Kyou kara Ma no Tsuku Jiyuugyou! Vol 4 Chapter 7

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Chapter 7

      Your Majesty, right now I am at a place as cold as the northern lands testing my piety… I’m on my way to begin my morning prayers, but several hours ago, I just got done with the day-change dance- I mean, prayer…

      “How are the bodies of the people here holding up?  Do they not require sleep?  How was it, Dacascos?  You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”

      “What!?  Did you say you farted!?  And without even think of my feelings, trapped in the same room with you!?”

      “… I didn’t fart.  But Your Excellency, if you’re going to freak out about something like that, you’ll never be able to get married.”

      His breathing is quickly speeding up.

      Dacascos lets out a sigh, careful not to attract his attention.

      He has some friends who are natural born gamblers who saw the ‘He’ll get a super younger girl and prepa… raise her according to his ideal’ and bet on that dark horse with a huge payback even while they were crying and hoping it would not come true.  But at this rate, he can no longer say that ‘His Excellency Günter, losing his mind, emits a strange voice, kidnaps His Majesty and runs around madly’ is an unlikely scenario.  That would get a huge payoff.  He’d be able to pay all his house payments at once.  His wife would fall in love with him all over again.  Alright, Your Excellency Günter, I’ll buy it!

      “These stairs… are seriously long… aren’t they?”

      Compared to the new soldier’s rite of passage, Bunny-hopping up the Five Thousand Stairs of Hell, this climb is nothing.  You have to bunny-hop down the stairs too, so every year there are soldiers who are seriously injured after falling down from the top and soldiers who sink down and hug their knees with empty eyes around midway and bunches of soldiers who drop out.  Although, there are some among the soldiers who managed to finish who have miraculously had their urinary tract stones pass.

      Around when Günter was about to explode because he wanted to know why, a resolute young monk came up next to him.  In order to not be noticed by those around them, in a small voice he left a short message:

      Huh?

      “I was moved.”

      “Is there any more?”

      “Diaries are really amazing, huh?”

      “… Huh!?”

      “Right now, he’s on the bank.”

      After my impulsive and flashy declaration of ‘I challenge you!,’ we put the near-dead Gegenhuber on a stretcher and left in a fairly plain fashion with a ‘Well, let’s call it a night.’  It took a while to get back to the hotel and it’ll probably be dawn soon.

      “Your Majesty, don’t get close.  If possible, stay with Wolf in the next room.”

      “No, you can’t let your guard down.  It’s gotten to the point where I want to record your wimpiness in the Airhead Book of World Records or something,” Wolf said as he leaned his head against the wall, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.  Is he praising me?

      “Hube can’t have known that Yuuri was the Demon King.”

      Greta had definitely said so, that the king wasn’t a woman.  Which means, when they met each other before she came to Blood Pledge Castle, it’s possible that he told her that the ruler of the Great Demon Kingdom was Lady Celi and if she told them she was her hidden child, it would be easy to gain access.  Sadly, that information is half a year old and he didn’t give her the current version.

      I sit backwards in the chair, chin resting on the seatback, and gaze at the bed.  From far away.

      “… He probably wanted to make me serious.”

      “Not so.  He saw through it immediately.”

      Gripping the heavily injured man’s hand, Greta starts murmuring as if to herself.

      “Greta?”

      He met Nicola, fell in love, and was instantly torn from his past life.  Because, they were a demon and a human.

      This must be about the mistake he made in the past and the reason between the ill will between him and Conrad.  I sneak a glance wondering what sort of face he was making while listening to this, but he had an even more charming look than usual and there was no trace of anger or resentment.

      “So he became a bodyguard in order to be killed by someone stronger than him…”

      “Yuuri.”

      I give an idiotic answer to Greta’s soft call.

      “Eh!?  That’s bad, we should call the doctor back, the doctor!”

      “That was, um, well I don’t know if what I did really had any effect…”

      ‘With Your Majesty’s immense power, this level of technique would be simple.’

      “Yuuri, help.  Hold his hand.”

      I move to stand up, but I’m pushed straight back down on the chair with Conrad’s large hands on both of my shoulders.  I’m held down by his strong palms and even if I put strength into my knees, I can’t move.

