Kazuma X Darkness (Part 4: Questions)

Our appetizers appeared just as we began thinking of our questions for each other. The food here was, as usual, exquisite. We decided to share the two plates, Kazuma ordering an Onion Duck spring roll platter while I'd requested two large bat wings with garlic sauce. My date seemed a little weirded out by his grilled wing, I suppose they were considered a mild delicacy to non-nobles, but was happy enough when he hate it with the sauce.

Soon though, he had his first question for me. “Okay, let’s start with an easy one: when did you realise Aqua was a Goddess? Cause for ages you were pretty adamant she was faking.”

“Hmm,” I said, dipping my wing while thinking about it. “I suppose… Megumin and I hypothesised about Aqua here and there. How strong she is, how she can purify liquids by touch, the undead’s attraction to her... but most of the counter arguments came to her attitude being so ungoddesslike.”

“Hehe, I know right.” He snickered. His warm smile made me melt. I was so happy he was enjoying himself even just a little…

“If I had to put a date on it, we stopped guessing and started believing when she took on Hans. It wasn’t all the way there then, but seeing her purify a Demon Lord General while her followers prayed for her was certainly a big enough feat to take her more seriously.”

"Makes sense, I was dead but from I hear she really showed off well. Better than her usual uselessness." He nodded, satisfied with my answer as he ate another spring roll, "Anyway, mm, your turn to ask me something, milady."

I smiled at his language, finishing up the last of my batwing appetiser while thinking what to ask. “I suppose my first question will also pertain to Aqua. How long have you two been friends?”

He raised his eyebrow at me, “Don’t you already know that one? It wasn’t long before I met you and Megumin.”

“I know that part, but I was hoping to hear something deeper,” I admitted, “You two act like lifelong companions, to think you’ve known her for not much longer than I seems strange.”

A whiff of nervousness wafted over his face before Kazuma shrugged at me. “Well, sorry to say that’s the truth. She isn’t some secret childhood bestie, just party-mate Aqua.” Our legs suddenly rubbed gently together, his shin stroking me tenderly. “Besides, it’s not like you and me get on bad. I’m on a date with you, not her.”

“It’s true… and I’m very thankful for that.” I purred, joining him in playing a bit of under-table antics. Though I had some more gossip that I'd been dying to share with him, “I’ll be honest with you here Kazuma, because I think you’ll like this.” I said while leaning in closer. “Do you remember the list I told you for my ideal man?”

“Yeah, I think so. Something like ‘Lazy, self-centred, abrasive...’ Huh, I guess I shouldn’t be offended since I asked you out on this date…”

I breezed past his implication, "Yes, well... before all this harem stuff I was feeling quite lonesome since I thought you had chosen Megumin. So I tried to find someone that fit that description by putting up a wanted poster in the guild. No physical description, just someone who acted in that manner to see if I could find a person that could treated me as well as you do... and, well you know." I gestured but he blinked at me. “...oh lord, you’re going to make me say it. 'sigh' The only reports I got back from the guild... was of those complaining about the attitude... of Aqua."

He seemed to consider that idea for a moment, then exploded.

“PfffffftttttttHAHAHHHAHAHAHA!” He bellowed, slapping a hand to the table. “HAHAHA! Oh fuck, my side hurts! That’s too fucking funny! She’s such an pft! a-awful goddess that she ended up on YOUR radar?! HAHAHAHA! Fuckin wow!” I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. The two of us attracting some attention from more ‘dignified’ customers with our behaviour but neither cared as our laughter peaked before slowly dying down. “Hooo~ That’s great. Well, I would have supported you two lovebirds one hundred percent.”

“That’s nice of you. Perhaps if our bisexuality had blossomed sooner then you and I wouldn’t be having this date. You’d still be using that sock while I had the Goddess all to myself.”

“Hmm, is that hot as fuck or me being cucked? I can’t keep track anymore.” Kazuma said while putting his finger on his chin in faux thought, then chuckling a little again and taking a sip of his drink to calm himself down, "Can't believe Aqua was the only one who came up with wanted poster. Priceless..."

