6 - Epilogue

With the story over, everyone started talking about returning to Iris Brand. They had imposed on the Forging Guild long enough.

Ichiro (and King Kirihito) said they would be staying a little while longer, but the others took their leave, with Iris at the lead and Felicia and Kirschwasser behind. It had just been a bit of recollection, but it had eaten up quite a lot of time. It was actually rather late in the day, now.

“So now you know,” Iris murmured on the way.

Felicia found herself cocking her head. “Huh?”

“You know, my relationship with the young heir. Right? That’s what you were worried about, wasn’t it?”

Felicia looked back at her blankly, as if to say, “Oh yeah, that’s what started all this.”

Iris felt a wave of exhaustion sweeping over her.

“The story all seems too extraordinary... or maybe too mundane, I can’t tell anymore,” Felicia said. “I guess it was hard on you too, huh, Iris?”

“No kidding,” Iris responded. “It’s like I said when we first met. I find him awful, and while I’m a bit grateful to him, more often he makes me so frustrated I could scream, and I’ll probably beat him to a pulp someday, but I don’t like to badmouth other people’s relatives, so I’ll stop!”

“You’ve badmouthed him a lot already, though...” There was no guile behind Felicia’s words. She was serious.

Of course, Iris was so thankful to the young heir that she couldn’t hate him. But, she reflected, what she felt for him was on a dimension that went beyond like or hate. To put it simply, it was more like the love a person might have for solving difficult entrance exam questions. When she thought about it that way, it was clearly nothing for Felicia to worry about.

To be honest, Felicia seemed to love her “second cousin Itchy” a lot. She wanted to say, “I won’t hold it against you, but please find better taste,” but it was none of her business, really, so she decided to hold off.

“By the way, Lady Felicia, will you be joining Iris Brand?” Kirschwasser asked.

“Hm? Hmm...” Felicia put a hand to her chin and tilted her head thoughtfully. She looked first at Iris, then at Kirschwasser, then at the Iris Brand guild house that towered before them.

The elder Knight’s invitation had been extended purely out of consideration. Felicia had wanted to join the same guild as the young heir, but it would be hard for her to ask to join. Iris Brand was a crafting guild, after all, so there was no objectively valid reason for her to be interested in it. Thus, he must have thought that the kind thing to do would be to ask her.

Iris herself found it a bit awkward, but she didn’t dislike Felicia, so she had no reason to object. But...

“I don’t think so,” was Felicia’s eventual response.

“Oh? A shame.” Kirschwasser raised an eyebrow.

“...Felicia, you’re not refusing for my sake, are you?” Iris asked.

“Huh?! No, of course not!” Felicia exclaimed.

Iris had been wondering if maybe Felicia still had her doubts about her relationship with the young heir, but judging from the girl’s reaction, that wasn’t the case.

There on Glasgobara’s main street, Felicia clenched her hands into fists. “I do want to be in the same guild as Itchy, but at the end of the day, if I’m gonna do one, it should be for something I want to do... that’s what I realized when listening to the story today.”

Iris hadn’t meant it to be an inspiring story, so hearing Felicia say that made her feel a bit self-conscious. “What is it that you want to do in NaroFan, Felicia?”

“It’s already been resolved, actually. So has Itchy’s reason for joining... but he’s still having so much fun, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Iris agreed. “He is always having fun...”

The group stopped right in front of the Iris Brand guild house.

“Kiryuhito also takes the game really seriously, despite not actually enjoying games very much...” Felicia said. “So I want to find something, too.”

“It’s a game, so I always feel one should enjoy it that way,” Kirschwasser said, arms folded. “But I suppose the freedom of choice in that regard is what makes VRMMOs so popular.”

As a gamer, he represented those who preferred to engage with NaroFan as a game, but Iris and Felicia’s limited social circles hadn’t put them in touch with many players who felt the same way.

And if the Knight was honest with himself, NaroFan was quite lacking as a game. The draw for most of the users was just the novelty of playing a VR game. The actual balance was lacking compared to classic computer games in more mature markets.

He continued, “Indeed, you see players like Iris and the Forging Guild, who set up shop as crafters in Glasgobara, and players who just spend their time relaxing in the Vispiagna Meadows with their friends, rather than grinding levels. Thus, Lady Felicia, it is up to you to find your own form of enjoyment.”

