Why Do You Insist on Crossdressing?
Standing up to pee was simply what any man would do.
Maybe that was why I stayed completely off guard even as he drew right up beside me.
I suppose I was so used to the motion that I’d momentarily forgotten my current situation.
“Uwaaah…!!!”
I instinctively hunched over and yanked my skirt back down.
But the damage was already done. He’d seen everything.
“……Can we pretend you didn’t see that?”
“Uh… uhh……”
“Goddamn it……”
The tips of my fingers clutching the hem of my skirt trembled faintly.
My mind was burning white-hot.
“What the hell are you staring at? Stop staring!”
Those were the only words that would come out.
My soul might belong to a thirty-five-year-old middle-aged man, but the body I currently wore was that of a beautiful girl who could make people drool with a single glance.
And that very beautiful girl was standing in the bushes with her skirt hiked all the way up to her waist, vigorously taking care of business.
In an extremely practiced, almost professional stance, no less.
After a long silence, he finally spoke.
“How… did you do that?!”
“……?”
Her name was Ruina.
We sat side by side in the bushes and talked for a while.
“……I had no idea.”
“Ah… haha… People usually misunderstand.”
And then I learned the shocking truth.
“…Is there really any need to go that far with the crossdressing?”
“Ahaha……….”
This kid.
She was a girl disguising herself as a boy.
With her solid build, fairly handsome features, and surprisingly boyish voice, I had been completely fooled.
More than that, though… those were huge.
How the hell did she hide them? It defied physics.
“Um… female explorers usually face discrimination, don’t they?”
“Well, more or less.”
Of course, that only applied to low-rank explorers who struggled to even coat themselves with mana. In reality, women made up over seventy percent of explorers ranked S and above.
“I didn’t want to be looked down on,” she said, briefly glancing up at the sky. “I have a younger sister. She works in the city.”
“What does that have to do with crossdressing as a guy?”
“Well… you know how it is. If someone harasses my little sister, her explorer brother can show up out of nowhere and solve everything…”
“Ah, I think I get it.”
If some rough men started bothering her sister, and the savior who appeared was a pretty older sister instead…
“Hmm……”
It was then that a voice called from behind us.
“Miss Nixie…? Are you perhaps doing a number two?”
Lucia’s voice.
“Huh? Miss Nixie. Who is this person…?”
Ruina looked back and forth between us, tilting her head in confusion.
“…Looks like I’ll need to explain.”
The three of us headed toward the nearby outer village.
Ruina had thrown a massive fit, insisting on treating us to a meal as thanks for saving her life.
“I can’t say no to free food,” I said, glaring at her.
“Are you the one cooking?”
“Haha. No need to worry about that!”
She gave a confident thumbs-up.
“I may not look it, but I originally planned to get a job as a cook!”
“Oh……”
“Uhe… I was getting hungry anyway. Perfect timing.”
I had initially wanted to refuse because it sounded like a hassle.
But I really was hungry.
Free food has done nothing wrong.
Besides, with my wallet growing dangerously thin, saving on even a single meal was worth it.
The small cabin we arrived at was old but impeccably tidy, without a single thing out of place.
Ruina rolled up her sleeves.
“Give me thirty minutes!”
She set a full spread on the table and smiled.
“Here. Please enjoy it to your heart’s content!”
Freshly baked rye bread and warm soup.
The fragrant aroma alone was enough to make my mouth water. Just looking at it made me salivate.
“Well then…”
I scooped up a big spoonful of soup and took a hearty bite.
“……It’s delicious!”
“Ump…!!! Ump…!!!!!”
Lucia was already wolfing down the soup and bread with frightening intensity.
“It’s… so good…!!! So… good…!!! Mmph…!!!”
“……Your reactions are something else.”
I turned to look at Ruina.
“You’ve got real skill.”
“Well… I’m used to it.”
“Used to it?”
I swallowed another spoonful and scanned the interior of the house.
For a rookie explorer living in the outer village, the place was surprisingly well-kept.
The furniture was spotless, not a speck of dust anywhere. It left quite an impression.
“You live alone, but the place looks pretty decent. You seem really young, too.”
Ruina gave a lonely smile and scratched the back of her head.
“Haha. Both my parents were explorers. They died in the labyrinth when I was little… This house is the inheritance they left behind.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Lucia’s eyes were already glistening with tears beside me.
“……How sad……”
Her emotional sensitivity really was something to behold.
But in Labyrinth City Astaroth, tragedies like this were simply part of everyday life.
The labyrinth swallowed parents whole, and the children left behind grew up staring at the empty space they left behind.
I had been the same.
It had already been twenty years since my own parents entered the labyrinth and never came back out.
