"...W-Wait! Hold on! This isn't right, is it?!" Aqua might not have been smart, but her instincts were sharp enough to sense something was off. "Why are you the one sacrificing your innocence? I want to share with Wiz too... No, wait, I want to share with Darkness too! Sleeping alone is lonely! What if there are ghosts at night?!"
"You're a Goddess. Any ghost that sees you would get purified on the spot. What are you even scared of?!" Kōichi mercilessly pushed away Aqua's face as she leaned in, then looked at Darkness. "Darkness, you don't mind, right? Sharing a room with me and Wiz."
"...Haa... haa..." Darkness finally raised her head. Two red flushes colored her cheeks, and her eyes were hazy as she looked at Kōichi. "Being crammed into a narrow room with a man... and an Undead... Not only must I endure moral condemnation, but I also have to constantly fear being corrupted by some unknown evil force? This... this arrangement, so full of immorality and danger... Kōichi, you truly are a hopeless sadist! Please... please take me inside!"
"See? She agreed." Kōichi looked at Aqua with perfect confidence.
"Waaaaah! Kōichi, you big liar! You just want to keep two beauties all to yourself! You sadist! Pervert! Axis Cult follower!!"
Aqua was so angry she started hopping in place, tearfully pointing at Kōichi and yelling.
"You're noisy. Keep yelling and I'll replace all your wine with plain water."
Kōichi ended her in one sentence, then pulled the still-trembling Wiz and the excited Darkness straight toward the last room.
"Um... Kōichi-san, is this really all right?" Wiz asked quietly. "Aqua-sama's eyes... they look like she's about to curse us."
"It's fine. With her intelligence, any curse would just bounce back onto herself." Kōichi calmly opened the door, then waved toward Aqua, who was still stamping her feet at the end of the hallway. "Good night, Goddess-sama. Remember not to kick off your blanket when you sleep alone. If you catch a cold, no one's going to bring you hot water."
"Kōichi!! You'll pay for this!! Waaah, I hate this place! I want to go back to Axel!!"
With Aqua's miserable wailing behind them, Kōichi slammed the door shut. The world was finally quiet... probably.
Inside the room, the air seemed to have congealed into some sticky gel, so heavy it was almost hard to breathe.
Two single beds with a faint wooden scent stood side by side against the wall, separated by a nightstand less than fifty centimeters wide.
Outside the window, the lingering echo of Aqua's shrill "Kōichi, you big liar!" still drifted through the night sky. Inside the room, the three of them were locked in an awkward standoff that deserved to be recorded in Adventurer history.
Kōichi stood between the two beds, his gaze moving back and forth between the clean white sheets and his two female teammates.
His brain was spinning at eight hundred revolutions per second.
Logically speaking, as a gentleman, or so he claimed, he should generously offer to sleep on the floor or go out into the hallway and feed the mosquitoes.
But when he remembered being pelted with coarse salt by that mob of Axis Cult followers at the city gate, and how his back still stung even now, he felt that if he did not lie down on a soft mattress tonight, his soul might leave his body from sheer grievance.
On top of that, his wicked inner voice was crouched beside his ear, whispering like mad.
(Hey, Kōichi, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance! One is a former Demon King's General, a Lich with a killer body but a weak personality. The other is one of the Royal Capital's top nobles, a Crusader Knight with severe masochistic tendencies... With this setup, you're actually hesitating over how to split the beds?!)
However, when he saw Wiz's expression, like she was about to cry, Kōichi discovered that his pitiful conscience was still making one last dying struggle.
"...So, two beds, three people." Kōichi broke the dead silence, his voice sounding especially abrupt in the empty room. "This is an extremely serious logistical problem, no less difficult than defeating a High-Ranking General of the Demon King's Army. Do either of you have any constructive suggestions?"
Wiz jolted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. Her beautiful pale-purple eyes darted around anxiously, and she twisted her hands tightly together.
