"Hey, what are you two whispering about over there?" Aqua finally sensed that something was off. She planted her hands on her hips and snapped impatiently, "Kazuma Satou, hurry up and decide! If you keep dragging this out, I'll just shove some kitchen knife that chops vegetables on its own at you and kick you down there!"
Kazuma gave a cold laugh. Then he slowly rose to his feet, moving with the elegance of a magician about to take his final bow.
He took a deep breath, raised his right hand, and pointed straight at the utterly dumbfounded Aqua with his index finger. In the impassioned tone of someone deep into chuunibyou, he loudly declared,
"If I can choose one thing to take to another world, then my choice is you! Goddess Aqua!"
The air froze.
Aqua's expression shifted from impatience to blank shock, then from blank shock to outright terror.
She blinked and pointed at her own nose, her voice trembling. "...Huh? Me? Did you just say... you chose me?"
At that moment, a sacred white light descended from the sky, so bright it was hard to keep one's eyes open. An angel with little wings on her back, who looked ten thousand times more reliable than Aqua, floated down from above with a glowing official document in hand.
"Kazuma Satou-san, your request has been accepted. According to the laws of the divine realm, whatever a reincarnated person selects, even if it possesses divinity, must fulfill the contract and accompany them." The angel read the proclamation expressionlessly, then looked toward Aqua, who had already collapsed to the ground sobbing. "Aqua-sama, I will be taking over the guidance duties from here. Please take care."
"Wait! That doesn't count! That's cheating! Somebody help me. I don't want to go to some place without potato chips and hot baths, aaaaaah!" Aqua let out a miserable shriek and tried to rush forward to grab the angel's skirt, only to be firmly sucked in by a huge blue Magic Circle.
Kōichi stood to the side watching the utterly absurd scene unfold, and could not help giving himself a mental pat on the back.
He might not have gotten a Divine Treasure for himself, but he had successfully dragged this idiot Goddess down with them. A play like this deserved a spot on the very first page of The Otaku Survival Guide.
The light of the Magic Circle grew brighter and brighter until it swallowed all three of them whole.
Kazuma flashed a thoroughly wicked grin and taunted Aqua, "Since you're a Goddess, you'd better take good care of us two 'comedians' once we get over there, Aqua-sama!"
A violent sensation of weightlessness hit Kōichi, and the white space before his eyes began to collapse.
"Kōichi Hayashi! You bastard! You definitely said something to him just now, didn't you?! I'll remember this! I'm absolutely going to purify you, aaaaaah!"
Amid Aqua's final scream, the three of them turned into streaks of light, tearing through the stillness of the divine realm as they plunged straight toward the town of Axel, a place full of the unknown, poverty, and one unreliable incident after another.
"Waaahhh! It hurts! It's freezing! What is this smell of horse manure? Where's my divine realm? Where's my fancy sofa? Help, this has to be a dream. Wake me up already, aaaah!"
Aqua sprawled on the ground without a shred of Goddessly dignity, pounding the earth madly with both hands and crying her eyes out. She sounded so miserable it was like she had just been licked all over by a hundred Giant Toads in a row.
Kazuma sat up, rubbing his butt. His face was pale, but when he saw Aqua in such a sorry state, the corners of his mouth still curled upward into the kind of nasty grin that came from finally getting revenge.
"Heh heh... That's karma, Aqua-sama. Welcome to the real world. Looking forward to working with you from here on out, you 'deadweight Goddess.'"
Kōichi crouched nearby, watching Aqua sob on the ground with her rear sticking up in the air. His eyes narrowed slightly.
As a seasoned otaku, Kōichi knew one truth better than anyone. A thief never leaves empty-handed.
Since she was a Goddess, she had to be carrying something, right? Some secret divine-realm treasure, a resurrection potion, or at the very least a glowing rock.
While Kazuma was still off wallowing in his own thoughts and Aqua remained trapped in her own total breakdown, Kōichi quietly and casually edged over to her side.
Whistling to himself, Kōichi's hands turned into blurs as he rapidly searched through the folds of her light, semi-transparent blue feathered robe and skirt.
Left pocket... empty.
Right side of her waist... nothing but air.
Even that high-class-looking ring-shaped headpiece of hers felt like ordinary metal when he touched it. There was not the slightest trace of divine power coming from it.