“Hmm...” Felicia folded her arms and thought. “Well, you know... Even if I don’t join the guild, I can still come here to hang out anytime. Right, Mr. Kirsch?”

“Indeed. There will always be tea waiting here for you.”

“Yeah...” Felicia nodded, and Kirschwasser smiled.

He pulled on the thick black door in front of him, which gave out its usual squeak of wood. The Iris Brand lobby appeared before their eyes.

Despite knowing it would be that way, Iris couldn’t help but wince at how empty it was. But then, suddenly, she caught sight of a human silhouette moving around the lobby.

Who could it be? she wondered, straining her eyes. What she finally saw startled her.

It was a woman, dressed elegantly. Her race appeared to be Elf, and her outfit was extremely striking. What she was clad in was not armor, but modern-day apparel of the sort that Iris Brand designed. A one-piece dress with what looked like a sleeve belt, in a tasteful houndstooth check pattern. Engineer boots smartly completed the outfit. Her wavy hair, despite its volume, seemed light and weightless, and was topped by a tasteful red beret.

Her coordination was surely the work of a professional, and the sight of her made Iris feel two inches tall. She couldn’t hold a candle, a match, or even a spark to this woman’s refined taste.

Had there been another person like her in the game? Iris froze. She could tell that Felicia and Kirschwasser behind her were bewildered.

“Is this Iris Brand?” the woman, whose avatar name was Nem, asked with a quiet smile.

“Oh, um, yes!” Iris burst out.

“And are you Iris?”

“Y-Yes!”

Nem gave Iris a piercing look from the tip of her head to the bottoms of her feet, then swept her eyes across the work displayed all over the store. After finishing a full look around, she let out a laugh.

“U-Um...?” Iris asked.

The next words out of Nem’s mouth, Iris wouldn’t forget for the rest of her life:

“It’s nothing.”

“Um...”

Airi Kakitsubata. In her 17 years of life, this was only the second time someone had picked a fight with her for no reason.

Naturally, she didn’t know yet that this second one had also been sparked by the behavior of the young heir, Ichiro Tsuwabuki. It really was utter nonsense.

Meanwhile, in the Forging Guild’s guild house, Edward had finished the work King had asked for and come back out of the workshop. Having its durability maxed out hadn’t changed the graphic of the XAN itself at all, yet somehow, it seemed to sparkle more. King Kirihito thanked him with a slightly satisfied smile, and paid Edward for his work.

“The XAN is one of the legendary weapons, isn’t it?” Ichiro asked, watching them through the corner of his eye.

“Yeah...” King said. “There’s only one of it on the whole server.”

“Just like Amesho’s knife,” Ichiro said.

“Yeah, it’s weird...” King murmured as he gave the XAN a few test swings. Despite its legendary status, it was rather plain-looking. “For weapons of which there are only one each in the game to have such ridiculous stats... You’d think all the game’s users would hate me.”

“Though the fact that you and I can dominate as solo players the way we do says odd things about the game balance to begin with,” Ichiro said.

As far as Ichiro knew, the Thistle Corporation was a young company. He had heard that their president, Azami Nono, whom he had met at Megumi Fuyo’s party recently, had started as a genius technician, and that she had created Thistle by headhunting geniuses and artistic types from other companies. It wasn’t a group that would have the knowhow to create a balanced game.

But the reason the game nevertheless got a steady stream of new players was probably because of the care put into the graphics, creating lifelike recreations down to the smallest detail. That was the part that Ichiro found so satisfying, too.

“It’s not unusual for people to play it even as they complain, either,” King added.

“That’s the nature of online gaming,” Edward murmured in response to King. “There’s no end to the complaints people have for the devs. If we don’t like it, we could just quit. But we keep playing it because we like it, crappy as it is. Am I wrong?”

King shrugged his shoulders. Even if he was, he couldn’t be too far off the mark.

“Well, everyone has their own way of enjoying the game,” Ichiro said.

“That’s true.” Edward nodded to Ichiro’s words. “If you want to try to become the best in a broken game system, that’s fine. If you just want to continue pursuing the plot on the front lines, that’s fine. If you want to create armor designs you like the way Iris does, that’s fine. Though it’s not something I understand, personally.”

Ichiro could have said something stuck-up, like “I see you’ve become a little wiser,” but he didn’t.

