But every time she logged in, she found that the only items she sold were potions, never the accessories she had worked so hard on. The sight depressed her and made her feel talentless.

Maybe it was time, she thought.

The rush that she had felt when she first logged in was beginning to wane.

The reality of the scenery and the towns...

The lively animation of the monsters...

There was an incredible level of skill on display, which was especially clear to someone like herself who had used 3D modeling software. Ever since Iris had learned that it was possible to craft equipment items with your own designs in this world, she had chosen her path. But that decision was now wavering.

If she was going to pursue her dreams, she really needed to do it in the real world. Perhaps using this cyber world as practice for the real one had been a futile gesture from the start.

Okay, she decided. Today would be her final day. The Miraive Gear had come at a high cost, but she would just write it off as a lesson fee at the school of hard knocks. With all that in mind, she had logged in that day to put an end to it. But...

“Huh? It sold...” She opened her item window, then checked her shop tab. The inventory was empty.

She left her home and came out to the front, where a copy of her avatar was operating her booth. This was known as a “Seller Avatar,” and it could answer simple questions and sell things to characters as an NPC while you were logged out. You needed the “Seller” Skill to use it, of course.

“Oh, hello, there. I’ve been waiting so long for you to log in.” Standing in front of her store was a young man of the rare Dragonet race. He was dressed extravagantly, head to toe, in pay-to-download items, and the smell of the devoted whale drifted out from his every pore. The mere fact that he was a Dragonet meant he had bought the premium pack, as well.

Iris was a penniless student in the real world. Hostility and caution rose up in her.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Nonsense. My name is displayed above my head. But that hardly matters right now...” This Dragonet man, Ichiro Tsuwabuki, continued, seeming a man of truly grating self-confidence. “Yes, indeed... I like your face.”

“Huh?” Iris asked.

Those words would change Iris’s life in Narrow Fantasy Online forever.

Thinking back on it now... Airi Kakitsubata thought, bringing her recollections to an end as the bus swayed around her.

Thinking back now, her first encounter with the young heir had not been romantic in the least.

Insolence. Audacity. Unrestrained depravity. When it came to describing him, even the relatively unacademic Airi could conjure up advanced vocabulary words with ease. To be perfectly frank, she found his extremely poor taste when it came to all things money-related and his utterly self-centered disregard for other people’s feelings absolutely galling.

“Just who is that guy?” Airi muttered aloud to herself once the bus was less populated.

A premium pack-exclusive race, pay-to-download items in every equipment slot... That was how he had been when they’d first met. His copious eccentricities suggested that he must be a wealthy man in the real world. The Knight, Kirschwasser, who always accompanied him had mentioned being the young heir’s servant in the real world, too. His butler, maybe?

Airi’s thinking took a brief tangent to mull over the question of whether people really still had butlers in 21st century Japan.

The young heir was bizarre. How had she gotten mixed up with a person like that? She still couldn’t fully explain it. Once again, it hadn’t been a romantic first meeting in the slightest. He had needled her terribly, and there was little to love about that smirking, above-it-all attitude of his.

And yet that same young heir had bought the original accessories that had gone so long without selling. And he had also asked her that question...

Would you like to try making armor for me?

Weren’t those the words that she had been waiting so long to hear?

Yes, she acknowledged. They were. She was embarrassed with herself.

Just how much of a pushover are you? she found herself thinking. Grow a spine, Airi Kakitsubata!

The bus that Airi was riding finally reached the stop near her house. She got down off the bus and tried steeling her nerve once again.

She was grateful to the young heir. In part. But that was all. From now on, she would be resolute with him. If she gave him one single inch, he would walk all over her. She had to be on guard against any such manipulation.

Her long exam period was finally over. Starting today, Airi would return to NaroFan as the Elf Alchemist Iris. She renewed her resolve once more.

Both of her parents worked, which meant the house she came home to was an empty one. She washed up hurriedly, then dashed to her room, threw her bag to the side, and pulled out the Miraive Gear box that had been sealed deep in her closet.

Then, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.

She found herself pausing. It was a file folder containing a collection of design drafts. It held a blue and black formal suit jacket and trousers, designed to resemble the wings of a butterfly in the game called the Radiant Morpho. After much trial and error, she had produced... well, it was an accomplishment as far as her designs went; a shining masterpiece in her personal history as a designer.

Oh, no... Airi thought.

As she had looked at the design, she had ended up smiling. Her nerve was growing un-steeled. She couldn’t help but remember the hateful heir’s reaction to it.

No, oh no...

Yes, he had given it a rave review. Airi didn’t have much experience with getting compliments on her apparel design, and since she had been starting to think she had no talent, she couldn’t help but feel elated over the praise.

