Q&A?
Aso, fidgeting and glancing around as though a bed of nails had been laid beneath her, finally spoke up in little more than a whisper.
"Um, Teach...? Would it be all right if I asked you something?"
"Of course. What has you so curious?"
"You did say you were going to train me, didn't you?"
"I did."
The place I had brought her to with those words was a café inside some game — not some arena where a round of Russian roulette was being fought, mind you, but an utterly ordinary café where one sat and ate and drank.
"Then why... are we eating at a café, of all places! With the stream running, no less!"
"So you don't like it?"
"N-no, that's not what I meant..."
Ah, now I could well imagine what was going through her head.
"You mean to say, 'What does lounging around like this have to do with getting stronger?' Am I wrong?"
"Y-yes, exactly!"
"Or perhaps you've simply been pushed into a corner by your viewers' teasing."
Knowing those mischievous viewers of hers, they were no doubt having a field day over the atmosphere between a man and a woman sitting across from each other in a café.
And Aso — forever single, though she would insist otherwise — with her paltry experience of romance, might well find my presence suffocating right now.
"Uh..."
"I am one of your viewers too, you know. Though it has only been a week, I confess."
"Only a week?"
"I am not the sort of person who concerns himself much with the flow of time. It simply seemed to have been about that long, so I said so."
As the one causing all this fuss, she might find it uncomfortable — but it was necessary. Not that her misunderstandings or her viewers' ribbing were what mattered; what mattered was loosening the knot she had tied around her own heart.
"O-oh, I see..."
"Speaking of which, why do you sit there frozen stiff, as if you'd been turned to stone?"
It was, after all, because she made such a delicious target for teasing that I had started watching her stream in the first place. And if I could indulge a little selfish amusement of my own along the way, so much the better.
"Not petrification!"
"Hm?"
Aso cried out quite without warning. Had something terrible happened to her involving petrification? I had not known her long enough to get a proper grasp of such things.
"I'm sorry..."
"It's quite all right. Clearly something unpleasant befell you that I know nothing of."
Perhaps, say, a lover stolen from her while she stood there petrified. I may well have prodded at a wound that tender.
"I-it's just... I suddenly felt like I had to shout something, and it came out..."
And here I had braced myself thinking it was something serious. Well — no harm done, thankfully.
"Also, it just feels like we're playing around way too much. This is supposed to be training, isn't it?"
The confession Aso blurted out with her head bowed was, frankly, laughable. To think she had genuinely been laboring under that delusion. Believing she was slacking off during training hours... Most people would be scheming to skip training, not to do more of it. Her thinking this way was amusing — and a little sad.
"Training, you say... This truly is nothing more than play. I do not know what sort of life you have lived until now, but for the present, simply savor this moment."
So that, in time, I might tear away whatever it is that blinds your eyes.
"...I'm sorry, what?"
She hadn't understood a word of it. Her insight was still sealed shut, so perhaps it couldn't be helped... though she was hardly so dense by nature. Just how far had she fallen, and how?
"What I said is that this time is for you. Did I not promise to give you whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted it, together with you?"
"...Huh?"
Even spoken that plainly, she could only stare back at me with a face gone completely blank — whether she genuinely failed to comprehend, or the words were simply too much for her head to accept, I couldn't say.
"Th-then... um, th-that, no, wait, um...!"
"So this is how easy it is to break a human being. Good to know."
"N-no, that's not — me too! I'm frustrated too, you know!"
She shrieked at the chat window, then craned her stiff neck around to sneak a look at my reaction.
"I see — so this was dreadfully burdensome for you. Of course. It never once occurred to me that you had never dated anyone."
"Wha — I'm not forever single!"
"Do you still not know that a day or two of 'dating' does not count as a relationship?"
"...Ah."
I could picture exactly what the chat looked like at that moment even with my eyes closed. Without a doubt, it ran something like this:
"Hmm. Then let us do this. I know you — I spent the better part of a week going through your streams and your past videos."
"Thank you...?"
