Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?

Chapter 325 - It’s not sensei’s fault!

On returning to the room in the elf village, there was sensei, sitting on top of the bed grasping her knees. It, it’s dusk. Since elves age slowly, looking at sensei sitting while grasping her knees like that, it’s like seeing a primary school girl being sad over having missed a snack. Ahh, what to do. This is supposed to be a serious scene, yet it’s as charming as a painting.

Also, just next to her, Felmina-chan and Kusheetani-san are seated on chairs having a friendly conversation. Or rather, not so much a friendly conversation as it feels like Felmina-chan is firing a barrage of questions as Kusheetani-san. As I teleport directly into the room amongst these three very different people, all their gazes shift to me.

「Wakaba-san.」

Sensei sluggishly raises her head and mutters that.

「How are you feeling?」

I decided to start off by a asking a harmless and inoffensive question. On doing so, Felmina-chan stared at me with wide-open eyes. What’s with that face? I will talk when it’s time to talk! It’s just that normally I’m not serious is all! Once I get serious then even I can do it!

「My body is fine. Thanks for worrying about me.」

Her body is, eh. In other words, emotionally she still has a long way to go.

「Please do not force yourself. After all, there is no longer any need for you to take risks, sensei.」

In order to console her, I speak to her as gently as possible. Felmina-chan is making a face like she’s about to froth at the mouth and collapse. What’s with that face? Even I have a fragment of kindness within me you know! Or rather, I’m actually super-kind okay! It’s just that everyone is strange for not realising that you know!

「Thank you very much.」

Even though sensei is thanking me, she doesn’t recover her spirits. It seems like my words weren’t enough to clear her mood. Even so, the only thing I can do here is to carry on talking.

「Sensei, there is no need for you to worry about it. You took action based on what you thought was good. It was Potimas who was at fault for trying to make use of your good intentions.」

In practice, sensei has not committed anything wrong. There is the stock phrase that swindlers use to say that those who are deceived are at fault, but it’s obvious that those who deceive are at fault. Sensei simply did everything that she could possibly do. That surely saved the reincarnators for a start, and everyone is safe since Potimas’s plot was crushed before it could be implemented. So it turned out alright in the end.

「However, that doesn’t change the fact that I was an accomplice to Potimas.」

Despite all that, sensei continues to worry about it. Hrm. Sensei’s sense of responsibility is too strong. By nature she burdens herself with responsibilities that she doesn’t need to carry and so she suffers because of it. Just because she is their sensei, it doesn’t mean that she has the responsibility of having to save the reincarnators, yet she took desperate action using the elves, meaning that when Potimas betrayed her she felt responsible for that as well. She burdens herself with far too many unnecessary things. It makes me think that she should live a more easygoing life. But well, that’s exactly what’s good about sensei though.

「That is clearly your wrong impression, sensei. You were simply being deceived. You have not done anything wrong at all. Besides, I’d rather not say this, but whether you were there or not, so long as Potimas was around he would have done something bad sooner or later. Regardless of your actions, that man needed to be dealt with because he was going to take hold of the total energy of the world some day. It was simply your misfortune to be born at that man’s side.」

It is Potimas who is to blame. In general things are his fault. This is the truth.

「In other words, it was a mistake that I was even born then huh.」

Gahh!? How did you get to that conclusion!?

「That’s wrong. I’ve said it over and over, but you are not at fault, sensei.」

I immediately denied it, but sensei stayed downcast. Ehhh, ahhh, uhhh. What should I do?

I shift my gaze to Felmina-chan and Kusheetani-san as a request for help. Felmina-chan gently averted her gaze. Kusheetani-san breathed a small sigh and shrugged her shoulders. Damn! They’re of no use!

「Don’t look at me like that please. It’s not like I am aware of all of the details for a start and we were also the last ones to come to this elf village. Since both my circumstances and viewpoint is different to everyone else’s there’s nothing that I can say.」

Kusheetani-san starts giving excuses. Well, whether they’re excuses or not what she’s saying is true though. Kusheetani-san and Tagawa-kun both spent a long time outside of the elf village. Accordingly, that means that the amount of interaction that they had with sensei was brief and they had also not experienced much time being restricted in the elf village. Compared to the reincarnators who spent their entire lives confined to the elf village from when they were small, their viewpoint is indeed different. So she wouldn’t be able to give an objective opinion.

「Well, going by what I’ve heard I also think that sensei is not at fault though. Isn’t this simply a matter of sensei’s own feelings? What I think is that sensei herself has to think through and sort out her own feelings about herself.」

……Are we really the same age? Well, actually, if our past lives are included then she’s older than me I guess. There I go escaping from reality again, but in truth Kusheetani-san is mature compared to the other reincarnators. When sensei collapsed earlier, she was the first one to move as well. Since Kusheetani-san has been around the world as an adventurer, she has proportionally wide experiences, so I guess mentally she has grown up? Well, compared to the reincarnators who’ve been spending time in this stagnant elf village, she’s been through quite a lot.

「So there you have it sensei. I’ll stay at your side until you’re able to sort out your feelings and recover, so I think it’s fine to slowly ponder things.」

「Kusheetani-san, aren’t you saying that because you want to take things slowly yourself?」

「Oh my? Did you see through me perhaps?」

Kusheetani-san smiles mischievously. Following that infectious smile, sensei also smiled briefly.

Hmm-mm? How strange. Wasn’t this supposed to be the scene where I gallantly take sensei’s troubles away? Kusheetani-san has run away with it all, huh? How strange. It’s totally strange! So as to ask just what’s going on here, I turn my gaze to Felmina-chan. But she stubbornly refuses to look my way!

While I’m being overwhelmed with a strange sense of defeat, the others suddenly have a surprised expression. Hm? When I quickly glance at the others, sensei and Kusheetani-san and also Felmina-chan are all gazing at nothing and have an attitude like they are listening carefully. Then, their expressions change from being surprised. To being grim. Their gazes shift, to me.

Ah. So it has come huh.

I send an order to the clones hacking the System. Try looking at the personal history of the Voice of Heaven (temp). Considering the reaction of the three people here, I think they probably received some kind of revelation from the Voice of Heaven (temp). And there - bingo. Hmm, so what’s what?

A World Quest is issued: Will you obstruct or will you support the plan of the Evil God who is scheming to sacrifice humanity in order to avert the destruction of the world?

Argh, damn you D. You sure have intervened in a big way.

Notes:

“sitting while grasping her knees” - this is a specific pose often used to evoke sad or meloncholy type feelings, such as in this example.

“I will talk when it’s time to talk” - as a general comment on Shiro’s speech patterns lately: for most of the series, when she spoke at all she used extremely brief sentences, often with just one or two words. In this chapter Shiro is speaking complete and proper sentences every time. Her speech patterns are actually very close to D’s, though slightly more colloquial.

“World Quest” - the way this is written indicates that it is a gaming term.

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