Book 2: Chapter 65: Patch 11.0: The Not-So-Delusional Princess

With everything and everybody loaded into the autocar, Ryouta, Serra, and Alice head back to his apartment. They have plans to go out and eat, but until they get all of this luggage dropped off, they can’t do much. There is also the fact that Ryouta doesn’t want to pay the outrageous price for renting an autocar for an extended period of time. They have a single hour to get back to his place, drop off her luggage, and then set the autocar to return to the airport before his wallet starts to really hurt.

“My hero, you need not look so worried. I have told you before that I can pay any expenses,” Alice says.

“Nope. I’m the boyfriend here, so I’ve got to pay for it. I have to try to at least,” Ryouta says. “My pride as a man is making me.”

“Do you plan on holding this against me to coerce sexual favors out of me? Are you only paying because you believe that I will owe you my body as a result? Such a cruel man! Your kindness only lasts for as long as my virginity does!”

“You’re something else, Alice, seriously.”

“I’m just another woman that you are keeping around for sexual favors is what I am!”

Ryouta sees Serra watching Alice’s face, and when she catches onto him, she looks at him and calls him a “horrible pervert” via signing.

“You of all people can’t call me that,” he tells her and then returns to looking forward. A human is required by law to sit in the “driver’s” seat of any automatic vehicle whenever human passengers are present. He isn’t sure why they can drive on their own without a human behind the wheel when there are no passengers, but for as long as there is at least one human in the vehicle, a human needs to be behind the wheel. The wheel won’t even work unless the autocar faces a serious malfunction at which point the human’s only purpose is to steer the vehicle off to the side of the road.

Of course, right now, Ryouta’s biggest issue with automatic vehicles is how overpriced they are to rent from the airport. It isn’t like electricity to recharge them isn’t incredibly cheap now, and there are not a shortage of rentable vehicles for the lax airport.

Then it all makes sense.

“Those bastards,” Ryouta says.

“What, my hero?” Alice asks.

“They know that it takes more than an hour to get anywhere with the traffic in this city, and they start charging way more as soon as you rent the autocar for more than sixty minutes, and given how airports don’t make as much money anymore from flights… they’re totally depending on people renting these autocars and charging them a bunch of money to cover the costs of everything else. This service definitely isn’t worth the money, it’s just slightly more convenient than calling and waiting for an autocar from a third party.”

“Is it truly that expensive? I thought it was only fifty dollars for the first hour?”

“Yeah, and then two-hundred for every hour after that. These aren’t meant to be rented for the long-term.”

“They aren’t? From the few cities I have visited, we would always keep the vehicle for several hours. Two-hundred does not seem like too high a price for renting.”

Ryouta is starting to realize that Alice has a horrible perception of what is expensive and what isn’t. “You live in a mansion, don’t you?” he asks.

“Oh! No, but we do have one as a summer retreat. We spend most of the year in our family’s castle that was built in seventeen hundred!”

Of course she would live in a literal castle. If anybody was ever going to live in a castle, it would be Alice.

“You might be in for a culture shock then. From what I’ve seen in those pictures you love to spam me with, your bedroom is probably bigger than my entire apartment,” Ryouta warns.

“That just means we will always be close to one another!”

Ryouta thinks of another problem. What about Fantasy Tales Online? He only has a single headset, and characters are bound to their headsets. “You bring your headset with you so we could still play together?” he asks.

“Of course!” Alice answers.

He has a feeling that even if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have a problem flying back overseas to grab it and then come back. Or she would have a servant do it for her, or with how much wealth her family supposedly has, personally fly it over and airdrop it right in front of his building’s entrance.

His hands shoot for the wheel when a couple of kids run in front of the autocar with a dog.

The autocar comes to a screeching stop on its own, and the children are left unharmed with wide eyes when they realize what just almost happened.

Ryouta feels his hands shaking and sweat dripping from his forehead. He’s gotten better about vehicles lately, but of course this happens as soon as he’s getting over his fear.

The children’s mother runs out and grabs the children while waving in apology to Ryouta.

“My, such unruly children. Hopefully they have learned their lesson and will not do something like that again!” Alice exclaims.

“I’m sure they did,” Ryouta says.

Serra leans between the two front seats to plop her chin onto Ryouta’s shoulder while her hands go for his right one, holding it between them. Serra knows the story of what happened to him as a child, but Alice doesn’t.

“Are you alright, my hero?” Alice asks, looking at his face through the rear-view mirror.

“Yeah. Just, remember when I told you about how I’ve got some leg problems myself? Only difference between these kids and me is that the autotruck that hit me couldn’t stop in time. Not a fan of vehicles because of that, so for that to just happen… not exactly helping my phobia out,” Ryouta explains. She is one of his girlfriends now, so he may as well explain the situation to her. He wouldn’t want her to be in the dark about something the other two already know.

“I – I am sorry, my hero. I do not know what to say at times like this, but I am sorry that you had to go through such a thing.”

“Don’t worry about it. Oh, wait, I forgot to include the part about how my parents died in an autocar accident,” he says in a much more casual tone than before. He already feels better after telling her that first part, and she’s been teasing him ever since she landed, so he figures that talking about something so casually and matter of fact might be a good way of throwing her off balance.

Instead, when he looks through the rear-view mirror, he sees her eyes welling up with tears as she covers her mouth with her hands.

He took it a bit too far even if he was just telling the truth.

“My – my hero, I am – I am so sorry to,” Alice sniffs, “your life has been so tragic!”

“D-don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal anymore. I’m over it, promise. I just wanted to—” he stops himself from saying anything else when he realizes that saying “oh, I just said that to get revenge for the teasing,” would make him sound like an ass.

Serra peeks at the rear-view mirror, flicks Ryouta in the cheek, and then leans back into her seat to comfort Alice.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to upset you,” Ryouta apologizes.

“It is nothing to apologize for, my hero. It is just that hearing such tales always makes me emotional,” Alice explains, still sniffling while Serra pats her head. “I cannot even watch romantic comedies anymore because the romantic parts always get me so worked up that I just end up crying most of the time.”

“So, you love tragedy and fantasize about being involved in tragedies, but you can’t actually watch or hear about them because you just cry the whole time?”

Alice nods her head, eyes still watery from his story.

She really is something else.

It is a rush out of the autocar when they reach his apartment building. The first thing that Ryouta does is take out Alice’s wheelchair, unfold it, and help Alice into it. Then, all of her luggage is quickly but carefully brought out onto the sidewalk with Serra’s help. Finally, with just a minute left on the autocar’s timer, Ryouta swipes his card in front of it to finalize the ride and pay.

“Thank you for riding with us!” pops up on the autocar’s dashboard screen. As soon as Ryouta closes the door, the autocar waits for a moment to pull out from its temporary parking spot and returns to the airport.

Now there’s the problem of taking all this luggage up to his apartment.

“Would you like to place it on my lap, my hero?” Alice asks.

Ryouta picks up two suitcases by their handles in each of his hands to carry in on his own. He just ends up having to make a few trips to the elevator and back to the sidewalk to get everything inside.

He isn’t falling for her teasing again.