But don’t forget... she said.

Don’t forget the hateful things he had said, even in the midst of all the praise. Don’t forget all of the trouble he had caused to people around him with his eccentric behavior, and the humiliation it had brought here.

There we go. Cooldown complete.

She wouldn’t let herself begin to like the young heir again. Then hopefully, next time, she would present him with a super high-fashion design sheet that would really knock his socks off.

“You just watch me, young heir!” Airi quietly boasted to herself as she fixed the Miraive Gear in place. After one week, Airi Kakitsubata, as the Elf Alchemist Iris, would return once more to her battleground.

Incidentally, the crafting guild to which Airi belonged was named Iris Brand. The guild leader was that odious young heir. It had been supposed to be a temporary guild, to be disposed of after she had created his equipment. But then, for some reason, he had built a large, fancy guild house and given her all kinds of things she didn’t need, and at some point, it had been decided that the guild would remain.

That big argument had been really bad, too. He had made an enemy out of one of the three great guilds of NaroFan. Of course, that had more or less calmed down by now, but Ichiro had still built that big fancy guild house just diagonally from them for no reason. He had been wrong to do that, too.

The guild house was far grander than the open-air stall she had run before opening Iris Brand. It had a black, stylish exterior with the “Iris Brand” logo in gold lettering.

It looked like a real high-fashion boutique. Naturally, since the young heir had built it to look that way. It was a big pain.

Was it going too far to say that? No, it really was a big pain.

Her avatar, Iris, manifested in her personal atelier on the guild house’s second floor. She checked her appearance in the full-length mirror.

“Iris” was an Elf Alchemist with long red hair. Until very recently, she had worn the Alchemical Robe that was her class’s starting gear, but on the young heir’s recommendation, she had changed it to a completely original design. The designer for Iris Brand could hardly look cool in the proverbial “dyer’s whites,” wearing clothing that was still white because the dyer was too busy dyeing cloth for other people. The underlying data for her outfit was just standard Mage equipment, though.

The young heir’s equipment was a modern-style suit, so Iris had had to design her own equipment with that in mind, but she had chosen to preserve a strong fantasy flavor. She had straddled the line. Certainly, she had pulled the coloring from the clothes she was wearing that day, and the design of her middle school uniform’s blazer, and various other references. But she couldn’t make a design that got too far away from the fantasy aesthetic.

“Okay!” Iris clenched and opened her hands, checking the feeling of being her avatar again after so long.

Iris Brand was opening in earnest today. The lobby of the guild house was lined with her experiments in making original design armor. (Of course, their underlying specs were mostly trash.) She wondered if a single one of them had sold in the week she had been away from the game, or if she had received any special orders for original design armor.

She checked the menu window and noticed that neither of her fellow guild members were logged in at the moment. Iris threw the door open and left her atelier behind, running out onto the balcony that overlooked the atrium that made up the floor lobby. She leaned over the banister to see how things were looking.

There was one customer.

Well, what were you expecting? she told herself. Feelings of disappointment and dejection were beginning to rear their heads once more.

“Welcome!” Iris descended the stairway and greeted the customer in a rather loud voice.

“Oh, yes. Hello!” It was a girl with silver hair. She straightened up as she was addressed and turned to face her.

On her feet were Leather Boots. Starter equipment. She also wore a Feather Ribbon that could be purchased in Starter Town. Her rarest equipment was a Healing Coat that required a composite recipe to make, but it was also something you could get relatively early in the game.

This must be her first time in Glasgobara, Iris speculated.

“You’ve got lots of unusual equipment here, huh?” the girl said as she rummaged through the armor on display.

Ah, Iris thought, her smile straining, I messed up the modeling on that one. Please don’t look too close...

“Yeah, they’re all my original designs!” Iris said. “Their stats aren’t much underneath, of course, so don’t get your hopes up in that regard, okay?”

“Oh, really?” the girl asked. “But I mean more in how they look. You don’t see many people wearing cute clothes like these...”

That was true. Iris felt a brief wash of shame over the thought.

First, most of the game’s players prioritized stats when it came to armor. That stood to reason, since it was hard to achieve much without good stats.

Second, as her guildmate Sir Kirschwasser had recently informed her, those players who did prioritize style over substance tended to come in two major groups: One was people who genuinely didn’t care about stats and just wanted to worry about fashion. The other was players who were so skilled, they didn’t need to worry about equipment specs. Players with specific play gimmicks usually fell into the latter category.

