Chapter 321: Chapter 22: No Lying
"Well then, I’ll be taking my leave."
Having visited Yimi, Kirito waved and left the room. Out the door, he let out a long breath—he was starting to lose track of just who it was he’d come to visit.
"Hold on a moment."
Right after, a lean, tall man blocked his path.
"And you are?"
"As you can see, I’m an actual member of this guild." Kuradeel—the one person in the whole guild who had to steer clear of Yimi—regarded Kirito gravely. "The others may feel too awkward to say it, out of regard for the Vice Commander and that little... mascot. So let me be everyone’s mouthpiece: this guild has no rule that lets outsiders come and go as they please. Don’t come here anymore."
What era was this, and how old were they, that something like this could still happen?
Kirito cut his eyes aside; still young himself, he simply looked away as if the man weren’t worth his attention. "Who Asuna chooses to spend her time with is her own freedom, isn’t it? Also—"
He finally turned his head and gave Kuradeel a look. "I never saw you in the boss room. A new recruit who just joined?"
Without waiting for a reply, he walked off.
In fact only a few dozen people could enter the boss room at a time, so it was impossible for the entire clearing group to go—but it was also true that he’d never once seen Kuradeel in the boss room. Having just finished the Floor 58 boss, Kirito needed to get up to Floor 59 right away to scope things out; detouring back to visit Yimi had already put him a good while behind everyone else.
"..."
Kuradeel watched his retreating back through gritted teeth, a shadow spreading over his face. He turned and went straight to Heathcliff’s office with a proposal.
"Commander, the Vice Commander has been indispensable to our clearing progress, but lately she hasn’t made any worthwhile contribution—I believe she’s fallen under someone’s influence. I propose we tighten guild discipline to keep unsavory sorts from wandering in and out at will, and, to protect the Vice Commander’s safety, assign her a dedicated bodyguard."
"..."
Heathcliff lifted his gaze from the Rat Soup he still hadn’t managed to try and settled it on the man.
Do you hear yourself? That NPC is the very one your allegedly unproductive Vice Commander carried home.
* * *
"Have you ever seen a box that bites people?"
After Kirito left, Yimi tried to sound Asuna out indirectly about that strange room from before. The kitty had started to sense something was off—like the way, along the streets, so many people would only repeat one single action over and over, and Kirito and the rest weren’t even curious about it. Something was wrong with this world.
"A box that bites... a Mimic? That’s something you’d only find in the Labyrinth." Asuna, in the middle of changing Yimi’s clothes, eyed her suspiciously.
Come to think of it, this child was a treasure trove from head to toe.
Asuna looked at the socks she’d just turned right-side out in her hands.
> @@’s Socks: [Paw Pads]Grants triple jump height.
Still, apart from a hat or a ribbon bow, clothing tailor-made for a little kid was something no one else could wear. The game did have children in it, true, but they mostly lived on the safe first floor.
At Asuna’s counter-question, Yimi shifted her gaze off to the side.
Because Asuna had said that if she ran off on her own without a word, she’d stop teaching her to make clothes.
"Oh?" Asuna held out a hand. "That Corridor Crystal from before—take it out and let me have a look."
"Lost it."
"Lost it? Did you lose it, or use it?"
"Lost it."
"Oh. Is that so."
Asuna, who’d already seen through everything, drew a crocodile hand puppet—bought from who-knew-where—out of her inventory and slipped it onto her hand. "This is Mr. Crocodile, the lie detector. Say hello to him first."
She’d anticipated a situation like this well in advance.
Yimi eyed the puppet warily, because no matter how she looked at it, the crocodile seemed like a dinosaur to her.
"Now then—little Yimi, please put your hand into Mr. Crocodile’s mouth, and repeat what you just said. If Yimi tells a lie, Mr. Crocodile will bite you, and gobble up every chance you’ll ever have to eat sweets. Yimi will never get to eat yummy sweets ever again."
Yimi hurriedly whipped her hand behind her back. "I used it."
"Honestly—how does someone so young already know how to lie?" Asuna set her face as stern as she could, and yet couldn’t quite manage the sternness of a real mother.
While they’d been out clearing the floor, the little thing had actually gone off and toured the labyrinth and back. The current floor’s labyrinth probably posed no great threat to her—but what if she ran into a malicious player?
Yimi’s ears drooped, and she began sadly gathering up the cloth on the table.
Asuna was puzzled. "What are you doing?"
"You won’t teach me, how to make clothes anymore."
Asuna put a hand to her forehead, laughing in spite of herself. "I’ll let you off this once. Vegetables for dinner—and there won’t be a next time, got it?"
Then she watched the little cat’s ears perk back up, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the crocodile puppet in Asuna’s hand.
"Do you like this?" Asuna misread her look.
Yimi shook her head. "Mr. Crocodile—why doesn’t he bite you?"
You told a lie too! You said if the kitty went out without saying anything you wouldn’t teach her to sew—but the crocodile didn’t bite you, so the two of you are in on it together!
This time it was Asuna’s turn to look away, changing the subject with grown-up cunning. "Why the sudden interest in Mimics? Did you run into one?"
"A box that bites. Strange."
She means "curious," surely?
"Didn’t I already give you a cardboard box to play with?"
A Mimic was, generally, a trap-type creature, more dangerous on its own than an ordinary chest on the same floor; with only one life to spend, few players who spotted a Mimic would be willing to fight it to the bitter end.
"But it’s strange—teleport into a room, then a crack, then squeeze through, then can’t get back, then the box bit me..."
"I can’t follow a word of that."
Unfortunately, Asuna wasn’t like the people Yimi had met in other worlds, able to puzzle out such crucial information on her own—so of course she had no idea that what Yimi was truly curious about was the buggy spatial phenomenon up on the top floor.
Yimi pointed at Asuna’s head. "The box biting people is what’s strange. How can you be so, dumb?"
"All right, all right, don’t get worked up. The point is, it’s a very dangerous thing, and you are not to go running off without a word like that again, understood?"
"Understood."
No—that little expression meant she hadn’t taken a single word of it to heart.
Asuna pinched the bridge of her nose. This child’s inexplicable interest in Mimics—was it because cats liked boxes? By the look of her, this bout of curiosity didn’t seem to have faded, and it would be bad if she slipped out again while Asuna was away and ran into danger.
Asuna thought for a couple of seconds. When a small child was curious about something dangerous, how did one reasonably put a stop to it? Even in reality, surely this was a matter to be taken seriously.
She fired off a plea for help to the just-departed Kirito: "Yimi’s starting to get curious about dangerous things. Come give her a talking-to, quick."
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