178. Minerva, even you...?
178. Minerva, even you...?
My body shrinking was one thing.
Mars running away out of nowhere was another thing.
And Mars's mother suddenly showing up to request a mating press was yet another thing on top of that...
...Though admittedly, each and every one of those things was not easy to ignore.
"Let's go home."
I couldn't stand being here any longer.
I got up from my seat and walked out of the hospital.
I hadn't been fully admitted as an in-patient, and since I wasn't particularly ill anywhere, I could discharge myself quite easily.
"....Could you let go of my hand?"
"Big Brother is a baby. I have to protect him."
On the way, Mai walked holding Rhea with her left hand and my hand with her right.
With a smile as if she owned the world. Even matching her stride to Rhea's and my footsteps, she looked extremely pleased.
'Must be nice...'
She seemed to have no worries at all.
Meanwhile, my insides were disgustingly tangled to death.
As I walked, heaving all manner of sighs, Mai's footsteps suddenly came to a halt.
"Hm? Why? What's wrong?"
".........."
"Hey."
Mai slowly lowered her eyes toward me.
"Don't know the way."
".....?"
"I don't know the way home."
"........."
Oh, right.
She'd been striding along so confidently, I'd assumed she knew the way.
Come to think of it, I'd never wandered every corner of this city with Mai, so there was no way she'd know the way well.
'Then why did she just walk off like that?'
Did she just do that to indulge her own selfish desires?
Finding that attitude rather detestable, I pinched the back of her hand lightly.
"Eut....♡"
"Ah, shit."
Please don't make sounds like that out of nowhere.
A woman letting out a strange moan in the middle of the street after having her hand pinched by a young boy... what a scene that was.
No matter how you looked at it, that was a certified internet meme waiting to happen.
'I should just keep my mouth shut.'
Ultimately, after going around in circles, we took a taxi and went home.
When I opened the door to the home I hadn't seen in a while and stepped inside—
"Welcome back──???"
"....???"
There was a maid.
***************
Come to think of it, she had said something like that before.
While she was mooching off me, while she was receiving my help, she'd said she would assist me as a handmaid.
At the time, I thought she just meant she'd take care of the household chores.
"I never expected her to actually become a maid...."
And where she got that maid outfit from, no matter how you looked at it, it didn't seem like a normal maid outfit.
"I got the one with the highest rating... online."
"It shows."
Internet mail order.
The highest rated.
Maid outfit.
...No matter how you looked at it, it was an outfit used for 'that kind of purpose.'
'Well, anyway,'
These days, it was more fusion fantasy than traditional fantasy, wasn't it?
The nonsense playing in my head that 'a fusion maid outfit for that purpose would inevitably dominate over a stuffy traditional maid outfit'... I must have been quite flustered.
I drank the tea Minerva had prepared and calmed my complicated thoughts.
"So... Chrono, is that right?"
"A lot of things happened."
Minerva folded her hands, not knowing what to do, and kept glancing at my appearance.
The way she twiddled her thumbs together.
Since her gaze was clearly drifting to my head, cheeks, arms, and so on, I spoke to Minerva.
"Do you want to?"
"Huh? Yes! Eh, ehh?"
"Yeah."
Because you look like you want to.
I got down from my chair and approached Minerva.
"Here."
"........"
Minerva looked down at me blankly.
"What. Wasn't it?"
"......!!"
Minerva covered her mouth with both hands as if she finally caught on.
She trembled slightly for a moment, asked me several times if it was really okay, and only then did Minerva bring her hand to my head.
"Huuu... aaaah...!"
An awkward touch. She hesitated and flinched several times.
As if she gradually got used to it, she slowly stroked my head and began to pull me closer as if into an embrace.
"Ah...! Ah, I'm sorry...."
Minerva quickly pushed me away, as if she hadn't done it consciously.
'........?'
For a moment, the inside of my chest stung a little.
I felt strangely displeased.
I approached Minerva, who had pushed me away, and spoke again.
"You can do it."
"....Really?"
"Really."
"Th...en...."
Excuse me for a moment.
"....Hup..!"
She pulled me into her embrace.
Two enormous mounds of flesh touched my face.
It was warm, soft, and had a strangely salty smell—well, yeah. It was a place where sweat inevitably collected.
'Still...'
If asked whether it was uncomfortable, it wasn't.
It was a bit suffocating, but it also felt that much more comfortable.
A feeling reminiscent of some childhood memory.
"This is... really...."
Minerva, perhaps feeling something different from me, just kept trembling while awkwardly holding me.
