Burned Offerings

Maan, the royal quest is wrapped up, Alto got her gun cartridges, and all that.

Tria-chan and Miitei-chan are getting steadily stronger too.

I'm totally hooked on this game, I thought to myself — and yet here I am, today same as ever, at work. Yep.

"Work just started and I already can't stand it, I just wanna go home and play the game."

That's pretty much what work is, yo. I don't much wanna work either, yo.

"Maybe if I sold meat and earned a living like Penpen, I wouldn't have to work anymore."

Labor is a duty, yo.

"Paaainful."

Yo-ho-ho, you're welcome to file a transfer to sales, yo?

"Sorry, my bad."

If I ever became a salesman, I'm confident I'd die on day one.

Working behind the scenes suits me better, see…

Anyway, this crap-tier reality doesn't matter, yo.

"During work hours I do still have to work, though?"

Flip it around, yo? The time we're logged into the game is actually longer. Which means the game is the real reality, yo!!

"I wish work hours could get time-compressed…"

Huh? You wanna do the same workload in less time? A double-speed RTA, yo?

"That sounds way too awful."

The game world is just too comfortable, the food's just too delicious — it really is a dream world.

Ah, crap. …Coworker, riddle for you, yo. Big fire up top, big fire down below. What am I!

"…Just a regular conflagration?"

Bzzt, the answer is me, right now, yo! Heeelp!! It's a real fire scene over here!?

Hey, this is no time to be tossing out riddles over chat, send a rescue call!! A rescue call!!

 

＊　＊　＊

 

After that, Coworker was rescued without incident.

Maan, the sprinkler wouldn't go off, I panicked, yo.

"Salesmen put their lives on the line way too much."

If Kurihama-san — er, the person behind Mahariku-san — hadn't come to help, it would've been bad, yo. Maan, when I suddenly started hearing things, I really wondered how it'd turn out, yo.

"Hearing things? That doesn't sound good. Did you tell the medical staff?"

Well, given the nature of the content, I couldn't say it, yo.

"No no, you've gotta tell them, that's a problem."

It's something concerning your body, so if you don't report it, who knows what could happen.

If anything, you might even be able to wring some paid leave out of it.

But the content was, "Will you offer everything to the spirit?", yo?

"Ahh. That's no question, you've definitely been playing too much. Take care of yourself."

I figured no way, seriously. Even I'll admit it was an awful hallucination, yo.

And if that did end up earning him time off, the game that caused it would, naturally, get slapped with a play ban.

Can't say it. Absolutely can't say it.

I mean, compared to those girls, getting offered up just because I got a little wrapped in flames? No way, yo?

"You're tough as nails."

And look, I got rescued just fine like this, so my judgment was correct, yo! Which means the game is harmless! So today, soon as I get home, I'm logging IN, yo!

So despite hearing an auditory hallucination during his own pinch, he had no intention of taking a break from the game.

He'd just been through something like being burned at the stake, so I couldn't help thinking he ought to rest at least for today… but then again, maybe the opposite was true — maybe he wanted the reassurance of his everyday routine precisely because of it.

The medical check came back with no problems too, so I'm coming in to work as usual tomorrow, yo.

"Making you come in to work as normal the next day after something like this — our company is seriously a black workplace."

These days everywhere's like that, yo? We get to clock out a little after the regular hour, so as far as black goes, ours is the more white-ish kind, yo. If anything, there are cases where working without taking a clumsy day off keeps you from getting PTSD, yo. I read it once in a manga about astronauts, yo.

"I see."

Well, "the next day" in the real world means two or three days of vacation in the game world, though.

Ah, but. The merch I'd left on my seat got burned, that really gets me down, yo.

"So your moe went up in flames, huh."

Ugugugu. My precious figure…!

"Guess you've got no choice but to buy it again."

Even with money, it's hard to get hold of, yo! What era do you think the work it's from dates back to!? All I can do now is dote on Alto-chan to my heart's content, yo…!

A work that old — yeah, no doubt it's precious and hard to come by.

Old otaku merch that's out of production never gets let go by collectors, and unless a collector dies and the bereaved family sells off the belongings, that kind of thing doesn't hit the market at all.

A reprint… yeah, that'd be hopeless too.

So, soon as I get home today, I'm logging in as Nika-chan and licking Alto-chan all over, yo.

"Here's the ethics filter, please."

Gweh. …Couldn't I at least suck on her fingers, yo?

"Who knows. Maybe it'll work? Why not give it a shot?"

The ethics filter's lax for medical procedures, so if I get her to put potion on her fingers, there's a chance, yo!

Coworker had been through a rough time, but the day's work ended like this — with us deliberately goofing around, keeping things bright and chatty.

Aaalright, let's set the painful reality aside and go have fun in the game. Today, same as ever.