Back at the stable, Aqua clearly still had not recovered from the cash-machine-like tenderness she had enjoyed from Kyouya Mitsurugi.
After being untied, not only did she fail to reflect on the outrageous mess she had made over the past few days, she instead plopped herself down on a haystack, folded her arms across her chest, struck an aloof Goddess pose, and looked down at Kōichi and Kazuma with the kind of gaze one reserved for commoners.
"Hey, you two!" Aqua lifted her chin, her tone unbearably arrogant. "Even if you dragged me back here by force, let me make one thing clear. My standards can't go back down anymore! Mitsurugi may have been useless, but at least he knew how to worship a Goddess. Starting today, my breakfast must be ice-cold top-grade sparkling wine, lunch must be that special red crab from the restaurant in the south of town, and I refuse to stay in this dump of a stable for even one more second. Hurry up and use that 500,000 Eris to rent me a mansion with a giant bathtub!"
Kōichi and Satou Kazuma stood side by side, expressionless, looking at this useless Goddess having a full-blown episode on top of a haystack.
Kazuma dug at his ear and turned to Kōichi. "Kōichi, did you hear that? I swear an unwashed duck was just quacking its head off. It's giving me a headache."
Kōichi gave a cold snort and smacked the thick stack of Eris bills in his hand with loud slaps. "I heard it. And this duck seems to have developed the delusion that I'm rich. She's probably forgotten that this 500,000 was compensation from Mitsurugi for our emotional suffering, plus a recycling fee. It doesn't have a single thing to do with the 'recyclable trash' itself."
Aqua's expression froze. She looked at the money in Kōichi's hand, then at Kazuma's face, which might as well have had the word sadist written all over it, and her voice instantly dropped several octaves.
"Huh? W-wait a second... you're not planning to keep all that money for yourselves, are you? Mitsurugi paid that to save me, so if you round it off, that makes it my ransom money, which means it's my money! Split it with me! No, give me 400,000. You can keep the other 100,000 as your service fee!"
"In your dreams, you blue-haired parasite that does nothing but add to our debt!" Kazuma finally exploded. He strode forward and pointed at the pile of filthy clothes in the corner of the stable, all of them giving off a suspicious smell. "See those? That's what I, Kōichi, and even Megumin piled up while you were gone these last few days. Because a certain Arch Priest wasn't around, we didn't even have clean socks to wear!"
At once, Kōichi pulled out an enormous bar of soap and a stiff-bristled brush from behind his back and slammed them down in front of Aqua with a smack. "Aqua-sama, since you love messing around with water so much, then for the next three days, you're staying by the wash basin behind the stable and scrubbing every last one of these clean! Don't even think about slacking off with purification magic. I want to see foam that you worked up with your own hands. Otherwise, tonight's dinner is nothing but white bread and plain water!"
Aqua looked at the bar of soap, then at the mountain of dirty laundry, and went completely rigid as though struck by lightning. Her eyes reddened instantly, and fat tears began to gather and tremble in them.
"Waaaaah! You two demons! Scum! Sadists! Mitsurugi would never make me do something like this! I'm going back! I'm going to find Mitsurugi! He'll definitely cry and beg me to eat red crab!"
She made a dash for the stable entrance, only for Kazuma to catch her by the back of the collar.
"Give it up. Mitsurugi's probably already packed up overnight and fled town by now. You could search all of Axel and still never find him." Kazuma showed a brutally cruel smile. "Kōichi, get the rope ready. If she dares step one foot outside this stable, we'll hang her from the Guild sign and put up a placard that says Rental Water Purification Goddess. Meals included."
"Good idea." Kōichi closed in on Aqua with a vicious grin. "Or we could sell her to one of those breweries that need huge amounts of water and let her soak there for the rest of her life."
Terrified by the two of them, Aqua curled into a ball. Sobbing, she picked up the soap from the ground and started muttering nonstop to herself.
"Uuuugh... my red crab... my sparkling wine... I only went and ruined Mitsurugi for this party's sake, so why do I still have to come back and wash socks... this world is so unfair... that flat-chested Goddess Eris must be laughing at me from up in heaven... waaah!"