"I-I'm so sorry! It's all because a useless Lich like me shamelessly tagged along that Kōichi-san and Darkness-san ended up in this situation!" Wiz's voice was as thin as a mosquito's buzz, with obvious tears in it. "I-I actually don't need to sleep! Really! As an Undead, I can just hang myself up in a corner... no, I mean, I can sit in a chair and meditate all night! Please, both of you use the beds. Don't mind me at all!"
"What do you mean, hang yourself up? Are you a bat?!" Kōichi could not help retorting. "Besides, your body's still a little transparent because of that salt-sprinkling ritual earlier, isn't it? If you don't rest properly, by tomorrow morning you might really turn into a ghost haunting this inn."
"Waaah... Kōichi-san is so kind... even though I'm just a useless wreck who only loses money..."
Wiz was so moved her eyes filled with tears, and she even started giving off a strange aura that could only be described as holy motherly light, which made Kōichi feel even guiltier.
Just then, Darkness, who had kept her head lowered while her body trembled at a tiny frequency, finally spoke.
She slowly raised her head. Her usually gallant face was now covered in an unnatural blush, and her eyes shone with a chilling fervor.
"...Two beds... three people... one is a man, one is a fragile woman, and one is an evil Undead..." Darkness's voice was hoarse and hurried, as though she were reciting some dark scripture. "Kōichi... you deliberately emphasized the two beds. Are you trying to say that, for the sake of fairness, we must decide who belongs where through some cruel competition? For example... the loser must sleep at the winner's feet as a human footrest? Or perhaps... you intend to abuse your authority as leader, forcing Wiz and me to share one bed while you take the other and watch us all night with the eyes of someone appraising his trophies?!"
"I never said that! How did your imagination even get to human footrest?!"
Kōichi loudly denied it, though for some reason, his voice lacked confidence.
"Haa... haa... this feeling of being cornered... this guilt of constantly jumping back and forth across the edge of morality..." Darkness clutched her chestplate tightly, her nails scraping against the metal with a harsh screech. "Kōichi! Stop pretending to be proper! Give the order already! Whether you make me squeeze in with Wiz, or make me sleep on the cold floor while you conduct late-night inspections, I... I absolutely will not submit, so please hurry up and do it!!"
Kōichi looked at his two female teammates, one on the verge of crying herself to death and the other on the verge of enjoying herself to death, and sighed deeply.
He finally understood that in this Party, trying to solve problems with common sense and democracy was itself a luxury.
"All right, both of you shut up." Kōichi summoned the dignity of a pseudo-leader and pointed at the bed on the left. "Wiz, that bed is yours. This is the leader's order. No refusing, no meditating, and absolutely no hanging yourself up. If you dare turn into ash in the middle of the night, I'll treat every magical item in your shop like trash and throw them all out."
"Y-Yes! Understood!" Wiz was so startled that she immediately sat up straight, then climbed into bed like an obedient child and wrapped herself into a cocoon.
Kōichi looked at the bed on the right, took a deep breath, and tried to make his voice sound calm, even though his heart was pounding like mad. "As for this bed... Darkness, you were the one who mentioned sharing, right? To save space, and to stop you from running out in the middle of the night because your delusions got out of control and asking the followers to throw salt at you, you and I will share this bed. Of course, we'll build a Wall of Sighs with pillows in the middle. If you dare cross that line, I'll... I'll send you back to Chris!"
"!!!"
Darkness's pupils suddenly contracted, and her whole body froze in place as if struck by lightning.
"Sharing... together... a wall made of pillows... severe punishment after crossing the line..." Darkness let out a gasp that almost sounded like her breath was giving out, and her entire body limply collapsed onto the bed. "Kōichi... you... you true sadist... This forbidden feeling, like newlyweds... Are you trying to kill me...?"
Watching Darkness sink deep into self-indulgence, Kōichi wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and silently swore to himself.
Tonight, he absolutely, absolutely could not close his eyes.