The Pain of an Inferior: A Blistering Love Comedy That Begins After a Broken Heart - Chapter 38

A few minutes after leaving the mall, Haruka’s car was driving on a paved road.

The speed was over a hundred kilometers per hour. The curves of the road were designed to be gentle, and the road was designed to be driven at high speed.

Shinku was pale, even though she did not feel carsick, and she was repeatedly screaming at him to slow down.

Ria, Haruka, and Yunika smiled at her, which was somewhat funny.

“I saw a cute side of Claudia-san today.”

“Really now, I’m surprised. A fighter plane is okay, but a car driven by a man is not okay even at a hundred kilometers?”

“If Obi-san suddenly turned the steering wheel to the side, we’d all be dead! How can Yunika and Ise-san be okay!”

“..I’m not going to suddenly cut the steering wheel to the side.”

Haruka smiles bitterly and calms down Shinku. Haruka still wants to live. There was no way he would do such a thing.

“You guys can lie down on the chair. It will take a little longer. Let me know if you need to go to the bathroom.”

“Okay, I’m going to sleep. Shinku, you go to bed and calm yourself down.”

“I’m calm!”

Shinku and Yunika leaned back in their chairs and got into a comfortable position. They chat with each other, each of them indulging with their Talismans.

“You can sleep, too, Ria.”

“Yes, thank you. I’m not sleepy right now, I’m fine just looking at the scenery.”

She smiles at Haruka once and turns to look out the window again. With a small smile, Haruka concentrated on driving.

The navigator in front of Haruka tells him to exit the highway after 2,000 meters.

Haruka obeyed and moved to the exit lane on the left.

Decelerating, he exits the highway.

He passes through an interchange and arrives at the desired area.

Huge mountains existed below them, and the city stood in terraced rows in the middle of the mountains. The mountains extend to the end of the horizon, and the collapsed city extends as far as one can see.

“It’s spectacular, isn’t it?”

“I know right?”

Ria marveled.

It was such a wonderful view that she felt it was worth the long trip.

“Did a person build all this?”

“It was designed by a man, but it was built by the King.”

Haruka answers Yunika’s simple question.

If the King was pleased with the field designer’s design, he will realize it using a Sorcery that transcended human knowledge. There were many applicants for the Field Designer position, whereas land is limited, so it seems the competition was pretty fierce.

After driving for a while, a drop of water hits the windshield of the car.

The sound echoes through the car.

“Rain?”

“Yes, It’s been raining all day around here.”

As they moved deeper into the area, the rain became heavier and heavier.

The terraced fields that had been carved out of the forest have been cruelly submerged and turned into a chorus of frogs.

Most of the ruins of the city were buried under the rain, and a sense of desolation pervaded the air.

The sound of rain hitting the tin roofs of the buildings lining the street echoed through the car.

Haruka never seen such a downpour before.

“Hey. I’ve seen it happen all the time in VR.”

“Kanto doesn’t get a lot of rain. I love rain with the force of a typhoon.”

It doesn’t rain much in the Kanto area where Haruka and the others live, and it never snows. The fact that the area lacks a bit of charm is a frustration for Haruka.

“If you like typhoons, why don’t you live in 2025 City?”

“That’s a good idea. Ria, do you want to live with us?”

He asks Ria casually, yet jokingly.

“That’s a good idea.”

Ria, imagining such a future, replies with a slight blush on her face.

Yunika feels a haze in her heart at their exchange. Clutching her chest, Yunika realizes that something is wrong with her heart.

?Something is wrong.)

When talking with Ria, Haruka has a special air about him. It feels somehow special, and it smothers Yunika’s heart helplessly.

Since the forest school, Yunika has spent more and more time thinking about Haruka.

When she first saw Haruka in class, she thought that he was a delinquent whom she would never get involved with in her life.

After meeting him inside the horror game, she became a little conscious of him as a man with a strange behavior.

When she had started chatting with him at school, she discovered that Haruka was surprisingly easy to talk to. She found it enjoyable to talk to someone who has different values from hers.

And when Yunika saw Haruka protecting Ria at the forest school, she ended up being captivated by him.

Since then, all she had been thinking about was Haruka, as if she had been trapped in a swamp.

There was no turning back now.

“Obi, are we at our destination yet?”

Yunika asked something that she didn’t really care about, just to break the atmosphere between the two.

“About five more minutes. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bore you in the car for too long on your day off.”

“No, that’s okay. It’s fresh and fun, just like you said.”

That’s the honest truth. It was indeed a fresh and enjoyable world with endless scenes that made her feel as if she had entered a virtual world.

A car drove through the heavy rain.

The rain was so heavy that the windshield wipers could not keep up with the constant pounding, and even Haruka kept his speed down to around 40 km/h.

As they drove on, the navigation system played an inorganic voice.

[You have arrived at your destination.]

Shinku slowly sat up and checked around the surroundings.

