Any oblivious person would have missed the sarcasm in Hajime’s voice and just continued the conversation as normal. But Monosuke was smarter than that. He could very easily tell the Reserve Course student was nervous. Honestly, who wouldn’t be nervous in this kind of situation?
He glared up at Hajime with an intimidating look. If he pressured him enough, maybe he’d be more likely to agree. Although it wasn’t all that easy to be intimidating…he was just a small teddy-bear-looking robot after all. Not very intimidating by design, except maybe for the permanent grin on his face.
Whether the intimidation worked or not didn’t matter to him anyway. He just cared about getting his plan to work. Talentless students were so easy to manipulate…especially when this one was clearly nervous.
The tension in the air was heavy as Monosuke glared at him again in silence. The light breeze flowing through gave it a bit of atmosphere…but not much.
“…Youse ain’t actually interested, are ya?” The tone of suspicion and underlying malice was clear in his voice. His loud, unfitting voice…seriously, it was such an out of place sound. Despite this, the question itself seemed to put a bit more pressure in the air around them, almost as if tension was rising. It really did seem like a scene from an anime…
But it wasn’t an anime. This was real life, where anything could go wrong for anyone at any time. And depending on how Hajime reacted, things could go very wrong for him very quickly.
•》What…? In the mere seconds after he’d spoke, the air suddenly felt heavy… like it was pressing down on him or something. Well, it made sense to be… a bit worried. Not because he was scared, of course, but… he didn’t know what this thing was capable of.
After all, if it could move and talk, couldn’t it also technically hurt him? Maybe explode or something? Eh.. whatever. He wasn’t scared. Totally.
Hajime bit his lip, feeling the tension in the air build the longer the silence stretched on. What the fuck? It was… probably a joke. Why would it suddenly have a deal for him? It didn’t know him… and he obviously wasn’t an Ultimate…
God damn.. Hajime tried to swallow and found he couldn’t- his mouth was too dry. It… sounded like it might hurt him after all. What would he do if he just left…? Well, they would never know, because there was no chance in hell that he was going to run away from a damn teddy bear.
Being as skeptical as he was, the idea of a random deal from an unfamiliar… thing… was certainly setting off alarm bells. But still… he was curious. “…You have my attention, I guess,” he huffed. “But why would you ask me? You know I’m just a Reserve Course student, right?“
God, it still hurt to say that. He leaned back against the bleachers with a low sigh. "Uh… I’ll listen to what it’s about, I mean.” Hell… he should have left here with the others. “But don’t you think there’s someone else that would be a better candidate than me?”