Those who fell into the former category, then, typically just hung out enjoying life near Starter Town, and therefore never made it to Glasgobara. Iris, then, was advised to focus on the latter group. But players like these often had high standards, and even when they came all the way to a store, it was rare for them to put in an order and then leave. It was embarrassing.

“Um... Felicia, is it? Did you make it here solo?” Iris said, checking the girl’s name as she asked.

“No way!” Felicia said. “A friend brought me here. I’m not really that powerful...”

“Oh-ho...” Iris said.

“A friend brought me” implied that she hadn’t formed a party with players of the same level range and fought their way through under great hardship. She was being power leveled.

“You must have a really good friend,” Iris said.

Usually, newbie gamers led around by more experienced ones fell into one of two categories. Either they became so imbued with their leader’s ideas of efficiency that they lost their sense of whimsy about the game, or they ended up getting so annoyed that they disengaged completely. It was extremely rare to see someone in Felicia’s situation who would still want cute equipment. Iris hoped she would be grateful for her leader’s maturity.

Felicia’s expression brightened at Iris’s words. “That’s right!” she giggled. “He’s talented, he’s cool, and he treats me as a real adult! He’s my beloved second cousin!”

“O-Oh...” Iris said.

So they weren’t just friends, they were relatives. She had never of heard someone hanging out with their second cousin before. Iris was relatively close to her family, but the sight of the girl grinning and praising her (likely quite a bit older, from the way she was talking) relative to the skies was slightly off-putting.

“If only the young heir were so reasonable...” Iris said.

“Young heir? Is that a friend of yours?” Felicia asked.

“More like a nemesis. Though he’s my guild leader, too...” Iris heaved a sigh up to the atrium’s towering ceiling. “He’s so selfish and self-centered and capricious and dictatorial, but every so often he says something considerate. It really gets on my nerves.”

“Wow...” Felicia’s eyes widened. “There are people like that out there? That stinks.”

“He’s my sponsor, you could say, or my patron, I guess. Well, given all that, I can’t just refuse him, and I’m grateful in a way, too, but... oh.” Iris suddenly remembered she was talking to a customer, and stiffened. She didn’t have anyone to vent to in real life about this, and she’d ended up ranting without meaning to. It did make her feel a little bit better, though. “Anyway, you want to buy something? I mentioned before that none of the display items have very good stats, but if you have time, I’ll can take an order for a new design.”

“An original design, huh?” Felicia asked. “I was talking to a friend today and thinking that might be the way to go...”

“Right?” Iris said. “Wow, I so rarely meet someone who gets it...”

The young heir “got it,” too. That was why she felt grateful to him, despite the way his attitude stuck in her craw.

“Um, about how much do the designs cost?” Felicia asked.

“It’s the cost of the base equipment, plus a little surcharge,” said Iris. “What’s your level, Felicia?”

“Forty.”

“Okay, let me think of what would be good...” Iris put a hand to her chin and thought. But her own knowledge of NaroFan was shaky, and she hadn’t downloaded the Miraive Gear’s proprietary browser, so she couldn’t search for information while playing the game. If only she could ask Kirschwasser for advice.

Just as she was wondering when the two of them might show up, with impeccable timing, the door to Iris Brand opened.

“My, there are two people here, for once,” one voice said with a hint of amusement.

“Well, this saves us the trouble of contacting you.” Another voice followed.

The best timing possible. Iris had just been waiting for them to arrive to discuss the specifics of equipment. But just as she opened her mouth to call out to him, Felicia also spoke up happily.

“Young heir!”

“Itchy!”

Realizing something was off, the two immediately shared a glance.

The young heir Tsuwabuki Ichiro smiled in the utmost happiness and said, “Hey, Iris, Felicia.”

“Why did no one call my name?” The silver-haired old knight Sir Kirschwasser pouted from where he stood behind the young heir.

It was nothing else but this. Felicia’s talented, cool, treats-me-like-a-real-adult beloved second cousin and Iris’s selfish, self-centered, capricious, dictatorial, occasionally-says-something-considerate galling young heir were one and the same. It was a small world, and the world of the game was even smaller.

The three of them sat in the Iris Brand lobby, at an expensive-looking chair and table set.

“The three of them” referred to Ichiro, Iris, and Felicia. Sir Kirschwasser remained standing to one side with a teapot in hand. Had he been wearing a tailcoat instead of heavy plate mail, he would be the spitting image of an elegant butler.

“Excellent tea, Sir,” Ichiro said. “Where does it come from?”

“Thank you,” Sir Kirschwasser replied. “I converted spiritgrass from the Lancastio Spiritwood Sea into tea herbs.”