“By the way, what brings you all the way out to a village like this?”
Ruina deliberately brightened her voice, trying to lift the heavy mood.
I pointed at Lucia with my spoon.
“Came to train this kid a little. She’s my first party member, believe it or not.”
Lucia flinched and shrugged her shoulders as if she’d just been praised.
Ruina looked at me with open envy in her eyes.
“That sounds wonderful. I wanted to become a party member of someone like you, Miss Nixie……”
“Forget it. This is an insanely dangerous party.”
The party leader couldn’t even control his own body specs properly and kept freezing up.
The priestess was a berserker who wrapped healing magic around her fists to rip monsters apart.
A broke, homeless, identity-unknown kind of party.
“You might just end up dying a dog’s death inside the labyrinth soon.”
Lucia dropped her spoon in shock.
“Eeeek……! I-I don’t want to die…?!”
“It’s a joke, idiot.”
Ruina burst out laughing at the sight.
“Haha. You two really are unique.”
“The Labyrinth Flood… really is right around the corner, isn’t it?”
The conversation had somehow drifted to the topic of the upcoming Labyrinth Flood.
I nodded and chewed on the last piece of bread.
“Yeah. The major guilds will receive royal orders again and be stationed along the city walls.”
Lucia tilted her head.
“Royalty? There are royals living in this city?”
“You didn’t know? I thought you’ve been here over a year.”
“……I wasn’t interested……”
“Astaroth is a massive city-state.”
“City-state…?”
“Its territory is several times larger than most kingdoms.”
Lucia’s eyes widened in wonder.
“Wow…… I had no idea. I did think the city seemed endlessly wide, though……”
I set down my cup and continued.
“They export all the magic stones and artifacts from the labyrinth across the continent through agreements with the Midas Financial Association. So of course the city keeps growing. It’s practically drowning in money.”
Ruina chimed in from the side.
“And their military strength is incredible. I’ve heard the S-rank explorers from each guild have wiped out multiple foreign alliance armies that tried to invade.”
“That’s right.”
I nodded at her words.
“Thanks to that, the city has enjoyed decades of prosperity without worrying about war. Refugees who heard the rumors keep pouring in.”
“And this outer village is one of the settlements those refugees built.”
“……It’s all pretty complicated.”
Lucia fidgeted with her fingers as she muttered.
I opened my palm toward her.
“To put it simply, it’s like this. Legally, it’s a republic governed by the Explorer Guild and the Council……”
Then I clenched my fist.
“But in truth, it’s a bizarre ‘republic with a hidden king’ secretly ruled by the descendants of royalty.”
Invisible exclamation points and question marks swirled chaotically above Lucia’s head.
“Uuu… It’s still too difficult……”
“Forget it. Read a history book when you’re bored later.”
I was about to wrap up the conversation and stand when Ruina looked straight at me.
“By the way, what are your plans until the flood arrives?”
“…The guild predicts we have exactly one week left. Until then, I’m going to train this kid so I can put her to good use during the flood.”
Lucia sniffled, looking wronged.
“……Treating a person like a tool is too much……”
I casually ignored her whining.
Ruina swallowed nervously and studied my expression.
“Um…… Miss Nixie.”
“Drop the ‘Miss.’”
“Sir Nixie?”
“……Just call me whatever’s comfortable.”
After a moment of hesitation, Ruina finally spoke.
“Miss Nixie. By any chance… could I train with you as well?!”
“……What kind of fresh nonsense is this?”
At the same time.
Deep within the labyrinth, in a layer so profound that not even a single ray of light could reach it, a low voice echoed through the darkness.
“Messenger who delivers the word.”
A man in a hooded robe knelt on the cold floor, delivering his report.
“The plan proceeds sequentially without the slightest deviation.”
In the deepest part of that darkness, the Cult Leader slowly raised his head from the high-backed stone throne.
“……Our Guardian Star has delivered an oracle.”
His voice resonated grandly through the gloom.
The dozens of cultists standing around him all held their breath at once.
“It said the 5th Vessel has appeared on the surface.”
Life instantly flooded back into the cultists’ faces.
The man before the leader asked in a trembling voice, “Then… is it finally time to fulfill our long-cherished wish…?”
“We cannot be certain yet.”
His voice sank even deeper.
“But we must confirm it with our own eyes. The time granted to us is not long.”
Fanatical murmuring spread through the darkness like a wave.
“Finally……”
“Is it finally beginning?”
“The salvation we have waited for across so many long years… the glory of Astaroth……”
When the Cult Leader lightly raised his hand, the noisy chamber fell silent as if by magic.
“Hurry.”
Behind his mask, a terrifying light gleamed.