Chapter 4: Love is This and That
“Love… What do you guys think of when you say ‘love’?”
“Guuu?”
The four of us and Carbuncle were walking along, brainstorming who we could try talking to.
“Personally, I love the unknown or matters that puzzle me,” Ringo said, her hand touching her chin thoughtfully.
Loving puzzles is all nice and good… But all of this is already way too puzzling as it is!
Ally turned to me. “Amitie, what sort of impression comes to your mind when you hear ‘love’?”
“Let’s see— Hmm…” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. “‘Love’ is, like, nice and fluffy, and soft and warm…”
“Then, is there anybody you know of that might suit these qualities?”
“…Hm~hmhmhm… Ah!”
Out of all the friendly faces I could think of, there was one that was spot on.
“There is! I have an extra-super nice, super gentle and warm, fantastic friend that suits that to a T!”
***
“Rib~bit rib~bit ribbit~♪”
“Rib-ribbit?”
“Rib-ribbit puff—!”
“Uhm… Excuse me, but there is enough for all of you. There’s no need to be hasty…okay?”
We had headed inside the forest. Now that we were there, we saw a huge group of round frogs wearing acorn hats.
“Look, acorn frogs!” I pointed.
Those little guys are super cute and also super good at playing Puyo battles, on top of it! But we weren’t looking for acorn frogs, we were looking for the girl standing in the middle of them.
“Lidelle~~~!” I waved my hand back and forth excitedly.
Lidelle turned around. “Oh, Amitie, and all of the others as well, good afternoon,” she greeted, and quickly bowed.
Lidelle is an extremely shy person. I think everybody from her tribe has horns like that, but she’s embarrassed to be different from us, so she always hides her horns by winding her green hair around them. Actually, I’d really like to see her with her hair down just once, if she didn’t mind… And, she’s super nice! She always smiles and is polite to anyone and everyone. When I’m with her, it gives me this warm, fuzzy feeling inside. She’s just that kind of girl.
“Lidelle, what are you up to?” I rushed over to her.
“Oh, uhm…” She stuttered a little before she began talking. “I found a lot of fruit, so I’m giving them to the acorn frogs. They seem to like them very much…”
“Ri-ribbit!” an acorn frog at her feet piped up happily.
“Wonderful!” Ally said, catching up to me. “So you have been distributing your love among them!”
Lidelle jumped, startled, and then tried to hide behind me.
“B-by the way, who is that…?”
Because Lidelle is so shy, meeting strangers makes her pretty anxious. It looked like she was a little nervous meeting Ally for the first time.
Ally replied in an excited voice, “I am called Ally! Oh, green girl who is so overflowing with love, without further ado! Let us fall in… MMGH!”
Arle and Ringo speedily put a stop to Ally’s word-tornado by clapping their hands over her mouth.
“C-calm down, Ally…”
“Yes, especially in front of a person like her, that is a piece of advice you should take to heart…”
Nice work, Arle and Ringo! If Ally went shouting something like, “Let’s fall in love!” like she always does at someone this shy, it might shock Lidelle into hightailing it out of here!
“…?” Lidelle tilted her head, puzzled. “You seem to be in high spirits… Are you perhaps a new friend of Ami’s…? Uh-uhm, I am Lidelle. Pl-pleased to meet you…” she introduced herself in a small voice. “B-by the way…Ami, why are you all…here?”
“Ah, about that, Lidelle…”
Hm~m, what would be a good answer to that? I was trying to pick my words, but my friends beat me to the punch.
“Lidelle, you’re always so nice to everyone, but do you think that counts as a kind of ‘love’?” Arle effortlessly summarized for me.
Way to go! That shouldn’t be too weird a question for Lidelle’s poor heart to handle, right?
“Love?” Lidelle looked a little surprised, but then she gave us a smile. “Hm, let’s see… I don’t really spend much time thinking about difficult things like what ‘love’ could mean, but…”
As she was talking, she gave the last couple of fruits she was carrying to an acorn frog next to her. The acorn frog sang “Ribbit~♪” happily and tossed a berry into its mouth.
“I just like making others happy…” Lidelle gazed at the frogs and smiled.
Rib~bit~ Rib~bit~♪ Ri~ib~bit~♪
Rib~bit~ Rib~bit~♪ Ri~ib~bit~♪
Huh, what were those sounds they were making now? Oh, that’s a song, isn’t it?! Before we knew it, the acorn frogs had gathered around Lidelle and all began to sing.
Rib~rib~bit~bit~
Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit puff-puff-puff♪
Sitting in a circle around Lidelle, they sang in a big choir.
Lidelle seemed flustered and covered half of her face with her long sleeves. But even so, she sounded very happy when she spoke:
“A-and…when they sing for me like this to thank me… It almost feels like we can really understand each other… Ehehe.”
“So it is love!” Ally shouted, as if she couldn’t keep it in any longer. “A give and take full of heartfelt love! You make them happy by presenting them with fruit, and they return the favor by singing for you… It’s love, what else could you call it?! That’s why… That’s why you must… Fall in…”
“WAAAH! ALLY!” I cut in, “How about we leave it there?! Like, for another time?! Why don’t you ask another time, okay?! Okay?!”