      “Don’t say something so heartless, Kaku-”

      “But, but even so!  He’s Nicola’s husband and the father of a child about to be born, right!?  The one I have to help isn’t just him; Nicola waiting in the kingdom will be hurt too.  And even if you guys are in different leagues now, wasn’t he on your team before?  You’re not so a cold man as to stand by silently and watch an ex-teammate die, are you!?”

      “I am that sort of man.”

      “If it's going to endanger you, I’ll abandon Hube.  I am that sort of man.”

      “… If I wasn’t the king… you wouldn’t have stopped me.”

      “How long’re ya two gonna go on widdall that complicated talk?”

      “Ya’anna heal Gegenhuber with healin’ magic, righ?”

      “Why ‘on’t you ask me?”

      “Because Wolf… did you have that kind of skill?”

      “Wimp.”

      “Alright Yuuri, watch closely.  This is how you use the healing arts.  Hey Gegenhuber!”

      “You listening, you injured guy!?   I don’t want to help you, but I am because Yuuri said ‘please!’  If you live any longer, thank him!  Promise you’ll devote your loyalty to him for the rest of your life!  You’ve got some serious nerve getting seriously injured and making me treat you.  I don’t care if you die, but that woman and Yuuri will grieve.”

      “… Well, he is drawing out his will to live, but…”

      Because the injured man’s condition stabilized I laid down with the thought I’d catch some sleep, but I’m woken up moments later.  According to my brave digital analog G-shock, it was a little past 4:30.

      Conrad was digging through a suitcase.

      He spreads out my black, school uniform type outfit.  Besides making an appeal as a stupid public high school student, how is this going to be effective?

      “Won’t they just say ‘that’s bad luck’ and cross their fingers?  What I’m more worried about is the arrangements for our rare beast.  I mean, it’s a rare beast race, right?  If we don’t have an animal to enter, there’s no point.  We can’t say ‘please choose for me’ or something like some line from a drama.  If I end up running myself, I won’t get that far because my position is catcher.”

      As I put on my new shoes, I remember that we came here to heal my ankle, not for some huge gamble or to save anyone.  It surprisingly hasn’t even been one day since we came to Hildyard’s resort town.

      Lord Weller calls for room service and hands me a light meal on a tray.

      “Stress?  Stress, huh.  That’s right; it’d be weird to not be stressed.”

      “I’ll say this in advance, but if some unforeseen accident happens and by some chance we lose…”

      “… I’ll do something cowardly.  If that happens, please don’t hate or speak ill of me.”

      “I’ll pick up Your Majesty and run away on my bare feet.”

      I ended up laughing a bit.  I guess speed is important either way.

      Maybe Luis Biron’s underlings worked really hard, but a facility like a racetrack appeared overnight.  Spectators are already taking their seats on the grass outside of the fencing.

      “Now now, they’re waiting at the paddock.”

      In an open lot in front of us, there is an animal going around in small circles.

      “Gyeh!”

      “No-no way are you thinking of entrusting Yuuri’s life to that impudent creature, jari!?” (2)

      “Sh-shut up, jari!  I’m not saying ‘jari jari,’ jari!”

      “Your Majesty!  Your Majesty!”

      “Your Majesty, let me introduce you to Keiji.  Hey Keiji, it seems His Majesty the Demon King has graciously come to see you run.”

      “Oh he’s extremely fast.  He’s been living in a sand dune his whole life, so he’s developed a lot of lower body strength in order to run through the sand.”

      The sand bear, which looks about five times heavier than Ryan, is leaning its entire body on him.  It’s playfully rubbing him with a clawed paw that looks like it can gouge a heart out.

      ‘Is it really playing with you and not just trying to dissect its prey?’ is what I want to ask, but I hold my tongue.  There is obviously a trust between this rare beast and animal trainer that we ordinary people can’t understand.

      When the participating animals are announced, the racetrack was filled with the sound of the spectator’s stomping.

      There were exclamations of ‘Oh, a sand bear!’  ‘They eat humans in the desert!’ ‘I get to see a sand bear run!’  ‘Sand bears are so cute!’ etc. etc.

      “On the Blue Course!  Owned by The World Famous Luis Biron, Outsider 201, the Hell’s Paradise Goala----!

