Chapter 65 The Pair
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
”I followed out of concern, and somehow I’m the one getting carried. Shameful.”
I was too tired to march and rested on Trash-san’s back.
Walk the same bleak landscape long enough and the nerves fray. Even if the view changed, my flimsy stamina could never keep up with them. After thirty minutes I was winded and my legs locked up.
Her pack had room, but I wasn’t small enough to fit. I’m built like a fourth-grader—about sixty percent of an adult’s height—so she had to carry me directly. Most things I wear pass right through me anyway, pack included, so a piggyback was the only answer.
Poor Flatty-chan shouldered two rucksacks.
”Sorry to tie up your hands. Is it heavy?” I asked.
”Perish the thought, your words are too kind. Should we return to your private room?” she murmured.
”No. I want to stay here.”
”As you wish.”
I tightened my grip on Trash-san’s shoulders.
I had no good reason, but I couldn’t stand to be away from them. I knew I was a nuisance, yet my own Psionic Power kept stirring, prickling at the edge of thought. Maybe it was the fog and its nervy dread.
The red mist ran so deep we couldn’t tell direction, yet they never lost their way. Past noon the view thinned; we holed up in the lee of rocks and a cliff to pass the night. We could only travel from misty dawn to midday—a crawl of a march.
Clouds smothered the sky; there was no moon.
Our rations were paste—sesame and miso worked into dried rice—with even the string of the bento, made from taro peel, fit to eat. Trash-san multiplied the food, and Flatty-chan fused and seasoned it with her Psionic Power.
”What is this? It’s delicious!”
”Right? Right? Flatty-chan showing her worth,” Trash-san said.
”Mmh. Clean flavor. A very good Psionic Power,” Kaede-san judged.
When it came to taste and variety, her power was unbeatable.
Flatty-chan said it was born from hard years—childhood poverty, when the only answer was to throw rotting fish and scraps into one pot and boil. She swore it wasn’t for some mystical object at all; she only wanted friends to eat something good.
I decided Flatty-chan was a gentle older sister.
At first light we were moving again. I flipped through my mental list of Psionic Powers and selected Trash-san. They were already on the march, steps set toward somewhere only they understood.
”Good morning, Trash-san. Here’s the morning report…”
I relayed what the Imperial Guards had passed along: shifts on the southern front from the town’s side. You can’t coordinate with troops inside a dungeon; that’s one reason infiltration strategy gets everyone’s hackles up.
When I was done, I trailed after her.
After a while I noticed a bulge that didn’t belong. In a place so bare, even a civilian’s eyes—mine—could spot the wrong shape at once. In a forest-type dungeon I’d never have seen it.
”There’s something there,” I said.
”Unit, halt. Young Master’s found something,” Kaede-san called.
”It’s looking at us.”
”Where?” Natsume-san asked.
”Over there. There.”
I pointed, a little off the path.
A little girl eased her face around a wicked-looking tree and watched us. Younger than me. Baby-soft face, a flicker of fear…
—No.
Just meat.
Not even humanoid. A lump of flesh, writhing like a huge potato maggot, slumped against the trunk.
”Breakfast, found. Leave it to Flatty-chan. I’ll fuse it with our rations and make something tasty,” she chirped.
”Ugh—no. I can’t. Not that,” Natsume-san gagged.
”What? Natsume-san wants first bite? Heeey, open wide—”
”Cut it out. I said stop!”
They’d grown friendly—well, that makes it sound too nice. Flatty-chan kept pressing the meat on her with a smile; Natsume-san recoiled, snarling through her grin.
The maggot-thing vanished wherever Flatty-chan sent it. It didn’t seem strong enough to harm a person.
We moved on, killing more of them—humanoid lumps of all sizes. A distant bell tolled now and then. We hunted by scouting and striking first, and the monsters died without much trouble.
Even so, the densest hours of mist were dangerous. They crept like turtles.
Our pace slowed, and small potato maggots pattered down through the red, like a nasty drizzle.
They stuck to skin and blistered it raw. No matter how we brushed them off, they slipped back through seams in our clothes.
Kaede-san’s trio didn’t mind. Trash-san, now a fair Psionic Power user, could endure—but Flatty-chan suffered. Her skin swelled, angry red, and it hurt to look at.
On a long march through enemy ground, two guard the front and rear while the middle three take a break. If you don’t rest when you can, the nerves won’t last. When Trash-san’s turn came, I swayed on her back and stared into the fog.
