Kamasse's War of Words

The lobby of the Adventurers' Guild Yoshanka branch office is overflowing with adventurers. And yet more intruders appear!

It's the merchants who work in Yoshanka!

They cross their arms and stand like guardians, surrounding me and casting intimidating glares!

Even the adventurers, who should be used to rough stuff, were overwhelmed by their presence and stepped back without thinking.

Right now, in this lobby: yours truly, Emi-chan, standing in the center (and Kamasse, who got dragged into it).

The bunch of merchants surrounding us.

And the adventurers watching them from a distance: that's how things ended up arranged.

The population density is very high. Yep.

“H, hey, wait wait wait...... the stall guy, and the landlady? What do you want, showing up all of a sudden?”

Kamasse, whose grand speech had been interrupted, is bewildered.

He appeals to me with his eyes, as if asking, “Did you do something!?” but unfortunately, I have no clue!?

I tilt my head as my answer.

“Hmph, it is not you we have business with. It is that cursed child next to you.”

The one who stepped forward saying that was...... ah, the stall guy I once made cry by doing side-step drills!

“Ah, that's Bakkaro-san of the ‘Togodo Skewer’ stall!”

“What!? Isn't he the chair of the Yoshanka Trade Association!”

“Eh!? The one called the ‘legendary Togodo skewer craftsman’!?”

The adventurers around us are whispering something.

Eh, was that guy actually such an amazing yakitori chef?

“I heard he's a nasty drunk.”

“Apparently he's been divorced 3 times.”

“He was puking on the side of the road the other day.”

<Some rather useless information is trickling in......>

Having good ears is a real pain, isn't it?

“Ahem!”

The stall guy gives a single cough, silencing the adventurers.

“Ahh...... sorry for barging in out of nowhere, my adventurer friends!”

And then, the guy began to speak in a booming voice.

“Right now, the town of Yoshanka is enjoying the biggest boom in its history! I was born and raised in this town, but I have never seen Yoshanka so full of life! That you adventurer friends have started using this town as one of your bases, this too is surely one reason for the boom! On behalf of the townsfolk, allow me to say a word of thanks right here!”

“Oho.”

“Now, now, you're too kind.”

“What's a boo-oom? Can you eat it?”

The surrounding adventurers give various responses to the guy's sudden speech.

Wait, there's one idiot in the bunch, huh?

“We want to make this boom a stepping stone to reviving the town of Yoshanka, which had been withering away from depopulation. Every shop is getting creative, and right now we're exploring new ventures, renovating our stores, breaking into new fields and more! This will make the town of Yoshanka more convenient! And it'll become a nicer place to live for you adventurer friends, too! Then even more new people will move to this town, and Yoshanka will grow and grow! A wonderful future awaits!”

“Oho.”

“Now that you mention it, there were extension works going on all over the place.”

“What's a Yoshanka? Can you eat it?”

The stall guy is surprisingly good at giving speeches, and the adventurers are inadvertently drawn into his talk!

Wait, that one idiot is a bottomless idiot, isn't he?

“However!”

The guy silences the buzzing crowd in an instant by shouting.

And then.

“There is someone getting in the way of Yoshanka's boom! And that someone is you, cursed child!!”

With that, the guy pointed at me with great force.

Every gaze in the room focused on me at once.

Eh?

Me, here?

What? Am I being blamed?

Why am I being blamed?

“‘Cursed children spread misfortune all around them’! It's a well-known fact, you see!”

“You are a devil who has come to bring this town to ruin! Begone, devil!”

The perfectly round inn landlady and the old woman who threw salt on me step forward from beside the guy and lay into me even more.

The other people also began to curse me, one after another, in their own way.

.........................

Ah, I see.

It's, the usual, that thing.

Black hair, black eyes discrimination against cursed children.

They curse.

Just plain foul-mouthed, they curse.

I am a cursed child.

Since you can say anything to a cursed child, they just keep cursing.

Well, to sum up what they're trying to say.

“Cursed child, get out of town immediately.”

It all boils down to this one sentence.

........................

Haah.

I mean, it's not like I haven't had this kind of experience.

Even in Trash Village, where I was born, I was shunned by the whole village (make that fully shunned?).

In my wandering days before I met Master, I was never even once let into a village or town.

But, it's been a while.

Since anything like this.

Haha.

I'm a little shocked.

Yeah.

It's nostalgic.

A sad, sort of nostalgia......

Taking advantage of my silence, the merchant bunch say all kinds of horrible things about me, just as they please.

According to them, I have no common sense and must be living by stealing.

That I am a breeding ground for filthy germs.

That my mere presence ruins the scenery.

That I lower everyone's luck.

What is it, I wonder.

I think this every time.

What is it with this world?

Is being born with black hair and black eyes really that bad?

Why do I have to be blamed, this much?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Seriously.

I feel it, almost leaking out.

Killing intent.

Ah, no, no.

I have to hold it in......

<Do you, need to, hold back?>

............Omake-sama?

<Let's just kill these people, Emi. Let's tear them all into eight pieces. No, eight isn't enough. Let's rip them apart joint by joint, tear them to bits, and throw them into the sea. It seems the adventurers here are all weak fighters. No one here can stop you, Emi. Let's do it. To your heart's content. Let's make a bloody mess of them.>

......She's snapped.

Omake-sama has quietly, respectfully, lost it.

And one more person.

In this room, there was one more person who got angry for my sake.

