CH 143

Unexpected visitor

“….and that’s what happened in oni’s village.”

It was 5:30 p.m. when I left Himiko and logged out.

Now I was talking with Rin-chan, who had spent her day reaching the sixth town, Zeronoa, about what had happened on my part.

“It sounds interesting, but the full moon at WLO is in roughly a week, right?”

“That’s what Hakuyo said too.”

“Well, I guess you would have had to fight if it weren’t for her. You were planning to stream it, right?”

What Rin-chan said is true.

Anyway, the oni’s village is a place where anyone can go if they follow the proper steps.

You only need to complete the request of a certain oni folk NPC in Griffith and obtain the [leading stone]. According to Meguru, the quest itself is not that difficult, and there are actually many players who have reached the oni village. And apparently, I met a few of them without my knowing in the yabusame field.

However, the difficulty level of the quest to obtain the leading stone varies greatly depending on whether you’re an Oni or not, so the number of players that try to go to oni village probably wasn’t that high in the first place.

And not even 20% of the players have been able to reach Griffith.

Considering the number of players aiming for the sixth city and the limited time it appears on a full moon night, I don’t think many players will try to defeat Nocturne, the Moon Wolf from the Beyond.

Hakuyo even said that the fight probably won’t happen.

And the objective this time is to lift the curse in my body.

Well, whatever it is, I still have to wait a bit longer. In the first place, the name of the moon wolf that bears the name of the nocturnal music is unclear, and what kind of monster is… that’s right, there’s no need to think too much about difficult things.

Although Himiko introduced me to a good teahouse, I didn’t get to see much of the village, and I had to complete the quests to get the Moonlight Jewel.

That also reminds me, I still need to contact Konekomaru regarding my equipment strengthening.

“By the way, did you defeat the Volcano Golem? Did you get any good drops?”

“Nothing rare, I guess? Only a lot of flare metal.”

“Isn’t that rare enough?”

It probably is, but since I don’t have attribute crystals, it is a treasure that will rot away in my inventory.

Metals that bear the names of attributes, such as heat and flare metal, are important items needed to create weapons with matching attributes.

You can make an attribute weapon without them, but you need to have these attribute metals to make a more powerful and durable attribute weapon.

It’s a drool-worthy item for those who want it, but at the moment, it is useless for me since I had used the Crimson Jewel to create [Yoiyami].

By the way, the current market price for Flare Metal is about 500,000 Iris per ingot. I can afford it, but for a normal player, it’s a very expensive item.

While we were leisurely talking about WLO, the doorbell rang, announcing a visitor.

“Is that…?”

“She’s finally here. I’ll go check the intercom.”

That’s right, I had to cut off my stream early because I had a visitor coming today.

Rin-chan spoke through the intercom in a very casual tone.

“…she really is here, I’m not lying. Anyway, I unlocked the door. Please come quickly.”

Judging by how she acts, 9 out of 10, it’s one of her close friends.

Because she was talking over the intercom, I couldn’t recognize the visitor’s voice, and it was a long way from here to the front door. The voice tone sounded vaguely familiar, though.

“That’s the guest?”

“Yes, Nana knows her well too.”

“Me too? I don’t think it’s Touka-chan….”

If it was, she wouldn’t have gotten stopped in the lobby’s auto-lock.

At this point, I can only think that she’s one of Rin’s relatives.

However, all of Rin’s relatives except for Touka-chan are constantly flying around the world…

As I was excitedly wondering who it might be, the intercom of my room rang a few minutes later.

“Let’s greet her.”

“Okay!”

The two of us went to the door and greeted our visitor.

Just as I was about to go to the door, the doorknob was twisted from the outside, putting a question mark on Rin’s face as she came to the door but didn’t get to open it.

“Ha-ha-ha! Don’t get in my way!”

With a loud laugh, the door was thrown open loudly! The person at the end of the door that opened with such force was definitely a familiar figure.

White hair and red eyes. The proof of her albino constitution, which is an extremely biological rarity.

She wore black-rimmed, bottle-bottom glasses and was smaller than me.

As Rin-chan had said, I certainly knew her.

“Ron?”

“Yo! Long time no see, Nana, Rin!”

The woman had a very lively voice that didn’t match her small body, and she smiled dazzlingly at Rin-chan and me.

☆

Her name is Takajou Ronri, and she has a friendly and very happy smile on her face.

From Rin’s standing, she is another cousin like Touka-chan and much older than us in terms of age.

Ron is the only person Rin would not hesitate to say that she respects, if I should describe her in a words, she is a person with bottomless kindness.

She was like an older sister to me, Rin, and Touka. She would fly all over the world and come back to us in a hurry to tell the story of her adventure.

She was also the one who patiently encouraged me when I was on the verge of a breakdown after losing my parents.

I hadn’t seen her since I was taken in by relatives that day, so it had been over six years since the last I saw her.

I was so surprised that my mind went blank, and as she approached, Ron pulled Rin into her arms and hugged us both.

“I’m glad you’re both doing well! Especially you, Nana, we’ve been worried about you for a long time.”

“Ron…”

“Yeah, you’re getting stronger, and I mean your heart, not your muscle. But you’re still so damn cute as ever, aren’t you?”

“unn….!”

Ron kept talking as she kept us hugged.

It’s a nostalgic warmth that reaches my heart.

It was a different kind of warmth than the one I felt from Rin-chan, and her warmth was like a blanket that enveloped me.

“—and Rin! It’s been a while since we’ve met, so you should be happier!”

“I’ve been calling you all the time, so I don’t really miss you.”

“tsk— no need to hide it, you’re really happy to see me, aren’t you? Your ears are getting red!”

