Ninjas Suddenly Appeared! #1
I sank myself into the steaming hot water.
It felt as though an entire day's worth of fatigue was washing away in one go.
"Ahhh─, this is the life."
An uncle-ish sound escaped my mouth, but hey—I was technically an uncle, so it was fair enough.
And it wasn't like there was anyone around to be embarrassed in front of, anyway.
Pat, pat─.
Just then, I heard the sound of bare feet padding across the wet bathhouse floor. I turned my head and there stood Tsubaki, shielding herself loosely with a towel and her arms.
"Are you really sure it's okay for me to come in?"
Tsubaki asked me. She meant, of course, whether it was alright to bathe together with a man like me.
I fell into brief contemplation.
Tsubaki.
She had a woman's body, but in her heart of hearts, she truly believed herself to be a man.
And yet, even in this world of the 5th Industry, where nymphs and elves roamed about in broad daylight, someone as unique as Tsubaki would inevitably be subjected to stares and whispered gossip wherever she went.
Bathing—she must have always done it alone, hiding away from everyone's eyes. I was certain of it.
Something about that struck me as unbearably sad.
"Hurry up and get in. The water's at the perfect temperature."
I decided to treat Tsubaki, in every sense of the word, as a man.
Sure, she had a large chest and wide hips—but a man was a man.
Soon, Tsubaki gave a little tremble.
"R-right. It's nothing between men. Yes. I'm… um… a man, after all…."
Slowly─.
She eased one white foot into the tub.
Then, with a splash─, she plunged straight in up to her chest.
"…Am I weird?"
Tsubaki asked.
I thought carefully about how to answer without wounding her.
"What's there to be weird about?"
"M-my body."
Slowly─.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
But honestly, I didn't find anything strange about her at all. So rather than sneaking glances or ogling her from the corner of my eye, I looked at her openly and directly.
"You must have trained like crazy. I'm jealous. Do you work out often? If so, what kind of exercise do you do?"
"W-well, I don't really exercise─."
You don't exercise, and your body is that solid?
Her muscles looked well-defined, too.
"Wow. That's truly a blessed physique. Is that how most physical enhancement-type awakeners are? My dog-squirrel Keongkeongi is an enhancement-type too, you know. Extremely sturdy little thing."
"I— I see. A blessed physique. I've never thought of myself that way before."
And that was the end of the conversation.
……….
The bathhouse fell silent in every possible way.
Was it up to me, then, to find something to talk about?
"Depending on how tomorrow's match goes, you'll be getting engaged?"
"Huh? Oh, ah, yes. Well, I suppose. That's the plan."
Tsubaki's face had gone bright red.
Maybe she was sensitive to hot baths.
And here I'd assumed Japanese people loved soaking in hot springs and bathhouses and were good at it. Seems that was just my prejudice talking.
Tsubaki spoke.
"Is it strange? Me… getting engaged to women…?"
"No, not at all. It's just… arranged marriage itself is a little unfamiliar to me. Corporations or whole groups pairing off their children with each other—it's a bit of an odd concept, you know?"
I was an ordinary citizen.
In today's world, common folks usually married for love.
You married someone you liked—someone who made you think, yes, this is the one.
That's how the movies and dramas portrayed it, anyway.
But an arranged marriage was a transaction settled by cold calculation, with no regard whatsoever for the feelings of the people involved.
I'd heard that long ago, everyone married that way, matched by their parents—but with my 21st-century modern brain, I could understand it without ever being able to feel it.
That said, I had no intention of lecturing her with some stuffy platitude like, "You should marry someone you actually love."
I had no right to say such things, and I wasn't nearly important enough to pass judgment on whether 'arranged marriage' was wrong or right.
I was simply curious.
About what it felt like.
Splash─.
At that moment, Tsubaki sank her body into the tub all the way up to her neck.
"…Please don't laugh when you hear this. I like pretty things."
"Is that so?"
"Reiko is pretty, and Yerim is pretty too. Delicate ankles, slim waists. Skin like polished silk. Like the dolls children used to play with when we were little…. Big eyes, long eyelashes─. They have such high feminine charm, don't they?"
Did they?
Come to think of it, now that she mentioned it, I supposed they did.
So Tsubaki liked pretty women.
Well, for a man, finding pretty women attractive was only natural.
"Women are just so beautiful. Small and precious-looking. They smell wonderful, too. When we did theater as children, Reiko and Yerim always got cast as the princess. And I was the prince standing beside them…."
I see.
I thought I understood.
That she'd grown up alongside Seo Yerim and Reiko and developed feelings for them made perfect sense to me.
Then Tsubaki asked:
"Dog-Squirrel Haildo. What type of woman do you like?"
It was common enough for men trying to become friends to end up talking about women.
I suddenly found myself wondering what type of woman I actually liked.
"I don't really have a type. If I had to pick one, I'd say… someone who laughs easily?"
I didn't exactly have an ideal type or anything.
But I was a sucker for people who laughed warmly at what I said.
My 1st-generation cohort teammate had been like that, and so was Cassie.
The moment I went, "The Gundam, it speaks—gundam─" everyone would just lose it laughing!
Of course, tragically, neither Yu Ji-hyun nor Cassie ever ended up together with me!
Thump, thump─.
Tsubaki's heart was pounding.
Because this was the first time she had ever bathed alongside a man.
"We should probably get out soon."
Whoosh─.
The dog-squirrel Haildo rose from his seat.
The man's body thus revealed was like a statue roughly hewn with a blade—taut with tension from every angle. Even the scars scattered across it had a strange, thrilling quality to them.
'…That's… a real man's body…! Other than Dad, this is the first time I've ever seen a man's body…!'
