I Can Laugh Off This Much, Right?
This much I can laugh off, right?
After shaking Robin off and returning to my quarters, I sat there blankly, clutching a book and staring at nothing.
All of today's tasks were done, which meant the rest of my time was entirely my own — and yet I felt no joy in it whatsoever. I simply stayed still, drowning in a slow tide of self-reproach.
"...Why. Why on earth."
When I was dragged into this world, the first thought that surfaced in my mind wasn't where am I — it was why, of all places, am I here.
It felt so unfair. All I'd done was open a game. All I'd done was browse a few threads of information online until my curiosity got the better of me, and I clicked. That was all.
So why? Why did I have to end up in a place like this, clawing my way through every single day just to survive?
"I have to go home. No matter what."
A line I spat out at least once a day — skip it now and the day feels incomplete, like a ritual I never asked for. At this point, it was practically routine.
Would clearing this game actually send me back home? Honestly, I had no idea. I didn't even know what the clear conditions were in the first place.
The one real comfort was that the notebook left behind by this body's original owner — the true Zeo Frizian Ernest — held a wealth of information. This book in my hands was exactly that.
"...Isn't there anyone out there on my side?"
The further I read, the more utterly catastrophic Zeo Frizian Ernest's personal relationships turned out to be, and my face crumpled all on its own.
I tossed the book carelessly onto the bed — and threw myself down along with it.
My thoughts were still a tangled mess, but even that couldn't outlast the fatigue weighing down my body. Closing my eyes took no effort at all.
Falling asleep took even less.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
I had a dream. A dream of escaping the syndicate, of shedding this world entirely and returning to the one I came from.
A dream in the most literal sense. The hope — or the ideal — I wanted more than anything right now.
And then I opened my eyes from the dream, and:
"Morning, Zeo. There sure are a lot of people out today, huh. Or wait — is it because it's morning that there are so many people?"
Despair, all over again. I hated to admit it, but this space, these people, this air — they'd all grown familiar to my eyes by now.
This was Shatrira's tavern. Why, why was I here yet again?
"Oh, right — I heard a rumor the boss is about to call a full assembly. What do you think about that?"
"......"
"By the way, Zeo, you've never even seen the boss's face, have you? I'm starting to get curious. What about you?"
Yes, it was true that I'd walked here on my own two feet early in the morning and settled myself into this seat. But that had nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with my own will.
The reason I belonged to this group in the first place was simple: they had a hold over me, and I couldn't leave. That was all there was to it.
"Answer me, would you? Hmm? Come on, hurry~"
And it overlapped with another grievance: being forced to face a person I found deeply uncomfortable.
Heh heh. Robin kept jabbing at my shoulder with her finger, and a sigh escaped me before I could stop it.
Anyone could see it was just teasing, but I had no desire to play along. Without letting it show, I rolled my eyes to study her — and the first thing I noticed were those unusually long eyelashes. But what actually bothered me was something else entirely.
A smear of blood still stuck to her boots, wiped too hastily. A vague, unmistakable air of hostility toward something — someone — specific.
"What's with the face~ We have to go out together today, you know. Smile a little, it won't kill you."
And that faint, unreadable smile — impossible to interpret as anything good.
Just as she said, today the two of us had been fated to carry out a job together, in what was surely a complete coincidence.
The unsettling news I'd heard that morning had weighed on my heart from the start; my mood sinking was the inevitable result.
I'll say it again: it was true that Robin had helped me in countless ways, and it was true that I was genuinely grateful. But regrettably — and I mean regrettably — being around her made me uneasy.
"Zeo. Answer me."
And there it was — her voice turning glacial.
"I haven't done anything to you. So why are you like this?"
"......"
The blunt truth of it made my expression falter. Reflexively, I turned to face her.
As if to deny the chill from moments ago, Robin's lips curved upward, the frost melting away.
"Oh, look who's finally looking at me. Hi there~"
She gave a little wave. The display of blatant, almost aggressive friendliness coaxed a nod out of me before I knew it. This was more or less how our conversations always went.
"Why were you so prickly yesterday, anyway? Way more than usual."
"Just... tired, I guess."
I answered as calmly and flatly as I could manage, pretending not to have thought about it for even a second, performing perfect tranquility.
Sharp as she was, she'd clearly picked up on the fact that I'd been unusually on edge yesterday.
Despite having been in this body for quite a while now, I still hadn't fully adapted to it — to the flesh, or to the mana flowing through it. My constant, careless expenditure of mana sometimes sent me crashing into total depletion.
"Really?"
"...Yeah. Really."
A sly grin spread across her face as she leaned in close. I met her gaze with studied indifference.
I wasn't in a state of mana exhaustion right now. Even if something unexpected happened, I could fight back this time.
