Chapter 20: Shinobu: Is Today Cursed or Something?
....
Morning. Hestia and Lili had Kihara by both arms and were marching him toward the divine tailoring shop Hephaestos had recommended — and had barely cleared the front gate when both of them stopped dead and formed a wall.
"Good morning, Mr. Kihara. Lili. Goddess Hestia."
"There is nothing good about it. What are you doing at our Familia's door, Sword-whatever."
The problem, from Aiz's perspective, was that the two of them being angry looked almost identical to two small cats with their fur standing up — marginally threatening, primarily endearing. She filed this observation away and waited.
Hestia's internal alert system was going off at full volume. She kept her eyes fixed on Aiz's every movement, apparently operating on the theory that sufficient glaring could substitute for a Level 5 combat differential.
"I came to find Mr. Kihara. I find him interesting."
Hestia launched approximately thirty centimetres into the air. "You stay away from my Kihara—"
"Why? I only want to talk."
"Talk leads to other things — don't think I don't know how that goes—"
She bit her thumbnail, eyes narrowing. "This has Loki Familia written all over it. Schemes and plots at every turn. Fortunately I am far too intelligent to fall for any of it."
"Lady Hestia is absolutely right!"
Aiz tilted her head. The gold of her eyes was genuinely, uncomplicated puzzled. "Is talking really not permitted?"
"Correct. It is not."
"Then what would I need to do for you to allow it?"
"You — you're already negotiating the conditions?! You're really something, Aiz-whatever—"
While Hestia sputtered, Lili's memory produced the framework they'd drafted the previous night.
"Miss Aiz — our Familia has a formal policy. Any woman above one hundred and fifty-five centimetres who wishes to interact with Lord Kihara must pass a rigorous screening process."
"Yes! Exactly what Lili said!"
Hestia gave Lili a look of profound approval.
"I don't need physical contact with Mr. Kihara. I only want to speak with him. Does that still apply?"
"Ah..."
The two of them pressed together and began flipping frantically through the notebook. There was, as it turned out, no clause addressing conversation specifically.
"What if we add one right now?"
"That would make the entire system look improvised and therefore illegitimate. We can't do that, Lady Hestia."
"Then let me find something — there has to be something—"
Hestia seized the notebook and began scanning at speed. She didn't find anything applicable to the Aiz situation. What she did find, on a page she hadn't written, was a neatly recorded personal note:
[Lady Hestia has no resistance to certain topics of a sensitive nature. Successfully used this method yesterday to share a bath with Lord Kihara. Highly repeatable.]
"LILI-SAN."
That's what my alarm was going off about this morning. Hestia stared at the page. It wasn't a premonition about the Sword Princess at all. The infiltrator was already inside the perimeter.
Her face went the specific shade of a person who has just understood something they wished they hadn't.
"Lady Hestia, please let me explain—"
The defensive line collapsed from within. Aiz didn't fully understand what Hestia and Lili were suddenly arguing about, but she recognised an opening when she saw one. She deployed Level 5 adventurer speed, had Kihara's wrist in her hand, and was halfway down the street before either of them registered the movement.
"Lady Hestia — Lord Kihara's been taken by the Sword Princess—!"
"That can wait — you are going to explain what you did in the bathroom—"
Aiz pulled him directly to Orario's semi-circular plaza, where a specific vendor sold red bean cream fried dough balls that she had strong feelings about.
She had spent the previous evening consulting Riveria on the subject of talking to strangers. One of the recommended approaches: share food you enjoy. She had considered this carefully and determined it was actionable.
The adventurers gathered in the plaza witnessed something that would occupy their conversation for weeks. The Sword Princess — the woman most of them had spent years admiring from a respectful distance — had just walked up to a man, purchased two portions of her favourite food, and given him half.
That's a date. That is objectively a date.
The collective silent anguish of Orario's male adventuring population was considerable. None of them approached.
The glares they directed at Kihara contained a quantity of suppressed emotion that would have impressed a therapist.
Aiz bit into her dough ball. The familiar warmth bloomed in her mouth and she let her eyes close briefly with satisfaction, then opened them and looked directly at Kihara, waiting for his assessment.
It reminded him more of a red bean pastry than anything else. He finished it in a few bites and put his thumb up.
"That's genuinely good. No wonder your eyes lit up the moment you spotted the stall."
She ate hers in small, precise bites, watching him steadily, saying nothing. Her expression suggested active internal processing of some kind.
Is she waiting for me to start a topic?
Being stared at with complete focus by a beautiful woman with no readable expression was generating low-level pressure. Kihara activated the accumulated strategic wisdom of years spent as an elite visual novel player and delivered his opening gambit.
"Nice weather today."
"Mm."
"..."
[Master. Does this not remind you of someone who scored full marks on theory and zero on application?]
[Quiet. That was a warmup. You are about to witness conversational technique at its most formidable.]
He straightened his collar. His expression became one of great purpose. He raised one hand and pointed at a stall across the plaza.
"I heard... the place next door has crisps at half price. Should we check?"
[I CAN'T — my sides — HAHAHAHA—]
Shinobu dropped to the floor of the shadow-space and beat both fists against it. She had diagnosed the problem immediately: Kihara's one genuine blind spot was the expressionless, hard-to-read type. It made his brain produce increasingly unhinged conversational attempts, and she had front-row seats.
Aiz, however, had caught the word that contained the same character as potato from her favourite food, and tilted her head with mild interest.
"Crisps... what are those?"
"Ah — a common snack from my hometown. I was mistaken, actually — I misread the sign. That shop doesn't have them."
"That's unfortunate."
"It's alright. If you want to try some, I can make a batch and bring them to you sometime. Call it a gift."
"Mm. Thank you. You're a kind person."
Once the channel opened, things moved more naturally. Aiz found a quiet bench away from the foot traffic, sat down, and Kihara settled beside her. The strained quality of the first five minutes had dissolved into something that functioned, against all initial odds, like an actual conversation.
[Wait. He actually got Aiz talking?]
[Is Master genuinely talented at this?]
[Don't get carried away. This is advanced technique. Not for ranked play.]
He delivered this assessment to the shadow-space with some satisfaction — and then Aiz blinked, looking at him with those clear gold eyes, and said:
"There's something about you that feels familiar. A warmth I recognise somehow." A pause. "Do you think... we might be related? Like siblings?"
...
Thank you for reading.