Making a Board Game (1)
"..."
When I opened my eyes, the Demon King was there waiting for me, her eyes round and sparkling with anticipation. I supposed this was going to be my every morning from now on.
"..."
"..."
"...Drumstick."
I gave the girl waiting for my answer the next word in the chain we'd been playing right up until I fell asleep last night. Her last word had been "oak barrel," after all.
She must have stayed up all night waiting, because she fired it back with everything she had.
"Little Farm!"
We ate a quick breakfast and fired up Little Farm right away. Today was the day we had to return Red Hare, which meant we needed to squeeze every last drop of value out of it. I couldn't believe she was counting the day we'd spent traveling as part of the rental. Her stinginess put Nine to shame.
"...Huh?"
"Hm? What's wrong?"
I'd found the source of the strangeness I'd been feeling since I woke up. Yesterday I'd scrambled out of bed, gone sprawling on the floor, and wrenched my knee — and it didn't hurt at all.
That wasn't all. The pain that always throbbed from the sword scar on my back, the one I'd gotten adventuring with those bitches, was gone too.
I slipped a hand under my clothes and felt around. The wound was still there. Only the pain had vanished.
"..."
I stared at her. Those crimson eyes that had been following the donkey around on the screen turned toward me.
"..."
"..."
"Starting today, I'm closing the door when I sleep."
"Why, why, why?! You can't!"
Where the hell had this little shit picked up nothing but bad habits. Back when she made me this hoodie, she'd taken my full-body measurements while I was asleep too. Why was she sticking her hands on a sleeping person's body.
"Why, why! What's the problem..."
The repeat-offender Demon King protested her innocence with the face of someone who hadn't done a single thing wrong. She looked so genuinely aggrieved I almost let her off with a warning.
"Bring me the contract. I'm shredding it."
"...Why? Why? Huh? Why all of a sudden? Is it because I snuck two extra meatballs while you were in the bathroom at breakfast?"
No wonder, dammit! I knew the meat looked short. Because of you I ended up chewing grass like a baby cow by the end of the meal. Adding that to the list of charges. This was a genuine menace.
"Bring it. As of today, that contract is void."
"I can't bring it! I don't know what I did but I'm sorry! I'll lend you Red Hare for two more days — ah, no, one more day, so please let it go."
Even her settlement offer was disgustingly cheap. Ptooey.
"...I just... you always looked like you were in so much pain, rubbing your back like that..."
So she'd been watching.
Come to think of it, she had a scar on her back too.
Had she used this magic to take the pain away?
...Yeah. She'd just been bothered by the way I looked like I was hurting. That was why she'd used magic on me.
"It's fine. Don't be sorry. Thanks for the magic."
"Ah, yeah. While we're on the subject... I also doodled on your face. I figured if I wiped it off before you woke up, you'd never know.... I won't doodle on you with crayons again."
"That's it. Bring me the contract after all."
And then—
Bzzz. Bzzz.
A familiar alarm blared, one I hadn't heard in quite some time.
"...I'll be right back."
She set down the controller as she said it.
"Yeah. I don't have to come with you, right?"
As long as I had Red Hare borrowed, I needed to wring every last bit of use out of it. The sooner I built her that Mars city she'd been dying for, the happier she'd be. I was sure of it.
"Yeah."
The Demon King got up from her seat and went off to drive out the intruder.
...Huh? What the.
Her character dropped the carrot it'd been feeding the donkey and wandered off. Sloppy.
Beep. Beep.
The empty room filled with the sound of a single person's button presses.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
She was taking a while.
Why wasn't she back yet?
Normally she'd have already slapped the guy into next week and returned by now.
I set the controller down. There wasn't much Red Hare fever-time left, but somehow the fun had gone out of it without her there.
I opened the game room door and went out to check on the thoroughly demolished intruder who was surely embedded in the wall like a piece of modern art.
Sure enough...
The adventurers who got wrecked in a different pose every time had each achieved their own unique pinnacle of the arts. Tank, healer, swordsman, archer — didn't matter what they were.
It had taken a little longer than usual. I'd never seen this one before... looked like he'd actually been able to put up a fight.
The long-haired man was jammed into the wall upside down, his cheeks swollen like an anaconda had bitten them. A sight no more remarkable than the canned beans we ate every day.
"Get over here! There's so much! So much!"
A huge grin spread across the Demon King's face as she looted the fallen intruder's bag.
I walked over.
"Anything worth grabbing?"
"Yeah! Look at this! We were almost out of soap! Heehee."
...Why the hell would a guy coming to fight the Demon King bring soap?
Then again, there were guys who brought game consoles, so this was nothing.
"Help me look."
"Sure."
We rummaged through it together. Whether he'd been possessed by the spirit of surviving in the Tower or just carried it all around for training, the intruder's enormous bag was packed with household goods. For a Demon King who'd been scraping by on daily necessities, this was a windfall.
"Heehee. Iheehee."
Grinning from ear to ear at this double-drop event for household supplies, the Demon King yanked loot out of the bag at random — and then climbed all the way inside, happily swimming through the dropped items.
"Hey, get out of there. What if there's a blade in there or something."
A wriggling answer came from inside the bag.
"Then that'd be awesome! I needed something pointy anyway. Heheh!"
"Don't say 'awesome' like that."