To show that she didn't need to hold back, I hugged Minerva from my side.
"─Higeek...!"
"???"
Minerva let out a strange cry.
After a while, once she got used to it, she finally began to stroke my head and hold me tightly.
"Feel good?"
"Huh? Eh, yes. Yesss...."
Mai sat in front of us, likewise holding Rhea in her arms and petting her.
Mai nodded as if she knew everything.
"Minerva. Wait a moment."
"Yes?"
Still held in Minerva's arms, I reached my hand out toward Minerva.
"....?"
I stroked her head.
"....Mm...."
She averted her eyes as if a little embarrassed.
As she puckered her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, I took her cheek and gently pulled it.
"....Haiiaaeo... (Don't... )"
"Mm."
I let go of her cheek with a pop, and it immediately sprang back.
As a sort of apology, I rubbed her cheek with my palm, and she quietly leaned her face against my hand.
"Minerva. How do you feel right now?"
"....I'm incredibly embarrassed."
"And."
"And mortified...."
"And."
"..........."
Minerva buried her face in my small chest and whispered.
"I'm so happy that it feels like my heart will burst....."
"........Is that so."
It didn't seem like a lie.
At the same time, the prickly feeling inside began to gradually ease.
'A bit, yeah.'
It might feel a bit childish, but
maybe I acted this way because of the feeling of being pushed away by a loved one.
The fact that I got hurt by Mars and was healed by Minerva was a bit trashy, but if it had come to this, I was trash no matter how you looked at it.
What did it matter if trash acted like trash?
So I asked Minerva.
"Please give me some advice."
"......?"
...
..
.
"So."
Last time, Mars's parents visited the hospital room and gave me a test,
they played a weird joke with the test content, so I flew off the handle,
and then I even sliced Mars apart by a hair's breadth when she came to stop me.
"So when you tried to face her again now, she was terrified and... showed an unsightly side and ran away from Chrono, is that it?"
"........Wow."
Explaining everything that had happened up to now to Minerva, I realized.
Thinking about it again, it was a development where I had no room to talk even if I got slapped.
'What am I, some psycho?'
It was even more absurd to expect a normal greeting after not only drying up her father to death like an ancient funeral custom, but also shredding her own body.
"That was pretty harsh...."
I was vaguely aware of it.
Since I knew what I did, I thought being hated to some degree was a given.
But laying it all out like this, it was a situation where it was strange she didn't come at me with a knife shouting 'you're my parents' enemy.'
"If we're assigning blame, it would be the parents' side... but it's also true that Chrono's reaction was too harsh."
"......Grrmm."
No, but how could I put up with that?
If someone threatened right in front of you to hook up your girlfriend, who was happily dating you, with another guy, wouldn't it be normal to see red?
"And with your case too, I..."
"....I can only say that the timing was bad."
Could one normally, with common sense, do such a thing?
You could argue that taking it as a joke would be normal,
but having learned very recently through the Minerva incident that people without common sense also existed, it was only natural that I reacted more sensitively to those who spoke without common sense.
"So... Chrono wants to get closer to Mars again, doesn't he?"
".........."
Minerva's question.
Now that I thought about it, Ultimately, it became a situation where I was basically asking another girl how to fix my relationship with my girlfriend after it went sour, right in front of her.
'Am I trash?'
I am trash.
Since I'm already trash, what did it matter?
I nodded and answered.
"I ask of you."
"....Chrono..."
A slightly disappointed look.
But at the same time, as if she had no choice, she let out a chuckle and started stroking my head.
"Yes. I will help you. It's because Chrono is like this that I got a chance."
"...I feel like I got insulted."
"It must be your imagination."
".........."
I don't think so.
But before I could even properly hear the answer, Minerva closed her eyes and began to think.
'I'll leave it to her.'
Athena was a bit iffy, but I could trust Minerva.
Just as in the original where Minerva handled most of the thinking, I could trust her to unravel this hopelessly tangled thread.
".....Chrono."
After about 10 minutes of pondering.
Minerva turned her head toward me and asked.
"You said that the mother witnessed Chrono defeating Mars's father, the Ares Guild Master, right?"
"Right? Otherwise, there's no reason for her to suddenly come and say such a thing."
Not even 'bear my child,' but asking to make a baby together.
This was a reaction born entirely from having 'seen' things.
"Then... yes. We'll have to do that first."
Minerva spoke to me.
"Please make a baby with the madam."
"............"
Minerva, even you...?