What was that, Keel?! I knew it . . . This kid was slow in the head. Sadeena was just making brazen sexual advances at me because she knew I hated that kind of thing! You could tell by the way that she was acting that she was just trying to mess with me. This was the same woman that put my hand on her chest and said, “boobies!” Taking her seriously would only wear you out. Raphtalia was the really serious type, and she tended to especially dislike that kind of talk.

“Right? Okay then, little Keel, how about you and I go after little Naofumi together? I’m going to make little Naofumi my hubby!”

“Like hell you will, you spaz!”

Raphtalia’s face was growing paler by the moment. She looked my way.

“Mr. Naofumi . . . Did you and Sadeena happen to . . . have a drinking contest?”

“Drinking contest? The first time we met, she had been drinking like a fish and she still made me drink with her. We drank the next time we met, too, but she never drank enough to get drunk.”

“Oh, come on, you. For all intents and purposes, you stood up to me and you won!”

Raphtalia threw her head backward and covered her face with her hands, as if she had been completely horrified. What was going on?

“Mr. Naofumi . . . For as long as I can remember, there was always something that Sadeena used to tell the villagers.”

“Huh?”

Keel was nodding knowingly. What the hell?

“She would say, ‘My lifelong partner will be someone that can hold their liquor better than me! If I ever find someone like that, there’s no way I’m going to let him get away. You’ve all been warned!’”

“No one else in the village could drink like Sadeena! There was even a rumor that she won a territory drinking contest and then went drinking after!”

“Oh really . . .”

“The fact that Sadeena says you’re going to be her future husband means that you must have beat her in a drinking contest, bubba. That’s what all the villagers will think!”

“Huh?”

Now that I thought about it, Sadeena had given me a drink with a rucolu fruit in it. I had a feeling she’d started acting even friendlier with me after that. Huh? So that was why she wanted me to be her husband? I figured she was just messing with me, but . . .

I looked over at Sadeena. The woman switched back to her human form and started drawing on my arm with one hand, while holding her other hand to her cheek and blushing. It made me think . . . If this had been before Bitch tricked me, I’d probably be thinking “score!” thrilled that I was finally getting some attention from the opposite sex.

“Hey bubba, how did you manage to beat Sadeena, anyways?”

“I don’t know if I beat her, but she started getting real friendly after I ate a rucolu fruit.”