Nijitana
Arc 6 — The Old Guy and the High School Girl Chapter 82

Omake 1 — Monologue of a Certain Underling

オマケ その1 とある下っ端の独白

Side: Nakajima Atomu (Atomu-kun)

My boss is legitimately incredible.

First off: he’s absurdly strong… strong to the point where you just back away slowly.

Kaiser Dragons? One hit. Yes — ONE hit.

One strike.

One punch.

Legitimately unreal.

Also: he’s popular. POPULAR popular.

Completely average-looking, and yet popular to a degree that defies measurement.

It is not an exaggeration to say that any encounter with a beautiful woman has a 100% conversion rate into a new housemate.

Day one of meeting them: “I don’t hate this at all.”

THAT popular.

Legitimately insane.

Yeah. You heard me.

The man is a walking harem factory.

And the WOMEN he’s pulling are just as unreal:

The queen of the palm-top rabbits.

Succubus nobility.

A money-obsessed fox girl.

A Sage-aptitude high school girl.

A dwarf child who can get bigger and smaller at will.

Nothing about this makes sense.

A little girl who can get BIGGER and SMALLER at will? Genuinely, what?

Truly, a divine dodge of criticism from Scary People.

The boss said it himself in the comic version: do the “I don’t hate this at all” while she’s SMALL, and “the editor-in-chief gets angry.”

But keep her big permanently, and the people who prefer her small are let down.

Hence: bigger and smaller. At will.

That’s right.

This is the legendary leave-it-to-the-reader’s-imagination divine play.

Anyway. Legitimately unreal.

His FRIENDS are also unreal.

A literal Demon Lord. A curry-loving Demon Lord.

Who is also a loli-baba.

None of it parses. The Curry Demon Lord. GENUINELY none of it parses.

And my boss is officially recognized as her EQUAL.

Yes — full peer status with the loli-baba Curry Demon Lord.

Word is, boss reached Demon-Lord-equal status within his first MONTH in this world.

—One month. He took the world’s summit in under ONE MONTH.

Because — Demon Lord. Equal. You understand.

Like — you’d back away from that, right?

Too incredible NOT to back away from, right?

It’s so unreal I get chills.

But you know what the MOST incredible thing about the boss is…? One time I botched the seasoning ratios on dinner—

“Atomu-kun. This is a bit heavy on the salt.”

“Sorry, boss…”

“Eh, everyone fumbles sometimes. Don’t sweat it.”

“Wait — you’re going to EAT it? You don’t have to eat the bad batch, boss!”

“It’s edible-tier bad, so it’s fine. Besides—”

“Besides?”

“You made it with your whole heart, didn’t you? And the mottainai ghost scares me.”

At “mottainai ghost,” Mayu and I burst out laughing — “GOD I miss Japan” — and then the boss laughed, and then everyone was laughing.

—And that’s the thing.

The boss is a GOOD person.

Like… just a plain, honest, good person.

This world, underneath everything, is a pretty vicious dark fantasy — nearly every transferee gets chewed up by it.

Miyamoto did. Mayu did. I did.

In a world this merciless, falling into darkness is the DEFAULT path…

But here — Mayu and I laugh without even trying.

And the reason is simple: with the boss at its center… there’s a gentle world spreading outward from this place.

—And THAT’s why I love the boss.

Following him for life.

That’s the vow I made in my heart.