”Last night,” I said, “in my room, I kept thinking—why do males hate females?”
”A reason to shun females…?” she said.
”A skewed gender ratio doesn’t automatically make you hate sex. It can end up that way, sure, but it’s not a reason by itself.”
Hours of the same scenery had drained our idle talk, and the quiet let my doubts rise. Lately, in school and in town, I’d met men—or even people—who hated sexual intercourse so much they made themselves sick. It nagged at me.
Say in a previous life ninety-nine percent of males died. Would the one percent left grow to hate sex? I don’t think so.
Maybe it changes over generations.
If so, what is that change?
Or is it a trait of this world—its races, its ethics—that makes males dislike females? They have semen-storing sacs, after all. We’re not quite the same creatures.
Thinking more about life and death has me cornered by puzzles like this.
”Then what about the other side?” I asked. “Tell me the female view. Is there some built-in reason to be disliked?”
Trash-san touched a finger to her lips as she walked and fell quiet, thinking.
”Males are meant to be modest and reserved,” she said at last. “It’s said they shrink from us because they see—and fear—their own lust when they look at females.”
”That doesn’t sound like a reason to be afraid,” I said. “I mean, yeah, I get that men see sexual desire toward women as something filthy—but that’s logic, not feeling.”
”That’s our common sense,” Trash-san replied softly. “Even I never thought to question it. If anything, it’s we women who would want to know why we’re disliked. We’d give anything to be loved.”
In the previous world, too, people called sex a stain. But why? The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Chastity had flipped sides here, and yet the disgust remained—strangely familiar. I hadn’t even noticed how easily I’d accepted it.
How was it explained to women in this society, I wondered.
”So, what do they teach you in school?” I asked.
Trash-san went quiet again. She always did that—listened properly, weighed my questions, and tried to answer from her heart. A model elder sister for any child’s education.
”Women are taught a Buddhist lesson,” she said at last. “That when a being from Heaven descends to the mortal world, its temporary vessel is male. And so, we’re told, the female body carries impurity—something to be feared.”
”You don’t actually believe that,” I said.
”Common folk think it’s because of the gender imbalance,” she answered. “That it raises men’s pride, sets them above.”
”So, in other words, you don’t really know either.”
”…Forgive my offense,” she murmured. “All men are precious. But you, Young Master—you’re exceptional. So gentle, so noble. You must learn to value yourself more.”
”Who’s that supposed to be?” I muttered, pressing my face against the nape of her neck.
If men despised women simply because they outnumbered them… that was a sad kind of world.
I’d lived long enough in this reversed-chastity realm to form my own thoughts. If a family line rejects the act of life itself, then extinction is only natural. Why hadn’t the men who cared for women survived? Why had kindness died out?
I think I’ve found the answer—but I’ll wait a bit longer before I call it truth.
Still, maybe that’s why life works here. Maybe because of this system, things somehow keep going. And I can’t deny—I’ve benefitted from being a rarity.
We walked and talked, wasting breath to fill the silence.
In the fog, human shapes wavered like dancing giants. Sometimes I saw monsters or travelers slipping through the haze. Real humans were few; they passed by quickly, torches in hand, never noticing us.
The mist hid us well. In the afternoons and at night we saw townsfolk, ordinary women—but when the monsters came, the world emptied. The entire war was a small affair, fought between towns of only tens of thousands. Even vigilance had its limits.
In a small town, there might be a dozen Psionic Power users who could move through the fog—barely enough for a watch.
On the fourth morning, we reached the valley’s deepest gorge. The path narrowed to a few meters, sheer cliffs hemming us in—a crevasse at the bottom of mountains and shadow.
Every footstep rang endlessly.
Beyond this pass lay a door—the entrance to enemy territory, the coastal town of Isumi.
A ‘town,’ but really just a cluster of prewar houses crowded along the plain by the sea. Fields and fishing huts sprawled around a single grand samurai estate—the target of our raid.
”So this is it…” someone breathed.
We reviewed our goal and motives one last time.
The mission: strike the enemy leader’s residence and throw the town into chaos. If the assault succeeded—if the noblewoman commanding their forces disappeared—the invasion would halt. The group had debated that point long and hard.
They’d already confirmed the target’s side wouldn’t have the strength to retaliate afterward. In fact, the plan was to kill someone whose death would guarantee that chaos.
As for motives—those were personal.