“You lot! I've been listening this whole time, and what the hell, saying whatever you damn well please!”

He steps forward as if to shield me, red in the face, arguing back at everyone around us.

It's Kamasse.

“This girl saved the town of Yoshanka, you know!? She's the one who defeated the Togodo Commander! And you're telling her to get out just because she has black hair and black eyes!? Are the people of Yoshanka ungrateful and shameless!”

“What did you say!?”

“What is this brat suddenly talking about!”

Kamasse doesn't back down a single step from the adults surrounding him, arguing on my behalf.

“I mean, really! Setting aside whether she's a cursed child or whatever, you're trying to run a person out of town! Do you have any grounds for this, any grounds!? Is there a law that says cursed children must not be in town!? Hey, what about it, guard!”

“......There is no such law.”

“Then your claim is illegal and unjust! You're grown adults, and what you're doing is no different from bullying by some random brats!! Am I wrong? Huh!?”

“......Guh!”

......Kamasse is really amazing.

He's smart and eloquent.

Despite the sudden situation, he managed to outargue the people around us in an instant.

“However, I saw it earlier! I saw that cursed child leaving the town by climbing the wall instead of using the main gate!”

The young guard argues back.

......That guy is the one who threw me out of town in the middle of the night while I was sleeping in the park.

If he saw me earlier, then that's it.

He must have seen me when I leaped out of town to go save Kamasse.

“......So what? Is there a rule that says you can't climb the wall?”

Kamasse falters for a moment.

......Yeah, it's a fact that I enter and leave town by climbing the wall instead of using the main gate.

Since I just entered town that way while carrying Kamasse on my back, Kamasse knows that fact too.

“There is no rule! But that is because no one ever imagined someone entering and leaving town by climbing the wall in the first place!”

“If there's no rule......”

“Even if there's no rule, wrong is wrong! In the first place, what do you think we guards are doing at the main gate? We are conducting investigations to ensure criminals don't enter! That cursed child over there has not undergone that investigation! No, she is intentionally avoiding it! Why? Because she is a criminal!”

This is bad.

Things are starting to look ugly.

<What is that. Their limbs, from the ends, one at a time, crush them, and in a tank, filled with their own blood, drown them>

Wait.

Wait, Omake-sama, calm down.

“It's true, avoiding the main gate is suspicious.”

“If they had nothing to hide, they wouldn't go through the trouble of climbing the town's outer wall.”

“Does that mean she was trafficking illegal drugs or something?”

The bystander adventurers start buzzing and spouting whatever theories they like.

“Anyway, we are taking that cursed child into custody! After an interrogation at the guard post, it will be prison or banishment! Move aside, boy adventurer!”

Saying that, the young guard tries to shove Kamasse aside.

‘Prison or banishment’, he says.

Apparently, getting off scot-free isn't one of the endings in that guy's head.

He's probably thinking that even if I've done nothing, he can just make it look like I did something and kick me out of town.

Kamasse......

Even though he's being pushed, he doesn't move.

He's using 【Body Strengthening】 to plant himself on the spot.

“You wretch......!”

Pushed back by Kamasse, the guard starts turning his hostility on him too.

By now, not just the merchant bunch, but even the adventurers around us see me as an evil that should be banished.

That's the mood it's turned into.

And yet.

And yet Kamasse still hangs on.

“......Since this is not an action based on the law, what you're doing is an illegal act, guard.”

“What is this brat saying......”

“And, the Adventurers' Guild has the ‘Adventurer Rules’!”

......Hm?

“These rules are a set of regulations that bind adventurers, but at the same time, they should be a shield that protects adventurers from unjust state power like this! The Adventurers' Guild, as an international organization, protects adventurers based on the rules! That is a fact agreed upon even between the nations where the guild exists! Isn't that right, Miss Receptionist!”

Ah, this is bad.

Kamasse, that's bad.

“Ah!? Is the Adventurers' Guild saying they'll shield this cursed child!? What about it, receptionist!!”

“Y, yeees~~~!?”

Suddenly put on the spot while watching from the sidelines, the receptionist woman panics.

The rotten receptionist who keeps exploiting me for medicinal herbs.

“No, well, uh~~m......”

From behind the counter, the rotten receptionist looks around nervously.

The merchants and the guard are my enemies to begin with.

The adventurers aren't exactly fond of me, a cursed child, either.

In a situation like that, what conclusion will that woman reach?

That's a given.

Or rather.

There's a huge hole in Kamasse's argument.

Normally, if that hole weren't there, that rotten receptionist would have to protect me.

Without hesitation.

As an employee of the Adventurers' Guild.

But.

“U, um~, you see! We at the Adventurers' Guild Yoshanka branch office, you see! Wanting to contribute to this town's development, with that in mind, you see! Have been doing our work all this time, you see!”

“Is the guild! Going to neglect! Its adventurers!!”

Kamasse roars.

‘Neglecting adventurers’.

He shifted the point of argument from my case to the case of adventurers as a whole.

But, it's no use, Kamasse.

“Ah~, um! We won't! We would, um, never neglect ‘all of you adventurers’!”

“Then!!”

“But shielding that cursed child, that's something, we won't do either!”

“Haah!?”

“Because!!!”

Here, she takes a breath.

Taking a deep breath, the rotten receptionist announces the fact in a shrill, grating voice.

“Because that cursed child, is not an adventurer!!!”

“........................Huh?”

Kamasse froze, staring blankly in a daze.