The Truth Is, I Want That One in My Harem Party
"Hey—wait!"
Something told him he couldn't let this slip past him. That maid, the one called Marx—he had to catch her. He had to talk to her.
Marx shot him a needle-sharp glare and whipped her head aside.
"What, human."
"I don't know the reason, but... you hate humans like me, don't you?"
"...So what if I do?"
"Then why don't the two of us talk a little more? Share a few things. Get to know each other."
He was trying, however clumsily, to lay the first stone of the ideal he chased. Marx only closed the distance in long strides and jabbed a finger into his solar plexus again, biting the words off.
"Hey. You human called Leyre. You know why I hate humans? You know why I wanted out?"
"Why?"
When Leyre asked, Marx's eyes went wide, as if she hadn't expected that at all.
"...You actually want to know?"
"Yeah. That's how you narrow a conflict."
"Unbelievable."
Marx folded her arms.
"...Back when I was a maid, all I ever got was abuse. I don't have a single good memory. So when humanity went extinct, I figured this was my chance, and I started gathering maids who'd broken free of humans."
"...I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"As another human. I'm sorry."
Marx, who felt she had already seen every strange sort of human there was, was struck by a tangle of feelings she couldn't sort. The gentle man chasing an ideal stood right in front of her, and she couldn't tell whether she ought to scold him, ignore him, or praise him. She couldn't get a read on him at all.
This was why she never wanted to look at a human again.
This was why she had wanted independence from them.
No.
Maybe she had been hoping she would meet a human like this.
Marx couldn't pour that feeling out on the human—on Leyre.
"Karin. Don't you ever come back to our group. You hear me?!"
She spent the anger instead on a slap across the cheek of Karin, standing beside her.
"Y-yes..."
Karin answered with her head hung low, utterly cowed. It was nothing like the way she looked when Leyre was the one handling her. Here, she was simply deflated.
"From now on we'll put up signs and mark off the territory, so take note. We're not treating you as enemies, which means this is where it ends. Understood, human?"
"...Got it. See you next time."
"See you next—what are you even saying...!"
Marx flared, then caught herself.
"Ha. Getting mad only costs me. We're pulling out, girls."
The maids at Chairman Marx's back answered, "Yes, Chairman," and left together.
"...Master."
Lucia came to Leyre's side.
"Yeah. You've got something to say, don't you."
"Yes, Master."
"What is it?"
"It would be best if you did not hope for too much. As the Chairman... as Marx said, that place is a gathering of units trying to become independent from humans. They will not be inclined to listen to you, Master, a human."
"Mm..."
Leyre thought it over, then shook his head.
"No. Someday we'll meet again, and we'll really be able to get along."
"Why do you believe that?"
"I've got a feeling. And if I put in the work, we can clear up the misunderstanding. Isn't that all it takes?"
Hope and a quiet warmth rose in Lucia at his words, and she offered him a soft smile.
"I see, Master. I will always be at your side, cheering you on."
"Thanks, Lucia."
"Mmm~ sorry to break up the warm fuzzies~ but then what do we do about expanding the farmland?"
The root of the whole conflict came back to him: the fields. Leyre sighed.
"We give it up. Otherwise the only option is to clear the land we already hold and farm that."
"So you mean we cultivate the idle ground inside our own territory~?"
"I don't think we have a choice."
"Mmmmm~ that'll take a lot more hands, though. Nothing for it, I suppose..."
Agrippa looked to Lucia.
"Can we manage it?"
"...It is not impossible. It will simply take more time."
"More time, she says... mmm..."
Leyre brooded. Clear new land, or negotiate until farming was possible again. His choice—
"Mm... we'll do both."
Both.
"Master, are you certain?"
"M-Master... that seems a little dangerous..."
"Right, right. Did you see that look in Marx's eyes? Like she was about to eat you alive any second!"
"I'm only doing what has to be done eventually."
A few days after they had returned to the building of the Holy Fire Ritual Faction, Leyre had thought it through and come to a decision. A sword and a pistol, in case something went wrong. Food. Paper and an ink pen, for drawing up a treaty. He prepared one thing after another.
"It is still dangerous. Even if you are not enemies, they are uncooperative toward you as a human. Is that not so?"
Lucia tried again and again to stop him. Leyre didn't bend.
"I know. But she said it was because of humans like me, didn't she? Then don't I, as another human, need to apologize? And I told you. I'm going to make a world where every maid can live in peace with the others."
