Chapter 98. Love Counseling
“I really don’t understand.”
He let out a deep sigh, his face turning red as if he was embarrassed.
Did he even realize that the daughter sitting in his arms had her eyes sparkling as she listened closely to her father’s love story?
He gently pushed away his daughter’s face as she sat on his lap staring up at him, then turned his head aside and struggled to continue.
“I seriously have no idea how I’m supposed to describe this.”
“That’s how it is for everyone.”
“…I don’t think it’s like this for everyone.”
First love was always special and unforgettable.
It was like the hole left behind in a wall after a nail had been pulled out.
No matter how many people in the world fell in love, got together, broke apart, or eventually found happiness, everyone tended to think their own love was special.
That they alone were experiencing a love like this.
…Romance stories were my thing.
I should listen seriously.
“Who is the other person?”
“Th-that… Ah, seriously! How am I supposed to explain this?”
“Come on, don’t be embarrassed.”
“…There’s this person called A.”
Look at him getting embarrassed.
He looked around the same age as me, yet the way he talked about love was so young and innocent that it was almost cute.
Even though his face looked pretty fierce.
I guess you really couldn’t judge people by appearance.
“I met A because of an accident. Ah, inside a game.”
Ah.
A game?
And they met because of some accident inside the game?
That opening alone was making me nervous.
There was a good reason for that.
Not long ago, there had been a huge controversy involving someone pretending to be a woman in a game and scamming people out of hundreds of thousands of won.
And if the A this innocent-looking man was talking about turned out to be one of those fake girls…
This would become one of those heartbreaking stories that would keep popping into my head every now and then.
His first love being some scammer pretending to be a woman…
How horrible….
“At first, we weren’t particularly close. But after spending a long time together, we naturally became pretty close.”
“Mm… Y-yeah. That happens….”
“Then at some point, I started thinking, ‘Huh? Does she like me?’ But the way she talks is so rough that I couldn’t really tell.”
Ohhh.
She had a rough way of speaking.
Then the chances of her being a guy pretending to be a girl probably went down quite a bit, right?
Wait.
Then was this guy perhaps…
misunderstanding everything?
They said men could start imagining the names of their future grandchildren just because a woman smiled at them once.
“She never even called me by my name properly before. Then, when we were about to be separated for a long time, she finally called me by my name. Honestly, that felt almost unfair.”
“Ohhh….”
“I know that A is someone I met in a game, so I can’t really know what kind of person she truly is. I understand that she’s basically nothing more than a bunch of data to me, but… I don’t know. Once I started caring about her, everything just felt strange.”
Mm.
I knew that feeling.
You didn’t even know exactly what kind of person they were, yet for some strange reason, you kept feeling drawn toward them.
Your eyes kept following them again and again.
And eventually, you started thinking,
Why am I acting like this?
Do I actually like this person?
How innocent.
“I thought about it for a long time. If you really think about it, maybe the reason I’m even staying here right now is because I want to spend a little more time with her. I’ve… had thoughts like that.”
“…”
“But she and I are too different. So then I started wondering… Are these feelings of mine really okay? Is it right for me to feel this way? Isn’t this just too strange?”
…What?
Did he discover that she actually was a guy pretending to be a girl?
I didn’t really understand what he meant when he said they were too different.
It was probably some kind of metaphor, but nothing immediately came to mind.
“Somehow, we ended up meeting in real life. But at first, she appeared in front of me while hiding the fact that she was the A I knew.”
“W-wait a second! This might sound a little strange, but… A is a woman, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“No reason. There’s been so much noise lately about guys pretending to be girls online and stuff.”
“Ahhh. I saw that too. I can understand why you misunderstood.”
Th-thank goodness!
Seriously, thank goodness!
There was still a possibility that a man had shown up dressed as a woman, but…!
When the atmosphere had been filled with tension and caution, finding a common topic was always the correct answer.
There were few things that made people more comfortable than realizing they could casually talk back and forth with one another.
