Jealousy
I bolted upright.
The moment my own bedroom ceiling filled my vision, a deep wave of relief finally burst through me. I found myself grateful for the peace of an ordinary day.
I'd dreamed I was possessed by Dorothy's pet hamster. Those crazy bitches had me surrounded, looking down with the kind of sinister faces people make right before they do something terrible.
"Dongha, no—Hamster Dongha, do you like me?"
"Yeah. I've already answered that twenty-one times."
"And me?"
"Nine, I live because of you."
"I assume thou art fond of me as well... tell me why."
"You moron... ah, no. Yuria's good too. Sure. Um... because you're an elf girl?"
I'd even forced out flattery so nauseating it made me want to throw up, and they still tormented me without mercy. Dorothy put an acceleration spell on the hamster wheel and kept me spinning. Yuria nocked me on her bowstring instead of an arrow and fired me off. That meathead Rebecca mixed me up with a meatball and tried to dunk me in ketchup and eat me. Worst of all, Nine called me cute and tried to take me into the bath with her. I was about to bite my tongue and die when the dream broke, thank god.
...Huh?
"..."
What was this?
The Demon King lying next to me wasn't looking at my face—she was staring at the ceiling. For some reason her cheeks were puffed up like balloons, so I spoke to her.
"...Hey."
"...Yeah."
"Are you sick?"
"I'm not sick. Why?"
"...No... normally you'd be watching me, then go, 'Whoa! You're up! Let's go eat!' You know. You."
"What? When did I ever say something that stupid?"
...
The Demon King's glare was piercing. I didn't know why, but as a cold-blooded survival expert, I knew the proper protocol for a situation like this.
"I was wrong."
"...About what?"
"Whatever it is you're mad about right now."
"Mmmph. There's nothing like that."
Let the air out of those balloon cheeks before you try to act all grown-up.
The Demon King was sulking for some reason. There were a few things she couldn't hide: her overflowing mana, her lies, and times like this when she was in a snit.
Then again, reading another person's heart isn't easy even between humans. How much harder between a human and a demon?
Just last night, the Demon King had been playing Little Farm during the night session, looking even more thrilled than her own character, who'd downed five glasses of the golden carrot juice we'd gotten as compensation. Same as always, she'd rubbed up against me sideways to show how satisfied she was.
Even at bedtime I'd played along with her word-chain game for a long time. We'd gone a full fifty-one rounds, evenly matched, before I got sleepy and drifted off.
So what was the problem? Last night's me had nothing worth pinching me over. Every single moment had been highlight-reel material.
"Mind putting some ketchup on this?"
Even the beans we ate every day tasted dry and chalky in my mouth today. I pointed at the ketchup bottle in her left hand and asked her to squeeze some on.
"Sure."
A tiny squirt.
...?
Wow. You squeeze more toothpaste than that when you're brushing a baby who only has one front tooth. If you love ketchup that much, go hug the bottle instead of me. When you die, I swear I'll write your epitaph in ketchup. And every year at your memorial, I'll offer nothing but ketchup.
...
Might as well just ask her straight.
"We had a good time yesterday. Did I do something wrong in bed?"
The second the words left my mouth, I realized that was a weird way to put it.
"Yeah. And there's one more thing."
?
I did something wrong? All I did was fall asleep during word-chain.
Hmm.
...
Ah. Wait, was it that?
"Sulky-pants."
"What?"
Her expression went ice-cold. She glared at me with such ferocity I half-expected black thorns to erupt from behind her feet any second.
...Okay, not that.
In the word-chain game we'd played right up until I fell asleep last night, the last word she'd said was "bridle." So I'd come out with what I thought was a clever follow-up... but looking at those eyes, wide enough to fire death rays, I'd clearly guessed wrong. She wasn't sulking because I'd fallen asleep during word-chain.
...
Breakfast ended. Her rice-cake cheeks were still puffed up tight, with no sign of deflating. I wanted to jab them with a needle and pop them. Of course, that would earn me a private audience with the hellbeasts of the underworld.
"...Not gonna play Little Farm?"
At that, the girl who'd been deliberately looking away in a huff gave a little twitch.
"...I never said I wouldn't...?"
Even when she was sulking, the Demon King still had to do what she had to do.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
Fuck!
All I'd done was farm diligently, and here came another potato bomb rolling my way.
Roll, roll—
KABOOM!
I rolled to the side and barely dodged it. I'd almost been reduced to powder like the village women.
...