      “Its staple food isn’t yucca leaves, but eucalyptus, isn’t it?  But anyway, what kind of animal is a goala?  And ‘Hell’s Paradise’ sounds like some kind of Buddhist phrase…”  (3)

      “What’s so ‘Hell’s Paradise’ about that thing?”

      It’s one lap around the race track and the goal is in front of this seat.  Ryan was riding on the sand bear Keiji’s back, but on the goala’s side there were only three men with axes standing around the trunk.  I wonder if they’re last night’s ‘Hah! Hah! Ho!' guys.

      “GOAA-!”

      Once it lays eyes on the sand bear Keiji, who made a smooth start to the race, it takes off after it with a hunter’s run.  I see, so it doesn’t need a rider.  Does it have a rule that no one (or thing?) is allowed to run in front of it?

      “Probably, Hell’s Paradise Goalas are carnivorous.”

      Just like the animal trainer boasted, the rare beasts were as fast as horses.  Their front and back legs were moving so fast, my visual abilities weren’t able to keep up with the movement.

      “Ah, so you went to a guy’s place, not a girl’s.”

      What’s more unbelievable, that or the rooms of girls who don’t know how to clean?

      "It’s gonna catch up!  It’s gonna catch up!  And they’re already on the third corner!  Was it really that bad that the course wasn’t sand!?”

      “Yeah, that well-formed tree.”               

      Mr. Shiny is switching back and forth between completely over the top joy and dejection.  Next to me, Conrad is smiling calmly and poking the tired looking Wolfram every once in a while.

      “Ah, Keiji, look out!  Ryan! Ryan!”

      “Eh!?”

      There’s a huge roar of delight from the crowd and a bunch of losing betting stubs fluttering about in the air.  Hey wait, since when did this race become a public bet?

      When I look up like Conrad indicates, I see the Hell’s Paradise Goala hanging from a prominent branch sticking out of the huge tree before the finish line.

      “Goalas are ferocious carnivores, but it can’t resist hanging on a branch that it likes.  No matter what the situation, if it’s faced with its favorite tree, it loses control of itself.”

      But no matter how cute it was, it clearly had a pattern of giving up.  Because it abandoned the match, Keiji and Ryan’s victory was decided and my body became my own again.

      Luis Biron stands with an enraged expression in the neighboring watchtower two meters away.  That anger was misplaced, but his clenched fist was shaking.

      “You must be joking.  It wasn’t an accident or anything.  Your chosen participant just retired.  Isn’t the reason for the loss because of the fact that the owner entered his horse in the race without knowing his horse’s personality or how the horse would deal with the location?  Complaining with ‘it’s invalid’ or ‘I want a rematch’ is pathetic.”

    His Kinpachi-style, one length hair is getting in his mouth in bunches.  His upturned eyebrows have been upgraded to the Mount Fuji version and he’s hitting his subordinate beside him.

      “Are you kidding me!?   The one who decides whether a match is forfeit is the referee, not the players!  And anyway, what’s that weird creature that sounds like Robocop that’s not a llama or a horse or even a kappa!?” (5)

      “You don’t know when to give up, Luis Biron.  You have agreed to the terms as such.  Any more resistance will just hurt your reputation.  You need to carefully consider between ill-repute and fame, however… ah.”

      This isn’t the time to sit around and write a response.  Looking for something to swap out with the balled up paper in its mouth, I dig in my pocket and pull out a wrinkled object.  What was this again?  Opening it, I see the inside is money and the outside is white.

      I wave around the thin paper.

      “Hm?  What, Conrad?  Why are you using such an apologetic tone of voice?”

      He nervously hands me a bill so crisp and new you can only find it in a bank envelope.

      “… normally only printed on one side.”

      “Hmph! What does a young foreign brat know about anything?  I will not tolerate these extremely rude accusations!”

      “But the problem isn’t Hildyard’s money, but the money of my home country of Cavalcade!”

      “Of course, the drachma bills of my mother country are not printed on only one side!  Now, Mr. Luis Biron, what kind of story are you going to tell me now?” (6)

      “Even if you bribe the Hildyard officials, you won’t be able to escape an investigation by Cavalcade.  Now, Biron, resign yourself and give up the deed, be ashamed of your actions and confine yourself to your home.”

