Arc 2 - Chapter 12: A Quiet Conversation (3/3)

"I didn't expect to see you here." Lucia turned to Yu, whom she had forgotten to greet with a kind smile. "Welcome."

"We got caught in the rain and came here."

"You did well." Lucia took the towel from Yu's shoulder and dried her brown hair some more. Meanwhile, her sister Lucie watched her sister with her mouth wide open, horrified.

"I'm going to start a fight between sisters without doing anything. It's hard to be handsome."

"Except," Sivina cleared her throat while Lucia still drying Yu's hair. "I want to clear up a misunderstanding; Satoshi doesn't like us, he's just an overprotective friend."

"Yes, it was a bit of an uncomfortable misunderstanding." Ana took Sivina's arm and expressed her support.

"It's not like Satoshi is anything more than a friend," Raul said. His smile reached his ears. There was a rivalry between the two men over these girls.

"I can hardly stop laughing."

As a man, he could understand Satoshi's feelings. The words he had just heard must have hurt him a lot. It was going to be an uphill struggle for him to regain his self-confidence from now on.

Raul laughed and threw his arm around his shoulder while Satoshi's pathetic expression made Yu want to laugh. The boy had eaten 'friendzone' before he had even proposed.

"Phuahahaha!"

Yu was trying to hold back his laughter so as not to embarrass the others, but unlike him, Yurine just let it out.

Yurine's laughter triggered Yu, who tried to suppress his own. He had to bite his cheeks to stop himself.

"Okay!" Lucia pushed Yu off her back and led him to a table in the corner of the inn. "Stop adding fuel to the fire and don't stand there. It doesn't look like it will stop raining, so if you're not in a hurry, move over there and I'll be right over."

They moved to the place Lucia had indicated. There was a corner seat against the wall, and he moved to the part where the wall curved. Yurine sat to his left and smiling Lucie sat to his right. Opposite them was the group of adventurers they had just met, sitting in single seats.

"Don't the clothes of that low lifestyle similar your nightgown?"

Yu hadn't intended to tell Satoshi that he came from Earth, but Yurine had inadvertently indicated it.

"Yes, it does."

Yu's tracksuit was also gray, but his stripes were purple. Because he liked the color purple. Satoshi's shoes were similar in appearance to the ones Yu had worn when he first came here. One of the shoes had burned so he had to throw it away, even though he liked it.

"I'm sorry, what do you mean, similar?" Satoshi asked.

"May I learn how he got here?"

Yu had no desire to return to his own world. However, he wanted to know more about his situation and what had brought people from different worlds here.

Since Satoshi was in the same situation as Yu, there was a chance that he might know something about it, and what Yu could learn from him could be useful in satisfying his hunger for knowledge.

"Are you Japanese?" Yu asked.

"Haaa!" Satoshi stood up excitedly, shouting, attracting the attention of everyone in the place and making his friends grimace. "Are you Japanese too?"

"Do I look Japanese from over there? Do I have slanted eyes and I don't know it?" Even if a world Yu spoke perfect Japanese, people could immediately tell that he was not Japanese.

"But you speak Japanese perfectly?" Satoshi was still standing.

"So I speak Japanese... Lan! I'm speaking Turkish."

  Yu's head started to ache slightly, as if he had swallowed the ice cream in one bite, but the pain was milder.

"Half the world speaks English, does that make half the world English? Your country must have thrown you in here for lowering the average IQ score of the country."

"Besides, we speak Rolder. The fact that Satoshi doesn't even speak our language makes me worry about the state of our party." Raul was smiling. Satoshi's humiliation in the eyes of the girls made him happy.

Yu didn't like Satoshi either, but it was obvious that Raul humiliated his friend to get favor with the girls, he didn't value people like him at all.

"Stop making fun of me! God..."

Raul kept smiling as Satoshi sat back down, and his smile was starting to catch Yu's eye incredibly.  It made him uncomfortable.

"I hope you're not fighting again." Lucia came to the table with a tray and sat down next to her sister.

There were cookies and drinks on the tray on the table. Yu still couldn't taste the food, but he could smell the fish in his mouth and feel the cookies making him thirsty.

