Chapter 41 Part B

“But you said you didn’t think it’d work out. You can’t have it both ways,” I again tried to leave but she grabbed my wrist. She yanked on me hard pulling me back.

“I’m sorry, I was wrong. I’m just so...so confused about how to make this work. It’s a very not normal relationship,” she said. “Don’t go. Just talk to me for a bit,” she added. She looked like the stress was boiling her alive.

“I know I shouldn’t be involved with a student but…”

“You aren’t a teacher anymore. And I doubt we can even get back to Earth,” I let out a sigh.

“That’s probably...” she hesitated for some reason.

Soon the others would notice and think we were arguing or something if I didn’t change this pace. I finally calmed down. Her arm refused to let me go. Despite her floundering back and forth, she’s still clingy towards me.

I hated this world. This was the wrong thing to talk about. I shook my head, what was I thinking…this was totally awkward now to be with her.

“Please,” Asakura said again.

I finally relented to puppy dog eyes.

“Well uh, in answer to your question about my family; there’s me and Rina, and Mom and Dad. Our parents work a lot, but they are nice honest, hard working people. I used to be an only child and then my uncle and aunt left Rina orphaned. So we took her in as a step sibling in a way,” I tried to keep myself cool and collected. It was really hard right after someone shoots you down before you even get off the ground. But I’m usually more of a serious person. So it’s not that easy for me to have it feel natural.

“That’s good. I was afraid you’d be someone with a bad relationship with your parents. So things aren’t too bad,” She almost smiled and finally wiped away her upset look.

“I’ve always got along with my family. We just don’t get to see our parents much,” I said.

“I kind of worry about if we go back to our own planet and country and what would happen. But it can’t be helped. We need each other to survive. Also we might not get back to our world. So we have to think about how to survive here and that requires cooperation,” she said relenting.

“That’s what I already told you. Now you are like going back the other direction. But that’s not fair, acting me to just be like your ‘little brother’,” I said annoyed.

“Yeah, but it hadn’t sunk in. I’m sorry. Realizing I’d lose a chance to thrive also bothers me. I feel like without you I can’t even live because I can’t take care of myself here. It’s forced me to be selfish,” she bowed deeply.

“Forgive me.”

“So what do you want? You can’t have it both ways. I also want to be someone who will be with me all the way, not just while the grass is greener on this side of the fence. It’s not like being selfish but…it’s mental exhausting to be by someone you aren’t with. It’s impossible to do, just because we’d both be seeing something we either can’t have or turned down and that would eat at us inside,” I said.

I think she understood without wording it that I meant dating partners as well as life. You can’t be like seeing the grass on the other side of the fence is always better than yours, when you have a desert and they have a thriving garden. It makes you ache inside. So does being around people that have caused major disappointment to you or that have hurt you.

“Ah, I’ve caused such a mess. I’m so sorry. How do I fix it?” she pleaded.

“I don’t know if you can, after playing the ‘let’s just be friends’ card?” I asked not entirely sure what she’s suggesting. But didn’t she think of it just as brother and sister before? So confusing... Isn’t there a how to understand women for dummies book or something?

“Oh err I didn’t mean for this to go this way. But I’m a teacher after all, but maybe we can be like I’m your older sister or something like that,” she blushed.

She leaned over. Was she teasing me?

With her leaning and more skin was showing and she had two top buttons undone. It was…maddening to be tempted like that when I couldn’t understand which direction she was going. She couldn’t be totally unaware of how her words and her body actions totally didn’t match up right now did she?

Her actions seemed to be inviting me to like make out with her. I didn’t recall her doing that in class with her buttons undone ever?

“I don’t get how to make this not have problems of one form or another, but we do need to help each other,” she suggested, but was very confused. “But It’s not fair for me to think it’s just friends and support your life while you are searching for someone else like you say,” she admitted.

Lots of girls do this to guys, I’d learned from listening to other men and women in my family. I didn’t want to be someone’s stepping stone to someone else.

I wasn’t sure how to respond yet. I didn’t want to burn any bridges prematurely.

“What if I promise not to search for someone else while I’m with you as a sister? It would be hard to start a new life in this world anyway,” she said softly.

Argh, what a cock tease she was being. She was still leaning over. I could see a glimpse of part of her bra, with an above normal amount of cleavage showing.

My heart was racing like crazy still.

“I keep feeling like I am letting my students down by being too close to one of them. If you weren’t a student…,” she said, “so this is so hard to talk about. I do like you too, but there’s this whole teacher student relationships thing. It’s…even with no government around to punish me the other students might have it affect them. That’s part of my worry, and there’s also…”

“Losing your job,” we both said in unison.

