Chapter 266: A Story As Old As Time
Ash was a girl of many appeals.
If I had a paper and a pen, and say for some reason I had to list out all her best qualities from A to Z, I would run out of space, or ink, or most likely, both before I even got to the letter C.
She’s caring, she’s always considerate... charming without even trying. Popularity-wise, she’d fit right in the upper limits of that totem pole, and I see absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t be.
My only gripe with it was that maybe perhaps... she was perched a bit too high up there for her own good. Because you know, as they say, too much of good is a bad thing.
And here, there was seriously just way too much of her. In the front covers of books, plastered on the wooden placards of various stalls, as a model posing within the panels of glass casings.
Everywhere I go, I see her face, I see Ash... and in turn, so could she.
“This is deeply unsettling,” Ash said, tearing her eyes away from a life-sized model of herself proudly on display.
.....
Only thing I could do was do my best steering us as far as possible away from anything even remotely perverse, but I gotta say... with a street as straight, narrow, and plentiful as this, you can only do so much to shield innocent eyes from the shameless debauchery of mankind nature.
“Yeah, I can imagine...” I said, doing my utmost to keep my gaze straying from the straight and narrow.
“I... I can somewhat understand my image being shamelessly exploited by others, it is not unnatural to indulge in oneself’s desires. It’s just...” She took in a breath. “Me? And so many? I... I never would have imagined.”
“I’m kinda surprised too,” Amanda said, slowing down to match her pace with ours. “There’s more of you here than I remembered from last year.”
“I-I see,” Ash slowly turned her way. “So, Lady Amanda, would this be considered an abnormal amount then?”
“No, it’s plenty normal,” She replied nonchalantly. “The people have their favorites every year. Guess you’re the favorite this year.”
“Who was last year?” I asked.
“Your mom.”
Fuck’s sake... I walked right into that one, didn’t I?
“Body pillow revenue went skyrocketing that day.”
“Please stop talking.”
Then, like a puppet strung along to the tug of her habits, Amanda drifted off the beaten path and wandered right on through the overhangs and into the open stall on our right.
Classic Princess Sidequest. No surprises she forgot about the main objective already... that or she really couldn’t much care about it, either way, she was gone.
But what was a surprise, however, was Ash drifting right along with her, through the same overhangs, into the same open stall.
I guess for all her unease and embarrassment... at the end of the day, morbid curiosity was just curiosity wearing a hat and trenchcoat.
And so, there I went through the overhang becoming the stall vendor’s customer number three, bringing up the rear with a loud weary sigh.
We spent some time eyeing the bandana-wearing salesman’s wares on offer. While Ash sort of nervously poke and prodded around the place, Amanda was busy flipping through the pages of a book.
I won’t lie, there were one or two things there that did catch my eye... which the keen-eyed seller dutifully observed.
“Oh like that one, don’t ‘cha?” He spoke, giving me a sly grin that showed false crooked teeth. “The alternate costume model. Bikini-armored Eshwlyn. Pretty rare, ya know?”
I looked away, fast. “I’m just looking.”
“‘Course yer just looking,” He chuckled, his beady eyes veering slightly left to the hesitant pair of hands lifting figurines off his shelves. “Why waste any money on a fake when ye already got the real thing right next to you, yeah?”
When I didn’t say anything, he got even more cheeky with his remarks.
“Looks just like ‘er, doesn’t she?” He said, leaning that crooked little smile over the counter. “Yer probably plenty lucky behind closed doors, aren’t ya? Unlike the figure... you can actually strip off the armor completely.”
This guy’s way too into his role, I swear. He’s giving me shivers in places I never thought could shiver... and probably worst of all, he’s also unsettlingly good at riling up the imagination... my imagination...
Bad imagination.
“Psst, hey,” like a slap to the face, Amanda’s elbow nudge digging into my ribs was just the wake-up call I needed to tear my thoughts away from depravity. “Listen to this, tell me if this at all sounds familiar to you.”
There was a flutter of pages and the clearing of throats, then not a moment after, the little amused smirk on her face was obstructed from view by a book she had raised up towards me.
“Fujiyuma Aoi was just an ordinary seventeen-year-old high schooler, until one day he accidentally stumbled upon the secret of the most popular girl in school. Shiori Naoko was actually an Elf from another world?! Ever since then, Fujiyuma’s life has been turned upside-down as he discovers more and more of his classmates’ otherworldly secrets! Is the student council president actually a Fairy?! Could it be that the school nurse is actually a Succubus?! Was his childhood friend all along the offspring of the Demon Lord threatening to bring his world to ruin?! All this and more in the very first chapter of ‘My friends aren’t exactly typical...’ being serialized soon in the next volume!”
She lowered the magazine ever slightly, denoting the end of her summarization... staring at me with stiff restrained lips very nearly on the verge of full-blown laughter.
Call me humorless... but it gets old real fast being the punching bag to every punchline.
“You pulled that out of your ass, didn’t you?”
She snorted, cackled, hiding again her expression between pages. “Actually, I pulled this out of the shelves over there. Hilarious, don’t you think?”
“Gut-busting.”
“I know, right?” She said, audibly gasping for air, deaf to my apathy as she flipped through the pages once more. “It gets better, listen – the genres listed for it – Comedy, Adventure, Slice-of-Life – ”
“Death, Gore, Trauma, PTSD, Angst, Poor Woeful Protagonist Hero?”