I smiled back at him. Now... wasn't the time to tell him about the date I went on all those months ago with the only other man that came up from the poster. The noble with a secretly twisted sense of fun that offered to be as rough as I wanted in the bedroom... the one who, on paper, ticked all the right boxes for me... but who wasn't Kazuma. My heart couldn't take looking at anyone else and I ended up escaping through a bathroom window. (I got stuck through the small frame and ripped the majority of the wall off in my escape. Just another reason why Michelangelo wasn't happy with us.)

It was around this time that the waiter took our appetizer plates and switched us for the main course. Kazuma had ordered the premium Dragon Steak, usually a rough meat that costs a lot to be tenderised by a barbarian before being cooked. My meal was simpler, just a three headed salmon spritzed with a live lemon I needed to defeat myself.

After we dug into the initial few tasty bites, both of us sharing a taste of each other’s meal, Kazuma was then looking at me with a frown. “Hmm, I’m having trouble phrasing this next question.”

“Oh?” I asked, a little surprised. Though slightly preoccupied with the lemon gnawing my palm. “I have nothing to hide, what was the question about?”

“I wanna ask about the harem, and if you’re okay with it.”

Okay, that did surprise me. “W-why would I not be okay with it?”

“It’s just… you and your noble side I guess.” He sighed, looking like he was spinning a problem in his mind, handing me his knife so I could slay the lemon appropriately. “You sometimes feel like a different person when dealing with that junk. Telling us all to keep quiet and ‘perfectly still’ at functions, wanting me to avoid speaking to anyone more royal blooded than me, I mean fuck, you even hate your own name! And like, that’s all fine. I get it. We’d get in trouble etc etc. But… I dunno. I guess I wanted to know what your deal is with your nobility. And why’d you accept the harem side?”

“Kazuma…” I began, somewhat failing to find my words.

These questions were what I had insisted upon, wanting to give him a deeper understanding of who I am. I wonder, was it so he’d be more informed to make a proper rejection for me?

Either way I’d have to face the music.

“Kazuma… I don’t like my nobility. I don’t deny it nor try to run from it, but my life is just infinitely better now I’m away from it. The four of us together will, hopefully, always be my true home. I love all of you so much and so… I just don’t enjoy the idea of the two worlds mixing.” I admitted with a sigh, scrunching my face in at the idea, a hot anger in my temple as these horrid images floated through my mind. “The thought that you could become as corrupt and dull as those men. Each of you losing what makes you unique and special because money and power corrupted you…. it sickens me to my core. A nightmare image of you all succumbing to that life that has taken so much from me I-” The feel of Kazuma’s touch interrupted me, I looked down to his hand on mine, realising the fork in my hand had become twisted into a knot without my own knowledge. I dropped it to the table and stared at its new design for a second, “I suppose… I never realised I was fighting so hard.”

“Hey, it’s alright.” Kazuma said reassuringly, “Sorry, you don’t have to answer the second part of my question.”

“No no, it’s fine.” I waved him off, calming myself a little before continuing. “Why do I enjoy the harem? The answer is simply: because it’s mine. Though it came from noble origins, I don’t have to worry about the two worlds colliding this time because I’m simply expanding my family. It stays safe space for everyone to remain themselves, you’re all just more free to express yourselves sexually under my banner.”

“I like that answer.” He smiled, subtly activating steal to swipe a new fork for me from a neighbouring table. “But I gotta say it’s funny how much you fight against me being a noble who’s lazy and boring when you get aroused by those types of guys as well.”

I exhaled with a smile, knowing he was right. With a little wink I replied, “Can’t I want the best for you while also hoping for the worst?”

Kazuma just shook his head at my flirt with a bemused look. If I had to guess this date was going well. I think he’s enjoying himself? At the very least he hasn’t given up on me and gone home, which were several of the fears I had before going out tonight.

