The crowd silenced for a moment as all the feelings and energy of Kaisaki's words struck them as if they were one mass of an audience.
"Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting, Kaisaki?"
The Princess's eyes began glowing as red as ever as I could see her grin grow wider and wider.
"Ummm..." Kaisaki was taken aback at how overjoyed the Princess looked. She even took a step back as the Princess leaned in closer to her. "If you mean switching places with you in the palace as your double while you wear the mask and go explore the rest of the world then yes, that's exactly what I..."
"Okay!" she said, giggling, and going to hold not just Kaisaki's mask, but her hands as well, "let's do it!"
The llama traders all looked at each other in confusion but then shrugged and began chuckling.
"Well, that was easier than I expected."
"Yeah, I mean, she had a reason to leave in the first place. Why wouldn't she just want to continue doing that?"
"True..."
"No, it's not that simple!" Kaisaki said, taking a step away from the Princess. "It's never that simple."
A blaze of fiery filled her eyes now equally red compared to Riko's.
"Princess, do you understand what you're giving up here? You have the life of constant luxury and comfort. And you're going to give that all up? For fucking what?"
"I... I don't understand." Riko said cowering down as Kaisaki hovered over her, "did I say something wrong? Isn't this what you said..."
"I know what I said!" Kaisaki shouted, "But I didn't think you would actually be so stupid as to actually accept the offer. Who the hell with such a life does such a thing, you're too spoiled honestly."
"But you just said..."
"I lied princess! I don't give a crap about your 'freedom' or whatever the hell you think that is. I just wanted to swindle you out of your life and yet..."
She sighed, calming down and squatting down onto the ground.
"And yet you just gave it away like it was nothing. Like all those comforts and all those servants and..."
She stared back at the Princess.
"All those people you knew, your parents, and I know you didn't have many friends but surely you had relations. Do you not have any relatives?"
"Well, I do have a sister,"
Wait, really? I had known the Princess for 7 months now and she never mentioned her.
"But she lives with a Prince in another kingdom where she plays piano at the royal palace where Hu can never interact with her or bring her up again for that matter or else I will be increasing my physical abuse levels."
... it appeared the Fujioshi Blunt did have two way effects after all.
"But yeah," Riko continued, "I haven't seen her in a while so that part wouldn't be any different. Next time I see her anyway will be without Hu. Don't even think about it, dumbass Hu."
"You're mentioning him again?" Kaisaki said. Her frown turned into a smile as she looked amusingly at the Princess.
"Who, Hu?"
"Yes, you seem to have strong emotions from him."
"Well yeah, because this dumbass pervert will definitely have dumbass pervert thoughts if I don't cut him off at the source."
It was unfortunate that she couldn't hear my thoughts or what I had to say at the moment but to be honest this wasn't too different from what usually happened recently when the Princess got angry and...
"And furthermore! He is actually even below my servant, and in reality my slave, so it is important he does not formulate any of his own thoughts or opinions. His only job is to narrate the scenes!"
...
The llama traders and Kaisaki just stayed there in amusement at the Princess not sure how to even react as she continued her seemingly incoherent rants. Suddenly though, Kaisaki began to chuckle, and then began to laugh out loud.
"What... what's so funny?"
"Oh, it's nothing Princess," Kaisaki replied smiling, "it's just cute seeing you get so emotional. Are you perhaps jealous?"
"Je... jealous? No fucking way!"
That was the first time I had heard the Princess swear to be honest. My constant swearing must have rubbed off on her.
"Why would I be jealous! It's just..."
She folded her arms.
"You wouldn't understand okay! This dumbass Hu, is just such a dumbass."
Kaisaki smiled and nodded at the Princess.
"Sorry."
"For what?" the Princess replied, still flustered, "It's not your fault this dumbass, Hu is such a dumbass."
"No, just..." her face was beaming from just looking at the Princess. "I'm sorry for misunderstanding you Princess, I understand completely now why you would give up the life you previously had."
"What!? How. It's not like this dumbass Hu influenced..."
