97. Thumbs-up, Hedgehog, Thank You
97. Thumbs-up, Hedgehog, Thank You
"Not funny."
"....The first thing you say when you see me is that?"
After coming home,
I had washed up moderately and was about to laze around and sleep when Mai started whining at me.
"Nothing to see. I saw everything I wanted to see, and even what I didn't want to see."
"Is it okay if I ask what it was that you didn't want to see?"
"A raw horse meat mukbang."
"........"
"They said it was crunchy and delicious."
"Uh... yeah."
That must have been quite the unpleasant broadcast.
As I blanked out at the unexpected answer, Mai took my phone from my embrace as if it were her own.
"...Mai, is it okay for you to use this?"
"You say that after you already took it."
I really needed to buy a phone just for the kid later.
I entrusted my phone to Mai and lay down on the bed.
[Goddess Athena: Ah, ah. Can you hear me?]
"....Athena?"
Why were you appearing here?
Hera or Cronus, maybe, but at the unexpected appearance of a goddess I hadn't thought of, I paused my body mid-lie-down and raised my upper body again.
[Goddess Athena: The tribute you offered today was excellent. So I have come to give you a reward in kind.]
"A reward, you say..."
I didn't do it expecting anything, but if you're giving me something, I'll accept it gratefully?
I quietly waited for the oracle to descend.
[Mission]
[Our child, honestly, isn't she cute?]
-A mission bestowed by Athena.
1. Buy and gift electric guitar strings (0/1)
2. Do not mention Athena's name in the process of gifting
Reward: A Very Good Olive Tree on the Head
".....?"
Somehow the state of the oracle was a bit, no, seriously off.
Mainly from the title to the whole content.
[Goddess Athena: But I won't accept thanks.]
"That... um..."
I slowly raised my head and spoke.
"...Me, I'm a pure love faction, you see."
[Goddess Athena:....?]
"I mean, that is, how should I say it... I'm a person who only looks at one person and lives..."
[Goddess Athena: What an interesting joke. Don't worry. I already received permission from Hera.]
"No... so I'm telling you it's true?"
Even though somehow I ended up two-timing and even got a pet,
my heart was still set on the pure love straight line, I said?
I expressed my feelings as clearly as I could and subtly requested Athena to withdraw this harem-inducing mission.
And as a result.
[Goddess Athena: Does a person who dislikes harems try to conquer a woman's heart so naturally like that?]
"Huh?"
[Goddess Athena: You won't say you're not self-aware, will you? That in itself is a bad quality, so the reward could change into a punishment, you know?]
"........."
What was this
This weirdly screwed-over feeling.
As I trembled slightly, Athena spoke toward me.
[Goddess Athena: If you truly desire pure love, I have no intention of saying anything about it.]
[Goddess Athena: However, simply calling yourself 'pure love' as an excuse is a worse look than some roguish playboy anywhere.]
"...By any chance that─"
[Goddess Athena:─Shh]
".........."
Mm.
I see.
Roughly, I thought I could take it as that.
'Anyway, a pure-love-claiming pantomime villain, huh...'
I wasn't like that.
Really, that wasn't what I meant...
[Goddess Athena: I'll say this clearly since we have the chance. Hera probably found it hard to speak definitively due to her position...]
While I was agonizing, the oracle continued.
Athena spoke directly to me.
[Goddess Athena: Form a harem.]
[Goddess Athena: A harem you can't take responsibility for is trash, but a harem you can take responsibility for is both a right and a duty.]
"...Isn't that a trashy conclusion in many ways?"
A timid rebellion.
To that, Athena spoke.
[Goddess Athena: In the first place, the very origin of the name Heracles was adultery.]
"Ah."
A child born from an affair between a human and a god.
And that child was then raised by forcing the goddess's milk on it, a cuckoo of all cuckoos.
And such a child of a scumbag Geum Taeyang NTR villain became the hero who would save the world, meaning that the immorality set by humans might not actually be the correct doctrine when it comes to living life in the end.
[Goddess Athena: Put another way, do not try to understand the logic of the great and vast world with the meaning of petty human will... is what it means.]
"............"
Now
I had no idea where to even start talking.
As I stared blankly at the oracle Ultimately, Athena only left behind a message saying she was counting on me and disappeared.
".....Tch."
First, I had to do the mission.
I closed my eyes and waited for tomorrow to come.
And then.
"I know about it. Chrono, you are keeping a girl in your house as a pet, aren't you?"
"What?"
"Please release Mai immediately! No matter how much you try to hide it, there are things in this world that cannot be hidden!"
".....???"
"If you truly... truly, truly, sincerely desire such a thing...."
"Um...."
Though I was saying this now,
"Please be satisfied with taking me, as your pet!!!"
".....Ha,"
Honestly, maybe it would have been fine if tomorrow never came after all.
*******************
"I'm sorry! Really, truly sorry....!!"
"Ha......"
The full story of the incident was thus.
At night, I handed the phone to Mai.
Mai diligently watched videos on the phone, and in the middle of that, a single message came in.
Mai answered Minerva's message diligently, but perhaps the content was beyond what she could imagine,
and Ultimately, one way or another, the misunderstanding deepened, and after much deliberation, the method she came up with was...
