Leave a comment

I was currently secluding myself, becoming the highly acclaimed NEET.

It’s impossible, you know! Definitely impossible! I was so scared that I couldn’t walk outside! Yeah, this is not a joke.

It’s been around a week since I got attacked by those mysterious thugs in the forest that day. A terrible thing almost happened to me… Yeah, I wouldn’t step out of this room after all of that. By the way, this was Lily’s house.

Seriously, this was already light trauma. Normal people would start having androphobia. Just looking at the butler made me tremble. What’s with this chicken, you ask? No, it’s me!

What happened to my mental tolerance skill! It’s f̲u̲c̲k̲i̲n̲g useless! …I guess this matter had exceeded the permissible limit. So LV10 wasn’t completely resistant to anything…? It’s seriously no use.

They saved me before those men could do anything to me, but experiencing a crisis of chastity had nothing to do with being men or women, okay? Shocking thing was still shocking. Ugh.

I knew my mind was too weak. I was so gloomy. I didn’t want to breathe. It’s hard to be alive…

Norn’s fur was the only thing that comforted me. I had been sticking beside her the entire time. But only Bell accompanied me when I went to the toilet.

In the daytime, I was burying myself in Norn’s belly as she curled up near the edge of the room. I just stared at the ceiling. At night, I was so scared that I couldn’t sleep. In the end, Lily accompanied me until I fell asleep…. That’s why the dark circles under my eyes were deep. Recently, I forced myself to sleep using a sleep potion.

Ah… Well, that’s why I had been depressed, but I couldn’t admit it. Anyway, let’s talk about what happened after I was rescued.

Vector came a few days ago and told me about them… hmm, where should I start?

For the time being, let’s start from why Lily and Arisa came together with Vector. No, maybe earlier than that? Hmm….

Well, I’ll start from why I got attacked.

To put it simply, it was because of our poor contact. The main problem was I didn’t share information with Vector.

I originally had escorts as a reward for meeting the various conditions Vector presented at the blacksmithing request. But he didn’t tell me about the escorts. Naturally, he didn’t tell me any information about the total escorts and how they moved to protect me. For the time being, Master told me about it at the beginning of the year, but I still knew little about them.

So there were various misunderstandings starting there. I thought Vector reduced the number of escorts because my security had been ensured, but that wasn’t the case.

Thanks to Master’s efforts, the people who were sniffing about me had mostly disappeared. But there were a few groups left. By the way, they were friends of those who attacked me. The client was a weapon merchant with a bad reputation.

And the number of escorts was decreasing since they were involved in the investigation. Moreover, it was under Vector’s command.

I misunderstood and thought that I was safe. And after going out, the execution team found an opportunity and tried to kidnap me… When I heard all of that, I wanted to say that this was all Vector’s fault. His debts increased now, huh!

By the way, it was a coincidence that Lily and Arisa came to rescue me with Vector. They didn’t have any particular connection with him before.

And Gim, Triela, Cain, and the others actually came to rescue me too, but I lost my consciousness immediately after Lily rescued me. I didn’t know that they got involved until I heard about it later.

And the story became complicated because of various coincidences…

Hmm, let’s start with Lily and Arisa first. After we broke up in the royal capital, they returned to Harula, eventually stopped working, and became a full-time adventurer. And after discussing this and that, they invited me to join their team.

In the spring of the New Year, when the snow melted, they returned to the royal capital with a carriage.

However, I just left the workshop when they arrived at the royal capital and searched for me. It was bad timing. But to surprise me, they decided to chase after me in the forest, which they thought should be my destination. And they met Gim and Triela on the way, who were talking about something.

Actually, Lily and Arisa were acquaintances with Gim. Gim was the one who taught them the spot to collect herbs. And they learned a lot of things from him when they were just starting out… people sure were connected in unexpected times, huh.

… I went off track, huh.

Seeing that the acquaintance they met after a long time seemed panicked, Lily and Arisa talked to him to know what happened. And when they listened to the story, they knew that a rookie adventurer who helped him before was being followed by bad guys. And after listening to the details, they found out that the rookie adventurer was me.

They were surprised that everyone, including Triela and the children, knew me, but they could sense that something bad was happening.

And as they discussed whether to follow me, Vector who ran at full speed appeared.

