#009
“…Kevin.”
Suppressing the anger that surged along with bewilderment, I opened my mouth as calmly as possible.
“Why are you treating me like this? What did I do wrong?”
“What did you do wrong? Ha. This is really unbelievable.”
However, Kevin glared at me as if he himself was dumbfounded and seething with anger but holding back as much as possible.
“To think you were such a shameless bastard. I want to cut out my tongue for guaranteeing that you were a decent guy. You piece of trash. We don’t have the luxury to feed precious food to scum like you when it’s already scarce.”
Kevin said this while coming around the counter and began to physically push me out of the store.
“Get out of here before Rosie comes and sees you!”
Rosie?
Even while being pushed out, I was puzzled by the name that suddenly popped up. I knew well who Rosie was. She was Kevin’s younger sister, an NPC who originally ran a cafe by the beach. After that entire area was submerged, her setting was changed to help Kevin run the bakery together.
She was basically cold-natured, and with the environment becoming this bad, she had become even more frigid, but there was no particular reason why Rosie and I shouldn’t meet. Most importantly, wasn’t this the starting point of the game? We hadn’t gotten entangled in anything yet. At most, she would know me as the failed farm owner from the outskirts of town who used to visit often as a child.
I didn’t know why, but Kevin seemed to hope I wouldn’t encounter his sister, but unfortunately, that wish wasn’t granted.
“What, why are you here?”
As I was being pushed out by Kevin, I almost bumped into Rosie who was just trying to enter the store. Rosie looked shocked when she spotted me.
“You came to our store? This is incredible. Were you such a shameless bastard?”
Rosie said exactly the same thing as Kevin.
“Rosie. Don’t mind him and just come in. Just ignore him.”
Kevin gestured to Rosie while pushing me out. Rosie glared at me as if she wanted to kill me, then pushed past my shoulder and went inside. I didn’t even have time to feel wronged by this inexplicable treatment. I was just dumbfounded.
“Why are they all acting like this? At least tell me the reason. This is really absurd…”
I stood there dazedly and muttered. I thought it was a soliloquy, but was my voice unexpectedly loud? The moment I thought I made eye contact with Rosie who was going inside, she came bursting back out with a completely furious face.
Smack!
Along with a sharp sound, my face whipped to the side. The cheek that collided with Rosie’s palm felt like it was burning.
“You bastard! A slut like you has no conscience! Right, you have no conscience, so that’s why you could do such things! If you’re at least human, shouldn’t you avoid lurking around this area?”
Rosie screamed like that and then ran off somewhere with reddened eyes. Kevin glared at me as I stood there with my mouth agape in bewilderment, clicked his tongue, and slammed the store door shut in front of me.
Slut… slut? Me? To me… she meant it in that sense, right?
My mouth fell open at being left behind. A slut. It was the first time in my life I’d heard such a word directed at me. I felt wronged.
“Why did you even show your face here? Did you get shot in the head?”
Someone put their arm around my shoulder while snickering. Despite the cold day, hot and humid body heat pressed against me. It was a man with a build much larger than mine, at least a head taller. He wore a flashy black sukazan with dragon embroidery over a bright red silk shirt, with tight leather pants and leather boots below. (Sukazan is a fashion item I personally like, but seeing this guy wear it, I’ll probably never wear one in this world.)
“…Muchi.”
Muchi was initially like a background character who wasn’t even a target for building favorability, but during the tutorial progression, he somehow solidified his presence as a sort of neighborhood thug, and later formed a gang and established himself in the village as a hunter.
Since there weren’t many people who could properly use force to fight back during times when monster threats intensified, even thugs like these ended up getting work assignments. It felt like they were solidifying their power more and more with each chaotic playthrough, so they might be doing even better now.
Since they weren’t the type to get involved with for any good, I avoided them during the tutorial. Anyway, during the tutorial, I was only practicing really necessary basic quests, so there was no need to get entangled with them. So this was the first time this gang had approached me directly and spoken to me.
