Chương 100: Just Be Yourself

Aiko shifted her weight from side to side, processing my grand speech before offering a timid follow-up.

"So... you are truly okay with the fact that Aiko is an absolute misfit?" she murmured, her voice barely registering above the rustle of the nearby greenery. I leaned forward, propping my elbows on my knees to level with her.

"Look, my personal perspective on the matter amounts to absolutely zero in the grand scheme of things. The actual riddle you need to solve here is whether you can tolerate your own unique brand of bizarre behavior. Are you actually content with who you are?" The question hung in the air like an awkward silence at a bad party.

Instead of offering a straight answer, she dropped her chin toward her chest and began a frantic game of finger-twister, completely absorbed in inspecting the texture of her own shoes as a shield against the heavy topic.

"Cut the performance and just embrace your genuine identity," I advised, steering the conversation back to solid ground.

"Give me eye contact for a second. Which lane actually gives your brain the most comfort? Do you prefer navigating life using standard first-person pronouns, or do you feel better just shouting out your own birth name?" Aiko slowly hoisted her head up, her gaze locking directly into mine. A sudden, undeniable wave of fresh determination began to take root behind her irises, replacing the usual baseline anxiety with the calm acceptance of a person who had finally decided to stop running away from her own shadow.

"Aiko experiences a massive boost in personal courage whenever she addresses herself in the third person," she declared, her delivery noticeably steadier as she finally embraced her natural settings. A genuine grin spread wide across my face as I watched her internal gears finally click into place.

"Then just stick with that setup from here on out," I encouraged, giving her a supportive nod from my rusty iron perch.

"If that is the style that makes you feel completely unstoppable, do not let a single person pressure you into hiding your true self." An absolute masterpiece of a beam broke out across her features, completely replacing her usual mask of baseline social panic with a pure wave of unadulterated happiness that could probably light up a dark tunnel. It was a rare, radiant expression that made her look like she had just successfully shed a hundred pounds of invisible emotional baggage right there on the terrace boards.

"Aiko is incredibly grateful that her path crossed with yours," she confessed, her voice maintaining its gentle, low volume but carrying a newfound weight of absolute sincerity.

"You possess the biggest heart of any human Aiko has ever encountered in her entire existence, Arthur-san." I leaned back against the metallic frame of my chair, crossing my arms as a wave of immense satisfaction washed over me.

"See? Now that is the exact flavor of speech we are looking for." A faint rustle of blankets and the creak of shifting floorboards drifted out from the interior quarters, alerting my radar that someone else had officially rejoined the land of the living. I turned my focus toward the balcony threshold just in time to spot June making her grand entrance, currently in the middle of a massive yawn while extending her arms toward the sky to shake off the final remnants of her royal slumber.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. She blinked against the morning light, her gaze drifting lazily across the terrace until she took in the sight of Aiko, before letting her eyes settle squarely on my position.

"Look who managed to resurrect themselves ahead of schedule," June remarked, her thick British accent carrying its usual lofty, aristocratic weight as she leaned against the doorframe.

"Considering the spectacular, alcohol-fueled circus performance you put on display during our tavern outing, my working hypothesis was that your physical frame would remain completely immobilized until well past noon." My brain instantly went into panic mode as the heavy implications of her words sank in.

"Hold on a second, what exactly is that supposed to mean? Did my subconscious mind take the wheel and execute some sort of embarrassing stunt that my conscious memory completely wiped from the archives?" Instead of offering a charitable explanation to ease my mounting anxiety, June simply let her lips twist into a deeply knowing, highly superior smirk, leaving me entirely stranded without a single clue.

Desperate for an emergency lifeline, I whipped my head around to lock eyes with our resident caterpillar enthusiast, hoping for a quick translation of whatever insanity I had unleashed upon the world. The immediate consequence of my intense gaze was a massive, high-velocity rush of blood straight to her cheeks, transforming her complexion into a vibrant shade of hot pink within a fraction of a second.

She instantly dropped her chin toward her collarbone, refusing to meet my eyes while executing a masterful evasive maneuver by intensely studying the woodwork of the balcony floor to ensure she would not drop a single hint about my lost evening. The absolute spectacle of my mounting paranoia was apparently the best morning entertainment available, because June immediately let out a crisp, musical burst of laughter that practically dripped with high-society amusement.

"Who would have guessed that a few drops of local fuel would unlock a hidden, chaotic renegade deep inside your otherwise clumsy soul?" June mused, her thick British accent magnifying the sheer, unadulterated snobbery of her commentary as she crossed her arms.

"Your usual social anxieties and conversational blunders completely vanished, leaving behind a wildly unhinged chatterbox who was suddenly running around and blending with the local populace with zero friction." I slowly squeezed my eyelids together, tracking her silhouette with the intense focus of a guy who just realized the ticking package in his hands might not be a complimentary alarm clock.

"That particular assessment feels incredibly ominous, your highness," I fired back, my voice laced with a thick layer of genuine alarm as I tried to calculate the damage.

"When a certified, gold-card member of the elite royalty club starts describing my behavior as a wild social uprising, it means I have officially crossed a line into dangerous territory." ••••• Once our resident Scottish powerhouse and the massive Russian freight train finally decided to rejoin the conscious world, our entire ragtag operation scrambled into gear.

We initiated a full tactical cleanup routine, scrubbed off the collective grime of the previous night's tavern disaster, and marched out the front door to conquer the day. Our destination was the local headquarters known as the Player Center of Inizio, which stood as the undisputed epicenter for every weapon-wielding misfit in the region.

Predictably, the gargantuan facility was absolute prime-time chaos during the early hours, packed to the absolute gills with an endless ocean of adventurers trying to organize their morning agendas. The entire lobby felt like a giant beehive on an intense caffeine rush, with waves of heavily armed bodies creating a massive gridlock across the main floor.

As we navigated our way through the dense jungle of armor plating and oversized swords, our ears were continuously bombarded by the ambient background hum of various cliques aggressively trading information regarding the latest dramatic developments shaking up the realm of Eteria.

"Word on the street is that the Capulets and Montagues are throwing down on Floor 101 yet again," an anonymous warrior muttered to his circle, leaning in close while shaking his head in disbelief.

"The body count is apparently skyrocketing, and the local graveyards are going to need a massive expansion if this keeps up." Right on cue, a heavily armored companion scoffed, crossing his arms with a look of pure exhaustion.

"Those two massive factions are practically hardwired to despise each other's entire existence, aren't they? It feels like they are permanently on the hunt for the flimsiest excuse imaginable to initiate a total bloodbath." The spicy fragments of their conversation drifted right into my sensory web, allowing me to catch a fleeting, highly intriguing preview of the political drama currently unfolding above our heads.