"Hey. Characters die if they get hit by bombs."
"Oh my, sorry. I guess the one I was playing with rolled that way."
Even as she said that, the Demon King pulled the next bomb from her inventory. I wanted to send a PvP request, snatch the bomb, and stuff it in her character's mouth.
Her character was all specced up on golden carrot juice I'd paid for with my own money, but with my control I was confident I could wipe the floor with her.
The bombs kept coming after that, and I had to farm and dodge at the same time. Who the fuck was I even feeding here. Driving a railroad spike through my chest would have been more than fair.
A chill seeped into the air.
Was my movement too flashy? Was she pissed that every bomb from a bomb terrorist like her kept missing? A cold aura started gathering around the Demon King. What did she want me to do, stand there and get blown to shit?
She was pissing me off again. The spite was rising.
Should I just make her cry again?
"Ahh, I wonder what my friend Langplgank is up to. Maybe I'll go che—"
A blast of freezing air cut me off. Before I could even finish, the ice dragon that had swallowed Nephilim's fire dragon last time materialized beside her.
"...What did you just say? I didn't catch that."
"You're my one and only secret friend, the prettiest in the world. Want to go drink some golden carrot juice?"
"Two glasses."
"Got it."
This was not a situation to mess around in. For the first time in a while, I remembered the old Bubble Bobble days, trembling while she chewed me out.
...
A chill seeped through the air again.
...Ugh. It's kinda cold.
You could sometimes tell how angry the Demon King was by the ambient temperature. This was not a good sign. As it got colder, I remembered the scarf she'd given me yesterday.
"Mind if I duck into my room for a second?"
"...Sure."
I went to my room, wrapped the scarf she'd given me around my neck, and came back. The Demon King saw it and said,
"...Huh!? You put the scarf on?"
"...Yeah. It got a bit cold."
...
Wait.
The air around us suddenly started warming up.
I whipped around to look at her face. Some of the air had even gone out of her cheeks. For reasons I couldn't pin down, the Demon King's mood had lifted.
...No idea why, but I'll take it.
Now that it was warm, the scarf felt stifling. I unwound it from my neck.
The air went cold again.
...
That's it. She's mad I came out without wearing the thing she gave me.
"Ahh, so warm. This is really nice."
The scarf was a bit stifling, but I said it loud enough for her to hear. Even I thought the line was forced, and I worried my acting wouldn't hold up—but apparently it passed. The faint little twitches at the corners of the Demon King's mouth were proof.
"..."
Still, she hadn't fully thawed. Of the two things she was angry about, what was the other one?
The Demon King's face, angry since morning, now looked a little anxious on top of it.
I sat at the table with the still-stifling scarf around my neck. If I took this off too, more air would definitely go into those cheeks.
...Time to be brave.
The ice dragon from earlier was still scary, but I hated this atmosphere hanging on. More than anything, I hated the shadow on the Demon King's face.
"Something on your mind?"
".....No."
"Tell me what it is. If I did something wrong, I'll fix it."
".....It's fine. And thanks for putting on the scarf. Hooo..."
Her sigh sounded like a mayfly that had just found out its own lifespan.
"Aren't we secret friends? Why are you hiding it?"
"...Ah, that's right. B-but... you said we don't have to tell every single secret."
"If it's a secret that involves me, tell me."
".....But... if I say it, I'll sound like such a kid."
...What?
"What's that supposed to mean."
".....I don't even really know why I'm like this."
"Because of what."
".....Uuu... uuuu..."
Like the last bit of air leaking from a rubber balloon, the remaining puff went out of her cheeks.
"Never mind. I really can't say it."
"You're like a kid sometimes anyway, so just spit it out."
"What? Y-you're the kid here! Yesterday you tormented me with the secret box, and you saluted the chess pieces because you won!"
She'd never know, not in a lifetime, that the chess salute had been a performance I put on to stay alive.
"Yeah. I did. So it's fine if you're like a kid too."
"...Still, I'm not a kid. Yesterday I even, like, cried like a baby..."
"If you don't say it, you'll keep thinking about it and feeling bad. You okay with that?"
"...Th-that's—"
...
"Alright, if that's how your grown-up brain wants it. I'm going to bed."
I put my spoon and fork in the empty dishes, pushed back my chair, and stood.
Thump, thump.
Grab.
Her little fern-shoot fingers caught the hem of my clothes as I turned away. In a voice so small it could have belonged to an ant, she started.
"...Th-that's..."
"Yeah."
"...Hey."
