Waltrautesan no Konkatsu Jijou - Chapter 3 - Part 1

The Difference between the Gods and the Giants is an Incredibly Unfair One

On a certain day of a certain month, the boy and Waltraute had a fight.

It happened during one of their dates. As usual, this date came about from a challenge made by the boy to the (supposedly) reluctant Waltraute. He had challenged her to a fishing competition. The boy had only been able to catch boots and buckets, but when he puffed out his cheeks in frustration just before the time limit, he accidentally snagged the clothes of the goddess of the sea Rán and won the competition. (Incidentally, this meant Rán was half-naked when she was pulled up out of the water, so Waltraute had scolded him unfairly.)

As for the story behind the aforementioned fight…

“Waltraute, you sure are tall.”

“Yes, having a decent height gives one an advantage in battle. That is why I was designed this way.”

"I don’t grow no matter what I eat. I wish my legs were as long as yours.”

“Hyaahn!? D-do not start rubbing me there, you fool!”

But that was not the cause of the fight.

“It’s so hot.”

“Y-yes. The god of harvest Freyr may be putting in too much effort today.”

“Don’t you get hot always wearing that armor?”

“Once you are used to it, it is no big deal.”

“Hmm. You don’t have some trick making it cool inside your armor, do you?”

“Nwaaaaaahhhh!? Where do you think you are sticking your haaaaannnnnnd!?”

But that was not the cause of the fight.

“Yams!”

“Pant pant pant… Y-yes. But do not touch them if you do not intend to eat them. They will make you itchy.”

“Yams, yams.”

“…Okay, Norns, you goddesses of fate. This is not happening. I can take a guess from the previous two incidents that this will have some kind of lewd punch line. However, I have my doubts about whether it still counts as simply ‘lewd’ if things head to a more delicate area-…gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

The three goddesses Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld who were usually completely expressionless started clapping their hands together and laughing, but this was not the cause of the fight either.

It all started with the white horse the Valkyrie always rode. When Waltraute arrived in the human world of Midgard, the boy had looked up at her and asked a question.

“I want to ride it too. Can I?”

“Mh.” Waltraute held the reins to control the white horse’s movements. “Unfortunately, I cannot allow that.”

Given the boy’s height, it would have been difficult for him to ride a normal horse. He might have been able to ride something like a pony, but it seemed impossible for him to manage such a large beast. It would obviously end up as something out of a rodeo.

And on top of that, Waltraute’s horse was no normal horse. It was also a device meant to ensure the special transportation method using Bifröst went smoothly. Bifröst would break her “existence” down, but intentionally adding in an impurity allowed her to move more quickly and more accurately. Other gods used Bifröst as well, but they were not able to travel at 87% the speed of light or land with a margin of error of only a few centimeters like a Valkyrie could.

That special white horse was not as simple to handle as a normal one. There was no way she could hand that boy of the human world the reins of a rough horse that was known to easily throw off your average god.

But it seemed the boy did not understand any of that.

“Why not? Why not? I wanna ride it! I wanna ride it!!”

“Sigh. This horse is almost 2 meters tall. Can you even climb up onto it?”

The Valkyrie denied him gently.

“Uuh…uuh…”

But the boy suddenly began rummaging through the bag on his back.

“Carrot.”

And the white horse immediately knelt down.

Waltraute gritted her teeth and said, “Kh, so you’re just a beast!!”

“Climb!!”

As the boy tried to grab on to the horse, the Valkyrie grabbed his upper body with both hands and placed him right in front of her.

Looking dissatisfied, the boy said, “…No. You can’t be supporting me from behind. I have to hold the reins on my own.”

“Why are you so insistent about this? If you want go somewhere, I can bring you anywhere within the human world.”

“The whole point is to control it myself!!”

“Well, unfortunately, I cannot allow that.”

That was Waltraute’s honest response after considering the fundamental difference in physical ability between a human and a Valkyrie, but the boy’s cheeks visibly puffed up.

“I can do it!! Even if I can’t do it right now, I’ll train a whole bunch and then do it.”

“No, the problem is at a deeper level than that.”

“I can do it!!”

“This is the same as having a race between a human and a leopard. It is not something worth putting any effort into.”

“I can-…”

“I will help you with everything a human cannot do. I do not know if a human can help me with anything I cannot do, but I am not so narrow-minded as to ask for an equivalent exchange.”

“Uuh…Uuuhh…!!”

“Hm?”

Waltraute realized something was odd.

The boy held between her arms was shaking. She tried to look at his face, but before she could, the boy raised his head and shouted out.

"Shut up, you idiot!! If I work hard…If I work hard, I can get strong!! Wahhh!!”

“Wait… Wh-why are you crying!?”

“Byahhh!!”

The boy slipped from Waltraute’s arms and half-jumped down from the white horse. He ran off with his arms up in the air and Xs in his eyes.

Waltraute was completely dumbfounded.

“…What was that?” she muttered.

Her white horse twisted its thick neck to look at its master.

Its round eyes seemed to say, “This is bad. Humans have many ways of crying, but ‘byahhh’ is bad.”