Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 13 - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: A Gulf Carved

Mitarai maintained her grim expression as she stepped into the room.

“Aoi...?”

A quiet, trembling voice shook the air. It was Katou. She was a smart girl, so maybe she’d predicted what was about to happen next. Even without such wisdom, it was obvious to everyone that the mood in here was turbulent. The thorny aura the nicknamed cheater, the Stalwart Snow White, emitted put Lily and the others on guard. Not that Mitarai launched herself at us; she just sounded stiff.

“About Majima-senpai joining us. I’m against it.”

“What? Aoi, wh—”

“Be quiet, Yuna-senpai.”

Iino started to say something in a panic, but Mitarai cut her off. Her strong tone shocked Iino, so Nakajima continued the conversation in her stead.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

Even when faced with a nicknamed cheater’s threatening aura, he remained composed. As the exploration team’s leader, he was probably used to this kind of situation. Or maybe he simply had the composure of one who held tremendous power.

“You can speak your mind, but you’ll have to give me a reason for this.”

“A reason? It’s simple. I question Majima-senpai’s morality,” Mitarai said.

“In short, you say he’s unsuitable for the exploration team?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why you think so?”

Mitarai turned to me. There was a hostility in her eyes that she’d never shown before. She then focused on something behind me.

“Majima-senpai, you’re in a relationship with that knight lady, right? And with the person there who looks like Miho-senpai. The same goes for the spider lady and the maid, right?”

She pointed them out one by one with her eyes, diving into the topic we’d been trying to avoid to the point that we’d carefully selected who would come with us from Draconia. She’d brought everything to light. If not for the way she was demanding answers, I’d almost be impressed.

“Do you deny it?” Mitarai asked provocatively.

Seeing how convinced she was, I knew she wasn’t going to back down. If I tried to lie, it would likely give everyone here a worse impression of me.

“No, it’s the truth,” I answered.

In that instant, everyone looked at me differently. I ignored that for now and focused on the girl before me.

“I’m surprised you noticed,” I said.

“I could kinda tell based on your gazes and expressions and how close you all were,” Mitarai said, scoffing. “Looks like you were trying to hide it in public, but I was monitoring you.”

“You were?”

“The reason I asked Yui-senpai to bring me along was so that I could find out what kinda person you were.”

Now that I thought of it, when I first met her, she’d been watching me and Shiran getting intimate. That hadn’t been because she was curious, but because she’d had an objective in mind. Even if she hadn’t come to a decisive conclusion then, she’d accompanied us all the way here. There had been plenty of signs for her to question our relationships, and they were what brought her here to criticize me.

Now that this had happened, the problem was how the exploration team would react.

The first to speak was Kuriyama. “But aren’t they monsters? Strictly speaking, they aren’t women.”

She was apparently trying to support me. Perhaps as someone responsible for an organization, she merely disliked quarrels.

“Besides, isn’t it allowed in this world?” she added.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Mitarai retorted stubbornly. “This world is this world. We’re not from here.”

No. Rather than being stubborn, it was more like she thought she was stating the obvious. To her—to all exploration team members with good sense—her way of thinking was perfectly reasonable. Kuriyama’s argument had, in reality, made her more obstinate.

“Well, you make a good point,” Kubota said in agreement. “I get where Mitarai’s coming from. Even if it’s accepted here, getting it on with a whole buncha girls at once is grounds to doubt his morals.”

He wasn’t being as hostile as Mitarai, but he still made a somewhat sour expression.

“I can’t agree with the thought that they’re not girls, though,” he added. “Until meeting them myself, I thought all monsters were the same, but even if they all look different, it seems Majima’s servants are no different from people.”

“That’s basically it,” Mitarai said, nodding in agreement. “I can’t work with someone so faithless. Even everyone who agreed already should think the same... In fact, the whole sixty percent Yui-senpai gathered is suspicious too.”

“Huh?” Shimazu cried. “Wh-What do you mean?”

For a while now, Shimazu had been mulling over how to mediate in this unexpected development. She couldn’t keep quiet after that statement, though.

“I actually have sixty percent of the signatures...” she said, leaning forward.

“I talked with a girl who gave her signature. I thought it was weird.”

“W-Weird how...?”

“As far as I know, she was totally against it.”

Mitarai had evidently been talking to the other members about this, which was probably why she hadn’t shown up at first.