I totally got why seeing Lidelle’s sweet relationship with the acorn frogs made Ally so happy. But! Just this once, let the whole “Let’s fall in love!” thing rest, I’m begging you—!
Lidelle tilted her head. “You all have been acting a bit strange… Is everything all right?”
Then, from behind — THUD!
“On. On~ion?”
A little imp with an onion for a head had suddenly appeared. Did it come to check out what all of our fuss was about?
Just like the acorn frogs, these little guys live all over our forest. They’re called “onion pixies,” there’s a whole tribe of them, and they can Puyo battle too.
And it wasn’t just the one onion pixie…
“On-on!”
“Ooon on?”
“O-oon!”
From the thicket, with one thud after another, tons of onion pixies swarmed out.
“Ah… It’s the onion pixies,” Lidelle said. “They also often come out to play with me here.”
“They play with you… So, they love you?!” Ally didn’t skip a beat.
“Oh, well… I wouldn’t put it that way… But if you want to know about ‘love,’ the onion pixies might actually know a bit more about it than me.”
“You think Onion Bulby knows more about love than you?!” Ringo sounded surprised. Calling others by weird nicknames was something of a habit of hers.
Lidelle gave a nod, and gestured at the two onion pixies that had come to stand next to her. One was a boy waving an iron club back and forth excitedly, while the other, a girl onion pixie, was gazing at him so lovingly that her eyes had turned into hearts.
“Y-you might have a point…” Ringo gave in. “I have heard that onion pixies are famous for their passionate pair-bonds… But even so…”
“On. On~ion?
“On-on♥ Oo~n…♥”
Ringo stared hard at the two onion pixies who were hand-in-hand, lost in each other’s eyes without a single care in the world. It was almost like there was a giant pink heart shining brightly around them!
“Wonderful! Such wonderful, unmistakable love! Right here, these two ‘people’…? They are sharing their love so beautifully right in front of us!!” Ally was on a roll again.
…Well, if it works for Ally, it works for me, I guess? Okay, now that we learned a thing or two, it was high time to move on. Or at least, that was what I was going to say, but…
“On-on-on! Ooon!”
Another onion pixie was thrusting his metal club towards the lovey-dovey onion pixie couple.
“On—? Ooon! BA-BONK!!”
Almost as if they all shared a thought, the other onion pixies also gathered around.
“Huh? Huh? Wh-what are they doing? Are they mad at something?”
And while I was wondering that…
“On~on! On-on♥ On~♥”
“Ooon♥ Oon… Ooon-on♥”
This time, even the female onion pixies came to gather around the lovey-dovey onion pixie couple.
“Huh? Huh? What’s going on…?” Arle asked.
“Guguuu?” Carbuncle repeated.
“Please calm down! …Is what I would tell them, but I don’t speak a word of Onionese!” said Ringo.
She and Arle also seemed pretty alarmed by the sudden hubbub at our feet.
“Uh…uhm… They are saying…” Lidelle began shyly.
Huh? Did Lidelle understand that onion pixie-speak?
“It looks like this is a lecture. The Onion Pixie Clan’s handsomest onion pixie is hogging all the attention from the Onion Pixie Clan’s sexiest onion pixie… And all the other onion pixies are feeling bitter that they’re flaunting their lovey-dovey relationship, and now they are all getting loud about that…”
…The Onion Pixie Clan’s sexiest? Handsomest?
I glanced around at all the angry onion pixies, and then I looked to Arle and Ringo. The three of us looked like we were all thinking the same thing.
Uhm… Yeah, no matter how you look at it, all those onion pixies look exactly the same!
But I guess that wasn’t how it was for the onion pixies themselves. They were getting more and more riled up…
“Oooon, oon-on!”
“OOOOON!”
The boy from the lovey-dovey onion pixie couple and the onion pixie who had started complaining in the first place both brought out Puyo. Then, in the blink of an eye, a Puyo battle broke out, dragging in all the rest of the clan!
PUYON! PUYO! PUYO!
“EEK—! Wait a sec, don’t go starting a match when we’re right here!” I said.
Puyo were flying all around us — it was complete chaos! I’d already lost track of who was Puyo battling who. The furious onion pixies were carrying Puyo in each of their hands, setting off small chains, and hitting each other with nuisance Puyo.
“Oww! Hey, watch it! That’s enough, please sto— ACK!”
We were caught in the crossfire. A wobbly, bouncy, squishy crossfire!
“Carby! Time to retreat!”
“Gugugugu!”
“Good thinking! Let’s get out of here!”
“I’d never thought that love could be so chaotic! There is so much to learn…about love!”
“Does nothing faze you, Ally?! Over here, over here! C’mon—!”
We were running through the wide forest. And running, and running, and running…
When the sounds of the onion pixies screeching and the Nuisance Puyo flying back and forth had finally faded away, I came to a stop. Standing there with my hands on my knees, I tried to catch my breath.
“Haah… That was awful. Everyone okay?”
I lifted my face. But then…
“HUUH?”
No one else was around. Which meant, which meant that… I must’ve somehow split from the others when we were all dashing away at full speed!
“Oh… GET REAL—!”
My hopeless yell echoed through the forest.
