There Was No Secret Organization to Fight with the World's Darkness so I Made One (In Exasperation) Chapter 23

Chapter 23 Fighting Against Reality

The day after the PSI Drive turned out to be damaging to me, I immediately called Baba to the secret base interview room. It was the second time in two weeks. Last time, I inquired about the PSI Drive's specs and gave her the ok to work on developing it. This time, worst case scenario, I may have to tell her to cancel her development of it. From now on, Baba will know everything behind the match-pump.

It would be ideal if she would agree to join me on this side. To be honest, having only two people means Kaburagi-san and I are kept pretty busy, and I feel like it would be difficult to increase the amount of Amaterasu members if it keeps on being just the two of us. In fact, I'm already feeling the burden of having to deal with everything myself while Kaburagi-san isn't here. It would be easier if Baba joined us on this side, since then we would have more control over the production of the PSI Drive. We could also benefit from Baba's political experience. Although she gained that experience on a different world, so I don't know how applicable it'll be.

The next best thing, if she refuses to join our side, is that she at least agrees to keep it a secret from the others. I think that this is the most likely outcome. After all, while Kaburagi-san and I enjoy working behind the scenes, Baba is someone who was so passionate about pursuing her desire for adventure that she travelled to another world for it. Could she really be satisfied by working behind the scenes? She probably wouldn't see any appeal in it. If that's so, then it can't be helped.

At the very least, I would like her to promise to keep silent about this issue in order to avoid destroying the dreams of the two middle-school students. Even though she looks like a young girl, on the inside, she's an adult (actually, just going by her age, it's more like she's a living historic relic from the 9th century). While, whatever she's like on the inside, the point is that she should be mature enough to know that exposing the “dark side” to youths who are thoroughly enjoying themselves would severely wound them. So whether she joins our side or not, I'm going to ensure that she promises to keep it a secret.

The worst case scenario would be if she became upset/enraged once she's told the truth. Baba gave up everything and placed all her bets on this world. Only to find out, it was all a match-pump! That would be a considerable shock. It might even cause her to commit suicide. She may even get so angry that she just dies from it. She has hundreds of years of thoughts and feelings about this that have built up inside her. I have no idea how to deal with that. I guess I'll just have to try my hardest and hope for the best. If she completely loses her mind and tries to kill me in a fit of rage, I'll have to place her on house arrest and try to rouse Kaburagi-san so she can help me think of countermeasures.

Ideally though, I would like to avoid failing and having to go to Kaburagi-san with my tail between my legs and have her handle it. I would like to consult with Kaburagi-san before things reach that point, but although she said she was only taking a week off, it's now been two weeks with no sign of her return. I don't want to add to her anxieties by thrusting such a big problem on her so soon after she's received such huge mental damage either. I just want to get rid of the problem on my own.

…I left all of the things to do with managing daily operations and negotiating with others to Kaburagi-san, so I never really noticed before how much work it is. Kaburagi-san really easily handled doing that much work by herself? I only have one issue to deal with and I'm already desperate for help. But Kaburagi-san could easily deal with problems a lot worse than this. She really is incredible.

Back to the present. Right now Baba and I are, for the second time this week, sitting opposite each other with a desk between us. Baba, who's currently in a good mood, is having fun by bouncing up and down on the soft and fluffy couch. It suits her childish looks, but isn't she regressing a little too much? Though this child-like regression has helped relieve some of my rising tension, so I thank her for that.

Honestly, I'm not very good at talking to people. I guess I'll just have to be as sincere as possible. I'll speak with her honestly, not using any tricks. I use my psychokinesis to lock the door and soundproof the room for privacy, and then I got the ball rolling.1

“Um, as to why I called you here this time…”

“Yes?”

Baba stopped bouncing and leaned forward, her green eyes sparkling. Her whole body was emitting an aura that screamed “Fun!”. It was breaking my heart. I have to tell this girl the truth? Isn't that too cruel? It would be better to let her keep dreaming…

No, if I leave it alone, I might die. I steeled my resolve and said,

“Everything's been fake from the very beginning. Both the Demon King and the Hero are match-pumps. I'm sorry.”

“*Nya?*”

“I don't know what that means, but let me explain the events in order. It all started ten years ago when I suddenly developed psychic powers ⸻”

I explained everything at once to Baba, who was whispering in her native language. In the beginning, she seemed doubtful, but as the story unfolded, she gradually became more and more shocked, and by the time I finished talking, she had become so enraged that her white skin was completely red.

“⸻ The reason I'm telling you all this is to protect my life.”