“So you feel scared about doing what exactly?” I asked.

“Not scared but like ashamed that someone will think I’m a bad teacher,” she blushed looking down.

“Well sometimes life gives us a bad turn and we have to just work with what we have. If you want we can go slower. You do need to not throw away a chance at a new life just because you are scared though. We don’t have to rush things and we don’t have to know how everything is going to work out yet. We just have to be honest,” I said.

“No! Wait!” she was suddenly panicky.

“Uh, it’s not going too fast. Slow is bad in this case. Medieval societies at best will honor family arrangements that are already together but more likely to attract trouble if they think we aren’t together. If the societies here think I’m available that’s bad too. I could be snatched up or kidnapped. I don’t want us to be separated from each other. I just…am trying to justify what doesn’t make sense logically. How do I overcome the years of thinking a student relationship is evil?” she said.

“Liking and being with someone never will appease logic. People are unpredictable too. What are you thinking?” I ask her.

“That’s probably true. But just because I feel nervous doesn’t mean we have to go slow. It’s just I’m confused. I didn’t have a chance to comprehend all this yet, and I’m not someone who likes to not have a plan. How do you plan when you are in a new world and don’t have the right skill sets either,” she reaffirmed.

“I’m confused here. You aren’t making sense,” I said.

“That’s good. My dad said the same about my mom. She was emotional too,” she replied.

Are we even talking about the same thing now?

Were we finally getting somewhere after a really strange conversation? I guess this is what dad meant when he said women could be really crazy sometimes. It came out sometimes in his dinner rants when mom wasn’t around. But when I’d asked him about it, he’d always said to forget it.

“Shun, I…” Asakura looked like she was desperate to tell me something…she was looking into my eyes.

But then suddenly we were interrupted. “Hey Shun, Akira wants to talk to you,” Rina finally came over and said.

Dang it! What awful timing!

“Uh, Sensei? Why are you holding Shun’s hands?” Rina asked. Her eyes were wide.

“Eh?! Oops?” Sensei didn’t know what to do and let go.

“Ah, I see how it is. Don’t worry I’ll not tell anyone,” Rina answered quickly.

Both of us gave each other a look of despair. We could both see it was a critical moment. If we were cut off now it’d be harder to get this conversation going again and we both knew it. Partly, it would be because we were both afraid it would end up in rejection because we hadn’t figured out how to solve our doubts and problems yet to make it work.

“Oh, good morning Sensei!” she chirped.

She looked at Asakura really smiley and happy and waved. Then she changed the subject. They were talking about plants and some other nonsense. Rina started talking about like bugs and stuff she’d found on the ground that seemed just like in our world.

“Say hello to my bug! Hehe,” she said playfully. She wasn’t stupid though. She was doing this to run interference maybe? Rina...you little twerp…she stuck out her tongue even.

That made her happy for some reason? I didn’t get it.

“Good morning!” Asakura waved back awkwardly. I could tell Asakura didn’t like bugs just from the reaction alone. She pulled tighter against me afraid Rina would stick the bug on her.

So confusing…

Rina and this cock blocking thing again. How could she always get the timing just right? It was like a super ability she had.

“OK. So about you know what?” I asked. I was referring to my order having her salvage clothes last night while the others were asleep. She’d done it without asking why or making me justify things.

Asakura nodded, “it wasn’t easy but after the others were asleep was a good time. I was able to pursue it aggressively... was only three enough for what you needed? I’m sorry there was so much blood,” she said really fast. We both knew she meant ‘outfits’ but we had to keep others unaware with vague details.

“What are you guys whispering about? Sensei did you know your top buttons are undone?” Rina teased. She held up a potato bug, threatening to put it onto one of us. It was pretty much the same as an Earth potato bug except bigger.

“Oh shit!” Asakura hurriedly did them up. Quickly the creamy bulging white skin disappeared. Asakura’s face turned bright red.

“I can’t believe I was like that this whole time!” she exclaimed. Then she turned to Rina, “don’t tell anyone about us please? The talking I mean…”

Then I remembered Rina was interested in science. Before getting sick she wanted to study bees especially and how honey farms worked. Now it made sense why she’d get excited. Was she hoping this planet had bees and honey too? We both liked honey…

I nodded at Rina and then hurriedly whispered in Asakura’s ear. “I’m sorry to ask you to do what I did, but if I were to do it you see how bad that might look right?” I said.