“Alright! That was a deep one, like you asked, so now you have to ask a juicy introspective question of me or else we won’t be going to round 3.”

My thoughts still struggled to come up with a good question 2, I suppose ‘do you like me’ is perhaps pretty childish. Hm… “Well, can I also ask if you’re enjoying the harem?”

“Of course I am.” He replied instantly, with a fierce amount of determination behind his words he rarely uses. “That wasn’t a very deep one at all, Darkness. Are you just copying my questions?”

I mulled the topic a little more, “Isn't it? I think you aren’t giving it enough thought. We’ve been through a lot the last few days, Kazuma. I just want to make sure you’re one hundred percent satisfied. You have been whining about the cults here and there…”

His serious look softened, seemingly hearing my defence properly. “Fair. Yeah, the religious stuff is a little odd. Especially when they drop to the floor and start praying at my penis like it's a celebrity. Honestly? I think I’m developing some form of imposter syndrome with how much everyone’s praising me…”

My hand reached out and stroked his, “Kazuma, no…”

“It got so bad I thought you might have been mind controlling everyone to like me or something!”

My hand retracted back away from his, “K-Kazuma… nooo…”

I didn’t have the heart to look him in the eyes for a reaction, only hearing “Mmhmm…” Somewhat suspiciously before he laughed it off, “I know, pretty silly. But I thought about it and realised it doesn’t matter.”

“I-it doesn’t?”

I looked back at his face to see it was his turn to look out the window at the sunset. This time there was no melancholy though, only a content smile. “Nah. I’m happy despite the strangeness. Harem life might feel daunting at times, but it’s not a bad life.” He looks so handsome over there, and so wise beyond his years. God I want to devour his cock so bad. “I was pretty happy when it was just the four of us, but everyone we bring into the harem… I dunno, it feels right. Like they found where they can be themselves thanks to us, almost like we’re saving them from somewhere lonelier.” He smiled, as if he wasn’t believing the words out his mouth. “Don’t get me wrong. Sex is amazing, but the happiness everyone has on their face is pretty dang nice too. Like you said, it’s like we’re expanding our little family.”

I know it did for me. And he’s right: Aqua, Wiz, Xara, Luna, Sena, Chris, Sylvia… so many needed us in their lives now. And I was excited to keep up my work to spread the Kazuma gospel.

"Besides, the religions and the dick fan club feel weird but I don’t think I have it in my willpower to tell them to stop, mostly because the childish kid in me doesn’t want them to. I don’t know if you could tell, but I enjoy the praise and attention." He laughed while the waiter once more cleared up our plates. With a simple gesture, Kazuma raised his wine glass to me. "Until this wonderful life inevitably crumbles to dust, I'm willing to enjoy it while I can." I nodded, taking my own glass and lightly tapping it against his.

"A fitting toast that I couldn't put into better words." I smiled, taking a final sip of my wine. "So, do I pass the test?"

"Yeah yeah, may as well finish this little interview properly. But ya gotta think of a doozy for the last question, okay?"

I nodded, resolving to think of the best question to ask Kazuma. Our desserts came next, a lovely apple pie for me and a scrumptious looking slice of cheesecake for Kazuma. The two of us shared a little of each other’s cake/pie as the evening masses began to slowly leave the restaurant. We weren't alone, but the was a significant drop in background noise when it was time for the final question.

“Okay. Here we go. I want you, Darkness, to answer me my biggest question about you." He said, building up his query well, "Why… masochism?”

I blinked at him. Really not expecting to go this route… “Oh, um…”

He waved his hand back and forth while scooping a bit of his pie. “Again, you don’t have to answer. It’s just something I always wondered about. If there was some deep reason, or at least if you had some introspection that we didn’t.” I tilted my head at him, “We being everyone I gossip about you with.”

He gossips about me? How odd, something about the fact he talks to me about other people makes me happy…

I leant my elbow on the table, smirking at the boy across from me. “I would have thought someone as perceptive as you could suss the general idea out already.”

