The stream kept flowing, endlessly.
In the distance, the pile of insect corpses gave off a thick, nauseating stench.
Perhaps because the tense slaughter had already burned off all his energy, Arato Sora now only wanted to sit quietly and zone out.
After an overly intense bout of exertion, wanting to rest for a while was only natural.
By the creek, the boy and girl gradually fell into silence.
Asagami Fujino watched Arato as he tried to settle his emotions, then looked at her own reflection in the moving water. Without meaning to, she began thinking about how Arato might see her.
In Japan, where "reading the room" was practically a survival skill—
Being different was the greatest sin. Even a condition like congenital insensitivity to pain had to be concealed at all costs—let alone a murderous nature like hers.
In theory, Arato was exactly what the system had said: someone she could never meet in real life.
She should've been like she was at the very beginning, unconcerned about her secrets being exposed.
But—
Only after you begin to hope, do you learn fear.
In everyday life, Fujino constantly suppressed herself, terrified that her abnormality might be revealed and bring consequences.
A divorced family. No parental care.
To hide herself, she never formed any truly deep bonds with anyone.
A girl like that—when she finally met someone who could work alongside her toward a goal—almost immediately began to develop a fragile, anxious possessiveness.
If Arato learned she was a pervert who felt pleasure from killing… how would he look at her then?
The purple-haired girl was easily satisfied. Even the warmth and fulfillment she'd felt during this brief time was enough to make her want to clutch at it desperately.
She couldn't accept Arato turning wary of her.
Compared to the beautiful possibility of being accepted, Fujino feared rejection far more.
And pessimistic as she was, she believed rejection was the more likely outcome.
"…Most of the giant bees have been lured over and killed. Next should be going to the mountaintop to take down the queen. Do you have any plans or ideas, Arato?"
She forced the conversation onto safer ground.
"Plans like that need more intel first… Next, I'll probably need to trouble you to go—"
Arato pulled his gaze back from the scenery and turned as he spoke… but the moment his eyes landed on Fujino, his words died in his throat.
On the legs of Fujino—still wearing the stone armor—fresh red blood was seeping out.
At first, the red had been hidden beneath the insects' sticky green fluid, hard to see. But as time passed, the stain spread wider and wider until it became unmistakable.
Arato almost instantly understood why.
The stone armor he'd made for Fujino had gaps at the joints—so she could move.
The bees' stingers couldn't easily penetrate those seams, so he hadn't bothered reinforcing them.
When Fujino first tested the armor, nothing seemed wrong.
But now…
After prolonged combat, everything became painfully clear.
Even ignoring the abrasions from movement, the crude armor frequently pinched and crushed the flesh of her legs as it shifted—creating patch after patch of damage.
A normal person would've been unable to endure that constant pain long ago.
But Fujino—who felt no pain—hadn't even noticed.
"Will that kind of damage affect the fight going forward?"
Arato pointed at her legs.
Fujino, who had been lost in her thoughts, reacted a beat late.
"It won't. My ability—The Third Person Without Pain—means as long as my limbs aren't severed and my HP doesn't drop to zero, my body can still move."
Almost instinctively, she presented her "usefulness" to him.
"..."
Arato stared silently into the girl's violet eyes.
"I'm not saying I care about the injury itself. But… do you really not want to treat it? This fully immersive VR is no different from reality. If you get too used to ignoring things here, you might start forgetting in real life too."
He explained his reasoning.
Fujino nodded obediently. "Then I'll do what you say."
Had she been persuaded?
No.
She was simply doing it because Arato had said so.
She could tell she was being cared for.
If that was true… what was there to argue?
They began removing the stone armor. During the process, they discovered strips of Fujino's necrotic skin and flesh still caught inside it.
Soon, the damage was laid bare before Arato's eyes: skin rubbed raw, and long, blood-running gashes—like knife cuts—crisscrossing her legs.
Arato Sora: "..."
The reality of it hit harder than imagination.
The streaming blood and mangled, pulp-like tissue formed a brutal contrast against the girl's otherwise healthy, snow-white skin.
Any normal person would feel their stomach drop at the sight.
And what Arato was seeing wasn't even Fujino's real body—only her chibi avatar.
If this were reality, it would be even harder to look at.
"…Does that really not hurt?"
Arato asked almost on reflex.
"It doesn't. Because I have that ability."
The bloody wounds and the calm blankness on the girl's face were a grotesque mismatch.
Wounds that should have produced pain—produced none.
Just witnessing it made Fujino seem… inhuman.
But as Arato looked closer, he saw something that startled him:
Tears were slowly sliding down from Fujino's eyes.
Her face remained expressionless. She didn't even know what pain was.
And yet the tears kept falling.
Fujino lifted a hand, as if she herself couldn't understand what was happening to her.
How does someone who can't feel pain confirm that they're hurt?
She did it through the amount of worry other people showed her.
Maybe she didn't care about pain… but her body was still grieving because of it.
"Thinking about it… we have no connection in real life, and we won't build any relationship beyond this, so it's fine to be blunt. How about I treat your wounds, Miss Asagami? Consider it payment for helping me kill those giant bees."
That was the conclusion Arato reached after staring at the damage for a while.
He wasn't the sort who liked meddling.
From the start he'd noticed Fujino's condition—how it would likely lead her to ruin in the end—yet he'd said nothing.
But after seeing her legs torn up like this with his own eyes, as a normal human being, he couldn't help feeling unwilling to leave her like that.
A scene like this could absolutely happen in real life.
"Miss Asagami might not feel pain, but anyone who cares about you—if they saw you like this—would definitely feel heartbreak in your place."
"…Would you feel heartbreak, Arato?"
"Anyone with normal values would feel awful seeing this."
"…I see."
The purple-haired girl stared at him for a long moment, then nodded.
"Then… can you handle my wounds for me?"
"I can."
Arato tore strips from his clothes, soaked them in the stream, and began wiping her clean—carefully peeling away cloth scraps that had already stuck into her torn flesh.
His expression was unusually serious.
Why?
Probably because some of these injuries were his fault—because he hadn't paid enough attention when he made the stone armor, and he'd allowed this to happen.
Time passed second by second. The stream flowed on beside them.
And as Arato cleaned Fujino's wounds with such focus—
A small voice escaped from her lips.
"…It really hurts."
Arato looked up.
Fujino was staring straight at him.
And then he saw her expression—fixed and intent—as though she were testing the meaning of that word on her tongue.
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