This is around Chapter 19.
The perspective is that of Katori.
This is the story of what the maid didn’t see.
“……hey, can we pretend we didn’t see this?”
“Well……we’re not using it anyway……”
“If we take it home, it would just trouble her, wouldn’t it, with this kind of thing……”
We quietly returned what we had found to its original place.
Yes, because, you know.
“This is like the ‘indescribable item’ from Dragon Quest, isn’t it? I bet it’s something like this!”
……Yes. “Naughty underwear,” right.
What’s in front of us definitely seems like it would be called that……
I could understand if the school split and the classrooms were scattered.
But why have the stairs turned into some kind of dungeon-like ruins?
As far as we are concerned, solving mysteries is moderately fun, and there are monsters, so it’s a bit sad that Maito-san has to stay behind, I think.
……So, we are in the middle of conquering these stair ruins.
“Ah, found another one! President, President, ‘appraise’ this!”
Hariu brought over a ring he had picked up.
“This is……ah, it’s a duplicate. ‘Maximum HP Increase’.”
And President’s “appraisal” revealed its performance.
We’ve been doing this kind of thing, oh, dozens of times now, haven’t we.
……Yes. These stair ruins, I said they were dungeon-like not just because of the puzzles and monsters but also because there are treasures lying around.
“Ah, I feel a treasure chest over there! I’ll go check it out!”
“Eh, how can you tell?”
Like before, rings and such might just be lying on the floor, and sometimes they are carefully stored in treasure chests.
Anyway, we have to take good care of the equipment we find, so we’ve decided to take everything we find back with us.
Armor and such can’t exactly be tried on here. Weapons, even more so.
It’s better to think carefully about what suits us and decide on equipment distribution after we’ve picked up and collected and taken them back, we concluded.
“Found it! The contents of the treasure chest were a sword!”
“For now, if we find a room that can be developed into a bathroom, let’s dump them there!”
“Is it okay to store rings and swords in a toilet, I mean, it can’t be helped…… yeah……”
How to take back armor and greatswords, you ask? We use the storage function of the classroom.
The classroom unfolds when a gem is thrown. If you take out the stone of the classroom from the unfolded classroom, the classroom turns back into a gem.
And when the classroom turns back into a gem, the contents of the classroom are maintained as they were. In short, it can be treated like an item inventory.
However, in a place like these stair ruins, there aren’t many places where a large classroom can be unfolded…… When you think about the options available to us, there’s only one choice…… Well, that’s the bathroom.
Yeah. It can’t be helped. It can’t be helped, right? Because isn’t the bathroom a convenient size……?
A little further, there was a somewhat open area, so we unfolded the bathroom there, and started packing things we had found inside.
“Well, it’s not unsanitary. Maito-san thoroughly cleans it.”
But even if it’s a toilet, it’s one that Maito-san has thoroughly dusted, so it doesn’t feel dirty.
Since the water doesn’t flow, it practically loses its function as a toilet, and well, you could think of it as an item inventory with an unnecessary thing (toilet bowl) just sitting there. It’s not unthinkable. It’s conceivable. It works, it works.
Since deciding to use it as an item inventory, we’ve laid down a cloth on the back floor of the toilet and managed it reasonably well. Yes. We are concerned where it counts, and since we can’t think of a better solution, it can’t be helped.
“Given this usage, it seems best to continue asking Maito-san to regularly clean the toilet.”
“……Hey, isn’t it weird that she cleans the men’s toilet?”
“It’s quite logical.”
“Ah, I see.”
……Well, it’s regrettable to keep asking Maito-san for various things. I think it’s a losing battle to think about it too much. There are many things that just can’t be helped.
……And so we continued to conquer the stair ruins.
“I hate! The 16-tile puzzles! In mystery RPGs! To death!”
“Kariya, calm down.”
For some reason, we dealt with a “puzzle where you have to light up all the panels” installed on a door.
“I like this kind of stuff! But I’m bad at it!”
“Good for you.”
We advanced through a 3D maze where the paths and stairs change with switches.
We also tackled giant puzzles, searched for ways to stop a falling ceiling in a room, looked for ways to stop the water flooding into a room endlessly, and nearly died from falling through a collapsing floor……
……Well, we faced various dangers, but we quite like this kind of stuff.
“Ah. Katori, I’m counting on you here.”
“Hm? ……Ah, got it, got it. Leave it to me.”
And now, in front of us is something like a mysterious game board. If we win this game, the door’s lock will open, I guess.
On the game board, there’s a model of the land, and on it, models of soldiers…… The player commands these soldiers to move and conquer the enemy’s territory, it seems.
Yes. Probably among us, President and I are the ones who like strategy games. So, it’s my turn now.
“By the way, if we lose, poison will be sprayed in this room, so please do your best.”
“Hm? President, does that mean you’re telling me to lose? Hm? Hm?”
“Well, I don’t mind either way.”
……Yes. I just have to try my best to win.
Yes, we won.
“That was fast.”
“As expected.”
“……RTA……”
The magic-infused games of another world are quite fun. Yes. It was interesting enough that I’d want to take it home and play.
If the poison wasn’t going to be sprayed even if we lost, I would have liked to try a challenge play, reducing the troops to the limit and then reversing the situation.
“I was fairly cautious. There’s no reloading. And if we lost, there’d be poison.”
“With that speed, huh?”
Kariya is skilled at recovery. Truly impressive.
“I don’t really like reloading all the time when I play strategy games, either. Maybe I’m just used to it.”