“Yeah probably.” He shrugged with a shared smirk. “But why not hear it from the horse’s mouth?”

I didn’t respond to his odd word choice (probably another idiom from his homeland) because I instead looked out the window. I had thought about this, about why I was the way I was, who hasn’t? Maybe this wasn’t the right answer, and someone much smarter than I can figure out the foibles of my own personality… but right now I wanted to answer Kazuma’s question to the best of my ability.

With a deep breath I pushed forwards.

“When my mother died, my father became very overprotective of me. Perhaps too much. I was very young when it happened, and I hold no ill will towards him, but looking back I do see the reasons for my urges may have stemmed from that life he enforced upon me after that event. A young girl who wanted to see the world, explore, and learn… was trapped in a noble lifestyle with no outlet for her curiosity.” The lanterns outside are being lit. Focus on that instead of the growing feelings in your heart and eyes Darkness… “For years, all my experiences were locked off in that room. While I was well read and well fed... I still dreamed of life outside those walls. Of a life full of adventures, just like the ones I’d read about in novels… the only place I was allowed to escape to. But every time I tried to leave home there was such heavy resistance from my father. I was once confined to my quarters for three weeks for even daring to greet a stranger that was my own age.”

Kazuma was clearly staring at me intently, “Shit. Your dad sounds like a hard ass.”

I kept quiet for that comment, not affirming his slander of my father but not denying it either. “On my 10th birthday, there was a particularly bad argument between us, though I can’t even remember what it was now. After he grounded me, in an act of rebellion I snuck out and climbed the huge tree that had grown in our garden, something I’d dreamed about for years looking at it out my window.” I was smiling down at the wooden table, a nail tracing the contours of the oak, “I remember that tree so vividly. Bark around my pampered fingertips. Dirt under my untouched nails. Leaves and twigs ruining my golden hair. And the feeling I might fall or get caught at any moment was so very exhilarating. And then… well, I did.”

“You got caught?”

“No, I fell.” I looked back to Kazuma to raise my arm up, then pointed his gaze to my elbow. “This is the scar, right down here. It’s barely visible now but the bones in my arm shattered when I landed on it. I don’t really remember what happened next, I think a maid found me and took me to our infirmary where three clerics healed me… and then there was my dad, angry and scared, yelling and crying, and once more confining me in my room for weeks.” Kazuma traced the skin gently with a frown. To this day it’s one of the few scars my body has sustained so it’s perhaps a rare sight that he missed on his various other explorations of my body. I gave his frowning concern a sad smile. “I suppose that that was the moment it all ‘went wrong’ per se. The rush of new feelings that happened when I fell from that tree. Pain was perhaps one of my first experiences with the real world, and so it was what I sought out for years. The ideas that would come with bringing me that next jolt of real experience.

“When I finally left home, being an adventurer just made sense. I convinced my friend Chris to start up as well, but she said she was too busy to go full time. Which led me to searching for my own party, then to you, and eventually the harsh words you love to yell at me… and I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.”

“Wow.” Kazuma exhaled, probably not expecting such a long answer about my masochism. “I don’t know whether to scold you or hug you.”

“The fact I don’t know which I’d prefer you to do shows how much you’ve changed me recently as well.” I gulped, knowing I was building to something didn’t make it any easier to say. “Part of me still feels all our adventures Kazuma. Ghosts of pain that float through me to lovingly tease me. Our battles with the toads, Beldir, Hans, Vanir, Sylvia, all of Megumin’s ‘explosion training’ she performs on me…”

“Megumin’s what training?!”

“It’s all slowly being overwritten. By you.” I smiled widely at him and he stared with wide eyes. “While pain was my body's first real experience, and some part of me knows it’ll always be masochistic… you’ve also shown me a new way to live. How intense a simple gesture can be when it’s from someone… you love.”

Kazuma looked stunned. I’d certainly confessed to him before, but I suppose a date changes the meaning a little.