“That girl thought it’d be scary for Majima-senpai to join us. I’m not saying you’re lying, Yui-senpai, but it got me thinking, so I went to check. I asked her why she agreed. She told me that she decided to sign after hearing a certain story.”

“A certain story...?” Shimazu repeated.

“The slime with Majima-senpai can revive the dead,” Mitarai said, shifting her gaze to Lily.

“Huh? Me?” Lily said, her eyes wide as saucers. She hadn’t expected the conversation would turn to her. “I can do what now?”

“You’ve got Miho-senpai’s looks, right? That’s not all. I’ve heard the supposedly dead Miho-senpai is literally inside you. In other words, you revived the dead, right?”

“That’s not exactly...”

In a sense, Mitarai was right. Mizushima had died, but she was still here. Normally, even a cheater couldn’t revive the dead. We’d discovered that in the Colony. No matter how much power one possessed, some things were still impossible. Maybe that was why this sounded all the more attractive.

“Back in the Colony, several exploration team members died. The same goes with that fake savior stuff. Obviously, everyone’s super worried about it.”

Mitarai made it sound very personal. Just maybe, she’d experienced it for herself.

“We might die. Our friends might die. I’m pretty sure we’re all anxious about it,” Mitarai continued. “But what if we have Majima-senpai’s cooperation? That girl signed ’cause she hopes this is true. Of course, Lily has already assimilated Miho-senpai, so it’d actually be her kids or something who do it.”

“H-Hey, Mitarai, that’s going a little too far...” Kubota cut in, glancing at Lily.

Lily’s expression was exceedingly grim. I couldn’t help but be extremely displeased too. Specifically, they wanted to use our children as tools to revive the dead. Naturally, it wasn’t that the people who shared those opinions truly thought of it that way. They weren’t full of malice or anything. The majority of the exploration team only knew of monsters as monsters. They didn’t know what my servants were. Kubota himself had just said, “Until meeting them myself, I thought all monsters were the same.”

Monsters were beings with no will and no personality who simply bared their fangs at humanity. They saw me as a cheater who could manipulate them as tools, which was how they’d come up with this idea.

I understood this, but it was a different matter whether I accepted it. Regardless of whether there was any ill intent, it was unpleasant. Even Mitarai was put off by this and winced a little.

“Ah, no, I’m not the one saying stuff like that,” she said. “That’s just how it turned out. Looks like it’s mostly Okazaki-senpai spreading it around.”

“Him again? I can easily imagine him acting all proud of that suggestion,” Kubota said, sighing.

Shimazu’s list of signatures included the Almighty Vessel Okazaki Takuma, so it wasn’t odd for his name to come up now. On the other hand, the one who’d started that list was now pale as a sheet.

“Wh-What’s with that? I haven’t heard anything about it...” Shimazu said, turning my way. “Please wait, Majima. I really didn’t mean to...”

“I know. You had good intentions,” I said.

It was unfortunate. She’d done all this because she believed it was best for the both of us and had taken great pains to get this far. Unfortunately, it’d been twisted along the way. In all likelihood, it’d happened while Shimazu was away from the capital. She’d also said that she’d gotten more signatures than she thought she’d get. The reason for that was now clear.

Shimazu had taken her eyes off gathering signatures to leave the capital and pick me up, so there was no point blaming her for it. However, looking at the simple facts, that was all the list represented now. That was what Mitarai was protesting.

“Aoi, is this what you’re trying to say?” Having stayed quiet this whole time, the Indomitable Will Ishida Tetsuo now spoke. “People are only swept up by the possibility of reviving the dead. They don’t actually agree with him joining in the original sense. Also, you don’t believe in Majima-senpai’s faithfulness.”

I’d heard Mitarai and Ishida were childhood friends. He was used to summing up what she was trying to say. The truth we’d been trying to keep from the exploration team had all been exposed. As a result, Mitarai and Kubota now distrusted me. At this rate, Ishida would also share his childhood friend’s opinion.

Nakajima and Kuriyama’s expressions hadn’t changed much, but about half of the members here were reacting negatively. Even so, I understood. Rather, I resisted the idea myself. It was only natural for them to have a poor impression of me.

It was vexing that they thought of me as some frivolous playboy, but we didn’t know one another, so we couldn’t make them understand. That was to say nothing of how the exploration team’s members had maintained their values from our old world. Having such a strong sense of justice also made them fastidious. It’d be one thing if we got to know everyone, but it was extremely bad for this to get out on our first meeting.