She nodded, slipped me a small backpack of some kind that was retrieved from a dead student. This was the real item of business before Sensei had acted all emotional. Then she passed it to me so I could look in the top without anyone being able to see what we were doing, though Rina might get curious too soon and try to peek in.

She’d ended up sticking the three sets of girls’ clothes inside. With this, there would be clothes for Sunghee, and the other two girls but we’d had to talk in code in front of Rina since she might talk, even though one of the shirts was for her. But instead of girl’s shoes, I’d had her snag boy shoes of similar size when possible because those shoes were better for running. But unfortunately she’d only found one matching set and the rest were girls shoes unsuited to running, but she had gotten socks and that was good.

But one of the sets of clothes was blood soaked. I wondered what would happen if that were put in the item box? Would they stay bloody or would biological debris be erased or taken off because of the demon box’s ability to eat the dead in its dream state?

“What are you two whispering about?” Rina again asked cheekily. She was trying to figure out what was going on. This was so awkward.

“You know it’s weird to ask this kind of stuff right?” Asakura gave me an odd look. She pretended we were talking about something like two people really close of the opposite sex to hide it. After all, if the camp knew I’d asked her to salvage clothes from the dead…

“I will explain it all to you later. Just trust me that there’s a good reason for this and it’s not being perverted. Also don’t do it again after today, I only risked it now because we thought it was safe but from now, it won’t be possible to move around at night. Kenji’s activities have shown us that,” I said.

“Got it.”

“What kind of movements at night? Were you guys doing something together?” Rina asked saying the wrong thing at the worst time. Luckily no one heard us.

After that we rejoined the others.

Hopefully Rina didn’t get the wrong idea. “I still don’t get what you were talking about. You did what three times?” she said as we were leaving.

…

Actually she probably did get the wrong idea. Ah frick. She’s not going to repeat that is she? She totally got it wrong somehow.

*stress*

As I walked back to the others I saw Gnome talking to them and he appeared to be listening to the problems of the others with sad eyes. Particularly some of the girls were nearly hysterical telling him everything that had befallen us since we got here.

The gnome elder was a bit emotional too, and had been influenced by the plight of our group. I could tell he’d been crying too from seeing so many dead young people that should be barely adults or near adults about to start life, because of the redness around his eyes and him saying he had allergies and sniffling.

Even though we were humans…

Gangster Girl was also talking to him on the side while he was coaching her about something.

I found out that her name is actually Saiya. They’d been working together for the past few hours to get things to work right. But because it had taken so long they’d ended up being up the entire night. I could see she was tired, but a little bit excited at the same time. Finding out you are a magic job when there are only a few of them has that kind of effect on people it seems.

“Good, good. You have to feel the earth and listen to it. If you don’t listen to it then how will it listen to you?” Gnome said.

I also found out his name was Steve. Who ever heard of a gnome named Steve?? I suppose I’d heard of weird names before but his didn’t fit at all. Or maybe because he’d had access to the language magic he could change his name to the closest equivalent to promote acceptance better.

“Feel the earth? I didn’t realize that was important! Thank you so much,” strangely Saiya practically worshiped Steve now for teaching her…whatever they’d been going over to help her skill. It was hard to call her Saiya though when all this time I’d been thinking the gangster girl.

Steve continued to be coaching her even while we walked up.

“It’s ready,” he concluded facing us.

“Eh? It is?” Akimoto seemed surprised.

“Well we better get everyone in before the sun comes up; it’s maybe about an hour away from dawn and getting a bit too light already. I hope this is enough time to pull it off. If we wait for that to happen, they’ll know what’s going on,” I cautioned.

Saiya was looking a bit smug while working with Steve the gnome. Everything was dependent on them working things out for the escape plan to work.

You see the reason why we’d not been worried about being surrounded was Steve the gnome had offered to hide us inside the gnome caves and tunnels; for a fee of course, which I’d had to take care of. And I was the only one here with this world’s money! Only I could have brokered this deal for shelter and taking us in!

I felt severe depression about how much of the money was going to be lost from in the demon box. It had also been a tough negotiation to even close the deal on, because he didn’t trust Akimoto. Then we’d planned to use the combined power of the gnomes’ earth element and the earth manipulator girl to close up the hole after everyone was inside their tunnels.

But when I told him I didn’t trust him either, we got along fine.

As we were climbing down through the hole we had to help each other not fall because of how deep the drop was. We had to use ropes and hooks provided by the gnomes and go through one at a time.

It was also slow agonizing work because we were sweating like bullets as we worried about if the orcs would come at us at any minute. Then also the wounded people could only go down the rope so quickly. Some of them had to be helped and that took a lot of extra time and help by others while we were getting desperate.