"This dumbass Hu, who you were still choosing to travel with?"
She blushed at the statement, turning away quickly.
"Well that's not... that's just because I don't have a choice okay!"
"Oh really?" Kaisaki replied looking over at the llama traders, "if that's really true then you could join any of the llama traders instead, no? If he really is as much of a dumbass as you say he is."
"No, that's not... I could never do that. I mean..."
She thought about her next words carefully remembering specifically vocabulary I had taught her about euphemisms for Kush and Kush users.
"That's just because he provides me the dankest Kush okay! So therefore, I have to stick with him because actually, I am now a degenerate stoner!"
"..."
"..."
"..."
The 3 llama traders and Kaisaki, as well as the rest of the people of the theater began to laugh in unison.
"What! It's true! I have to stick with Hu, because I am a degenerate stoner. Why is that so funny to you all?"
"First off, we're all degenerate stoners," Ahmed replied, "second Princess, you realize I am the guy who actually sells Hu the Kush candies right?"
"Ummm... okay but... uhhh, I owe him for paying for my meals okay! I mean, a lot of the money came from jewels I gave him but I just need to stick with his dumbass because dumbass perverts need their viewpoints on the world corrected, okay!"
"If you say so," Kaisaki replied still laughing, "anyways, shall we resume our journey then princess. If you really say it's alright, then we can continue with the plan of me taking your place so that you can continue traveling with your dumbass pervert."
"I uhh... " the Princess looked down at the ground still blushing.
"What... whatever yeah,"
"Wait, but how will you even find him again?" Ahmed asked, "I mean, we kind of did the whole, 'please do not ever see us again' thing so it's not like we can go back on that. I mean I guess we could, we're not that far away from where we left him. I mean... yeah, none of us thought you would actually accept the replacement offer. Just to be clear Princess, this isn't going to be a one month replacement sort of ordeal. No no no... we're asking you to leave the kingdom for 1 year at least, probably even longer depending on what happens."
I don't remember agreeing to these...
"It's fine," the Princess said smiling, "that dumbass pervert will find me eventually on our way back to the palace. He travels much faster as just one person compared to the hoard here anyways so there should be no problem. Wait, do you guys even have a horse carriage when we land back onto port Bajhal?"
"Ummm..."
"... really, we're walking? That's going to take 2 weeks at least."
"I mean you don't have to actually come at all actually then," Ahmed said, "We can just bring Kaisaki there ourselves, we just needed to confirm you were cool with it so we don't have any of that little 'beheading' issue if you report to your father the truth."
"Nah nah it's fine, my dumbass pervert will come rescue me okay! That'll be so romantic when it happens, oh..."
She looked at the ground blushing.
"I might just forgive him for being such a dumbass pervert if he does that. He might even appear romantic to me... for a moment at least."
"..."
"..."
"..."
The crowd just looked at her stunned by her statements.
"Princess..." Kaisaki began, "I understand you like being romantic. But perhaps in your library of words have you learned the word 'practical?' If not, I will tell you now that practical means..."
"I know exactly what practical means!" the Princess interrupted, "but let me ask you this, when have I ever felt it was more important to be practical than romantic!"
...it appeared I wasn't the only dumbass pervert among the two of us. Still, as logically backwards as her thinking was, it still drew quite the emotional response among the crowd.
"Is that right?" Kaisaki said looking down at the ground, "You certainly do trust him a lot."
"Well..." the Princess thought about this for a moment, "while he definitely is a gigantic dumbass pervert, he still hasn't let me down yet so... yeah, I would say I trust him.
"Fair enough then," Kaisaki replied, "We shall be continuing our journey without turning back. When Hu eventually comes and stops by to rescue you as you said he would, we'll just explain everything that happened as well as our plan for me to replace you in the palace."
Kaisaki looked down at the ground, whispering something under her breath.
"Maybe I'm the one that's jealous... still, I don't have a choice."
