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TL: ALT
Chapter 141 – Confession?
We swam in the ocean, played beach volleyball in the sand, ate lunch at a beach house, and then enjoyed a banana boat ride.
I was lying on a beach chair under a parasol, watching the cotton candy iridocumulus clouds as I dozed off.
On the chair next to me, Sayuki looked down at her waterproof reading device.
Honoka-chan said she wanted to swim some more, and Haruhara went out to talk to the older sisters here.
So Sayuki and I stayed here as baggage handlers.
“That rock… looks like a dungeon.”
The strange rock jutting out of the sea, small enough to look like a cumulonimbus, gives off the feeling of a dungeon.
However, the signs of a dungeon are faint.
It is probably one of the lower-ranked C-rank dungeons.
It might be as difficult as the dungeon in the woods near my parents’ house in the skill world.
I’m curious about its location near a beach, but I’m sure there are no examples of dungeons in this level range causing flooding.
As long as there are more dungeons than convenience stores in Japan alone, that level of risk exists no matter where you are.
People get used to it.
Nowadays, you can’t make a decent living if you’re worried about the risks of low-level dungeons.
“Yuto-senpai. Don’t be tactless.”
I was shocked when a voice shouted at me from next to me.
“Sorry. I’m here to have fun.”
“Huh, you’ve been distracted lately, haven’t you?”
Sayuki raised her eyes from her device and asked.
“I don’t really care. But I feel sorry for Honoka-chan. If you are like that, Honoka-chan must feel uncomfortable. But she doesn’t show us anything like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Instead of apologizing to me, you should pay more attention to Honoka-chan.”
“You’re right.”
That’s where the conversation ends.
As far as I’m concerned, I can’t say anything more, you know.
I think even Sayuki senses that I’m not interested in talking anymore.
“Hey.”
“What is it?”
“I know this might sound strange, but…”
“Strange? Please be clear.”
“Let’s say, hypothetically. Suppose there are no dungeons in this world.”
“I suppose it can’t be helped if they appear, but… it would be good if it was a science fiction hypothesis.”
“Yes, you can ask it as fiction. If dungeons didn’t exist, I would never have met Honoka-chan. I wouldn’t have been able to save Sayuki either.”
“That’s right… In that case, Haruka-san, an elf from another world, and her daughter Honoka-chan would not have come to this world. If Yuto-senpai didn’t have the power as an explorer, you might not have been able to stop Junko Himuro from bullying me.”
“Right. If… if, you know. If I didn’t have the power of an explorer and still intervened to stop Sayuki’s bullying…”
“…That wouldn’t have been a good thing.”
Sayuki answers with a slight frown.
“I wonder if Junko Himuro might have changed the target of the bullying to me.”
“That’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I should be an easier target for bullying than Sayuki, who has a strong heart.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. A no-nonsense woman would have dared to choose to hunt down Yuto-senpai in order to hunt me down even more. To make me feel remorse that it was an unrelated person.”
Sayuki’s words were unexpected.
In the skill world, Sayuki killed herself while cursing me for intervening half-heartedly with an unnecessary sense of justice.
The logic that Sayuki would be cornered if I were cornered does not match my senses in the skill world.
That’s because, in general, if the person who tried to help me was involved in bullying me, I would inevitably feel responsible.
“That’s not because you feel that way because Sayuki and I are now part of the same party, right?”
“It’s insulting to hear you put it that way. Even if it had not been Yuto-senpai who came to help, I would not have been able to stay calm if I had seen someone other than myself involved. If it was just me, I could bear it to a certain extent…”
“I see.”
“…Come to think of it, I might not have told you properly. Well, I’m embarrassed to say this… Yuto-senpai is Honoka-chan’s boyfriend now, and I thought it would be a problem if it was misunderstood.”
Saying that Sayuki lifts her body from the beach chair and sits on her side facing me.
“Yuto-senpai. Thank you for trying to help me.”
Sayuki bows deeply to me.
“N-no, stop it.”
I’m the one who couldn’t protect you.
The words were about to come out of my mouth.
“Earlier, Senpai said that you wouldn’t have been able to save me without the power of the researcher. I think that’s probably true. Junko Himuro is a monster. She’s not the kind of person that a high school boy driven by a sense of justice can handle. But…”
Sayuki looks up and meets my eyes.
“…But still… Yuto-senpai tried to help me. Even though you weren’t a researcher at the time.”
Chronologically speaking, in this world, ‘I’ went into the dungeon to save Sayuki from being bullied.
I didn’t go in to help her because I was an explorer; I became an explorer to help her.
“If there had been no dungeon and if senpai had not been a magic swordsman… it would have been the worst thing that could have happened to me. But even if that had happened… I would have found salvation in the fact that there was even one person who tried to help me.”
“Sayuki…”
“Um, you know. I want to emphasize, so that there is no misunderstanding, but this is not a love affair. A person tried to save a person without thinking twice. That is something very sublime.”
As a lover of literature, Sayuki emphasized “sublime” and said,
“At that time, I was about to despair of humanity, and you were my savior. You were my hope. Even though it resulted in a fleeting dispersal… my respect for you is unwavering. For me, this feeling is irreplaceable.
Sayuki says, looking at me.
“To tell you the truth, there was a time when I thought it could turn into a romantic feeling. I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way. I don’t want to fight with Honoka-chan over a guy, and even if I did… I wouldn’t win, you know.”
Sayuki laughs mischievously.
“Or do you prefer to have women around you like famous explorers? At that time… if Yuto-senpai insists on it… I can think of something for you, you know?”
I was at a loss for words when Sayuki laughed softly at me.
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