I could almost hear splashing. I wondered how the guy felt, watching the little girl who'd slapped him into a wall swim around inside his own bag.
Take it like a man. You came here to kill her.
If that bastard tried to argue she had no right to do this, I'd personally deliver a Shin-chon Gerard dropkick on behalf of every demon in existence.
"W-WAAAAAH!"
The Demon King, who had been laughing in a voice as happy as a stag beetle swimming in a pot of honey, suddenly screamed from inside the bag like a hundred pterodactyls crying out at once.
"Hey—!"
There really must have been a knife in there. I shoved myself into the bag in a hurry, grabbed her by a spot that didn't have any buffs on it, and pulled her out. She was incredibly light. Definitely way lighter than Rebecca's armor, at least.
"Whoa...."
Thankfully, she wasn't hurt.
The Demon King's red eyes were shining and trembling violently, as if she'd found a treasure chest.
What was she so...
What she was clutching in her hands was a Blue Marble box.
We gave the intruder a rough lesson in manners, wiped his memory, and sent him on his way. Without the bag, of course. Empty-handed.
The Demon King was holding the Blue Marble box, her hands trembling.
"...I really... I really wanted this..."
"...You know what this is?"
"Uh-huh. I saw the little kids in the village playing it."
Apparently some Earthling had sold one they'd brought with them. Earth goods fetched pretty high prices in this world.
Listening to her talk, it seemed the Demon King would watch the village kids play with something and envy them — but she never took it from them.
Did she have some kind of creed about only taking things from people who came into the Tower to kill her?
...She was too soft for her own good.
"Eheheh."
...Heh. Is she really that happy?
I hadn't even been the one to give it to her, but a dad-smile spread across my face anyway. Maybe this was how a father felt handing his daughter a Christmas present.
Hang on... seeing her this happy...
Maybe she'd even forget about something like the Paper Crane?
"Let's play this. You, me, and the Paper Crane."
Ah, hell.
An Earth board game.
You roll the dice and move your piece that many spaces. You build on the space you land on, and if another player lands there, they pay you in the game's currency. A player who loses all their money, or who can't pay a fine, is out.
I had memories of playing it to death during school retreats.
Honestly, the fact that it involved rolling dice already meant the Demon King's odds of being good at it converged infinitely on zero.
Not that it mattered, when she liked it this much.
"Do you know how to play?"
"...No. All I saw was the kids throwing some square thing and handing paper back and forth."
"I know how. I'll teach you."
"W-wow. You know this one too?"
"Yeah."
When I said yes, she looked at me with something like reverence.
"Oh my gosh! You really... there's no game you don't know!"
"It's nothing. Don't make a big deal out of it."
"King of Games! Game Commander! Captain Hook of Games!"
"Come on, I said it's fine. Stop. Put those away."
"Game junkie! Guy who doesn't know anything but games!"
"..."
"Man who staked his life on games! Guy who couldn't live without them!"
...Would you cut it out already, you shriveled-up little demon. This is starting to piss me off.
Having the Great Demon King of Games herself say that kind of thing to me made my entire life feel infinitely pathetic.
"..."
"..."
You've got to be kidding me. You son of a bitch.
I wanted to drag the long-haired guy we'd just turned into an idiot and kicked out of the Tower right back in here and beat the hell out of him.
Why.
Why the hell would this lunatic store beef jerky in an empty Blue Marble box.
Why, of all things.
What was I supposed to do about the Demon King's face.
"..."
She turned the Blue Marble box — no, the jerky box — upside down and shook it for all she was worth. No game pieces or play money came tumbling out. Just dark, shriveled scraps of dried meat.
The Demon King's soft pink lips drooped. Was there anything crueler you could do to a child than hand them an empty gift box?
"...Uuh..."
That long-haired bastard. What an absolutely punchable face. I hoped he spent his miserable twilight years with an enlarged prostate.
"...Heh, heheh. Jerky's good too!"
She forced a laugh, trying not to look disappointed, holding the withered scraps of jerky in both white hands.
"Alley-oop. I'll go clean up that bag from earlier, then. We got so much soap!"
She was so much more grown-up, and so much more admirable, than I was — standing here hurling every curse I had at a long-haired stranger.
...When a kid's this good, you owe them a present. That's just how it works.
"We've still got plenty of paper left. I'll make it for you. Right now."
"Huh?"
"Blue Marble. I know all the rules, I know the board well enough to draw it without looking, and I've got every card effect memorized. I'll make it."
The girl who'd looked so resigned just a moment ago lit up instantly. I loved this purity of hers. It was the engine that stood her back up no matter how disappointing a thing happened to her.
"Really? For real?! Y-you're not going to make something like Omniscient Donkey Perspective again, are you?"
"...What's wrong with Omniscient Donkey?"
"Ah, nothing! Anyway, did you mean what you just said?"
"Yeah. If we add our own rules and bonus cards, it'll be way more fun than the original. You're going to help me make it, right?"
"Of course! I'll definitely help. I swear on my horn. And if that's not enough, I swear on the Paper Crane!"
...So that horn was less precious than the Paper Crane, huh.
"Hyaaah... that's sick as hell!"
"Don't say that."
"Okay, okay. I won't say it for the rest of my life. And as thanks, I'll lend you Red Hare for two more days... no, one more day."
...She really was stingy about that part until the very end.