“Ugh, you, my, this, *yo f kucu doiti! Csum csuerk cmohektfurer! Kufc! Kufc yo ssohlaue!*”2

Before she even finished talking, Baba launched herself from the sofa, jumped on top of my desk, and lunged at me. She grabbed my collar and pushed me down, screaming wildly. I had no idea what she was saying, but I could tell that she was probably cursing me out. Since I deserved it, I endured her abuse. I separated my mind from what was happening, and while I was thinking about how she had chosen the worst and most troublesome route of becoming enraged, I noticed that tears had started to well up in Baba's eyes.

“Oh no, please, don't cry.” I should probably say something like that. But give me a break. I just don't want to die. This shitty reality is the real problem here. Why did Baba come to such a shitty world?

By coming here, Baba closed off this world, and we'll never have any more visitors from another world. Fantasy has crushed any hope of other fantasy-like things happening. Meanwhile, Baba is trapped in this shitty world and can never go home again.

It's awful. It's the absolute worst thing that could have happened.

But let me tell you. Listen to the words of a young man who hasn't even lived one-tenth of your total years.

“No matter what I say to you right now, I don't think it'll have any impression on you.”

Once Baba gets tired of screaming and her punches to my chest grow weak, I take her face in both my hands, stare right into her crying eyes, and say

“This is reality. No matter how long we wait or how much we cry, nothing will change. You just have to accept it and move on. We have to fight for our victories.”

Baba muttered some more curses and violently glared at me. If looks could kill, I would've already died three times by now. However, before long her glare loses strength, and eventually her gaze drops downward. After a long silence, Baba gets up from on top of me and retreats back to the couch.

“It's true,”

Baba says while playing with the branch in her hair. While listening to her, I slowly return to my seat.

“I may just have been running away from reality.”

“Running away? No, you stood up to it.”

I interrupt involuntarily. It's not easy to abandon your hometown, your status, and your property and go to another world. Baba, in her own way, fought against this boring and shitty reality. She should be praised for it. But Baba just shook her head.

“No, it's the truth. If I really wanted to face it without running away, I should have made an effort in my own world. If there was nothing interesting in the world, I should have looked for companions and made my own fun with them. But instead, I threw my world aside. You could even say that I betrayed it. I ran away. I didn't even try to change the world, as you are doing.”

“That's…”

“Don't be modest, just accept the compliment. My my, to be behaving like such a fool at my age. I even had to take lessons from a young sapling.”

Baba says this calmly; all the anger has disappeared from her face. She may just be skillfully hiding her emotions though. But I do have some skill in reading people, and it seems to me that Baba has sublimated her anger and sadness with great speed and is trying to move forward.

“The time has come for me to face reality. I apologize for my previous behavior. And now, I have a favor to ask of you. Please, let me work with you and Kaburagi on this side of the match-pump.”

“Baba…!”

Seeing Baba say this while wiping away her tears, I was moved. The former queen wasn't just putting on airs. As you grow older, reflection becomes more difficult. “Apologize for your mistakes”, how many people can't put this simple thing into practice? Apologizing isn't easy, and most people lie when they do so. And there are some who don't apologize no matter what. What makes apologizing so difficult is that it means that you are accepting responsibility for your actions.

But Baba was able to reflect on her actions. While I personally don't think that Baba did anything wrong, Baba was able to find her mistakes and admonish herself for them. At 905 years old, she can still reflect and change. What a great person. I want to be like her when I'm old.

I was day-dreaming about what I'd ideally look like as an old man while a silver-haired loli-baba sat on the couch, when behind me, the door of the room suddenly made a rattling noise. A few moments later, The door opens with an unlocking sound. It was Kaburagi-san, who walked in wearing a red dress that was covered in frills and lace. She had recovered completely and was brimming with energy.

“So you were both here. I'm sorry I took two weeks off to ⸺”

Upon seeing us, Kaburagi-san froze up. I also became frozen. After all, it was just the two of us, alone in a locked room. There was a loli-baba with messed up clothes who looked like she had been crying. The sofa and desk, which had been kicked over by Baba in her rampage, were still out of place. Baba's expression is unreadable, but my face was twitching. The circumstantial evidence is bad. It makes it seem like she just walked in on a pervert with an isekai fetish ravishing a helpless loli-baba.

Kaburagi-san took a step back, then stopped.

“So you're a loli-con… no, there must be some sort of explanation for this, right?”

“Ah, um. Just hear me out…”

Safe! I'm glad Kaburagi-san always keeps her cool. I'm really, really glad.

Once I explained the situation to Kaburagi-san, it became a three-way interview. Once the three of us were done exchanging information, Kaburagi-san held her head in her hands.

“There's a lot I want to say, but instead I'll just say this. If you were going to bring in Baba, why didn't you talk to me first? Didn't we agree to decide on important matters together?”

