"Bang, Bang-Bang!" (2)
"Ugh... uuugh... What the... Why does this bed reek of some old guy..."
This bitch?
Whatever beautiful first impression she'd made, the words that tumbled out of her mouth crumpled it flat in an instant.
Her opening line had already set off warning bells, but the sight of her blinking awake and slowly coming to her senses was striking enough to blow every negative thought clean out of my head.
Her short brown hair still held its luster even after sleeping in some corner of a ruin. Her features were so fine I half-wondered if she'd been an idol trainee. And her figure—god, her figure was unfair. Those breasts. What even was that cup size? I needed to know!
Holy shit... So this is what the old folks meant when they said marrying a beauty means one look at her face and the fight's over. Not a lie after all.
The nonsense she'd spouted while waking up had soured my mood completely, but one glance and it melted right aw—
"...Huh? This texture... this isn't my blanket? Wait! That's right! The orcs—the orcs grabbed me! Kyaaaaaah! Somebody help me!"
—ay, goddamn it!
She must have finally gotten her bearings, because she bolted upright and started screaming her head off.
That was when the sinking feeling hit me. Maybe, just maybe, I had rescued an extremely high-maintenance woman.
It didn't take long for that hunch to prove itself true.
"Kyaaaaaah! Save me, please, Mr. Orc! I'm nothing but bones—I taste terrible! Th-these breasts are just big lumps of fat, they don't taste good at all! I don't even produce milk! Please, grab someone else and make them your sex slave or slice them into sashimi, whatever you want! I'm not tasty and I'm not even good for screwing, please!"
"Calm yourself."
"I've never even had a boyfriend so I don't know how to have sex properly! All I know is spending steamy nights with the imaginary boyfriend in my head! So please, just spare my life! I can't clean or do laundry or anything, but if you order me I'll do it no matter what! So please, just my life—!"
"Haa... Calm yourself."
I set a hand on the shoulder of the woman babbling hysterically in front of me and murmured low.
Whoa... Whoa. Just casually putting my hand on a beauty like this... I had this much nerve in me? Looking at her up close, her features don't fall apart at all—I'm sitting here admiring the length and shape of her eyelashes. And I just walked right up to her without hesitation?
Thank you, Lawful Good!
Seriously. Thank. You.
"Huh...? A... a person's... hand?"
"A human man's hand, at that. Have you calmed down now?"
The woman who'd been throwing every ounce of drama she had froze solid.
Then those wide round eyes slowly turned and locked onto me.
Even that blank, dazed stare is pretty. Cheating, honestly.
So this is why those idiots in college would hit on the gorgeous classmate and just grin like morons no matter what garbage she said. Those dumbasses... I kind of get it now.
"Wh-who... are you?"
Finally my turn to introduce myself?
I opened my mouth with that lazy assumption—and got completely cut off.
"Wh-who are you, barging into my room like this... No, barging into my house?! C-can you please leave? This is straight-up b-breaking and entering, you know. Breaking and entering! Sexual harassment! Sexual assault! Kyaaaaah! Intruder, intruder!"
She suddenly switched to a prickly, hostile tone, yanking my blanket over herself and trembling—and that was when it hit me.
Yep. I definitely brought home a girl who's only pretty on the outside.
I calm her down and ten seconds later she's back to throwing every scrap of drama she can find. Unbelievable.
"Look around you. See if this is truly your home."
I told her calmly, and Han Sora swept the room with uneasy eyes. And then...
"This... bachelor-reeking room...? Wait? This... isn't m-my room... this isn't my house?"
This bitch for real!
She's doing this on purpose, right? Trying to scrape my nerves raw by going on about bachelor this, single guy that (I never said that)?
Huh? I genuinely want to dump a whole bowl of curses on her!
Hoo... Lawful Good. Thank. You. Again.
"...Yes. This is not your room. I rescued you from the orcs and brought you here."
"Ah... right... I... got dragged off by orcs... So, so I thought I was going to horribly lose my virginity and die, and I just fainted..."
Judging by her tone, she was finally starting to grasp reality. The trembling anxiety in her eyes settled a little. Good. Slowly now... maybe I could attempt an actual conversation.
"My name is Jeong Hoon. Twenty-nine. I've been surviving in this area by clearing out zombies. And you? Where is your home?"
"M-my name is... Han... Sora... I'm twenty-two... But why are you asking about my house...?"
Han Sora, huh.
"To take you home."
"Um... what's the address here, by any chance...?"
"Haengbok Villa, XX-ro, XX-gu, XX City, Gyeonggi-do."
"Oh—XX Apartment, where I live, is also... on XX-ro in XX-gu...?"
What? She's from right around here?
XX Apartment... that's pretty close to here.
What? Under normal circumstances that's walking distance. Of course, in times like these, walking there would just get every zombie in the neighborhood swarming you for an autograph—by which I mean your guts.
More importantly... if she really lives in XX Apartment, this beauty named Han Sora is probably from a pretty wealthy family. The land prices over there are no joke.
But if she lives in that apartment... shouldn't there at least be some neighborhood gossip about her? A looker this outstanding, and I've never seen her face or heard her name?
"But... ugh... so it was Haengbok Villa... I thought it smelled like a bachelor and the room was ridiculously small, and sure enough... this is the kind of place old couples and broke people move into..."
Grit...
My teeth ground together on their own at Han Sora's completely unfiltered muttering.