Ron stroked Rin-chan’s head while teasing her despite their height difference, but Rin’s ears were certainly red as she was being stroked.

And that is natural.

For Rin-chan, Ron is the only person who can pamper her. It is no exaggeration to say that she treats her like a real sister.

It’s not the same as me who supporting her as an equal. She was one of the few people that Rin-chan could turn to when she was really troubled.

“That’s your imagination. You have bad eyesight, don’t you?”

“Don’t be shy! Your favorite sister came back to you. Nana is the only one here, so there’s no point in worrying about what outsiders would say.”

“geez!”

Rin-chan, who was not used to being teased so much, run away to her room to pout.

Ron shrugged her shoulders when she saw Rin-chan like that. She then walked off to chase her ……and she collapsed.

“uh…”

“Ron! Are you okay?”

“Sorry, you saved me.”

I expected that would probably happen, so I caught Ron in my arms as she began to fall.

“…Sorry, I was so happy and tired, but I was truly excited.”

“I thought you might be. You looked so pale.”

“You noticed? Well, Europe is a long way from here.”

I lifted Ron’s limp body and leaned her a little, and then took her in a princess carry.

Ron was born with poor eyesight and a sickly body. I don’t know if it’s because she’s an albino or not, but she’s always been physically weaker than Rin-chan.

A person with abundant mental vitality, without a body to keep it up. That’s the dilemma she’s facing.

She’s the opposite of me, a person with no physical strength at all.

Rin-chan, who had returned from her room, sighed when she saw Ron being carried by me, which I then carried to the sofa.

“Sister Ron, I knew you were tired. You must be.”

“I’m only twenty-eight. I can still do more.”

“To be exact, you already twenty-eight. Your body is weak. You should take better care of yourself. This kind of carelessness isn’t so much different from Nana’s.”

“I’m sorry. I was trying to be strong in front of my cute little sister.”

Rin-chan’s words silently stabbed me in the back. I’m sorry for being so careless.

And Ron seems to lose all her energy at those words, was silently accepting Rin-chan scolding.

Ron’s eyes narrowed as he leaned her back comfortably against the sofa.

“Fiuh…., as usual, you’re using good materials for your sofa.”

“It’s about to become Nana’s bed these days, she always curls up and sleeps like a cat on this.”

“Because it’s so much more comfortable than the floor in the studio where I lived until a while ago…”

Especially lately, I’ve been mentally tired and unstable, and there are many occasions where I fall asleep right away, so this sofa has been a great help to me quite a few times.

When I was living alone, I used to take naps leaning against the wall or sometimes on the floor.

As I was accustomed to that hardness, and the softness of this sofa was blissfully comforting to me.

By the way, this sofa was brought from a very high-class furniture store where a single seat would cost several million yen.

The sofa set itself probably costs more than 10 million yen. Even if a brand name plays a role in influencing the price, the fact that it is made of high-quality materials remains true.

“One room studio… I’ve never lived in a room like that.”

“I’ve never lived in anything less than a four-bedroom house either.”

Ron looked shocked when he heard about my life, while Rin-chan already knew what kind of life I had.

Rin-chan’s statement could serve as a proof that she is a rich person. Most people don’t live in a house with more than four bedrooms, right?

By the way, Ron has flown around the world and been to many places, so she must have lived in more places than Rin-chan.

Still, she’s a Takajou too, and I guess that means she’s had a much better life than most people.

“They’re just too different, you know? Well, I guess my 6,000 yen a month 3 tatami room was a little too small…”

“Is that really a house? Did it have an attic?”

“No, but it was registered as a rental house.”

“What did you do with all your stuff? It’s too small for a desk, right?”

“I only needed a closet for clothes, a hanger rack, and a bag for valuables. I rented a bath at my part-time job and did my laundry at the laundromat.”

[As long as I could survive, it’s enough], That was my thinking at the time, and I didn’t go home much, to begin with, because I was working part-time all the time to spend my overflowing energy.

When I returned home, I would take a nap for an hour and then leave the house, and I was treating it like some kind of a station.

It was just a place I had signed up for because I needed a place to live to work part-time.

When Ron heard about my life, she looked astonished and pressed Rin-chan.

“You’re cutting back too much! Rin, why didn’t you stop her?”

“I did stop her, I did. but Nana was no good back then.”

“I’m not in a position to say this, but Nana really really needs to take care of herself better.”

“Unlike Ron. It’s not like she’s trying to be tough. And since she’s life without any difficulty and keeps a normal everyday life, the people around her didn’t notice at all.”

Both of them looked at me as if they were looking at something disappointing.

Uuh? Something that would look good in Ron is something that is unsuitable for me?

The air is getting weird. I need to change the subject somehow.

“Well, Ron, how long are you planning to stay this time?”

I know she wants to see everything in the world.

Ron, who travels worldwide, once said so. She had always stayed in Japan for only about a week at most.

At worse, it was not uncommon for her to fly to another country for a night or two.

The only exception was when they took care of me, and even then, it must not have been that long because I was taken in by a relative.

I asked the question, thinking that if she was going to travel somewhere again soon, she probably would want to invite me, Rin, and Touka and make plans for us to play together.

But the answer I got from Ron was surprising.

“No, I’m not leaving Japan for a while. The only reason I came back to Japan is to play games!”

“Games?”

“The game you’re playing now, WLO, right? I’m going to visit that virtual world that’s boasted itself as good as the real world.”

I was taken aback by Ron’s happy smile.

===.

Ron’s height is a little smaller than 150 centimeters.

The height order from tallest to shortest is Touka, Rinne, Nana, and Ronri.