Edward was a proper adult. He had let his emotions make him narrow-minded for a while there, but he wasn’t the kind of person to keep that going forever. And at the end of the day, it was the Forging Guild that had the overwhelming support of the game’s player base. When Ichiro had ignored that and extended a hand to a half-baked (from Edward’s point of view) crafter like Iris, he should have just laughed it off and said, “What a fool.”

The reason he hadn’t been able to do that was simply because Edward was too sincere a person. It would be easy to dismiss him as lacking vision, but Ichiro personally liked people who stuck faithfully to their own sense of values. Of course, it was important to be flexible with your ideas, so as not to impose them on others, but it wasn’t right to expect that of all people all the time.

“But...” Edward continued, then paused.

Ichiro prompted him. “Yes?”

“...I really hate you.”

“Really? I like you quite a lot.”

Nearby, King Kirihito murmured, “Adults are such a pain in the ass” as he sheathed his sword.

And that was the end of the small talk. King exited the store, and Ichiro decided to return, as well. As they walked out of the Forging Guild side by side, King Kirihito wore an openly sour expression on his face.

“By the way, old man...” King addressed him as they got out onto main street.

“Yes?”

“Your guild house...”

“Yes, someone’s there.” Ichiro nodded, remembering what he’d seen just a few hours ago.

When they had originally left Iris Brand to head out for the Forging Guild, and then when they had been trading small talk in the lobby, he had sensed someone watching him out on main street. He’d also noticed a little while ago, just before Iris and the others headed back, that the person had entered the Iris Brand guild house.

“Shouldn’t you have gone with them?” Edward asked.

“Are you worried?” Ichiro responded.

“I was wondering if you’d picked another senseless fight with someone.”

Ichiro shrugged, the usual cool expression on his face and one hand on his pocket. “Nonsense. There’s no such thing as a senseless fight. They’re things that happen inevitably when beliefs and opinions collide. Of course, I’ll always win, regardless.”

“You’re firing on all cylinders today, old man.”

“But I may not be the one fighting, this time...” he said.

Iris Brand’s black door opened with a clank. And then...

A female avatar stepped out, dressed in equipment he had never seen before. Her race appeared to be Elf. As the woman saw Ichiro, she averted her eyes in surprise. Ichiro quietly narrowed his eyes at the girl. And then he said...

“Good evening. I never expected to run into you here, Megumi.”

He could see King in his peripheral vision, watching in puzzlement, but Ichiro ignored him.

Megumi Fuyo. The daughter of the president of Tsunobeni, Inc., and president of the fashion brand MiZUNO. The fuyo, or cotton rose tree, was known in Chinese as the nem, which must have been where her avatar had derived its name. He had meant it when he’d said he hadn’t expected to meet her here.

She seemed to steel herself, and then, a moment later, she turned to meet Ichiro’s eyes. “Good day, Ichiro.”

“I suppose you came here to meet Iris?” he asked. “Were you that worried about the person who made my brooch?”

Nem’s only response was silence, which all but confirmed it. She opened her mouth plaintively, then averted her eyes from Ichiro. Then she met his eyes again, and eventually said this:

“Ichiro, I don’t understand the meaning of ‘good.’ If I may ask... is that brooch really that good?”

“Well, the design of it actually isn’t good at all,” Ichiro answered, as breezy as he was tactless.

From an objective point of view, the design itself was quite crude. It seemed to have been a mere graphical study from the start, as it was clearly inferior to the jacket Iris had designed more recently. When he had had the brooch made in real life, he had faithfully recreated the roughness of the polygons, so that it would look more or less like the one in the game.

To Ichiro, it still had value, despite that. But even if he explained that to her, she might not understand.

“...I’m leaving.” With that, Nem opened the menu window and prepared to log out.

“Nem.” That one word was enough to stop her.

“Yes?”

“This game is quite fun.”

Nem was silent. Then she said, “I’ll let Azami know.”

And with that, she logged out.

That hadn’t actually been what he was trying to convey, but perhaps for once, Ichiro thought, he had expressed himself poorly.

“She seems like a real pain in the neck,” King muttered.

But Ichiro was smiling. “People can’t control how they feel. Sometimes that can seem like a pain, I suppose...”

“Well, you’re the biggest pain of all.”

“Nonsense.”

King remained staring at the place where Nem had disappeared, then spoke again. “She seemed like a real newbie.”

“I’m impressed that you could tell.”