This girl is either slightly off in the head or pure, unfiltered innocence itself. No question.
How do you sit in front of someone living perfectly fine in Haengbok Villa and start running your mouth about Haengbok Villa? Is this how bourgeois people think by default?
You got attacked by orcs because you think like that (completely unrelated)!
Even so, I didn't let a single scrap of irritation show. Why?
Because even the lips spouting that rude garbage looked cute. Wow. Seriously... a face really does carry everything. The face does all the work.
...I just had a great idea.
"If you wish to return to XX Apartment, I shall escort you along the way. However, I do not recommend going back to your home."
"H-huh? Wh-why...?"
At my negative remark, Han Sora clutched the blanket tight and shrank into herself.
"From what you said earlier... it seems you were attacked by orcs and abducted while inside your home. That means your apartment is inadequate as a hideout. Inadequate even compared to this villa where you sit now. Did you barricade the apartment entrance or anything of the sort?"
"Ah, n-no. I... I just locked myself inside... I've always liked holing up at home... A-and... when that weird voice was going on about the world ending and whatever... n-no... way before that even... when the emergency disaster text came... I figured something was off, so I stocked up on emergency food and locked myself in for over two weeks... I only went out a little to take out the trash... and then... s-suddenly the world was ending... stats were being granted and all that... and I was like, figures, and stayed home, and then... I just..."
I'd only asked a simple question, and Han Sora spilled the entire story.
This girl—unlike her looks, she's an introvert. No, she's got a heavy outcast streak. No wonder nobody around here noticed her.
I never thought I'd actually meet someone who saw an emergency disaster text and got so scared they started prepping. The exact type I'd imagined.
Watching Han Sora get captured by orcs so easily even after all that preparation drove home again just how cruel and merciless an apocalypse really was.
"I see. In that case... your home is almost certainly in one of two situations by now. One: other survivors have occupied it or stripped it of every supply. Two: the entire apartment has already become a den of monsters. I rescued you from inside a ruin the orcs had turned into their base, along with other women. That is proof enough that monsters frequently claim human buildings as lairs. If you cannot be certain, I advise against returning."
"Th-that can't be..."
Even I thought the logic was solid. But it was also an argument dripping with Lawful Good's intentions. No joke—the words had just poured out of my mouth on their own.
I thanked Lawful Good all over again. Far from putting the brakes on me spinning excuses to keep this beauty from leaving my house, it was shoving me forward hard.
Hehehe. Thank you so much, Lawful Good!
After that, I told her what had happened before I brought her here.
When I explained that the other female survivors had been reluctant to take Han Sora in, leaving me no choice but to bring her myself, she openly wilted.
A woman alone and under threat would naturally prefer to stick with people of her own gender. But for perfectly valid reasons—at least in an apocalypse like this—they'd been unwilling to take her into their group. Of course the disappointment would hit hard.
"Sooo... h-how... did you do it?"
"Do what?"
Han Sora mumbled the question in fits and starts. When I just looked at her, waiting for her to say it again, she flinched a little but repeated herself.
"H-how... those hulking... orcs that look like they'd snatch women in some eroge to use as breeding stock... how did you beat them and rescue me? N-no matter how I think about it... it's hard to believe."
What a painfully awkward way to put that question.
I hesitated. Should I tell her? The secret of the system granted to me?
No matter how beautiful she was, and no matter that we were going to live together from now on (in my head, the only future that existed for Han Sora was one where she cohabited with me)—was it really okay to just casually spill what this system was?
In novels and games and movies... people with weird systems or powers or alignments always ended up buried under endless hassle.
No—the people around them practically ostracized them and made the protagonist's life a living hell. After going through all that, the hero always ended up preferring secrecy, locking their identity away tight.
"U-umm...?"
I stared silently at Han Sora, who was looking at me with a spark of fear in her eyes.
...She's pretty, so it'll be fine. Whatever!
I surrendered to instinct.
So what? It's not like I'm exposing my secret in front of hundreds of people.
Even my Lawful Good alignment is shouting it in my heart. Lying is not good.
Both sides agree, so let's bag Han Sora!
Ah—no...! Let's tell Han Sora the truth!
"I shall open my status window. System, on."
I called up the system window into the air.
And in doing so, I uncovered one of the system window's secrets.
"...I can't see it?"
Shit. Only I can see it.
In an instant the road ahead went blank again.
Even if I decide to explain, the method of explaining itself just got a whole lot harder.
And if I just flap my mouth about it, I doubt she'd believe me anyway...
What am I supposed to do?
Just as my chest started to tighten, something changed in my system.
⊳ Invite Han Sora to your party?
⊳ Yes / No
...Huh?
Party? Party?
There's no way it means the kind of party where popular people get together to drink and mess around... so it must mean that party you see all the time in games? This system had something like that?
Why didn't you tell me sooner! Not that I'd have much reason to use it anyway!
I carefully selected Yes, and the result came back as Han Sora's startled reaction.
"Kyaak! Wh-what is this...! Huh? Pa...rty? Form a party... with Jeong Hoon...?"
"Press it. You should be able to see my stats."
...So that's why the notification popped up, right?
I'm right, aren't I, Administrator. You're watching me right now, aren't you?
Administrator A, who had been snacking on something cracker-like in their room, suddenly started coughing.
"Hack, hack!"
And muttered,
"How did he know...?"