Watching Aqua's back as she cried and scrubbed the filthy clothes with all her might, Kōichi and Kazuma looked at each other and let out a long sigh at the same time.
Under a crooked tree outside the stable, Kōichi and Satou Kazuma squatted in the shade without a shred of dignity, each holding a cheap skewer in hand, gazing into the distance at Aqua, who was still wiping away tears while furiously scrubbing socks not far off.
In a world like Axel, full of idiots and explosions, a quiet moment stolen in the middle of the chaos like this was especially precious.
Kazuma took a huge bite of meat and spoke through it. "Hey, Kōichi. Our party's full of lunatics, sure, but when you really think about it, it's actually a pretty luxury lineup, isn't it? An Arch Priest, an Arch Wizard, and a Crusader. If you ignore their completely hopeless personalities, then just based on looks alone, they're all above-average beauties."
Kōichi shot him a sidelong glance and said nothing, silently indicating that he should continue down that dangerously misguided train of thought.
Kazuma let out a sigh, and his gaze suddenly softened, even carrying a trace of a smile he himself did not seem to notice.
"Come to think of it, lately I've been going out to that abandoned castle in the outskirts with Megumin every day so she can cast Explosion Magic. Sure, every time she's done, I have to carry that little brat back for miles while she's all limp like a mud puddle, but... I don't know. When I watch her seriously chanting those insanely embarrassing lines, then see that pure, satisfied smile on her face in the light of that massive explosion, I actually start to think that girl is... kind of cute, somehow."
At that point, Kazuma's old face turned red, and he quickly stuffed another piece of meat into his mouth to cover up the embarrassment.
"Of course, I just mean her dedication to her dream is cute! It's absolutely not that I have any improper thoughts about that washboard figure!"
Kōichi slowly turned his head, set down the skewer in his hand, and stared at Kazuma with a look of utter contempt and caution, like he was looking at some kind of wriggling pest.
That stare was so sharp it looked like it could carve the word lolicon right into Kazuma's forehead.
"Kazuma." Kōichi lowered his voice, and there was a chill to it like legal judgment being passed. "I knew you were a sadist, but I didn't think you were this far gone. No matter how you look at it, Megumin is still just an underdeveloped little girl, isn't she? That flat chest, those skinny limbs, that chuunibyou-ridden brain... and you're actually calling something like that cute? That's a dangerous emotion to be having."
Kōichi shifted backward, putting more distance between them as if Kazuma were carrying some kind of contagious disease called lolicon.
"Listen, Kazuma. Back where I come from, this kind of behavior gets you invited in for tea, then locked in a little dark room to reflect for three to five years. If what you really want is the warmth of a woman, then that useless Goddess over there washing socks may be an idiot, but at least she's got an adult body. Or there's Darkness, that masochistic Knight hiding behind the haystack peeking at us with a face full of anticipation about getting roughed up. But Megumin... Kazuma, you're dangerous. Your soul is starting to give off criminal vibes."
Kazuma was so battered by that nonstop barrage of mockery that he turned to stone on the spot. The skewer in his hand dropped to the ground with a smack.
Face flushed bright red, he shot to his feet and started wildly waving both hands at Kōichi.
"Hey! Kōichi! Cut it out already! I just said cute! Cute like the little girl next door, or a pet, that kind of cute! Who the hell would feel desire for a brat who doesn't even need a bra yet?! And what's with that look? Don't look at me like I'm some kind of psychotic serial killer! I, Satou Kazuma, am a man who firmly believes in gender equality. I haven't sunk so low that I'd make a move on some Crimson Demon brat!"
He was yelling loudly enough, but the guilty tone and darting eyes made it look exactly like a final desperate struggle.
Kōichi sighed, picked his skewer back up, and calmly drove in one last knife.
"Is that so? Then next time Megumin runs out of magic and collapses, I, a righteous wizard, will carry her back myself. Better that than let a dangerous lurker like you do something irreversible on the way."
"Like hell you will! That's my job! It's for building my stamina!"
Kazuma jumped up like a cat with its tail stepped on.