“Hmm, I see.” Ichiro brought the cup to his mouth and drank it down. A merry blipping sound indicated a temporary stat increase. Ichiro laid the empty cup on the saucer and looked over at the seated pair. “Now, you two, I suspect you have something you wish to say to me.”

Iris was turning her eyes away diffidently, while Felicia was full-out sulking. Their expressions were the total opposite of what they had been when he’d walked through the door.

“I don’t,” Iris said eventually. Apparently tired of averting her eyes, she leaned back against her chair and reached for the spiritherb tea that Kirschwasser proffered.

“Good,” Ichiro said. “Felicia, then?”

“I-I do, but...”

“Yes?”

“I do, I do! But umm, umm... it’s... it’s just...!” Felicia clenched her little hands into fists, eyes downcast as emotion seemed to seethe up inside her.

“I see,” Ichiro said. “So you concocted a plan in your own mind that you would invite me to form a new guild with you, and you also talked to King and decided that you would buy yourself new equipment. But once you finally logged in, you found out I was already in a guild, and that it was with the guild that does equipment design that you were interested in, and now you’re frustrated that it feels like I stole your lead in both regards.”

“That’s right!” Felicia hit the table and stood up. “I know saying it won’t mean anything, but I’ll still say it! Itchy, you idiot!”

“Nonsense.” Ichiro took a second cup Kirschwasser offered with a perfectly calm expression.

“Ha ha ha, Lady Felicia. I believe ‘two-timer’ is the more appropriate term at times like this.” Kirschwasser smiled knowingly. “I had also been thinking about proposing a guild to Master Ichiro when he told me about Iris Brand. I found it very frustrating. Isn’t that right, Master Ichiro?”

“I suppose,” Ichiro said. “Though I believe I’m still granting your wish of playing through the game with me.” Even an objective witness to the situation would regard Ichiro’s breezy expression as extremely irritating.

Although that didn’t seem to be the only thing Felicia was sulking about. She cast a sudden, icy glance in the direction of Iris, who was sitting beside her.

“Wh-What?” Iris looked back at Felicia.

“U-Um, well...” Felicia stuttered as well.

“Allow me to interpret.” Ichiro said, intruding on the conversation once more. “Felicia, as my second cousin, believes she has a duty to monitor my romantic interactions. Thus, now that she knows we’re in a guild together, she wants to determine your worthiness for me.”

“Itchyyyyy!!” Felicia rose and pounded the table two or three times more.

“Perhaps I was wrong?” Ichiro asked.

“You’re not wrong, you’re not wrong! You’re not wrong, but... nnngh!” Poor Felicia was driven to holding her head in her hands while performing a strange sort of dance.

Ichiro’s expression remained as placid as ever. Kirschwasser calmly poured more tea, while Iris just stared in shock.

“Young heir, do you have... any tact at all?” she asked.

“Nonsense. I’m sure it’s not something Felicia wanted pointed out, but coming right out with it is better than leaving this vague ill will hanging between the two of you.” Ichiro placed his teacup on his saucer. “Now, Iris, let’s hear your defense.”

“What defense? We don’t have that kind of relationship... do we?” Iris asked.

“I agree.”

“R-Right?” Iris’s expression was a mix of confusion and relief. “Listen, Felicia... Like I told you at the start, I really do not like the young heir. At all. I’m grateful to him in part, I’m far more annoyed by him, and I’m very likely to beat his brains out some day.”

“Ha ha ha.” Ichiro, for some reason, just laughed in delight.

“Well, I know it’s rude to speak ill about somebody’s family, so I’ll leave it at that,” Iris finished. “The point is, we’re not like that at all. So just relax, okay?”

“Ugh...” Felicia looked up from her position, which had at some point become “lying on the floor, clutching her head in her hands.” She looked at Iris, and then at Ichiro. “I’m not sure I’m convinced...”

“Young heir, you should say something, too,” Iris said. “Or Mr. Kirschwasser.”

“I don’t have anything in particular to say...” The silver-haired knight remained as laid-back as ever.

“Hmm...” Ichiro assumed a pondering posture. Iris and Felicia didn’t know each other, but if Felicia wanted to join Iris Brand, he would be happy to have her. He couldn’t have her bizarre preconceived notions getting in the way of her priorities, though. “Well, it might be a problem if you don’t have an accurate understanding of the situation. Why don’t I spend the day telling you that story?”

“You mean the story of how the guild was founded?” Felicia asked as she got up off the floor.

“Yes. Or, more precisely, the story of what happened before I met up with you in the game.” Ichiro gave her a gleefully enthusiastic smile.

Felicia looked to be feeling a swelling unease.

Iris let out a very small sigh.