With the plan set in motion then, the people of the theater continued to walk forward. And as they did, the "fujoshi perception" blunt's powers faded for the final time as I returned to my present environment in the smoking room with Riki.
"So," Riki began, "what's your plan?"
"My plan," I thought, "Hmmm..."
There were a lot of considerations. And although yes, I did enjoy being romantic about things... I did think it was vital as well for the Princess to learn a thing or two about practicality as well as that would make the journey on the road which appears to now be extended to a year at the least. Though it was really at this point I couldn't even imagine a life without her. But I wasn't going to say such an embarrassing thing out loud.
"You can't imagine a life without her right?" Riki said out loud.
"Wait what... did you just..."
"Read your thoughts? You're not that hard to read Hu, especially when you're grinning like a dumbass pervert."
I blushed, turning away in embarrassment, realizing that I was in fact grinning.
"Oh, it's alright, it's pretty normal to be honest." Riki replied, "Have you never been in love before?"
"Well..."
I thought back to all the relations I had made on my travels as well as even a few of the ladies from the hometown that I had been familiar with. And sure, there were good memories I had with them all, but never one I connected to like the Princess. No... that's not quite right, some of them were my closest friends and at the time were probably closer from the friendship level. But even so, it was different this time because...
"I've never been in love with someone so interesting," I finally said, "she's really amazing you know, changed my whole world on how I see things."
"Well it certainly is nice that you are accepting it," Riki said, sighing, "not everyone is that lucky to care for them in the same way."
I blinked for a moment trying to process Riki's words.
"Wait Riki, are you talking about yourself?"
"..."
He looked at me coldly.
"So... sorry I don't mean to pry, I was just curious. You don't have to share if you don't…"
"Anyways Hu, do you have a plan then?"
"A plan?" I blinked again, "Oh yeah... I forgot we actually have to think about those things. Well, I do know the first step of the plan if you want to know it."
Riki nodded his head as if already understanding where I was going with this.
"Indica or Sativa," he asked
-1 regular blunt later-
Location: the smoking room coaches
"Dude Riki... yo space time is wild."
"Yeah dude, I know, it's like... it's like so wild man."
"Yeah, so wild,"
"And long man."
"Yeah man, that shit lasts forever."
The former theater leader sat up.
"Yeah, it's like... it's like despite how long it is we as humans still have a level of consistency within us. A sort of meta awareness that even though we are one age, we can still somehow recall the part of us from when we were 5 and 10. And as you know since I am a member of the theater how important that is because it's like... damn. Even though in the theater characters are being played, because of the duration of human life, it's like... it's like we are the characters but not necessarily at this moment in time. Well okay, sometimes it is this moment in time, but like... usually the actors aren't the same age of the characters but like... they can still portray those characters because they remember what it was like at that age. Yeah, wild shit. And then it's like shit... you know how you can live vicariously through others because humans have a way of understanding other humans through like... through like words and mutual understanding or some shit. Yeah... wicked stuff, you feel me Hu?"
"Yeah I feel you," I said looking at the ceiling. "I feel you bro, spacetime and shit are complicated yo."
"Yeah... so what's the plan then?"
"The plan?"
I blinked, trying to gather my thoughts.
"Oh yeah the plan, the plan yeah, right uhhh..."
"Well?'
"Uhhh..."
"Hu, man, we've been lying here for an hour, surely by now you have thought of a concrete plan for this situation?"
"Yo, how about we just stalk them?
"Stalk them... bro that's creepy as shit."
"Nah nah, don't worry, I saw this in a book. It doesn't matter if the attraction is mutual."
"Okay, but then why don't you just do as she says then and like, at least pretend to try and rescue her or something. That seems more practical."
I sat up as well.
"Nah man, I've been thinking through this shit man. You gotta scale to the future of space time man and it's just like... at some point the princess will need to learn to just be practical about things and romantic at other times man. Plus, she's a smart girl, she can figure shit out herself as well. Honestly man I don't fucking no. But you only live once. And in this life. I chose the bechdel test!"
"Fair enough man, fair enough."