He chewed on his thoughts for a moment.

Resolve in his eyes is growing.

…

He’s about to reject me. I just know it.

I don’t think my heart can handle this… can’t I live in this fantasy a little longer?

“Darkness… I-”

My mouth blurted out words before he could continue. “M-my turn on the question now, right?!”

A simple frown passed over his face before sighing and finishing the last few bites of his pie. “Sure, your turn. Anything you want to ask me?”

Phew, rejection averted. I calmed my thumping chest a little… though it was for nought. The question I wanted to ask him is making it rise again…

Because I had thought of a good question. One I had been wondering for a while now, but was almost scared of what the answer could be. Even if my ideas were for naught, surely this could be a blow to his ego? I wasn't sure, but no other question burned as greatly in my heart.

“Yes…” My hands clasped together under the table a little, trying to reassure myself this was what I wanted to ask. “But it might also get a bit personal…”

He nodded, “Good. Feel like I crossed a line somewhere back there so it's only fair. Besides, I don’t really have anything I wanna hide from you.”

“You say that… but I feel like you are hiding something from me.”

With a tilt of his head, Kazuma seemed confused, "Hm? Hiding something?"

“There's plenty you have yet to reveal about yourself. You’ve come to Axel with a Goddess, have a general idea of defeating the Demon King, a knowledge of incredible inventions, and claim to come from a land I can’t find on ANY map.”

His eyes went wide, his brow went sweaty, and I think he could anticipate my question as his frown grew quite deep. But I had to ask it, if I had actually hit a nerve then that meant an answer was out there. And I did really want to know...

“Satou Kazuma… who are you, really?”

“Wow.”

“Yeah... sorry, it’s a lot to take in.”

“...it is a bit…”

Kazuma had just explained that he wasn’t from here. He wasn’t from our world at all. He’d grown up in a land from the stars (or from alternate stars?) and was chosen from the heavens to help us defeat our war against the Demon King. Aqua was the item he’d chosen to help him in his quest, and though he was one of many heroes who had been called upon to save our land, he had somehow gotten the furthest in killing the generals. A whole universe away...

Currently we were walking around outside. The restaurant had closed for the evening, the band had gone home, but the two of us were still chatting away and not wanting to go home just yet. Walking hand in hand around the park while enjoying each other's company and discussing 'Japan'.

“It does explain pretty much everything. The Goddesses, the maddening contraptions, your weird attitude to everyday things.” I looked up at the starry sky in thought, “Another world... I wonder if I’ll get to see it one day?”

“I honestly have no idea.” He shrugged casually, not shutting down the idea completely. “If I could set up a day visit I would. If only to delete my internet history.”

I had no idea what those words meant, instead choosing to just walk with him a little longer. After a few moments of silence, he gave me a raised eyebrow. "That it? No questions about how more technologically advanced it is, or the implications of other worlds, nothing?"

"Not really. None of that matters." I admitted, squeezing him a little closer. "It sounds fascinating, but you're here with us now and I'm just grateful the heavens have brought us together in this way. Though I do wonder, perhaps if there's another version of me out there, in your universe? Would we be friends then too?"

Kazuma just smiled at me, "Lady, I don't even know how we're friends in this universe." He laughed, though I frowned a little bit he did qualify, "I mean, you're way too pretty and cool for me. You'd be off doing super fun helicopter rides or meeting Hollywood superstars..." He once more spoke gibberish, but I suppose that's how I've been speaking to him occasionally too? "But, if there a way that we happened to live next to each other, or you were a school friend... then I would have been hunting you down no matter what. Sometimes a guy's gotta shoot his shot."

We shared another tender embrace and kiss by a tree in a field. The park was absolutely empty at this time of night, but the shining stars and the lanterns from the surrounding city kept us illuminated well.

"And speaking of shooting shots," I giggled, walking backwards until my back was against the tree, spreading my legs and showing off my soggy panties in the darkness, "I think it's high time the two of us end this date off properly, don't you think?"