He reached for his drink, it was orange juice. When he drank it he couldn't taste it either, for Yu it was just a liquid running down his throat.

"We were just talking, even Satoshi can't pick fights all the time." Raul again talked down to Satoshi.

Sivina and Ana carried swords at their waists, Raul carried two daggers, Satoshi had no weapons at all. Ana also had a staff, so he thought she was something between a mage and a warrior, and Sivina was said to be a knight. Raul must have been an assassin or something, in which case Satoshi seemed to be nothing.

"So he is from the same country as you?" Yurine asked.

Yu could have answered yes because they came from the same world, but he assumed that would be a misleading answer because they were not from the same country, so he said, "No. If we think in terms of territory, I would say yes, but we are not from the same country or origin."

"It's already clear, there's a gap between you," Yurine said, as if she praising Yu.

"Are you praising me? My dear."

"Hya! I didn't mean it like that, you misunderstand!" Yurine was trying to push Yu's hand away as he pinched her cheek.

"You two make such a cute couple."

"The last time someone described me as cute was when I was a kid, but thanks."

It was Lucia who praised Yu, Lucie again looking at her sister in amazement.

"So you two are a party?"

"Yurine, Mr. Valarfin's daughter." Sivina spoke for the first time since she sat down at the table and answered Raul's question.

"D-daughter?!"

Satoshi and Raul spoke in synchronization and opened their eyes wide, both more surprised than the other one.

"How is she? You, how? When did you come into this world? When did you get married?"

"NO ONE MARRIED ANYONE!" Yurine suddenly shouted, pinning Satoshi in place. "And you stop misleading people!"

"Without marriage-!"

"SHUT UP!"

Satoshi was completely silent.

What was clear from the conversation was that Yu had made Yurine with Rie, and that this had happened without the bonds of marriage. That's why Yurine was angry. Yu could have explained how things actually happened, but he didn't want to correct the misunderstanding.

"Do you get along well?"

"Yes, we get along very well." He answered Lucia's question with a sly smile that worried Yurine. "We even got a room with two beds the other day but she..."

"WHY ARE YOU TELLING THIS NOW? SHUT UP!"

Yu didn't listen to Yurine and continued. "We slept in separate beds at night, but when I woke up in the morning, Yurine was next to me."

"IDIOT! IDIOT! WHY YOU TOLD!"

"Your face is flushed, your tail is wagging behind you, you look so cute."

Yurine held her wagging tail and tried to hide her red face, the only reason Yu told the story was to see Yurine blushing.

"Isn't that normal? I mean, father and daughter lying next to each other? Why did you make it sound like a special moment?"

"Mr. Valarfin has adopted Yurine. So it's a very special moment for him."

"Uh..." Satoshi looked somehow relieved when Lucie answered his question. "I thought you got married or something."

Yu didn't like the talk of adoption, he wanted everyone to accept them as an ordinary father and daughter.

"After all, they both seem happy," Sivina said.

"Oh, what makes you think I'm happy?" Yurine crossed her arms and turned her head away.

Yes, it was true that Yu was happy when he was with Yurine, even though he did not know her feelings. But this happiness was accompanied by sorrow and pain.

"It's better this way, after all..."

"I have white hair."

Ana was speaking for the first time since she sat down at the table and was interrupted by Yurine before she had finished.

Adults did not want a white-haired child to play with their children. Children could also exclude another child with white hair.

In short, the people of this world could easily break Yurine's heart, and it was good for her to have a protector by her side.

"But it annoys even me that it's always being forced on Yurine, and I can imagine how uncomfortable Yurine must be."

He didn't want people to say to Yurine, 'Be grateful to Yu because he adopted you.'

"Let's talk about something different." Yu closed the current topic.

"How was the Redchapel?" Sensing Yu's discomfort, Lucia accommodated him and brought up the new topic. Finally the conversation was going where Yu wanted it to go.

"The people are unbearable, I wouldn't want to live there."

"I've heard that Redchapel is dangerous."

"Yes, I've heard similar things." After answering Sivina, he turned to Lucia. "I have a question I want to ask."

"I'm listening," Lucia said, reaching for one of the cookies she had brought and taking a small bite.

"Do you know anything about Sony von Bishory?"