Akira was useful in being a spotter and keeping people from falling because of his extra strength. But we soon found out he had a disadvantage in that his goat hoofed feet had no grip whatsoever on the ropes themselves any time he had to get down to help a scared or injured person.

Plus the majority of the climbers going down were girls with low upper body strength. Many of them hadn’t ever used climbing ropes before or had exercises similar to this so there was a high risk of falling from some of them.

Then another problem surfaced when we had to get rid of a lot of the boys at the bottom once they were in because they were trying to study the girl’s panties as they were climbing down in uniform skirts that weren’t long enough to protect those areas from below.

I was lucky I was still at the top and didn’t receive any negative faction for this. Others weren’t so lucky however.

But while I was at the top of the hole helping to keep the ropes and hooks at the top secure for the thirty foot drop that people were climbing down my mind was still racing. I didn’t want to write off Asakura just yet and I suspected she was making a mistake and knew it. I felt like things might still work out, but it was really discouraging what she’d just done.

But she’d have to be willing to fix it.

So should I keep trying to get close to Asakura or just focus on Fox Girl and Sunghee? I didn’t want to give up being with someone or the idea of having a family just because I was on a different planet. It was strangely weird that Asakura was wavering and I wasn’t sure if that meant a personality flaw or a onetime doubt, or just she was scared to death?

Or was it a doubt because she thought I’d asked for the girl’s clothes for a really strange reason like sniffing panties fetishes or something gross? It was also true that I should have asked Rina to do it, now that I think about it. I thought Asakura trusted me more and Rina had been sick but that was a mistake.

After sorting the clothes into my demon box as quick as I could with no one seeing I was also able to confirm that she’d not gotten any underwear. I suppose having bodies out in the open that were naked might attract attention, but Sunghee, Ayumi Sensei, and Haruka needed the clothes. I didn’t know if Fox Girl did or didn’t. But Sensei not retrieving the underwear might mean she thought something weird too.

I’d had time to think about things the last few days and all the terror and stress had made me realize I didn’t want a life of danger. I wanted to have a simple life and have the good things like my own land and a house and be able to live peacefully.

It would be the crowning part of that dream to have a girl with me, maybe two that were good looking and happy to be with me too.

This adventuring stuff sounded too dangerous. I think adventurers also didn’t just adventure for the risks. They also had a dream too, like living in a castle from the reward money or the dream of always having so much money and savings that they could just do whatever they wanted every day.

I’d have to plan and think about my goals better.

Some of that dream would be hard to build here.

As we finally climbed down we did another check. It seems that everyone was down here. We’d left nobody behind that was still alive and taken every salvageable weapon that we could.

We watched as the gnomes and Saiya then sealed the hole using earth manipulation techniques. Of course after awhile of seeing them work, some of the other gnomes made us leave to give them privacy.

As we were finally resting it occurred to me that this was finally like we’d left our old lives behind. The hole being sealed represented a clear distinct branching away from the other survivors and a new birth of a new life. Everything from here forward would be completely different than before.

But as I was thinking I felt Akira clap me on the shoulder. “Hey man I heard you got lucky! You sweet devil bro! I didn’t know you could score with high class women like that!”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Oh come on you don’t have to hide it from me bro! I’m proud of you for your mackin’ skillz yo!” he was too happy.

“Huh? Are you high on something?”

Akira tried to give me a high five but I didn’t raise my hand and instead looked at him like he was stupid. “Oh nice deflection. Rina leaked the scoop you see. So you can’t hide it anymore! She said you and Sensei did it three times late last night after everyone was asleep, but that you were …something about hiding it for awhile for fear of being caught. Then she caught you and Sensei together again with her clothes half unbuttoned again talking about it.”

I groaned. That girl totally misunderstood everything!

I can’t believe she misunderstood salvaging 3 sets of clothes for 3 times of sex…and she’s telling people?!

“Oh holy shit! How many people did she tell that too again?” I exclaimed in frustration. This was terrible! It was the worst possible spin that could have happened!

“Well pretty much everybody knows now, except Akimoto and his two aides. He has a crush on Asakura too so I would be careful around him when he finds out. But it’s OK man. I mean I’ve totally been trying to score with Yuriko and now this will like make her think it’s OK to mate and stuff! I’m so happy! Women follow the pack leader after all. So now the door with Yuriko will for sure open for me!” he said excitedly.

This was bad. Having this started right when Asakura was wavering with me too made it even more awkward. I could end up with nobody if Asakura continued to waver and other girls would also already think I’m taken.

There’s no way to fix this misunderstanding now.