Grateful, and yet the question mark. What in the world was puzzling her now? She was still broken in one place or another, it seemed.
"But that knowledge runs only one way. All you know of me is the name Sword God and the name Cheon Seojun, is it not?"
"That's right?"
"Then gather up everything you and your viewers are curious about, and ask me."
If we took the time to come to know one another like this, that vague wariness Aso felt toward me would surely fade. Did I truly need to go to such lengths? Perhaps not — but even my capacity to teach a gathered crowd had its limits.
"You heard him, everyone... Ah, hold on. Chat, slow down! No—!"
"If the chat is moving too fast, then simply take questions through donations. Will that not do?"
"Oh. Right, that works. Ugh, why won't my brain cooperate today?"
Even watching her myself, her head showed no sign of turning. If I stretched things wildly and swapped our positions entirely — casting myself as the woman and Aso as the man — her reaction would still be beyond excessive.
"Take it slowly."
There was yet another inner demon gnawing at Aso's heart. Just who had tormented her, and by how much? She had been put through the wringer, poor thing.
"Aigoo! PantyColorVillain-nim, thank you so much for the $75 donation! Huh? PantyColor? My life would be in danger over that one! I mean, didn't you see him split the sky?! And asking this gets me twenty more questions?!"
So Aso was gathering the questions through donations, it seemed. Something rather unusual had come in, but she would no doubt filter it out with suitable care.
Collecting the questions took far longer than I had expected. The money pouring in from somewhere was considerable as well.
Look at her — flustered as she claimed to be, yet the corners of her mouth were twitching uncontrollably. She looked positively happy. Well then, let me secure a small happiness of my own while I'm at it.
"You there. Three egg tarts, if you please."
I stopped a server who had just finished serving a nearby table. Thus singled out, the poor thing looked around in bewilderment, evidently having no idea what was happening.
"Yes, you. Are you not a server here?"
Only when I spelled it out did they seem to realize they were the one being called, and answered in a flustered voice.
"Th-that's right."
Whether from rushing their words or a poorly rested throat, their voice cracked on the reply.
"Then ought you not to be taking my order?"
"That's... right?"
"Yes. Three egg tarts, if you please."
"Oh... yes. Of course."
Off the server went toward the counter with a strangely resolute set to their face. Why was it that everyone around me seemed so hollow-eyed today? Were they losing their grip on sanity one by one? A troublesome day, in more ways than one.
Aso remained buried in her questions — but the first to arrive was, naturally, the egg tarts. Golden-brown pastry fresh from the oven, and a caramel glaze glistening a deep amber. A sight to make the mouth water.
"Much obliged."
"Enjoy!"
It may not have been the most dignified sight — someone my apparent age chasing after sweets — but they were delicious, were they not? What does age have to do with taste?
A shatteringly crisp shell giving way to soft, sweet custard cream within — a truly excellent treat. One bite in, and the first tart vanished in the blink of an eye.
How on earth had they engineered a virtual reality capable of delivering sensations this vivid?
"Teach."
I was midway through the second tart when Aso returned to herself. Not that she had gone anywhere — she had merely departed in spirit.
"I've picked and sorted through everything, and I've got eleven questions ready!"
"Eleven? What an awkward, in-between number. I take it there was no shortage of questions, then."
"I took out the really personal ones as best I could... Of course, you're totally free to skip anything that makes you uncomfortable! Really, totally fine!"
Such was her state: an anxious face, earnestly pleading with me in advance to skip the uncomfortable ones.
"So after removing the personal questions, a mere eleven remain? Now that is genuinely funny. Has no one anything better to be curious about?"
Judging by that expression of hers, something decidedly strange lurked among them... What a utterly ridiculous lot these people were.
"Very well. Begin. Let us hear these eleven hard-won questions."
"Let me say it one more time — you can absolutely skip anything uncomfortable! First question! What color are your panties today? Asked by PantyColorVillain."
What color are my panties today? Of all the questions that survived her careful filtering — that one?
"What in the world kind of absurd—"