Night had deepened, and the mansion in Axel was brightly lit.
Kōichi pushed open the heavy front door and found Kazuma Satou sitting all alone in a rocking chair before the fireplace, swirling half a glass of cheap malt beer in his hand. His back radiated such thick despair that even a passing Slime would have felt depressed.
"Yo, Kazuma. It's the middle of the night. Why are you sitting here cosplaying The Thinker instead of filling out forms at the Succubus shop?"
Kōichi walked over, casually pulled out a chair, sat down, and studied him with some curiosity.
Kazuma slowly turned his head. His dead-fish eyes were filled with despair toward the entire world. He let out a long sigh, his voice hoarse.
"Kōichi... you're back. Have you heard? The legend of the silver-haired underwear thief. I used to think that even though this Fantasy World is full of every kind of screwball imaginable, at least when it came to perversion, I, Kazuma Satou, could still cling to one last shred of dignity... But now what? Now there's a silver-haired female pervert who specializes in collecting men's underwear! And she snatches it in public, right in front of everyone!"
The more worked up he got, the harder he chugged his malt beer. Then he slapped his thigh in outrage.
"This is so unfair! Why is it that when a girl does something like that, she gets called a mysterious thief, but when I accidentally steal one pair of panties, I get thrown in jail? More importantly... this world is completely broken! Even a quiet-looking silver-haired girl turns out to be like that. There are absolutely, absolutely no normal girls left in this Fantasy World! My harem dream died before it even began, crushed under the sheer density of perversion!"
Kōichi looked at Kazuma, who was trembling with grief and indignation, and could not help picturing Chris curled up under the table, shivering, even unconsciously adding "meow" to the end of her sentences.
He fell silent for a moment, his expression turning extremely subtle. As the only person who knew the truth, he really did not have the heart to tell Kazuma that the so-called silver-haired female pervert was actually Goddess Eris.
To change the subject, and also to test the absolute bottom line of their Party, Kōichi cleared his throat and asked tentatively.
"Anyway, Kazuma, let's leave that underwear thief aside for now. Since you think the world is beyond saving, what do you think of the two in our Party... you know, Megumin and Darkness?"
The moment he heard those two names, Kazuma's already despairing eyes died even harder. He set down his cup and spoke in the hollow tone of a man who had seen through all worldly attachments.
"Megumin? You mean that chuunibyou brat who feels sick if she doesn't blow something up every day, turns into useless baggage the second her magic runs dry, and makes me carry her home? Aside from having a pretty cute face, she's basically a self-propelled human artillery shell! Who would ever look at a powder keg that could blow up your house at any moment and think, yeah, there's my romantic partner?"
He paused, and his tone grew even more horrified.
"As for Darkness... heh. That woman is even more hopeless. Have you ever seen a proper Knight make that disgusting 'please ravage me' face while being surrounded by monsters? Sure, her defense is probably the best in the world, but her head is packed full of nothing but masochistic fantasies! Every time I see her getting all worked up like that, even a degenerate like me starts looking as pure as a Priest! Kōichi, tell me, surrounded by teammates like this, how am I supposed to keep any beautiful fantasies about women alive?"
Kōichi sank into another long silence.
He looked at the bleak moonlight outside the window, then at Kazuma, who had already started giving up on everything. From the bottom of his heart, he felt that this Party's future really was pitch-black, though that darkness still came with a touch of explosion firelight and masochistic panting.
The flames in the fireplace flickered. As Kōichi watched Kazuma, a trace of pity rose in his heart.
Of course, most of it was still the joy of watching the show.
Kōichi shifted into a more comfortable position, lightly tapped his fingers against his knee, and tossed out two more names.
"All right, those two are definitely a little... overly distinctive. Then what about Yunyun and Wiz? Surely they count as normal, right? Yunyun may be a bit lonely, but she's serious and strong. Wiz may be a Lich, but she's gentle, beautiful, and practically a model of good manners. Aren't they exactly the kind of normal women you dream of?"
At those two names, Kazuma's dead eyes stirred slightly. But immediately afterward, that flicker turned into an even longer, heavier sigh.
"Yunyun..."
Kazuma drained the rest of the malt beer in his cup, his voice carrying a strange sort of pity.
"That girl really is a good kid. Not only is she ten times more developed than Megumin, she's so gentle it almost brings tears to your eyes. But Kōichi, haven't you noticed? That girl is surrounded by an aura of loneliness more terrifying than any curse! Whenever I see her talking to stone statues by herself in the park, or making that pitiful, dirt-low expression just because she wants to make friends, my heart doesn't flutter. Instead, I remember the friendless old me and my stomach starts hurting... That's the sorrow of kindred suffering, not romance!"
He covered his face in pain, his voice growing even more hopeless.
"As for Wiz... yes, Wiz is beautiful, and she's as gentle as a saint. But! Kōichi! Look at her shop! That isn't a Magic Item Shop. It's an Eris coin shredder! That woman has absolutely no business sense. Everything she buys is junk, like potions that make people grow cat whiskers or brooms that explode on their own! If I got together with her, even if I were the richest man in the world, I'd be out on the street chewing cabbage the next day because I had to pay off her debts! And she's a Lich. She may look soft, but deep down, she's still a cold dead person, right? My fragile little heart can't handle a romance that burns through money and freezes you at the same time!"
Kazuma shot to his feet, spread his arms, and hurled a question from the depths of his soul at the ceiling.
"Why?! Why are all the top-tier beauties in this world defective products with traits that make them impossible to live with?! Either their brains are broken, their personalities are broken, or their wallets are broken! And now we've even got a silver-haired female pervert addicted to stealing underwear! Kōichi, tell me, is this Fantasy World targeting me? Did that idiot Goddess Aqua trade away all my romantic luck for drinking money when she reincarnated me?!"
Kōichi watched Kazuma sink into a frenzy of ranting, and the corner of his mouth could not help curling upward.
He really wanted to tell Kazuma that, actually, when that underwear thief was not stealing underwear, she truly was the perfect, gallant, charming ideal woman he had in mind.
Unfortunately, she was currently hiding in some corner, so ashamed that she was probably considering a divine descent to destroy the world.