“Why are they acting like that? I’d be pissed off too if I were them.”
The lackeys standing behind Muchi, giggling, began to make snide comments one by one.
“His head really must have problems. Look at this bastard’s state. Looks like he got thoroughly beaten by monsters somewhere.”
“He still has that wronged expression on his face? His character is amazing. I like this bastard – should we let him join our gang?”
Hearing that, Muchi laughed and patted my cheek.
“Why did you come to your ex-wife’s oppa’s store? Good thing it was gentle Kevin who let it slide – if it were me, I would’ve broken your legs completely.”
Ex… wife? Former wife?
A scene came to mind at those words. I had concluded that it was a hallucination due to poisoning, but didn’t Carlisle, whom I met in the forest, also say something about me being his ex-husband? Could that have been real?
No, wait, does that make sense? How is this all working out right now?
I suddenly fell into confusion. If I really had met Carlisle in the forest, and he had correctly called me his ‘ex-husband’, and if Rosie was now my ex-wife, then this game world was a continuation of the game I had actually played.
No, that’s not right either? Wasn’t everything reset right now?
If it wasn’t reset but rather time had passed while I was unconscious and the farm had failed and I’d lost all my accumulated wealth, that would make sense. But with that setting, at least my house should have maintained the scale of being upgraded to the final stage, right? It could be dirty and damaged from poor maintenance, but a 3-story house shouldn’t have reverted back to a two-story cabin. My current house was exactly the small, shabby cabin from the starting point.
Most other things had returned to the starting point, but only human relationships remained at the final situation from the actual game? Does that make sense?
If only general favorability building had ended and it was fixed at that point, that would be different. The NPCs would harbor goodwill toward me, which would actually be a great help.
But if that’s not the case… if it’s a situation where I had progressed to the romance simulation stage and not only dated and married every single female NPC in the village, but also divorced them all not long after through ‘my unilateral notification’… and the last partner was even a male.
It’s not even an anonymous big city, and in this small world that’s called a town but where most residents are set to know each other, I had done such things. How would I look in their eyes?
The giggling mercenaries, the village residents looking coldly from afar, and even Rosie and Kevin.
‘Wow…’
Only one word came to mind.
‘I’m fucked…’
I could feel the system’s massive malice.
Please let it not be true… Let Carlisle just be a hallucination, and let only the situation of marrying and divorcing Rosie remain by data error… But Rosie calling me a ‘slut’ was probably…?
My vision grew distant. I could only hope and hope again that this ominous premonition wasn’t true.
***
I started walking toward the guild in a half-dazed state. My thoughts branched out.
If I had been reset with the records of my romance simulations completely intact, then it would explain Eira talking about lingering attachments and old connections. She wasn’t talking about innocent childhood connections.
Wasn’t Eira even my first marriage partner? Now that I knew the situation, I understood why Eira had called herself a pushover and such. If all the romance records really remained, it meant she had married me and been divorced in less than a season, then watched as I repeatedly remarried and divorced other partners several times after that.
Since the village was small, all my marriage partners were essentially Eira’s friends or acquaintances, and the final marriage partner was even a man, Carlisle Lightinger. What did the NPCs here think when they saw me like that? Did they think I had run out of women so I extended my hands to men? Or did they think I was originally gay or bi but kept hiding it until finally revealing my true nature? (Not even soap operas were this dramatic!)
The reason Kevin didn’t throw a punch at me the moment he saw me but held back was truly because he was an extreme pacifist. To him, Rosie was a sister he had raised like a child due to their large age gap and their parents’ early death. Just seducing and marrying such a sister then abandoning her shortly after would have made his teeth grind, but I had continued showing trashy behavior after that.
I had even brazenly come to the store and acted friendly as if nothing had happened – how outrageous must that have been? I also advocate non-violent pacifism to some extent, but if I were in the same position, I wouldn’t have been able to hold back and would have thrown a punch. There’s a limit to shamelessness!
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