There was a huge ruin standing on the slope of a mountain. From its appearance, she could guess that it was a hospital. The exterior of the hospital is in such a state of disrepair that it makes her wonder if the inside is really safe in this rain.

Haruka drove to a covered parking lot and parked the car there.

As Haruka undid his seatbelt, he turned his face half toward the two people sitting in the back seat.

“We’ve arrived.”

“Good grief, my body has stiffen.”

“It been only an hour, but it felt like two hours had already passed.”

Haruka opened the door and got out of the car.

The sound of rain was clearly audible. The air was heavy and warm. A soft breeze softly caressed his face from time to time. The sky was a murky leaden color, with occasional flashes of lightning in the distance.

The sound of croaking frogs echoed uninterruptedly from the nearby mountains.

For a while, Haruka and the others took in the scene of the rain-soaked cityscape in the distance as if they had lost their words.

“Shall we go inside soon?”

Haruka suggested, coming back to his senses. The three of them silently followed Haruka’s lead.

“How can I say this, it’s kinda amazing…”

“…. Yes.”

The building was in ruins, but the interior was relatively intact.

“This building won’t collapse all of a sudden, will it?”

“It’s all right. Ruined areas are basically built with safety in mind.”

Except for some buildings that are off-limits, most of the buildings are safe to go inside.

The interior of the hospital was not exactly what one would expect to find in a hospital. There were no beds, no medicine, no medical equipment, and all that could be seen was shabby furniture.

The corridor itself was partitioned off, giving it the appearance of a living quarters.

“It doesn’t look like a hospital.”

Ria says, looking at the dirty sofas and thin futons in the corridor.

Haruka answered her question.

“Maybe it’s because the hospital is set up as a residential area.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Many field designers are rather detail-oriented.

I think it was set up so that some of the people who couldn’t live properly after the rain moved to the hospital to live.”

“I don’t think they would be able to make a decent living even if they moved here.”

Yunika makes a valid point. Just because the area is not submerged, it was still raining heavily, so there’s no way they could lead a decent life in  place like this.

“They must have abandoned this place at some point, or maybe they ended up dying here.”

“Obi-san, if I find any human bones, I’ll hit you!”

“It’s just a setting.”

The visitor’s area is above the fourth floor of the hospital, and Haruka leads everyone there.

The fourth floor has a slightly different atmosphere.

The floors and walls are still in disrepair, but the furniture in the corridor is spotless.

[Nyaa?]

The four of them react to the meow of a cat coming from the shadows of the furniture.

“This is a place where cats live.”

“What do they live on?”

Shinku crouches down and makes eye contact with the hunched cat.

“There are maintenance androids here too. I’m sure each and every one of the cats are well and properly cared for.”

Shinku picks up the slightly frightened cat and took it into her arms. The cat, as it bad being held, looked alternately at Shinku’s face and it’s surroundings.

“There seems to be a Japanese-style room ahead, so let’s take a rest there.”

Displaying the floor plan in the window, they head for the desired place.

Yunika walked alongside of Shinku, patting the head of the cat in her arms and breaking into a smile.

“Maybe, you chose this place because of the cats?”

Haruka nodded in reply to Ria’s question.

Ria had already heard that Shinku had took a liking to cats very much during the last fake date between Haruka and Shinku.

“Claudia-san, I heard that you like cats…” said Ria

“… I won’t deny it, but that doesn’t mean you should think of me as a lightweight woman who can be easily won over with cats!”

“Calm down. I just chose a place where everyone can relax.”

Shinku glared at Haruka to hide her embarrassment, and Haruka replied with a wry smile.

Touching the cat, Yunika’s smiling face turns serious as if she has lost her smile.

(-As I thought, I’m going crazy…)

She couldn’t stand at the fact that Haruka had chosen the place for the sake of making Shinku happpy.

A pain ran through her chest as if she had been stabbed by a small thorn.

Yunika was simply bewildered by the new sensation.

The feeling of love and bitterness coming at the same time, made her thoughts go haywire.

Haruka has a frank attitude toward everyone.

There seems to be no difference in the way he treated others. But only with Ria and Shinku, she felt that his attitude was a little different. She could tell that he was more open to them compared to when Haruka was talking to her.

(I’ve spent more time with him than with Shinku, though…)

Yunika stopped walking involuntarily.

Shinku looked at Yunika with a doubtful look on her face.

Yunika stared at the cat in Shinku’s arms, and then she peered into Shinku’s eyes.

“Yunika? Are you all right?”

“Yes. it’s nothing…”

Since that day when she first witnessed Haruka’s gallant figure, Yunika’s consciousness had turned upside down as if a switch had been flipped.

She wanted his protection and interest. Yet, all he was interested in was Ria and Shinku.

Jealousy and envy, both of which were new to her.

Therefore, she was unable to come to terms with them, and she was in pain.

?What makes me inferior to them?)

Yunika, feeling a bitter pain in her heart, stared at Haruka who was happily exchanging words with Ria.