The Witch and Her Companion: I'm Just a Normal High School Student, but I Became the Familiar of the Highest-Ranked Witch. Also, It Seems I'm the Only Guy in the Witch Organization I Joined - Chapter 73: A Date with Bubblegum - Part 2

Chapter 73: A Date with Bubblegum – Part 2

[Tatsumori Haruto]

The room had no unnecessary furniture or decorations, yet it didn’t feel barren.

Rather, it had a refined elegance—almost like a high-end hotel.

In short, it was the complete opposite of its owner.

“Muhaa~! You’ve been staring at my room for a while now. What’s up?”

“Ah, I just thought… it’s surprisingly clean.”

“Muhaha~! That’s because I’m a clean freak! Now, lower your head!”

I obediently bowed my head as Bubblegum instructed, feeling the warm air untangle my damp hair.

It was post-bath dryer time.

“Come to think of it, Ys also gives off a neat and tidy impression. I suppose you really shouldn’t judge people by their appearance.”

“Muhaa~! Ys just can’t stand it when her territory is messy. But if she visits someone else’s room, she’ll turn it upside down before she leaves! Same goes for me, though!”

“You never fail to disappoint—in the worst way possible.”

“Muhaa~! Who are you talking about?”

“…Both of you.”

Bubblegum never really reacted to mild sarcasm.

Whether she was oblivious or simply didn’t care—I suspected it was the former.

“Muhaa~! Drying complete! You’re all fresh and clean, Tattsun!”

“Thank you very much.”

A bath, a change of clothes, and even a personal hair-drying session… it was an absurdly luxurious experience.

Like having a personal maid—except in reality, the roles were reversed.

Bubblegum was the master here, and I was nothing more than a pet.

A rather humiliating dynamic.

“Muhaa~! Tattsun, let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

“Weren’t we going to watch a movie?”

“After we talk.”

Absolutely nothing had gone according to plan today, but if I played along, I might get the chance to ask Bubblegum what I wanted to know as well.

“Alright. So, what do you want to talk about?”

“Muhaa~! I wanna hear all about your master~! Oh, and not me—I mean Blondie.”

…I figured.

Still, that just happened to be the exact topic I wanted to bring up myself.

“You mean Fuu? Like I said before, I barely know anything about her.”

“Muhaa~! That’s fine, just tell me whatever you do know!”

I had no idea why Bubblegum suddenly wanted to know about Fuu.

If this were an interrogation, she’d have brought Brush along.

And it had absolutely nothing to do with this so-called date.

Yet her voice was more serious than ever.

Could it be that this whole date was just a pretext to get me to talk about Fuu…?

No—surely, I was overthinking it.

“…Alright. Where do you want me to start?”

Regardless of her motives, I only had three choices: tell the truth, lie, or refuse to answer.

If I wanted to get something out of her later, honesty was my best bet.

“Muhaa~! Start with how you first met Blondie!”

“It was about a month ago. On my way home from work, I saw a girl being harassed by some thugs. I stepped in to help her—that girl was Fuu.”

“Thugs? Why didn’t Blondie handle them herself?”

“Because back then, she was practically a newborn. She could barely speak. But within a few days, she picked up language surprisingly fast and started functioning normally.”

“Mufu~! Once she could talk, did she ever say anything about herself?”

“No. She seemed to have lost her memories… She didn’t understand anything about herself.”

I had pressed her on the subject multiple times, but learned almost nothing.

“Muhaa… Memory loss, huh? So, is it safe to say that once Blondie got her memories back, she stabbed you and ran off?”

“I don’t know for sure… but it’s a very real possibility.”

“…What makes you think that?”

“When she stabbed me… she called herself Kuzuhara Mai. She also seemed to know something about the Inquisitors. She mentioned the island’s security, something about a bishop, and… she said someone who was supposed to be dead wasn’t.”

As I recounted it, I realized Bubblegum’s theory made more sense than I wanted to admit.

Fuu was likely connected to the Witch Hunts all along.

The only reason she stayed with me was because she had no memories.

And when they returned… I was just an obstacle she needed to eliminate.

“Muha—wait. Kuzuhara Mai?!”

Suddenly, Bubblegum grabbed my shoulders, pressing in closer.

“H-Hey, what’s with you all of a sudden?”

“Did she say anything else?! Anything at all?!”

“Uh… like I said, she was talking to the Inquisitors. Something about the island’s security, a bishop, and someone who was supposed to be dead… I’m sorry, my memory was fuzzy from blood loss, so I only caught fragments.”

The moment I mentioned Kuzuhara Mai, Bubblegum’s expression completely changed.

Her sudden intensity caught me off guard, and I ended up blurting out even the uncertain details.

“Muhaa, an island… Harami jima, huh. I see, so that blondie was the one?”

Bubblegum, seeming to have made some sort of connection, nodded to herself in satisfaction. Meanwhile, I was still completely in the dark.

“Muhaa, sorry ’bout kidnapping ya, Tattsun, but turns out it was the right call! Talk about an unexpected jackpot!”

“What? Bubblegum, do you know something? If you do, please tell me!”

“Muhaa, sure! Consider it an apology for snatching ya. But, y’know, there’s something we gotta do first, right?”

She grabbed my face with both hands, peering into my eyes. Her crimson irises gleamed seductively against her pale skin.

“…B-Bubblegum?”

There was no rhyme or reason to any of this, but knowing her, she wouldn’t care in the slightest.

A boy and a girl, alone in a room during a date… The scent of her shampoo lingering in the air as we gaze into each other’s eyes…

This… this has to be the moment where we—

“Muhaa, let’s watch a movie.”

“…Huh?”

After some back and forth, we settled on watching a movie while she shared what she knew.

But in reality, the movie was nothing more than background noise, playing like some decorative BGM in the plain-looking room.

“Muhaa, it was about a month ago—I got my hands on some info.”

“Info?”

“Yup, solid intel from an informant.”

At the moment, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding Bubblegum in my lap as we faced the screen.

She sat snugly between my legs, and just like with Scarlet’s safety bar the other day, my arms were wrapped around her waist.

Of course, this was entirely at Bubblegum’s request, and though we were both facing the monitor, I couldn’t focus on the movie at all.

“Muhaa, to put it simply, that info was the location of a witch hunt research facility. And y’know, being a witch of Ravens, I had no choice but to wipe it out.”

“A research facility…?”

“Yup. It was on a small island floating in the Sea of Japan. Officially, it was supposed to be some kind of private rocket development site or whatever. The island’s called Harami jima—’cause it looks like a pregnant woman lying down.”

She spoke casually, eyes fixed on the movie.

That name—Harami jima—stuck in my mind. To think it was actually a witch hunt facility…

“Muhaa, but, when I got there, the whole island was already burned to the ground.”

“…What?”

“Someone must’ve had a shootout before I arrived. I searched the whole place, but all I found was rubble and ash—no witch hunters in sight.”

A facility that had been attacked by an unknown force.

If Bubblegum had no idea who did it, that meant it wasn’t the work of the witches of Raven.

This was getting interesting, but I still couldn’t see how it all connected to Fuu.

“Muhaa… but then, by chance, I found a card washed up on the shore. It looked like an ID badge—probably one of the facility’s personnel. Had a name and a photo on it.”

“No way…”

An identification card, left behind on a witch-hunting island.

A single name immediately flashed through my mind.

“Muhaa, yeah, it’s exactly who you’re thinking of, Tattsun—Kuzuhara Mai. The card had that name written on it.”