"Mm."
"...Do you like Nine and Rebecca and Yuria and Dorothy that much?"
...
...
"What?"
"Do you like them that much?"
...
What the hell was she talking about all of a sudden?
Hearing those names—the ones that made every hair on my body stand on end—come out of her mouth made reality briefly leave the building. I'd mentioned them once during that camping trip, but even then I'd kept the details PG.
"When did I? I said I liked them?"
"...Yeah. You said it."
"Said what? Say it louder."
"Eee! You kept saying it in your sleep last night! That you like Nine, Rebecca, Yuria, and Dorothy so much! You kept saying it!"
....
The nightmare I'd forgotten from last night came flooding back.
...
Don't tell me... she heard me running my mouth, sucking up to those bitches as hamster-me?
"Who even are they? What's so great that you'd say 'Nine, I live because of you'? You've never said anything like that to me."
The Demon King laid it out point by point with a deadly serious face. She couldn't quite meet my eyes, so she must have known that sulking over sleep-talk was a little embarrassing.
This was that, wasn't it.
Jealousy.
...
"Pffft!!"
"...!?"
A real, full-throated laugh burst out of me for the first time in ages. I probably hadn't laughed like this ten times since coming to this world.
She'd been in a foul mood all day because she heard me sleep-talking about liking those pieces of trash? I laughed so hard I fell over in my chair. Watching that, the Demon King's face went as red as spicy jjamppong broth from a meal she wouldn't even remember eating. It was so cute.
"Eeeee! That's why I said I wouldn't tell you!"
"Ahahaha! Oh my god, my stomach. You were suuulking over that?"
"Hic! Stop it! Stop laughing!"
"Shtop, I'll shtop laughin'."
CRACKLE.
?
...
My laughter cut off cold. That now-familiar crackle of electricity had just skimmed past my ear. Oh for fuck's sake, now she was cracking down on laughter too. Who did she think she was, Hitler? Kim Il-sung?
"Stop... sheeeesh... stop laughing... pleeease..."
But the sense of injustice vanished the second I saw the Demon King's face, so embarrassed she was about to cry.
"...Sorry. It's not like that."
Still sitting in her chair, she twisted her body the other way. Too embarrassed to show her face, apparently. Facing the other direction, the Demon King said,
"...Those are the ones you mentioned before, right?"
"...Yeah. Old party members."
"Do you like them that much?"
"What are you talking about. I don't like them at all."
Like them? I'd cursed them to get struck by lightning and drop dead a dozen times a day.
"You can be honest."
"...I really don't like them."
"...Look, there's not much bread here, no meat, and the sunlight barely comes in. You haven't started hating it here, have you? So you had a dream like that because you want to go back?"
...
Completely, completely wrong. The place I wanted to go back to was Earth—not those bitches' party.
...
I unwound the scarf and wrapped it around both her neck and mine.
"...Nnh?"
"I told you last time. I like you way more than anything outside the Tower. Why don't you believe me?"
Only then did the Demon King turn her body toward me. Her pale white legs brushed against mine.
"...But... if you're even having dreams like that..."
"It's really not. You've got it all wrong."
That one sentence, at least, was never a lie.
"..."
The Demon King, face flushed, flicked her eyes this way and that before dropping her head.
Then she pouted and thumped my chest with her fists. The fact that I was scared my ribs would break is a secret.
"...Sorry for being so spiteful. It was just sleep-talk... I, I was just so worried... my chest kept aching..."
"...Why."
"You said you liked them. You said you live because of them. I'm the only one here. If you like them more than me... then there's no reason for you to stay."
"...I like you the most, I said."
...
The Demon King fidgeted with the paper crane around her neck and went on.
"...I believe everything you say."
"..."
After that, no conversation passed between us for a while, which was a little awkward. I pointed at the canned beans the Demon King hadn't touched at all.
"Let's eat now, okay? You haven't had a single bite."
"...Okay."
Only then did the Demon King start scooping up her own beans, the ones she hadn't laid a finger on.
"...Huh? No ketchup today?"
"Nom. Can't."
...?
"What?"
"The ketchup... ran out... Hehe."
...
So that tiny squeeze she'd given me this morning had been all of it.
No wonder the ketchup bottle she'd been clutching at every meal was gone. Even while eating, the Demon King had been staring only at my face the whole time. She said,
"..."
I...
"..."
"..."
"..."
"...The beans are good. Heehee."
My mouth wouldn't open. All I could do was lean on the clinking of her spoon.