Haildo.
Rumors about the dog-squirrels, honey ant, ghost spider, and tiger owl he kept had even reached Tsubaki's ears.
They said he was a man who tamed extraordinary animals and wielded them as his fighting force.
People sneered at him for it: "He just makes the animals fight for him while he sits back and takes it easy—talk about luck─."
But now, facing Haildo's back, Tsubaki found herself thinking it was anything but that.
'This is the back of a man…. of a warrior…. Is this the body of a 1st-generation awakener… of Korea, where the very first rift opened in this world─.'
Slowly─.
Tsubaki scrubbed at Haildo's back with a lathered towel.
Pressss─.
She tried gently pushing a finger into that back, and it wouldn't give even the tiniest bit—a body trained to its absolute limit. It felt like layers upon layers of steel rebar compressed together.
'A body carved down to the extreme.'
It was ascetic, self-punishing to the point of self-abuse—there was even a kind of madness to it.
What on earth could have driven him to push his body this hard?
Training the body to its limits didn't raise an awakener's rank, after all.
And what was most astonishing of all was─.
Sneakily─.
Tsubaki peeked over Haildo's shoulder at the front of him.
'A veritable oni…! Is this what a real man is…? A fake like me… could never imitate this…. How does a human body even─!? Doesn't it weigh him down? It must be so inconvenient to move!'
Fluuush─.
Tsubaki's face turned crimson.
Up until now, Tsubaki had always believed herself unladylike—more man than woman.
Because from childhood she'd grown up beside princesses like Reiko and Seo Yerim—girls who looked made for fluttering dresses—and being endlessly compared to them had convinced her that something about herself was wrong.
Tsubaki had been tall and strong from an early age.
As puberty arrived and the girls around her grew ever more feminine, that gulf became impossible to ignore.
Tsubaki was so strong and so tall that people called her 'Prince.'
She was far stronger than even the average man.
And at some point, Tsubaki herself had begun to wonder—was she not, in fact, a man rather than a woman?
But she had been wrong.
This thing, like several strands of thick wire braided and compressed together.
This fearsome object, like an oni's club—this was what it truly meant to be a 'man.'
The difference between Tsubaki and the male Haildo.
It was many times greater—far, far greater—than the difference between Tsubaki and fluttering, feminine women like Seo Yerim and Reiko.
There stood a wall that simply could not be breached.
A pillar too high to climb towered into the sky.
"Ms. Tsubaki. I think that's about enough. Here, let me do your back."
Slowly─.
The man turned around.
Tsubaki jumped in fright.
"Ah—y-yes! I'm a man, so—. Right. Yes─."
Scrub, scrub, scrub─.
A large, sturdy hand pushed the towel across Tsubaki's back.
She'd been blushing ever so slightly before, but now the embarrassment doubled, then tripled.
'So I really am… a woman…!'
She'd washed my back without so much as flinching—and let me wash hers just as casually.
So Tsubaki really was a 'man,' it seemed.
Awakening usually came around puberty, when emotional intensity came to dominate the body.
Given that, it really wasn't strange that some awakeners ended up confused about their own identity.
"All done."
Slowly─.
With a final splash of water, I rinsed her off.
And with that, our bath came to an end.
While I was getting dressed again, Tsubaki—already fully clothed—approached me.
"…An incredibly trained body. What kind of exercise do you do? On a regular basis, I mean."
Slowly─.
Saying that, Tsubaki placed a hand on my chest.
She seemed envious of my well-developed pectorals—finely honed as befitted a man. An educated eye, I see.
Back when I was stuck stagnating as a D-Rank, I'd started working out every single day out of desperation—pushing myself until I collapsed gasping for air, on the off chance it might help.
That habit had stuck, and I still trained the same way.
"A bit of everything, really. Though training like I do won't necessarily build you the same muscles. Everyone's constitution is different, you see."
"I see…. So a real man really is different, after all…."
Tsubaki's face flushed red.
I was thrown off balance.
Had I somehow hurt her without meaning to?
"Everyone's muscles are built differently by nature, Ms. Tsubaki. Would you mind if I felt your chest for a moment?"
"Huh? Wh-what did you say? My—my chest?"
"We're both men, of course, but touching another person's body can come across as rude depending on cultural differences, so I thought I should ask. That said, by feeling a body, I can generally read its constitution—figure out exactly how it should be trained."
"B-between men, then… between men… I… ah, I… um…."
Tsubaki was utterly flustered.
She sputtered and stuttered like a broken cuckoo clock.
"I— I'm— actually… I… I'm a woman…!"
Pop─.
At last, Tsubaki shouted it out.
And I felt the world collapsing around me.
"You're a woman?"
"Yes! No matter how you look at it, I'm a—a woman…!"
Tsubaki was a woman?!
She wasn't a man?
Then everything I'd done up until now had been nothing more than one-sided sexual harassment…!?
If this became the spark that destroyed Japan-Korea relations and plunged the world into World War III, then I─.
Right at that moment—
"Domou~! Tsubaki-san! It is ambush ninja, desu─."
Bam, bam-bam─.
The bathhouse lockers began popping open, one after another—and ninjas came bursting out of them!
"Huh? Ninjas? Why? Ninjas…!? Whuh?"
I was bewildered in every possible way.
I thought some kind of event was going on.
The whole thing felt like a hidden-camera prank staged just to fool me, Ha Ildo.
But Tsubaki, as if she were used to this sort of thing, clenched her fist and snarled:
"Who the hell hired these ninjas?! You're coming at me because you know I'm Yagami Tsubaki, heir to the Dark Dragon Yagami, is that it?! So it was you all along—said to be suspicious presences lurking on this island!"