"Hey... Kōichi, what are you doing?" Kazuma turned his head and stared at Kōichi's hands roaming all over Aqua with his usual dead-fish eyes, then snarked in a strange tone, "I know this idiot has it coming, but starting to molest a Goddess the very first second after reincarnating is a little too... you know, isn't it? Is this the 'depraved survival skill' you were talking about?"
Kōichi ignored him. His hand slid up along Aqua's slender back, searching for the legendary "Goddess's relic."
But the moment his fingertips touched the thin layer of fabric on her back, he froze.
Smooth.
A shockingly smooth feel.
Under that backless outfit, Kōichi could not feel any horizontal or vertical straps at all. He could not even detect the slightest outline of underwear.
Th-this girl... could it be that Goddesses, for the sake of so-called divine beauty, do not even wear that kind of thing?!
Kōichi pulled his hand back, looked at his empty palm, and could not help sighing.
This Goddess, aside from that face and this troublesome body, really had come down so poor she had not even brought a single Eris with her.
No, to be more accurate, she did not even have one valuable change of clothes on her!
"What are you sighing for?!" Aqua finally seemed to notice something was wrong behind her. She abruptly rolled over, wiped her nose, and glared at Kōichi, her big aqua-blue eyes filled with fear and grievance. "You were feeling me up just now, weren't you? You definitely were! You perverted otaku who snuck in through the back door! I'm a Goddess! If your filthy hands get me dirty, my divinity is going to go down, waaah!"
She cried even louder, and even started rolling around on the ground, grinding that expensive feather robe against the stone pavement like it was a rag.
Kazuma stood up and dusted himself off. Looking at the pedestrians in the square who were already starting to point and whisper, he covered his face awkwardly. "Enough. Stop embarrassing us. Kōichi, even if you did not find anything, we have a more serious problem right now. The three of us are flat broke, and we do not even know where we are sleeping tonight."
Kōichi slowly rose to his feet and brushed the dust from his hands. The expression on his face suddenly turned more serious than ever before.
He lowered his head slightly, letting the loose hair over his forehead hide his eyes, creating the heavy air of a hero who had just returned from some epic battlefield. Then he walked over to Kazuma with steady steps. Under Kazuma's confused and wary gaze, Kōichi reached out and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"Kazuma-san, although what I just did may have had a few flaws on the legal and moral front, I must tell you that I have just completed a field investigation worthy of being recorded in human history."
Kōichi's voice was so low it sounded like he was chanting some ancient spell. Kazuma was completely thrown off by that inexplicable aura. He swallowed unconsciously and leaned in a little closer.
"...Hey, what is with that face? Don't tell me you felt around on her and found the draft of some Divine Treasure that can instantly defeat the Demon King?"
Kōichi shook his head. Then he leaned close to Kazuma's ear and, in a voice only the two of them could hear, revealed the earth-shattering secret word by word.
"Kazuma-san, I just felt all over her back. I even checked under her arms and around her waist. And I discovered something incredible. That self-proclaimed Goddess has absolutely no horizontal or vertical support straps on her back at all. In other words, under that sacred-looking feather robe, she is probably in an extremely dangerous, extremely 'natural' vacuum state. To put it simply, she is not wearing that kind of thing at all."
Kazuma's whole body instantly stiffened.
His dead-fish eyes flew wide open, and his pupils trembled violently, as if he had just heard something capable of destroying his entire worldview.
He slowly turned his head and looked at Aqua, who was still rolling around on the ground crying and making a scene like a salted fish.
At that moment, the way Kazuma looked at Aqua changed.
What had once been pure disgust toward an idiot and a troublemaker now held a complicated look that only one man could understand in another, carrying a strange mix of respect and curiosity.
"...You're serious? Vacuum? Something like that... is that really possible?" Kazuma's voice had gone hoarse. He grabbed Kōichi's arm with surprising force. "Kōichi, are you sure you did not get it wrong? Maybe it was some kind of invisible divine strap?"
Kōichi gave his back a solemn pat. "Kazuma-san, you have to trust these hands of mine, hands that read countless doujinshi and watched countless anime before I died. That touch was definitely real skin, with nothing in between. Is this what divinity is supposed to be? Truly unfathomable."
Kazuma took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. The faint hostility that had lingered in his gaze toward Kōichi completely vanished, replaced by the sense of brotherhood of two men who wished they had met sooner.