I’d predicted this, so I’d already made my decision. If something like this were to happen, I had no choice but to give up on it. Thus, I easily accepted the situation. I did, at least. Someone else here didn’t.

“P-Please wait a moment!” Katou stood up in a panic, sending her chair clattering behind her.

“Katou...?”

I hadn’t expected this. I was wondering if she had some kind of plan, but it didn’t look that way.

“You’ve got it wrong! You’re misunderstanding, Aoi!” Dismay was written all over Katou’s face. “Majima-senpai isn’t that sort of person!”

She stared at Mitarai and spoke in a strong tone. Alarm, anger, and bewilderment colored her voice. However, there was none of her specialty logic behind it. She was just saying exactly what came to mind.

Something was strange. This wasn’t like her. Normally, she would never act like this. Be that as it may, thinking back on it, maybe this was how she was before Mitarai. The girl known as Katou Mana had been shattered into pieces in this world once already. The cool and collected girl I knew had come together after that fact.

Maybe by reuniting with a friend from before that time, something that Katou had once lost inside her was coming back. She was returning to being a girl who’d lived a peaceful life before being horribly scarred. Her coolheaded self was nowhere in sight.

To my eyes, such a change was a good thing. Above all else, Katou had seemed happy. I’d hoped Mitarai could be for her what Mikihiko was for me, but unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way.

“Mana! Why won’t you understand?!”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand!”

An emotional opinion was refuted by an emotional outburst. That was all there was to it. Spurred entirely by feelings, they only grew more fervent. Katou was already bad at dealing with sudden events, but having lost her normal calculating nature, and with her friend, of all people, making things worse, Katou was panicking.

“You still don’t get it?!” Mitarai said, her cheeks turning red.

She’d long lost her composure. She ran over to Katou and grabbed her shoulders. Perhaps failing to hold back her strength a little, her grip made Katou wince.

“Open your eyes, Mana!”

Her expression showed nothing but concern for her friend—no falsehood. Maybe that was precisely why all this had happened.

“He’s scum who’s laid his hands on all sorts of girls!”

Mitarai kept her eyes fixed on Katou, screaming as she pointed at me. Then, the decisive blow came.

“Falling for a guy like that will only make you unhappy!”

This was the reason Mitarai had made things worse. She’d acted this way for her friend’s sake.

“Ah...”

Katou froze as if time had stopped. Her cheeks turned redder and redder, then she turned pale. She’d regained her composure from the sudden shock as if a bucket of cold water had been dropped on her, and she finally understood. She now knew why Mitarai was doing this and why she’d aggravated the situation. Katou also knew what she had to do now.

The Katou Mana I knew wouldn’t hesitate once she came to that realization. In the next instant, all expression vanished from her face.

“What kind of assumptions are you making?” she said in a terrifyingly cold voice. She looked at Mitarai with a chilling glare. That was the look she gave her enemies.

“M-Mana...?”

It was probably the first time Katou had treated her so coldly. Faced with that sudden change, Mitarai sounded bewildered, but Katou no longer gave that any more thought.

“Majima-senpai isn’t the type of person you say he is. I’ve been with him this whole time, but he hasn’t laid a single finger on me.”

Mitarai’s grip on Katou’s shoulders loosened, and not missing that opportunity, Katou shook her off. Taking several steps back, she glared at the girl who’d once been her friend.

“He’s protected me faithfully until now. It’s distasteful for you to slander my benefactor like that.”

“Mana...”

Mitarai was now on the receiving end of criticism. Unable to keep up with this change, she was in a fluster.

“B-But Mana, you’re in lo—”

“That’s a misunderstanding,” Katou said coldly, then took a breath.

She glanced my way, and for a second, I thought I saw her lips quiver as if she was about to cry. Maybe that was just my imagination, though. The next moment, Katou spoke as if it were nothing.

“I don’t like Majima-senpai or anything,” she declared with no warmth in her voice. Seeing her as she was now, nobody could doubt her. “Your misunderstanding is causing trouble.”

Mitarai stood stock still in silence. All feelings of criticism toward me had vanished at this point, which was Katou’s intent. People’s impressions changed so easily. Katou had turned Mitarai’s misunderstanding into an utter nuisance to her. However, as the price for that, a decisive gulf had been carved between the two girls.

Silence hung over the room. A hopeless, heavy atmosphere sucked all the air out. And just then, the door was flung open once more with a loud thud.