Megumin got the distinct feeling that the magic hat on her head had just turned green — the color of a person who'd been cheated on.
Why hadn't her mother bothered locking her and Jhin in a room together these past two days?
Why had she gone out of her way to bring up Yunyun coming home?
Because the other party at this matchmaking meeting was her boyfriend — Jhin!
Even Jhin couldn't keep pace with the wild turn this had taken. His brows pinched together and he asked in a puzzled tone, "Sorry, is this a joke? This is the first time we've met, isn't it?"
If this hadn't been Another World, he'd have assumed he'd walked straight into a honey-trap shakedown.
Yunyun's eyes misted over. "P-please believe me. If I don't marry you and have your children, this world... this world will be destroyed!" she said weakly.
"Um... how about we sit down and take this slowly?"
"Mm."
Megumin held off from erupting, partly because Jhin hadn't shown the faintest sign of being seduced by Yunyun's figure, and partly because she wanted to know what on earth was going on. Radiating a low-pressure front from head to toe, she sat down behind him.
Only then did Yunyun notice that Megumin was there too, which settled her nerves a little. She smiled at her. "Thank you for bringing Mr. Jhin here."
"????"
Megumin felt like an absolute clown. On the surface she'd dragged her boyfriend along to watch someone else's circus; in reality her mother had tricked her into escorting her own boyfriend to a matchmaking meeting with another woman.
Jhin grabbed her small hand under the table before she could jab a finger at the girl and shout, "You b*tch, coming here to poach my man?!"
Going purely by appearances, a meek girl with an enormous chest beat a chuunibyou flat-board mage like Megumin into the ground — but he knew exactly how delicious his own "good bro" was, especially that two-tone ice cream, one black and one white.
The white one was plain, rich cheese, sweet with a faintly salty aftertaste. The first bite gave a little, soft at first, yet springy and full of chew; press your teeth down even slightly harder and it would leave marks.
The black one was chocolate, a shade more tart and bitter than the plain flavor, and impossibly silky, like a tongue gliding across a polished mirror. The base and the soft front end weren't quite alike, though the overall taste hardly differed.
Hsss~ The joys therein are not to be spoken of to outsiders.
Me, Jhin: hardline, iron-blooded member of the "good bro" camp.
"Miss Yunyun, what you're telling me is honestly very hard to believe. Can you produce any proof?"
"Th-this was written for me by someone in the clan who specializes in Prophecy Magic." Yunyun sniffled, took a letter out of her pocket and laid it on the wooden table. "Please, read it."
Prophecy Magic brought back what had happened when he went to the Red Dragon Volcano looking for Letishi. It had mentioned a prophecy too, and that prophecy had already come true: through a chain of events he still couldn't say were coincidence or fate, he had killed it as the Dragonslayer.
So his face turned serious, and he opened the letter and read it through carefully, Megumin craning her neck to follow along.
The gist of it was that an ultimate Demon King, hidden somewhere on the continent, was quietly amassing its power. The Crimson Demon Clan, sitting in the top tier of the continent's fighting strength, was destined to face that undefeatable, terrifying opponent someday — yet the clansmen they had now could never handle the Demon King's abilities, which defied all reason.
Only if the Village Chief's daughter married a black-haired, blue-eyed person from Another World and bore a child with mismatched red and blue eyes, something unheard of among the Crimson Demon Clan, could the Demon King be defeated and the world saved.
Parts of this prophecy did line up with the intel Jhin already had. That Demon King meant What Heads Toward Death, and once it completed its total assimilation with this world's native life, the world itself really would be forcibly reset. Calling that destruction wasn't a stretch.
Whoever had cast that Prophecy Magic genuinely had talent — they'd even known he came from Another World.
"I refuse to accept this!" Now that she had the whole story straight, Megumin slammed the table in protest. There was no way she was going to sit there and watch someone make off with her boyfriend on the strength of one deranged prophecy.
The sheer gall of it!
"Megumin! This is a matter of whether the world survives! Why would you object?!" Yunyun still had no idea what Jhin was to her; she'd only been told that her rival would be bringing the person from Another World to meet her.
She fixed Megumin with a solemn stare, her eyes deadly earnest. She was painfully shy — she'd even considered running away from her hometown more than once — but the moment she thought of her family, and of her rival, she knew she could never let this world be destroyed.
This was Yunyun's resolve as the Village Chief's daughter: I will marry this person from Another World and bear his children, defeat the Demon King, and save the world!
Megumin couldn't have cared less about any of that. She seized Jhin by the collar like a lioness declaring ownership in front of the pride and snarled, "You listen to me, and listen well!"
"This one before you — black of hair and blue of eye, wicked one moment and gentle the next, whose cooking is beyond delicious, who can unleash Explosion magic at my side, who has sealed with me the pact of eternal descent into darkness, who shines before the crimson divine thunder — he is the most, most, most, most, MOST beloved of I, the Jet-Black Explosion Mage!"
"You want to steal my man? Not a chance in this world!!!"
After one contemptuous snort through her nose, Megumin — with Yunyun staring on, frozen stiff as a wooden chicken — kissed Jhin in front of an outsider for the first time. The ferocity in her gaze dissolved the instant it touched those sky-blue irises, leaving nothing but focus and devotion.
How about that? That was the once-in-a-lifetime confession of I, the Jet-Black Explosion Mage!
Full marks, obviously.
Their eyes locked, and then they pulled each other close and kissed, lost to everything else — which left Yunyun, an innocent girl who had never witnessed anything on this scale, blushing so hard that steam rose off the top of her head and she nearly fainted.
So this is what a k... kiss between lovers is like?
Wh-what an incredible sound!
As expected of my rival — I absolutely cannot lose to her in feelings!
The glow unique to the Crimson Demon Clan flared to life in Yunyun's eyes, and she declared firmly, "Even so, I am still going to marry Mr. Jhin and have his children. To save the world, to save the Crimson Demon Clan, I will not back down — that is what it means to be the Village Chief's daughter!"
Her declaration broke the kiss apart. Megumin was so furious she laughed. "So what you're saying is, you've decided to fight me for my man?"
"That's right! As your rival, s-stealing your man and so on falls within the scope of our competition, doesn't it?" Yunyun snuck a bashful glance at Jhin, and her attitude turned thoroughly self-righteous.
He very much wanted to say "You're both my wings" right about then, but he had a feeling the aftermath would be brutal, so he kept his mouth shut.
Just as the sparks were crackling between their locked stares and the standoff hit its peak, Jhin caught sight of a small folded-over corner on the letter with what looked like a line of tiny writing tucked inside. He flipped the corner open and read it out loud.
"Dream journal. Remember to leave a rating when you're done."
Yunyun collapsed in on herself. Eyes brimming, she looked at him pitifully. "P-please... don't tell me that's real."
____
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🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: The Retired Void Hunter — posted on The_Mikudayo