"I never... dreamed you would even prepare a leash and come, really."
"Euk──! Uuuuu....."
An answer where several screws were loose, even before counting the one that said she would become a pet substitute.
No. If that was the conclusion you came to, shouldn't you be reporting it to the police instead of volunteering to become a slave?
I asked Minerva, and to this Minerva answered,
"If it's Chrono... I thought there must be some circumstances."
"....What?"
"If it's Chrono, if it's you, I thought we could talk it out and resolve it together."
"No....."
But what were you going to do if you ended up getting screwed from top, bottom, front, and back?
Just as I was starting to feel frustrated by what I could only think of as too lax a sense of caution, I thought about it and realized this too made sense.
After all,
'That's why you get NTR'd and film humiliation scenes...'
Because Minerva was the heroine of an NTR game.
Because you couldn't rule out that this kind of heroine humiliation scene didn't exist at all.
I let out a deep sigh and nodded my head.
I understood.
I could accept it in my head.
So then, what was left?
"..............."
"...I'm truly sorry, I have no face."
"That part's over now, so let's move past it... Anyway, what's that on the back of your hand?"
"Huh?"
A small bandage stuck on the back of her hand.
Minerva pretended it was nothing and hurriedly hid her hand behind her back, but since I had already seen it, I couldn't pretend I hadn't.
'How did she get hurt...'
...Wait, now that I thought about it, the mission Athena gave me yesterday.
Looking at the mission, it clearly said 'Gift electric guitar strings.'
So then, by any chance,
"Guitar strings...?"
"....How did you know?"
Seriously.
It seemed the string had snapped while playing the guitar and struck the back of her hand.
But getting struck on the back of the hand was one thing, why was she sticking a bandage on it?
"Can't you fix it with holy magic?"
"Chrono... you shouldn't use the power of the Main God for such trivial personal matters."
"Hey, if your own god—... devotee, if your own devotee is hurt and wants to use it, what would they even say about that?"
From what I felt while talking yesterday, Athena didn't seem that strict.
Should I say she seemed rather flexible in her own way?
She seemed to have that much leeway, didn't she?
"Small things like that can pile up and bring disappointment to the Main God later. You say you have to be mindful even from your everyday conduct."
"....Who said that?"
"Huh?...My father told me that."
"Then it's not even what the Main God said."
Put another way, the higher-up had no problem with it, but the lower-down was making a fuss.
"What is a Main God from a devotee's standpoint? They say they are someone to be served and at the same time, like a parent, right? When a child is writhing in pain under a parent, what's the problem with asking the parent to tend to them?"
"That's why I'm telling you, they are beings you shouldn't approach like that?"
"Euh."
It was frustrating.
Should I call her stubborn, I even got sick of her almost compulsively answering that way.
'Fine, do whatever you want.'
Sick of Minerva's reaction, I decided to just let it go.
[Goddess Athena: No, right?]
".....Tch."
If I had been alone, I probably would have just passed over it.
Though it was a sentence of only 3 characters, the meaning it held was incredibly heavy.
'But what am I supposed to do?'
A situation that went in circles with no answer.
Then suddenly, a single clever plan came to mind.
'Honestly, it's a bit absurd if this works, but...'
Still, I could at least give it a try, right?
I approached Minerva and said,
"You, are you going to keep partying with me in the future?"
"That is... yes. If Chrono doesn't find it uncomfortable, I would like that."
"Then heal the back of your hand. Because if the schedule gets delayed because you're hurt, that alone is a nuisance."
"Yes.....?"
Minerva was flustered by the suddenly changed tone of voice.
I continued to pressure Minerva.
"This is an order as the party leader. If you're going to drag out something that can be simply resolved with holy magic and mess up the schedule, then just withdraw from the party and leave."
"No.... what's with the sudden...."
"If you don't like it, get lost."
"....I will treat it."
As if she had no choice, Minerva healed the wound with holy magic.
The back of her hand became clean in an instant. At the spotless surface with no trace of injury, I finally relaxed my expression.
"See. How simple was that?"
"...Things like this can pile up one by one and you might receive divine punishment."
"If this was an act deserving of divine punishment, what you did last night would be a death sentence?"
"That's!.... That might be true, but...."
Treating a wound on the back of a hand,
versus shouting in a public place that you would violate their mother.
If you were to argue which was the more serious offense, it was clearly the latter.
"She's not the type of person to get mad over something like that. I know because we're close."
"...Say something that makes sense."
A curt, prickly tone.
[Goddess Athena: (A picture of a hedgehog raising its thumb)]
'...Seems like you really are close?'
The Thumbs-up Hedgehog was saying thanks.
As an aside,
─Rring-ring♬
"!, Hold on a moment. Suddenly a phone call is....
.....Ah."
A phone call suddenly came in for Minerva.
"....Father."
Minerva's father.
The guild master of the Athena Guild.
"Go to the guild right now.... Yes. Ah, and your colleague too.... Yes, yes. Understood."
After the call ended, Minerva turned to look at me and said,
"My father says he wants to see Chrono..."
The Minerva Site Quest, Siren's Tears.
And simultaneously, the branching point of the Minerva NTR Event, [Eternal Doll for Someone] had arrived.