Because I’d interfered with an infiltration mission, hundreds, maybe thousands, might die needlessly. Kaede-san wanted to cleanse that guilt from her heart.
Kiri-san and Natsume-san wanted to redeem their failure to protect their master last time—to win back trust, and because neither could abandon an old comrade.
And me? I was doing it for myself. So that, someday, I could face intimacy without guilt. So that when I touched someone, I wouldn’t feel the weight of graves beneath my hands.
Trash-san and Flatty-chan only came to help me.
Even so, by saving one town, we were bound to destroy another. We were killing people to protect lives.
I still didn’t know what was right. I’d never once thought of taking a life by my own will.
But in the end, there was nothing left except to act.
”Your face is pale, Young Master…” Trash-san said.
”Sorry. It’s nothing,” I whispered.
She must have felt my anxiety, because she let out a small, teasing laugh.
”It’s simple,” she said. “We go in, we come back. Dangerous, yes—but nothing new. You’ll be asleep in your bed before we return, long before your sweet stomach starts rumbling for Maggot breakfast.”
”…I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m staying with you.”
Trash-san took my hand.
Yes. What mattered were these people. We could just turn back, return to town, live quietly. The Imperial Guards had secured me a safe rear-line post—what madness made them send me to the front?
Anxiety kept bubbling up inside me. Part of me wanted to run away with the Imperial Guards and forget all of it. But Trash-san and the others had told me to trust them. And I did.
We moved carefully along the gorge floor, avoiding loose stones, praying not to meet man or monster.
That’s when we saw them—two women walking toward us in the mist.
They were unmistakably human.
Both wore robes of blue-dyed hemp, strolling without a hint of caution through this cursed valley. One carried nothing. The other, a great paper umbrella.
The two women wore wooden geta sandals—just like townsfolk from the Edo period. Their silhouettes floated in the mist, unaware of us. Only I could see them through the haze.
Trash-san’s visor worked like a heat sensor, so she probably hadn’t yet decided if they were humans or monsters.
”Trash-san, there are people ahead—”
She said nothing, only lowered me gently from her back. Then she tapped Kaede-san’s shoulder and gave a quick hand signal.
They exchanged brief gestures, then the group fell back a few meters, pressing themselves into the cracks of the ravine wall.
The gorge had no branches. To retreat would mean a long backtrack—and if someone came from behind, we’d be trapped. The five of us crouched close against the rock, backs flat to the wall. Kaede-san’s trio hid across the chasm; the rest of us stayed on this side. It was the perfect setup for a pincer attack—if it came to that.
The fog was so thick I couldn’t see more than a few meters. No ordinary person could have noticed us. Then again, no ordinary person would be here at this hour.
From beyond the mist came the faint clatter of geta. Karan, koron—two pairs of hollow steps striking pumice. The sound drew closer, and then came voices, muffled by the damp air.
One was calm and quiet. The other, bright and chattering.
The Imperial Guards held their breath. They could stay motionless, breathless, for minutes if they had to. If we were spotted, there would be a fight—and someone would die. Even if we killed those two, who knew what would follow?
The voices grew clearer.
”Come on, you should see it yourself.”
”Does that place really exist?”
”Sure does.”
”Well, fine then…”
Two young women passed right before our eyes, chatting as if on an evening stroll.
”I’ll take you there next time. It’s lovely.”
”Sounds fake.”
”You’re awful!”
The cheerful one tossed her semi-long hair and laughed, a bright, ringing sound that didn’t belong in this valley.
”…Hh—””
Flatty-chan almost gasped out loud. I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t sure if the beings before us were even human.
They stood about a hundred sixty centimeters tall—ordinary figures by every measure. But between the bangs of one woman gleamed a horn. A single red horn, like polished steel, jutted from her forehead as long as her face.
Her skin, too, wasn’t quite human. A reddish tint—like rusted iron—colored her flesh.
Flatty-chan clapped her hands over her mouth.
Behind the horned woman trailed a bundle of corpses. Human corpses. Their uniforms marked them as Imperial Guards from Kujukuri Town.
I sucked in a breath. Among them was a face I knew.
That person… she used to watch me train.
No mistake. One of the town guards who often lingered near the exercise grounds. I remembered the coral hairpin she always wore.
Now her eyes stared blankly at nothing, her mouth frozen half-open, caked with dried blood. Her wax-pale face scraped the gravel as she was dragged along.