“The way she walked suggested she wasn’t used to virtual reality, and while her equipment was an original design, the Mage Stick on her belt was beginner equipment. I wonder how she managed to make it to Glasgobara at all...”

Even if they had been led there by a high-level player, it would be difficult for a level 1 player to make it across the Volgund Volcanoes. That was what King’s statement was pointing out. In addition, her equipment was all original graphics, which, as they had discussed at length today, would require a high Create Armor skill to make.

They had no proof that Nem was a low-level player. But King’s observations had been accurate. When Ichiro had met her at the party, Megumi had seemed to know almost nothing about the game. She had likely only started playing today.

She had begun the game today, and through some means, arrived in Glasgobara.

Ichiro had a suspicion of what those means must have been, which was why he had told her, “This game is fun.” But Nem didn’t seem to have followed his meaning.

“What the hell was that?!” A cry rose up from the Iris Brand guild house.

The players coming and going down main street looked over at the sound of it.

Ichiro smiled wryly. “Well, King, our designer seems to be in a bad mood, so I really should be going.”

“Sure. Try not to pick any more fights.”

“Ha ha ha. Nonsense,” he responded with his usual line to King’s warning, then returned to Iris Brand.

“What the heck? What was with her? Who says that?! Who looks at someone who’s obviously worse and says, ‘It’s nothing’?! Human garbage, that’s who! Total filth! She just came in, picked a fight, and left! Of course, that’s partly because I obviously wasn’t going to rise to her provocations!”

“Firing on all cylinders, I see,” Ichiro commented.

Iris was talking big (with a lot of bluffing behind it). The young heir Ichiro Tsuwabuki nodded in satisfaction at the sight of Iris’s usual bluster. Kirschwasser and Felicia had retreated to the far wall, where they were quietly drinking tea.

From the way she was acting, Ichiro could guess more or less what had happened, but he decided to get confirmation from Kirschwasser.

Indeed, his hypothesis was accurate.

The player with the avatar name of Nem had dropped by Iris Brand, dissed Iris’s designs, and then left. First Edward and now this. It was sad, the way that Iris continually had people stroll in to crush her self-confidence. Fortunately, she had a strong core. The makeup of Iris’s soul was more like crabgrass than the flower she had named herself after, and Ichiro had always preferred weeds to flowers arranged in pristine beds.

“You’re looking pretty happy, Itchy,” Felicia said, her teacup in one hand.

Ichiro nodded. “Do I? Perhaps I am.”

“Lady Felicia, you had suspicions about Master Ichiro and Iris’s relationship, did you not?” Kirschwasser asked as he made a new cup of tea for Ichiro.

“Y-Yeah...” Felicia responded, as if noting something unsettling in the elder Knight’s calm smile.

“Master Ichiro’s behavior towards Iris is much like his behavior towards King Kirihito,” Kirschwasser said.

“Huh? Kiryuhito?” she asked. “How so?”

“I won’t go as far as to tell you that, but... Master Ichiro, your tea.”

“Hmm, thank you.”

“Well, Master Ichiro prefers people who are capable of losing their tempers at him,” Kirschwasser said. “In that respect, your concerns were half correct.”

“I wish you could have told me that sooner!” Felicia shouted, waving both of her hands (which included the cup). The game wasn’t so realistic that it would allow the contents to go flying out, and Kirschwasser felt grateful that it meant he wouldn’t have to clean the floor.

“Okay, okay, starting tomorrow, I’m gonna go tsun-tsun at Itchy!” she declared.

“I don’t believe you’d be capable of it, Felicia, but do try your best.”

Kirschwasser’s explanation was rather baseless, in Ichiro’s opinion, but he wasn’t going to go out of his way to correct him. It was true that the core of it was accurate. He really did like King Kirihito, Iris, and even Edward. The game had plenty of value if it had allowed him to meet players like them.

Iris was blazing bright in the face of this new adversity. That was a good thing.

“Ah, welcome back! Young heir!” Iris regained her state of mind, and turned back to address him.

“Mm, thank you.”

“You may not be aware of this, but right now I’m blazing with motivation!” she declared.

“So I see.”

Iris clenched her hand into a fist and thrust it up at the ceiling. “Okay, I’m gonna do it! I don’t know who that Nem woman is, but if she’s picking a fight with me and Iris Brand, I’m gonna make her regret it!”

It seemed things wouldn’t be boring for quite a while. Ichiro smiled in satisfaction, and brought the teacup to his lips.