"Let's get there fast and finish fast. There's no reason to linger here anyway."
So with no change in expression, I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sorted through my thoughts in short order.
As always, I arrived at the same conclusion: finish the job quickly, part ways quickly. That was the best path.
"My, my, someone's impatient."
That ended the conversation. I moved out first. Robin grumbled a little under her breath, but followed along obediently at my back.
The air between us was awkward, skin-pricklingly so — but the girl walking right behind me was almost certainly smiling. She always was.
"So today's job is..."
"Nothing special. Just a delivery."
"...Okay."
At some point, Robin had drifted from behind me to walking right at my side. Those violet eyes silently sweeping our surroundings the entire way set my teeth on edge, but I did my best to ignore them.
Normally, when Robin and I were together, she was the one who spoke first. Not today. Just stillness — a silence that wasn't exactly heavy, but wasn't light either. Nothing more.
"What's the plan?"
Her lips finally moved when we'd turned into an alley — and a fairly deep one, at that.
Her footsteps stopped. I opened my mouth at the suddenness of it, but a third party's voice reached us faster.
"Nice outfits, you two."
A low, heavy voice — carrying not the slightest trace of welcome. I turned around to find exactly three figures blocking the way behind us.
"Hand over every~thing you've got, and we'll let you walk away without a scratch."
"I like the girl. Can't we keep that one alive?"
Two more voices now, from ahead. A larger group stood facing us — every last one of them armed.
"I've got this one. You just stand there and watch."
Surprisingly, that line was mine. Robin watched me with evident interest as I slipped a hand into my sleeve and drew out what I'd stored there with Spatial Storage Magic.
A golden shimmer rippled through the air. Something that had no business existing in this world slid out of my sleeve.
Magic, in essence, for storing and retrieving objects at will — and what emerged was a long, slender staff.
The currents of the alley dropped a degree colder. A mage gripping a staff meant one thing, plain as day: combat stance. Their eyes flooded with naked hostility.
"Grab that bastard first!"
It happened in an instant. A sharp voice hurtled toward me, and blades lunged in its wake.
Two behind me, three in front, and the remaining two moving on Robin. Even with their intent obvious, I stayed calm, unhurried, and drove the butt of my staff into the ground.
"Spark."
Just a short chant — that was all it took.
Crackling — a bone-deep tremor shuddered through the alley, and the hiss of frying electricity swallowed everything around us. Then came the sound of collapsing bodies striking the pavement, filling the alley from end to end.
There was no need to survey the aftermath. Every one of them was groveling on the ground, convulsing. Situation resolved. It was over.
"Kuk kuk. Look at you — bolder than you used to be. That's good."
Next came her laughter — the voice of Robin, who hadn't moved so much as an inch, trusting that this was exactly what I would do.
Robin, who had sensed the hostility even faster than I had, held still and did nothing, just as I'd asked. She believed in me.
The massive axe strapped across her back, the small hand-axe tucked against her chest, the two daggers hidden above her ankles — none of them moved an inch.
"...Thanks to you, I guess."
She was right. In the beginning, I'd often failed to handle even people actively trying to harm me. And every time, the one who'd bailed me out was Robin.
So yes — a fair amount of guilt toward her lived in me, too. I owed her, clearly. And keeping her at arm's length like this was, frankly, bad manners.
And yet, the reason I still tried to keep my distance was—
"Let's move. From the look of them, they won't be able to move for at least ten min—"
Kwajik. Before the words had even left my mouth, something shattered with a wet crunch. A clean, decisive force swept through the air, and a thin bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. Panicked, I turned around—
"Hmm? What are you mumbling about?"
A voice reeking more of blood than blood itself wrapped around me. My pupils trembled with dread as they found her — and I took one step backward.
The first thing I saw was the red spray staining her face, clean only moments ago. The axe in her hand. Fragments of someone's flesh.
And when my eyes dragged lower — something that, until mere seconds ago, had been a human being.
"You... you..."
"Zeo, what do I always tell you? Anything that could come back to haunt you later — you cut it off at the root."
Her voice was faint, delicate. Her smile, soft. Faced with a contradiction this nauseating, I simply forgot the human language.
Far from hiding what I felt, I radiated hostility at Robin with my entire body — at her, drenched in another person's red, still smiling, still not stopping.
"So don't make that face. You'll hurt my feelings."
I'll say it once more: I held gratitude and guilt toward her in equal measure, both at once.
After all, her presence had weighed heavily in my managing to find my footing in this world at all.
Without her, I would never have stood here on my own two feet — that much was certain. I truly was thankful.
But. But even so, the decisive reason I tried to keep her at a distance was this:
"This much, I can laugh off. Right?"
That twisted way of thinking — the kind that treats murder as a matter of course.