“Well, I didn't want to place an additional burden on you while you were recovering, so ⸺”

“It's more burdensome for me to not be consulted. That's what I'm here for, after all. From now on, when something comes up, please don't hesitate to tell me about it.”

“Uh, I'm sorry.”

“Good.”

Once everything was settled, Baba smiled slightly.

“So, I've decided to try to cheer up the downcast Kaburagi by giving her a present. It's a magic wand.”

“Baba, please stop talking.”

“Oh, is that so? I'm happy.”

A smile blooms on Kaburagi-san's face. Wow, she's dazzling! Baba caused her to become as beautiful as a rose! But Baba, don't just sit there smiling like an old lady watching over a matchmaking session!

“I'll look forward to the present. It seems like there's a lot that piled up while I was away, so I need to get to work. First, I'll prepare citizenship documents from Marineland for Baba. We'll claim that you're a young genius who's already finished her necessary education. Don't worry, I'll make sure the paperwork is flawless.”

Kaburagi-san quickly switched gears and started making a to-do list. I added on to it.

“I also need to work on some things. Right now, I'm only doing my habitual training, but I want to start doing some more intensive training again as well. Specifically, I need to do PSI Drive defense training. When I'm attacked by the PSI Drive, there's not much damage, but I definitely feel like it's penetrating my defensive barrier. Or rather, it's not penetrating it, it's more like it's disabling it. It goes right through. But if I practice enough, I may be able to gain some resistance to the PSI Drive. Although it may be the case that developing a resistance to it is impossible because it's technology from a different world, I still want to at least try. So, Baba, would you please help me with this?”

“Sure. I'll do what I can. I'm also interested in whether or not you can create a barrier that will be able to deflect my weapon. When you receive damage from the PSI Drive, what's the magnitude of it? Is it like a mosquito bite?”

“No, it's more like a paper cut. Why do you need to know? Is it important for something?”

Baba thought for a moment before replying.

“I worried about the fact that, so far, all of the events have been caused by external pressures.”

“External pressures?”

To Kaburagi-san's question, Baba nodded.

“External pressures are threats or enemies that come from outside sources that you fight and defeat. While these events are easy to understand and there's nothing really wrong with them, I want something more than that. We need to have internal pressure as well.”

“Internal pressure… like an enemy on the inside? You want a betrayal event?”

“Exactly.”

I see, so that's it. Well, traitors and internal factions are common occurrences in secret organizations, but that won't be keeping with the idea of a “fun-filled youth”, right?

“Babsan, we're not going to toy with Shoutkun and Toukchan like that. We want them to have fun.”

Kaburagi-san said what I was thinking, but Baba just shook her head in response.

“Having a youth that is only fun will make them weak. Those who only know how to defeat external enemies will easily be defeated by internal ones. Experiencing both is necessary to become a wise and good adult. You can come to terms with hardships and talk about it as a funny story when you grow up. Isn't having both hardships and fun truly what it means to have a fulfilling youth?”

Kaburagi-san and I both let out a moan. She has a point. Actually, she has three or four of them.

Internal pressure? Fine then. I wanted to keep the dirty world of adults hidden from our two young people, since it's unpleasant to kick such pure hearted kids out of the nest and into such a harsh and shitty reality, but if it'll help them grow, then I guess I have no choice. Just like how Shoutkun needed to experience his defeat event, these kids need to experience a betrayal. But I still have some misgivings. After all, if we take it too far and/or don't follow up properly, they may end up hating reality so much that they want to die. We need to prepare carefully so that there's just the right amount of suffering. But, thinking about it, giving them too much of a safety net won't allow them to build up any resistance to the real world, so maybe I should just let them experience reality at full-blast…

Wait, since when did I start worrying about how to properly raise children?

“I think it's a good idea. However, we'll need to carefully make adjustments as we go in order to prevent them from having any lasting trauma.”

“Ok. I'll keep that in mind. Then let's have a betrayal event. I'll take on the role of the traitor. If it's me, the psychological damage will be lower than if it was Kaburagi or Sago.”

“What do you think, Sago-san?”

While I was thinking over things, the women had continued talking. Kaburagi-san must've noticed that I wasn't participating in the conversation, and thus directed a question towards me.

A betrayal event, huh?

I feel a bit uneasy about it, but… well… I'm in!

It would be rude of me to reject Baba's idea after she gave up so much to come to this side of the match-pump. It's going to be a bit of an upsetting event, but then again, youth is supposed to be comprised of both laughter and tears, right? So let's go ahead and produce some tears.

Now that it's decided, I'll give it my best efforts. Let's have a betrayal event. I'm itching to put my skills to good use.

Chapter end