“Romance, Ecchi, Harem, Drama,” Amanda stared at me, slamming firmly closed the once open book. “Tragedy.”
I don’t like that one-brow-raised stare of hers... it makes me paranoid, and it makes me think, and those two into one was like a hurricane volcano.
“Tragedy,” She boomed out in a low overbearingly ominous tone. “Oooh~~”
“Oh, I’m quivering in my pointed boots right now. Please, have mercy.”
“Yeah, you should be,” She said, sniggering. “It’s like someone’s plagiarizing your life story unfolding.”
“Or it’s just a story choke-full of cliches and tropes that just so happens to coincide with mine.”
She glanced sideways. “I’m sorry, did you just call your story unoriginal and cliche?”
“Prove me wrong.”
Silence for a moment, and then a huff. “Touche. On yourself.”
Afterward, for no apparent reason, she flipped open the book again, fluttering through a page with an obvious frown. “Still... I suppose some stuff here doesn’t really align with your story.”
Mild interest had my gaze leaning forward just a bit, peeking over... just a bit.
“Hmm, they got Slice-of-Life right. Adventure, no doubt about that. Comedy? Definitely – I’m staring right at it...”
“Gee, thanks.”
“But Romance? Harem?” She scoffed, shaking her head so bemused. “Yeah right, in your dreams.”
“Hey...”
“Oh wait, no, they got the Harem part semi-right,” Her fingers stopped flicking, her eyes started staring. “Can’t deny the company you keep has been rather feminine as of late.”
I sighed. “You’re really including yourself in that.”
“Oh, you bet I’m really including myself in that,” She nodded, eyeing me with a fervor in her gaze. “Right alongside Ash, Adalia... there you’ll find Amanda too, and whoever else you know with an ‘A’ in their name...”
“Amelia...”
“Whatever,” She waved a hand. “See? Don’t you think that’s already one A too many? That’s not even including the girls without an ‘A’ in their names. Face it, jester, you’ve got a harem on your hands.”
There was me, you can’t see me right then, but there I had my shocked face cranked to the maximum... because I never knew her this audacious and assertive. Kinda reminds me of a certain other woman without an ‘A’ in their name.
Shit, she’s right... I do know a lot of girls.
“But isn’t a harem kinda sexist?” I said, frowning at her. “Isn’t it kinda demeaning to women, and sort of objectifying them even though their people too and they really shouldn’t be treated like – ”
“Shut your mouth,” She abruptly said, brandishing a finger. “You and I both know you couldn’t give two shits about any of that. I know deep inside you actually have a big stupid grin on your face right now hearing all this.”
Damn, it seems the magazine in her hands wasn’t the only open book around here.
“But, hey, it does sort of beg the question, doesn’t it?” She met my gaze with a wiggle in her brows, and flipped the magazine around towards me. “In your cliche, uninspired story... who do you think is best girl?”
In the place she had pressed firmly by her fingers was a two-page colored illustration of the characters in the story. In the middle, we have our hero... your typical short raven-black haired protagonist, and surrounding was an entourage of the otherworldly type.
A blonde elf tugging at one of his arms, the fairy in another. The childhood friend leering closely behind at them in a pout, arms crossed. Nurse Succubus had a mischievous smirk, her narrow tail slithering around and up his calves... and as per standard tradition – our hero of the day looked as if he hadn’t a single clue at all what to do with himself, pleading to the sky like ‘woe is me’.
For a second, just for a second, in that one fleeting moment... I felt as if I was gazing into a mirror.
“So?” Amanda’s eyes peeked from above the pages, twinkling with anticipation. “Who is it?”
“Trick question,” I looked away. “I’m not answering it.”
She groaned, frowning. “It’s a good question, answer it.”
“No. I know my catch-22’s. You’re not gonna catch me on that.”
“Fine, wait, I’ll help narrow it down for you.”
Her eyes darted about the place, searching, before suddenly her hand went reaching over the countertop. When she pulled it back, to my surprise, a familiar scantily-clad figurine was in her grip... it’s glittering emerald eyes staring oh so tender, raised side-to-side with Amanda’s dark hazel browns.
Slowly, softly, her voice noticeably meek, she asked again. “Well? Can you answer now?”
If my eyes were eggs, they would have cracked by then. Thankfully, they weren’t. Thankfully, they were hard-boiled.
.....
“No.”
“Yup, no romance!” She exclaimed loudly with a frustrated breath, slamming mini-Ash on the counter. “That confirms it! You confirmed it! You’re going to die alone and unloved! There’s your damn tragedy! ‘Least the book got that part right!”
“Hey, spoiler alert.”
She sighed again, both her shoulders, and expression sagging like melted ice cream. “There’s no way. You’re gonna have to choose one way or another... and I know you know that, I just wish I knew who.”
I patted her shoulder, raising her with a smile. “A mystery we shall take to our graves. Let’s not worry ourselves about it. Let’s go, we’ll take Adalia, and then we’ll – ”
I don’t know when it happened, I don’t know why it happened, but suddenly she made a noise – a loud noise... it was the type of noise you make when something strikes your head... and in Amanda’s case, I think she might have gotten concussed.
Her eyes glowing open, her lips just as wide... gradually, the corner of lips began to stretch once more, once again – there was that one-browed stare of hers.
“Idea!” She uttered, almost breathless.
I seriously do not like that stare.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om