While responding, I checked around the game board to see if we could detach it and take it with us, but unfortunately, it’s completely fixed to the floor of the ruins, so it seems difficult to bring back. Disappointing.
“……oh.”
However, while I couldn’t find a way to take the game board with us, I did find something else a little different.
“Hey, there’s a treasure chest!”
When I removed a hidden cover beneath the game board, a treasure chest appeared. It’s not very large, so maybe it’s not a sword or armor.
“Shall we open it?”
Hariu quickly pried the lock and opened the box.
We all peered inside excitedly…
And that’s how we got to the beginning.
Yes. The item that came out of the treasure chest was “naughty underwear.”
“……Can we agree to pretend we didn’t see this and just leave it here? Okay?”
Eventually, Suzumoto said that, and everyone nodded. After all, it’s underwear, and it’s quite a design…
“Wait, please.”
Then President spoke up. Of course, when President says wait, everyone waits.
“Let’s take it back with us.”
Even if he says that, I don’t want to bring something like this back.
“……Why?”
“Maito-san might need it.”
Yeah. Typical of President.
“……Just to clarify. President, do you really think Maito would wear this?”
“I believe she would.”
Uh, umm? Even for President, that seems a bit much?
“Everyone. Even now, we are struggling with our underwear situation, right?”
“We have fundoshi, don’t we?”
“That’s all we have.”
President dislikes fundoshi… Well, if I had to say whether I like them or not, honestly, I don’t really like them either.
“And Maito-san is in the same situation. Women need such things more than men, and I’ve actually heard Maito-san lamenting, ‘I miss bras with wires.'”
“Don’t listen to such complaints. And she shouldn’t be complaining like that either.”
It seems a bit too much to ask of Maito-san now, doesn’t it? Yeah.
“……So. We are undoubtedly in a shortage of supplies in this other world. Especially, there might be things Maito-san needs that we don’t understand. Therefore, regardless of the design, there is a reasonable possibility that Maito-san might decide to wear it.”
……Yeah.
There’s no room for argument.
The shortage of supplies is undeniable, and after all, it’s definitely better to sort and dispose of it after bringing it back than just leaving it here.
But still… but still…
“……I know it’s selfish of me, but…”
Suzumoto started holding his head.
“I don’t want Maito to wear something like this.”
Yes.
“She’s eccentric but not a pervert. I don’t want her to become one. Please don’t let her become one.”
……Yes, I see. Well, I can somewhat understand the sentiment, I guess…?
“If she wears clothes over it, it wouldn’t change anything.”
“It’s Schrödinger’s underwear! She might be wearing it, or she might not be wearing it, and we won’t know until she takes off her clothes! That means the moment we bring this back, the possibilities of Maito-san wearing it and not wearing it overlap!”
It’s complicated, but I kind of get what Kariya is trying to say.
“……Isn’t it fine? I mean, if Maito needs it, I don’t think it’s our place to say anything…”
……And I really understand what Kadomi-kun is saying.
That’s right. Our resistance to such items, in the end, is just our own selfishness, surely.
The best thing would be to bring everything back and let Maito-san choose.
“……Actually, I’ve been thinking,”
Here, Hariu raised his hand.
“I wonder if girls would want to wear underwear brought back by guys, you know?”
……
“Hmm, I feel like Maito-san wouldn’t mind?”
“You don’t know that! Maybe Maito-san is actually a girl! That’s Schrödinger’s girl for you!”
“Hey, don’t you think you’re just throwing around Schrödinger for everything?”
……Ahhh, ahhh, the discussion is getting even more tangled!
In the end.
Our discussion ended with everyone running out of energy.
It’s kind of funny, but when you get tired and run out of energy, you start to feel like “whatever, I don’t care anymore.”
And when you’re tired, whether it’s underwear or outerwear, it all ends up being lumped together and brought back in a carelessly mixed way. It can’t be helped.
“This is fabric. Let’s bring it back.”
“Right. It’s fabric. Yeah, let’s bring it back.”
“That’s fabric too.”
“Ahaha, fabric, huh? Ahahaha.”
……Right.
The greatest trap in these stair ruins wasn’t the hanging ceilings, the guillotines, the puzzles, or even the 16-tile puzzles… it was women’s underwear.
Hahaha……
In the end, we unanimously agreed not to mention the underwear saga to Maito-san upon returning from the stair ruins, and after various events, we distributed the equipment…
“I’ve been thinking,”
Hariu said, gazing absentmindedly at his fundoshi.
“If we’re going to fuss about the underwear issue, shouldn’t we be concerned too?”
……Hmm?
“Because, Maito-san not only sees these but touches and even makes them.”
“Stop it. Stop saying that. It starts to bother you, doesn’t it? Just when we had managed not to worry about it, now it’s going to start bothering us!”
“Let’s call these Schrödinger’s fundoshi!”
“Um, since it’s something we were trying to forget and you’ve just reminded us, isn’t it more like Pandora’s fundoshi?”
“I don’t feel like there’s any hope left.”
……I think, you know. Maybe Maito-san doesn’t fret over things the way we do.
She’s as rational as President, if not more so. And also, she’s a bit too unbothered by us in various ways.
Which means, this conversation would probably just end up hurting us if we mentioned it to Maito-san…
“……Let’s just agree not to bring up this topic in front of Maito. It could open a can of worms.”
“Agreed.”
Yes. Well, let’s keep Maito-san unaware of this from now on. Yes.