“Anyway, after all sorts of things happened and we finally met in person… I don’t know. I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to look at A anymore.”
“You mean whether you just see her as a gaming friend or whether you have other feelings for her?”
“Mm. Right. I keep looking at her, so I definitely think she’s precious to me. But when I seriously think about it, I can’t figure out exactly what kind of feeling it is. That sort of thing?”
Whoa.
He said she was precious to him.
Even I was getting embarrassed listening to this.
It wasn’t easy for most people to say something like that out loud.
Still…
From what I was hearing, this sounded like love no matter how I looked at it.
But if I simply said, That’s love! Go confess to her! this complete beginner in romance would definitely panic.
It would have been nice if I could tell him something useful, but I had never lived my life with that kind of pure innocence.
So I honestly didn’t know what advice to give.
“May I tell you a little about my own story?”
A short silence settled over the interview room.
The old man, who had only been quietly nodding while listening until now, carefully opened his mouth.
Considering he was a Great Hero, maybe he could tell us a pretty good story.
Something moving.
Something that could give this man some kind of realization.
That was what I expected.
“You’ve at least heard my wife’s name before, haven’t you?”
“Yeees… I don’t remember it.”
“I did not expect that much from you. Aien’s report already stated that you are not very good at remembering people’s names, so I expected this.”
“…You’re not insulting me right now, are you? Like, ‘Of course you wouldn’t remember.’ Something like that?”
“If that is how it feels, then please try remembering names better from now on. In any case, just like you, I also once felt that there was an enormous difference and wall between my wife and me.”
NPCs usually carried enough rare tragedy and misfortune on their shoulders to fill several lifetimes in the real world.
They were beings made from misfortune piled upon even more misfortune.
So perhaps the story this Great Hero was about to tell would carry a weight far beyond what this man was currently feeling.
“…”
For some reason, he simply nodded shortly with a tired expression.
Almost like he had already heard something like this before.
He looked like a son listening to the same lecture from his father for the hundredth time.
“Naturally so. My wife was a hero of Poweor, while when I first met her, I was not even a hero myself.”
“…Oh….”
“You cannot imagine how painful it was to fall in love at first sight with one of Poweor’s pillars, someone who had become an enemy of the Empire.”
“Ahhh….”
The further the story continued, the more that man seemed unable to raise his head.
He kept looking into empty space, as though he had nowhere safe to put his eyes.
…What was with that reaction?
What did he know?
And what exactly had he done?
With a reaction like that, I could only assume he had done something bad to the old man’s wife.
“She possessed some resistance to it, so she was easier to communicate with compared to most people of Poweor. However, she was still consumed by Madness and followed it while calling Madness her ‘benevolent teacher.’”
“…”
“Madness is evil. Yet the woman I saw could not be considered evil. The sight of her standing beautifully on the battlefield and continuing to fight with honor was something I admired.”
“Uuuugh….”
“The Empire, and indeed the entire continent, said that the being she served was wrong. They called it absolute evil. So I wondered whether loving a woman who served such a being meant that I was the one who was wrong.”
The old man continued.
“Was I mistaken? Was the woman I saw truly wrong? Or had I perhaps become infected by Madness myself?”
I didn’t know all the circumstances surrounding the story.
Still, considering he was calling her his wife now, hadn’t he overcome all those negative opinions and managed to win his love in the end?
That sounded like a pretty good story.
And based on the context, there were at least some similarities with this man, who was confused and uncertain about his own feelings.
It seemed like a story worth hearing.
“There was even a time when I wondered whether I had gone mad. Just like you, I constantly doubted myself because of the eyes of those around me, blamed myself, and worried endlessly.”
“Wow. But you still ended up marrying her?”
“Heh heh. It was nothing special. Once I understood and accepted the habits of the people of Poweor, it was not particularly difficult.”
“How did you do it?”
“I fought her and won.”
“…What?”
Ah.
This wasn’t useful advice at all.
Look at that guy!
He was glaring at the old man with eyes that practically screamed,