Vector told me that the last escort who I thought had left and disappeared shortly after I entered the forest actually rushed to call him.

The escort realized that he couldn’t deal with all the people who were following me with him alone.

Now that they knew the situation from Vector, everyone ran around in the woods looking for me with all their might… and made it in time.

Well, it’s something like that. But I heard it from someone else and didn’t actually see and hear it, so I wasn’t very sure.

By the way, the men who attacked me had been known to have bad behavior for a long time. They belonged to a criminal guild in the royal capital, regarded as a problematic group.

They had been involved in various crimes in the past, but no one could catch them because it’s hard to find their lead. But their activities had become more and more recently, causing them to make a slight mistake. They tried to do a stupid thing with me when they were kidnapping me instead of moving quickly. That means they got ahead of themselves because of their pride.

I also heard that they were shrewd poison users, but let’s omit that.

Anyway, they were also involved in using multiple poisons to make Norn and I incapacitated without noticing anything. Apparently, various dangerous poisons and other amazing techniques were shared in the criminal guild. Criminal guild sure was amazing. Too scary!

By the way, some of those men died in the forest. The rest were arrested and died during interrogation. It seemed like they were bound with a lot of restrictions on magic, so they died after spitting out various information.

Ah. By the way, the order of arrival for the people who helped me was Vector, Arisa, Lily, Gim, Kuro, and everyone else. Kuro was still a child, but wasn’t she a bit too fast? And Triela, Cain, and everyone else arrived at the same time.

After that… having the poison derail her sense of smell and other things, Norn got angry and minced one perpetrator. Norn… thank you? However, Bell who was together with Norn was a little injured, so that man probably resisted a little.

After mincing the criminal into cuts of meats, Norn arrived by my side. She was so angry that no one could calm her down… Lily and Arisa, whom I once traveled with together, struggled to calm her down along with Triela and the other kids. They then returned to the city.

In addition, Norn carried me on her back the entire time. It’s more like Norn started rampaging when someone else tried to carry me… Huh? I’m being loved by Norn?

After that, in order to ensure my safety in the royal capital, I hid in Lily’s house since I had stayed there before.

Anyhow, Vector told me all of that as he prostrated himself.

I didn’t care if the royal family was prostrating to me. It’s all his fault, anyway.

That being said, he now owed me big time… Should I use that as my shield to ask about the orphanage?… No, I’m still a bit anxious. It’s more like a bad premonition… This all feels like a one-man show, you know?

After all, he already noticed the perpetrators from the start. It’s like I became his decoy… Yeah, let’s stop it for now. This all screamed suspiciously. I couldn’t believe him. Impossible.

My distrust of men because of this incident was probably one reason I couldn’t believe Vector, but I wasn’t confident that I could make the right decision in my current mental state.

So I asked Vector to go home without saying anything special.

Ah, the merchant who was the mastermind also had been caught and sentenced to death. His business also crashed in a go. I didn’t really care, though.

Later, the criminal guild got exposed. Right now, Vector was busy getting rid of the remnants. But then, there were still many other criminal guilds.

… I felt sick living in the royal capital.

After that, I was buried in Norn’s belly in the daytime, living my life being gloomy and all.

I didn’t like this kind of me.

However, my [Mental Tolerance] skill seemed to gradually work after a week. I became a little mentally better, so I decided I shouldn’t stay like this and came to think of how to cure this.

Yes, I decided to ask Lily to have a date. To be more specific, I had her hold my hand all the time.

I wanted to make fun memories with the people around me, overwriting the unpleasant ones. If this went well, I should become better! My [Mental Tolerance] was also a great help!

… I was being too optimistic? I had to take that so-what attitude, or else I would continue becoming a hikikomori all day. That’s not good. Besides, I couldn’t make Lily take care of me in her house all the time…

Well, doing that should improve my mood, even if it didn’t heal me completely.

“A date… you mean going out? I don’t mind, but are you sure you will be fine?”
“As long as you hold my hand, I think I can manage?”
“Hm… I guess you can’t stay like this all the time… I understand, let’s have a date!”

I asked Lily about it when we slept together at night. I was glad she understood me. Yay! I’m having a date with a cute girl!

… No, I’m faking my courage, okay? I need to stay excited…