Chapter 214: Yukari's Sore Spot
The Marvel world's nights were livelier than anything from Ryū's previous life, for reasons that weren't hard to understand. When your city had been levelled by various supervillains on a semi-regular basis, the residents adapted. The people passing you on the street were probably survivors of multiple near-apocalyptic events. The calibration of what counted as a dangerous night out had shifted accordingly.
Street-level heroes like Spider-Man also tended toward nocturnal activity, which had the secondary effect of driving ordinary small-time criminals indoors after dark. The truly dangerous elements — actual supervillains — didn't care whether you stayed home, so that calculus washed out. Net result: New York at 4 AM was notably functional.
Ryū had been to San Francisco's Chinatown once, around age seven or eight in his previous life — a family trip to visit relatives. The relative had been explicit: going out at night in America was asking to become someone's convenient target. After dark, the streets belonged to night-shift police, homeless people, drunks, and various categories of individuals whose business hours were unconventional. The comparison wasn't flattering to real-world America.
He wasn't paying the two probable S.H.I.E.L.D. agents further attention. They weren't doing anything. He'd be aware if that changed.
About half the mall's stores had already closed. The ones still open had staff who looked like they were calculating how many minutes remained until they could leave. It was approaching 4 AM. Nobody should have been awake.
His gaze drifted to a superhero figurine shop across the way — currently closed. The clientele for that kind of shop probably skewed toward people who didn't venture out late.
Do they pay licensing fees to the actual heroes for their likenesses?
Before the thought finished forming, his Observation Haki registered Yukari and the others making their way back toward him.
Yukari, Kaguya, Sakura, Eriri, Tatsumaki, Umaru. Plus himself — that was the full street-shopping party. Tohru had apparently stayed at the villa to watch Whitebeard and the others play chess.
Seven female members now. That crept up without me noticing.
He'd been waiting for thirty-plus minutes.
"Women taking three hours to buy clothes, and thirty minutes is apparently fast. I'll accept this."
"Ahh~ Admin, why the reluctance about girls' clothing? You're so good-looking — with a wig you'd absolutely be adorable. Some unsuspecting shut-in might mistake you for wife material~"
Yukari's speech had developed a very slight slur. Ryū was not going to believe she was actually drunk. One or two degrees of warmth in the cheeks, possibly. The rest was performance. Someone with the strategic depth Yukari operated at didn't lose control to alcohol.
He gave her a single flat look.
"Want me to wear something like that? The day you, a dog who's been single for a thousand years, actually finds someone and gets married — maybe I'll consider putting on cat ears to celebrate."
The faint flush on Yukari's cheeks went slightly more pronounced.
She cleared her throat with great dignity. "Ahaha! A young and beautiful woman such as myself — finding a partner and getting married would be trivially easy! How many men could possibly resist the great Yukari pursuing them?"
Kaguya, walking beside her, murmured thoughtfully: "Yukari-nee, your tone of voice just now had a distinct lack of confidence in it…"
"Nonsense! If I, Yakumo Yukari, decided I wanted to get married, what shut-in male would refuse?!"
"I don't think the question is whether they'd refuse. I think the question is — you don't dare find a boyfriend, do you? Are you possibly… shy?"
"…"
Ryū mentally awarded Kaguya twelve consecutive thumbs-up and kept his expression neutral.
Does Yukari's vocabulary even contain the word "shy"?
Under normal operating conditions, any shyness she exhibited would almost certainly be constructed. But then why had she been single this long? She was objectively attractive — there would have been people interested, across a lifespan spanning millennia. There had to be a reason none of it had gone anywhere.
Option one: she was a complete romantic blank, having never developed any functional understanding of that particular domain.
Option two: her orientation had a certain specificity to it.
Option three: she was a variety of youkai for whom the concept simply didn't apply in the usual biological sense.
The implications of option three were something he chose not to develop further.
Kaguya's offhand comment had, without much intent, found somewhere that genuinely didn't have a smooth comeback available. The great sage of Gensokyo was quiet for a moment longer than usual.
She pivoted smoothly. "Doesn't the Admin want to go buy his discs? I believe there's a shop still open. We should go now — it's already past 4 AM, and in two hours we can get breakfast."
Ryū decided not to press further. Pushing a cornered Yukari toward full defensive frenzy wasn't a good use of the next two hours, and the current power differential meant he was operating with limited escalation options. When the Points balance eventually allowed him to edge past her in actual combat capability — then the keyboard-dragging would commence.
That thought had a slightly unusual texture to it.
He chose not to examine that either.
He followed Yukari's redirect and they headed for the disc shop.
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