”What’re you going to do with those bodies?” asked the woman with the umbrella.
”Hang them in the valley. A warning. We were infiltrated last time.”
”Ah, a message for the townsfolk.”
”For their own good.”
That dead guard had been a Psionic Power user—young face, white hair, one of the elite explorers from Kujukuri. Stronger than most of Kaede-san’s generation. And now there were more than ten like her, tied together by the ankles like bundles of vegetables, leaving a trail of blood.
”This should make them think twice.”
”And if it doesn’t?”
”I’ll kill them. Honestly, the Kujukuri Guards are weak. Too blessed to know real hunger.”
”We’re much poorer,” the umbrella woman said with a soft laugh. “Maybe that’s why we’re stronger.”
The horned one grinned. The other chuckled quietly, mumbling about poverty.
Even without seeing her face clearly, I could tell—the horned one was a body-alteration type Psionic user. But far beyond Kaede-san’s level.
Kaede-san was an exception; normally, anyone with that power grew monstrously strong. The air around this woman felt like when you face a true monster—pressure thick enough to crush the lungs. It was as if a dozen beasts had been compacted inside her human frame.
No… it was closer to that feeling I’d had before, staring at the corpse of the stork in the cursed forest—a sense of something sacred, dreadful, beyond reason.
I had only human-level senses, but even I could tell: this was something terrible. Something that shouldn’t exist.
Every second felt like an hour as I begged silently for her to pass us by. If she noticed, we’d all be corpses within moments. One sound, one word, and she’d happily add us to her chain of the dead.
Yet somehow, they didn’t notice. Maybe the fog was too dense. Maybe their senses weren’t as monstrous as their power.
The two women passed right before my invisible eyes. Then the bodies followed—their legs bound, their faces vacant—as they disappeared into the mist.
My heartbeat finally began to slow.
Then, from the cliff where the others hid, came a sharp clatter of falling stone. Small, but unmistakable. The sound echoed through the valley.
”Stop moving—!” someone hissed.
Ah… Flatty-chan…
”Oh no…”
I turned toward her hiding spot. Something had slipped from her perch, tumbling down the rocks. It struck the ravine floor with a dull, wet thud—a sound of flesh meeting stone—followed by the scraping of gravel. This time, the sound carried.
I prayed they wouldn’t notice.
But the footsteps ahead stopped.
Even the heap of corpses froze mid-motion.
Then, a deafening roar filled the gorge. The ground shook like an avalanche.
A cave-in? No. A collision.
Something red was striking the ground.
The impact left my body tingling from the soles up, as if an explosion had gone off right beside me. The ground still trembled.
In front of me lay a fist—human-sized, no, bigger. A muscular, stone-hard hand had slammed into the valley floor, splitting the ground apart.
A crimson giant’s arm had appeared out of nowhere, its hand crushing something that had tumbled out from the crack where Flatty-chan had been hiding. The weight of it stirred the mist into wild swirls.
Beside its little finger, something had been flattened.
”A-ah… ahh…”
Something alive had been crushed beneath it. Flesh smeared flat in an instant, blood flooding outward. The shock was so intense even bits of meat had splattered across the gravel.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the red giant’s hand vanished like smoke. Only the flattened remains and a pool of blood were left behind, spreading into the stones like some grotesque carpet.
”What happened?”
”There was a maggot crawling here.”
”Oh? Did you kill it?”
”Yeah. Killed it.”
The two women walked away, geta clacking, never glancing back. Their voices faded into the red mist until even their outlines dissolved.
Silence returned. Nothing moved in the dead valley.
Flatty-chan…!
I rushed toward her. The others thawed from their paralysis and followed.
”Thank goodness—you’re safe!”
Flatty-chan leaned against the rock, eyes wide, face frozen like an ancient corpse trapped in glacier ice. Her posture was twisted, absurdly stiff.
She was still half inside the crevice, trembling.
Thank God. Not a scratch. Every limb accounted for—the girl with the boyish upper body and the beer-loving office lady’s hips was alive.
”My soul… just left my body,” she croaked, her lips twitching. “I thought I was dead…”
Everyone blinked at her words. The three hiding on the opposite cliff had assumed we’d been discovered and slaughtered.
Honestly, I thought she’d been crushed too—by some Psionic Power that manifested a disembodied fist. But no.
When I got closer, I saw the truth: the thing smashed on the ground wasn’t her at all.
It’s… that flesh lump? One of those maggot-like monsters from before?