"But Master...!"
Leyre stopped her mouth with a fingertip.
"Now that the humans are gone, the maids will live better if they get along with each other. And when even I am gone..."
He let out a long breath.
"I want every maid to live in a world that's safe, and peaceful, and abundant. An ideal world, where they help one another. The kind of paradise humans never managed to build."
Leyre slung the packed bag onto his back.
"So I'm going. To Marx. To get along with this place called the Autonomous Independent Council."
"Master..."
"And, well. I've got a personal desire, too."
"Yes?"
Leyre's mouth curved into a lecherous smile, thick with want.
"I want more maids to love me... a maid harem... I can't help it, okay? In a world where I'm the only human... I'm the only one who gets to be loved, right? More harem, more love, more breasts!"
Lucia, Hias, and Karin heard the entire declaration.
"...Master is sneakily quite the pervert, I tell you."
"See~? Master's a man after all."
"Heh, hehe... honestly, it's not a bad goal..."
The three weren't revolted. If anything, they took it as very like their master and let it pass—because he was the last human left, and because he was someone who had the right.
"So I'm going to conquer that Marx and make her my maid. No matter what."
"C-conquer her and do what?! Something awful?! That sort of thing?! Make her submit?! Forcibly □□□ her?!"
When Karin asked it in a voice brimming with excitement, the faces of the other three went dead.
"Master is a good person. He would not do such a thing."
"Trust a masochist to have an imagination like that..."
"I'm not going to do that... well... if the other person wanted it, I might consider it..."
The way he had with Karin.
"Anyway, I'm going to where that Council group is. Lucia, I'm ordering the farm work to go ahead by clearing land. I'm counting on you while I'm gone."
"Understood, Master."
"Hias, stay by Lucia and assist her properly."
"Got it, Master~"
"And Karin..."
"Y-yes!"
Karin was buzzing, her face alight with expectation. Of course she was.
"You used to belong to the Council, right? Show me the way."
"Yes!!!"
And with that she turned and offered her back.
"Then climb on! I'll run us there in no time!"
"No, you don't have to... I'll walk too."
"Ah, a-ah... o-okay..."
Karin drooped. She had been sure she would earn another reward, and once again she hadn't.
"Well then... shall we go."
Leyre yanked his shoelaces tight.
"Why are there so many Scrapped Units on the way?!"
The road to the Council. He had thought it would be as safe as the road out to the farm, and yet Scrapped Units blocked them at every turn.
"This road is especially bad! It's a residential cluster, and the android-maid shops are all packed in together!"
Ordinarily he would have wanted Karin, strong as she was in a fight, to guard him on her own. They came on too fast, though, and too quietly, and even Leyre had to draw the pistol and the sword he had brought as backup. A complete novice with no combat experience at all, he grew more winded with every step.
"How did you even fight through a road like this and find the park?!"
In the end they decided to hide for a moment, slipping off the avenue where the Scrapped Units prowled and into an alley to catch their breath.
"B-back then I was alone, so there was nothing I had to protect, and there weren't nearly this many..."
Karin turned her fists over, examining them. She had been punching so long that the skin was ready to peel, and parts of it were already damaged.
"Wh-what do we do, Master... at this rate I think we're going to go past what I can handle..."
"Ha... maybe I should have brought Hias..."
She was Lucia's aide, so taking her along had been difficult. When Lucia was busy, someone had to cover the work. Bring any of the other maids, and they would be tied up with the clearing besides. In the end, only Karin. Leyre let out a breath.
"For now, let's stick to the alleys and go around as much as we can..."
"Y-yes, Masteeeeer?!"
At the sharp cry of worry in Karin's voice, Leyre turned his head.
The alley was packed solid with Scrapped Units, more of them than he could count.
"Oh, Mother..."
Was this it? Was Leyre going to die without even laying the first stone of the thing he meant to do?
THUD-BOOM.
Just as the thought struck him, a bomb came sailing in from somewhere. The blast turned every Scrapped Unit into scrap iron at once. They were flung into the sky and came raining down over Leyre and Karin.
"Wh-what...?"
Leyre looked around with dazed, half-dreaming eyes.
"Human... how did you find your way here?"
The voice came from above—the roof of a building. And there she was.
"I told you we shouldn't meet again, didn't I?"
The Chairman of the Council. Marx.