      Everyone including me readied themselves wondering what he’s going to say this late in the game.  Only Greta looks around and her nostrils twitch like a small animal.

      “Then I’ll give it to you as you wish.  Losing one or two backwater resort areas like this doesn’t bother me at all!  Just as written, I’ll gladly let you start up a hypocritically clean business in the brand new western district.  I, Luis Biron, as the one who is leaving, will promptly clear out my business so as to not leave a mess for you.”

      “On the pleasure quarter purified by flames, you can even build a church or temple!”

      Hearing a high, hysteric laugh behind me, I turn my attention to where Greta points.  Smoke and flames are rising from the wooden buildings surrounding the plaza.

      The spectators who came to the special race track start scrambling over each other to escape in the other direction.  Pressed with the weight of the flow of people, the watchtower shakes and we can’t even get down to the ground.

      "The fire truck, where’s the fire truck!?  Where are the firefighters!?  And… uwa!”

      In the blink of an eye, the blaze consumed the building and started to spread to the neighboring shops and surrounding grass.  Finally, firefighter-like men came running, pulling along a handcart with a pump.  However, the flames are so vigorous I don’t even know if they can be contained anymore and they’re licking at numerous wooden buildings.

      The ones who have escaped out into the street, running for their lives, are all male employees and I can’t see any of the many girls working there.

      “Then… they can’t get out…”

      “Luis Biron, you, this is despicable.”

      “Your Majesty, and Greta, too.  You shouldn’t watch…”

      “Your Majesty?”

      And who is ‘someone?’

      With flames licking at her back, the girl puts her feet on the windowsill.  When she lifts her head, our gazes meet for just a moment.

      I get the feeling she laughed.

      I simply gaze at the now unoccupied window without the courage or preparedness to see what happened.  The room was lit up with an orange glow, rather, it was filled with a divine-seeming light.

      The afterimage of the body that fell straight to the ground is projected on the other side of the smoke.

      The magic stone at my chest is burning hot and even the air in front of my face is swaying.  Somewhere from inside my skull, a small electric current runs through my synapses.  The shock creeping up my spine is made all the more intense in a natural, pulsating rhythm.  I’m assaulted by a heavy, low tone and a high ringing in my ears of an unbearable intensity.

      The orange spread of the fire and the grey of the smoke, the flash that erased all that turns my vision pure white.

      Becoming a memory out of the folds of my soul and making an appearance, the person who protected me smiles in the form of light.

      Go on.

      Then what do you want to do?

      “No.”

      You become who you want to be when you wish to be so from the bottom of your heart and you have faith and put forth the effort.

(1)     This was a mini-pun with ‘tode’ (an embankment), and ‘touge’ (the difficult part).  ‘Touge’ can also mean ‘mountain pass’ so it’s also a pun that way (in that ‘tode and ‘touge’ are both land features).

(3)    This was another pun.  In the Japanese, the spectator said ‘…shushoku wa yuukai…’ (the staple food is abduction) and Yuuri’s like ‘shushoku wa yuukai janakute, yuukari nan janai ka na’ (its staple food isn’t abduction, but eucalyptus, isn’t it?).  The pun here being ‘yuukai/yuukari’ (abduction/eucalyptus).  Honestly, I’m not sure how you eat abduction o.O;  That might be part of the joke, though.

(5)    Ah, puns and stuff!  I actually only changed donkey to llama here (donkey in Japanese being ‘roba’).  The rest of the joke actually fit kinda well.  A kappa is a water monster.  The most popular version being a turtle creature with a little bowl-like spot on the top of their head that needs to stay filled with water or they lose all their power.  They’re said to do stuff ranging from little pranks to straight up drowning people in the river.
(6)    Takabayashi-sensei specifically says ‘drachma’ here.  To be honest, when I first read this book I didn’t know what it was and, thinking it was some made up animal that was printed on the money, I just skipped past it (in Japanese it’s written ‘dorakuma’ so I immediately thought ‘tiger-bear?’).  But!  I ran it through the dictionary just in case and came up with ‘drachma’ and I was like, okay, that doesn’t sound like an animal…  It turns out it’s a type of Greek money!  -->Yay Wikipedia! I’m learning stuff!

Chapter end