Flatty-chan stared at the bloodstain and finally let out a deep, shaky sigh. Relief softened her shoulders.
She looked around at our confused faces and tried to explain.
”That thing—it was a monster I caught earlier. Small, so I stuffed it in my pack. I wanted to bring it back and study the corpse.”
”You carried that around with you?”
”I did anesthetize it! Well, I thought I did. Maybe it woke up. Ah—my legs gave out. I can’t stand.”
”…Good grief, ” Trash-san sighed. “You nearly gave us all heart failure.”
Flatty-chan slumped to the ground, completely limp.
I felt the strength drain from my own body. Thank goodness. I don’t know what I’d have done if she’d died.
Don’t scare me like that again, Flatty-chan.
”Sorry, sorry. Flatty-chan has learned her lesson.”
You don’t sound very sorry.
”I really have! Please don’t look at me like that. I mean it—if that thing had woken up properly, we’d all be dead.”
Her voice cracked between laughter and tears. Somehow, her light tone only made me angrier. When we got back to town, she was getting a proper scolding.
But my irritation was nothing compared to Natsume-san’s fury. Her brows shot up, and her chest heaved as she snapped, “You endangered the entire squad! Let’s just leave her here. She’ll get us killed next time.”
”Natsume,” Kaede-san warned. “Mind your words. She’s an Imperial Guard.”
”Stay out of it, Kaede-chan.”
While they argued, Trash-san bowed her head to Kaede-san’s team. “Kaede-dono, my apologies for this fool of ours.”
”It’s fine,” Kaede-san said coolly. “Everyone fulfills their own role.”
”Hey, Natsume,” Kiri-san added, “you’re no saint either.”
”Oh, please. I’m not that bad. I’m organized.”
”Sure,” Kiri said with a smirk. “The old you would’ve jammed electrodes in those corpses and made new friends by now.”
It was easy to forget their real work was exploration—fighting monsters and surviving nature’s madness. Perfect coordination was never part of the job description.
Still, once we got home, I swore I’d hug Flatty-chan senseless, then spank that reckless backside for good measure.
Trash-san and Kaede-san were murmuring nearby, recalling what we’d just witnessed. I wasn’t the only one who recognized that face—or that giant hand.
Trash-san’s tone turned grave. “That was Lord Samidare’s body, wasn’t it? And several titled warriors. Not explorers like us, but the town’s military guards. I can’t believe they’re dead.”
”If you’re caught, you die,” Kaede-san said flatly. “That’s all.”
”…True, ” Trash-san murmured. “You always were pragmatic. Did you recognize those Psionic users?”
”No. Let’s move.”
Kaede-san remained unshaken, her calm almost chilling.
Kiri-san, on the other hand, was in high spirits. She patted Flatty-chan’s trembling shoulder with an easy grin.
”Don’t worry about it,” she said.
”Kiri-san…”
”I’ve got five yen riding on you being the first to die.”
”Eh—what?”
”You’re young. Keep your head up. Don’t make this old lady rich.”
Then she strode ahead into the mist, still laughing.
The others followed, leaving Flatty-chan wobbling alone at the rear.
”Hey—! You’re not actually leaving me, right?”
Natsume-san’s voice echoed from ahead, half a scold, half concern.
”Wait! Don’t leave me behind!”
Flatty-chan stumbled to her feet and hurried after them, unsteady but alive.
After a while, the outline of a door appeared through the fog. Beyond it waited the town itself—and whatever awaited us inside. It might have been lucky we missed those aberrant Psionic users. Assuming we don’t have to come back.
Notes:
• Psionic Power – Mental energy concept in Chapter 35’s lecture. Trash-san teaches it to strengthen the protagonist’s mind after dungeon ordeals.
• Kaede – A female psionic explorer known as Necksplitter, is a veteran assassin and messenger of Lord Ichimatsu. Her appearance is both young and old, with gray hair streaked through black and vibrant, unlined skin. She is graceful yet carries the fatigue of a long life in war, resembling an old hunting dog. Her psionic ability is mysterious and potentially dangerous.
• Natsume – A female companion and younger sister of Kaede-san, cared for by Kaede-san during their journey through the dangerous valley, at risk of infection from the parasitic creatures.
• Kiri – A female sniper and member of Kaede-san’s team, white-haired with sleepy eyes, wielding a disguised sniper rifle, known for her quick hands and slow speech, often joking in dire situations.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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