Chapter 31
The morning after sex is always an unpleasant affair.
“Holy shit.”
I frowned at the dampness around my waistband the moment I opened my eyes. I never imagined the bed would get this wet from vaginal fluid and semen. No wonder everyone goes to motels when they have sex. Fuck.
“You're awake?”
Frang's voice came from above my head.
I'd been worrying about the damp bed, but the soft sensation against my head and the impressive bulk of flesh-colored breasts blocking half my view made me realize exactly what position I was in.
“A lap pillow?”
“My mother used to do this for me when I was little.”
Frang answered while stroking my hair. Since we'd both fallen asleep after last night's sex, we were naked. I was lying naked with my head on Frang's bare thighs.
“I used to wonder what Mother found so enjoyable about watching me lie with my head in her lap. But now… I kind of understand.”
“…You can't see my face because of your breasts, can you?”
“No, I can't. That's rather unfortunate. My mother was a pure-blooded dwarf, so she didn't have breasts as large as mine. I can't see your sleeping face the way she could see mine.”
Were all dwarves built like mortars? That was something I hadn't known.
“Having large breasts sure has a lot of drawbacks.”
“They always have. They'd never been useful—until yesterday, that is.”
Frang said that with a chuckle. I realized a beat late why she was laughing. The dick-anaconda in the canyon between my thighs, which had gone out hunting for food since morning, was twitching vigorously.
Oh, my dick. Thank God you still looked exactly as you had, untouched by expansion-pack patches or nerfs. If you'd suddenly gone, “Squeee…” and shrunk back to your original size, that would've been a hell of a problem.
“All men are like this every morning.”
“Really? I didn't know. So it didn't get hard because of me.”
“The fact that it still hasn't gone down is thanks to you, though.”
At my words, Frang bent down and whispered into my ear.
“Pervert.”
─Squoosh.
Because Frang had leaned in to whisper, my mouth was lightly pinned beneath her soft, pillowy breast. But I wasn't suffocating, and I wasn't angry either.
Breasts are always right. I will accept no objections.
Anyway, we got up and dressed. For the first time since coming to this world, I found myself missing wet wipes. Regular tissues existed, but wet wipes didn't. That was a problem in an inn room without even a shower; situations like this left you feeling thoroughly grimy.
“Frang. I was thinking of going to the bathhouse. Want to come?”
“Hmm, give me a moment? Actually, I have a request today… I think I need to check the time before deciding.”
“A request? What time do you have to be there by?”
“One p.m.”
“One? We should hurry. We might've overslept.”
Not having a clock in the room was inconvenient at times like this too. If it was already noon, we'd have to rush to the public bathhouse, wash quickly, and run back out.
More importantly, fuck, I could just ejaculate and wipe myself off, but didn't Frang still have my semen inside her? The thought of her having to sneak off to a corner of the bathhouse to clean herself made guilt surge through me.
─Clomp, clomp.
We freshened up quickly and went outside. While I went to check the clock on the clock tower, Frang was talking with the innkeeper.
“Frang. It's still eight.”
“Eight? I overslept.”
Eight counted as oversleeping? Was I normally nocturnal? Thinking of my usual wake-up time—eleven or twelve—I was almost amazed by the difference in our ways of thinking.
The innkeeper asked then.
“So, did you enjoy yourselves last night?”
“Huh?”
I looked away at her words, but Frang asked back as though she hadn't understood right away.
At the innkeeper's knowing smile, Frang turned to look at me. She was asking whether I had any idea why the woman was acting that way, so I simply stared at her in silence.
“──Ah.”
Once Frang caught on to the meaning of the question, her face went pale up to her neck, then turned bright red again.
I mean, come on—an adult man and woman had gone up to an inn room together and crawled back out the next morning. It would've been abnormal not to figure it out. Obviously.
But it was so fucking embarrassing that I wanted her to let it slide.
“Ah, ah!! Aaaaa──!!”
Frang screamed. I wanted to scream too. Just scream.
“Th-th-that? It wasn't like that! There was a misunderstanding, you see? You're getting the wrong idea because of it!!”
“A misunderstanding? What kind?”
“I-I mean, we didn't do anything like that! We just slept, that's all!”
“In the same bed?”
“No!!!!! I!!!!! Slept!!!!! On the floor!!!!!”
“Oh my, is that so? I must have misunderstood. ─But Frang, didn't you know?”
The innkeeper put a hand to her cheek and spoke as though she were troubled.
“Our inn is well soundproofed, but the floor is old, you see. Sometimes the creaking of the bed comes through very loudly downstairs, and it can be quite a trial──.”
“I'mjustgoingtothebathhouseandthenI'llgotowork!!”
Whoosh!!
Realizing she was checkmated, Frang ran off, tossing the embarrassment to her evening self. I alternated between watching Frang sprint outside and watching the innkeeper giggle at her.
“…Should I thank you for what you did last night?”
I asked. The innkeeper wiped away the tears brought on by laughing and smiled.
“No need. I was only rooting for that girl. Frang was the one who chose you. If you hadn't looked responsible, I would've stopped her, though.”
“That's a relief.”
In my twenty-eight years of experience, ‘kind’ meant ‘You look too difficult to compliment, so I'll say this instead,’ while ‘you look responsible’ meant ‘You look like such a virgin sucker that you couldn't even act slick.’
According to the innkeeper, if I'd shown up looking like a blond, tanned punk saying, ‘Annyeonghaseyo~?’ this wouldn't have happened.
The fact that she had pushed things between Frang and me along somewhat forcefully last night meant that, in the innkeeper's eyes, I looked like a perfectly decent person.
“When your job has you meet lots of people, you get a rough sense of what kind of person they are just from first impressions. And to me, you looked like a pretty decent person.”
The innkeeper said that.
I considered physiognomy nothing more than pseudoscience, but who knew in this otherworld? Since things like divination existed, perhaps physiognomy could be established as a proper discipline governed by laws, just like alchemy.
Anyway, the innkeeper really had subtly played matchmaker between us, so I bowed my head to her and said:
“My name is Nord.”
“I'm Beinya Mutarat. Please take good care of Frang.”
“Of course. Leave her to me.”
After exchanging greetings, I chased after Frang, who had run ahead.
The inn ‘Children of Mutarat,’ huh.
What a well-chosen name for an inn.
***
Bathhouse culture spread through Britannia largely under Romania's influence.
No, to be blunt, nearly everything good in this country was a rip-off of Romania's. That was the policy of the current Britannian kingdom. They were developing by copying every foreign thing that looked useful.
─We grind manpower to improve quality!! After chasing the developed nations, Britannia's brilliant future as a great power awaits, desu!!
You could say that Britannia had inherited the will to copy.
‘They say reasonable imitation is the foundation of growth, though.’
I wasn't really in a position to criticize Britannia's copying. Korea had also gone through a period of growth by plagiarizing all kinds of things from other countries, from snacks and policies to television programs.
The fact that, whenever the bigwigs were idiots, it was the people below who died was the same in every world and every country, though.
‘Shouldn't these fucking Britannian noble bastards get on with currency reform before they get around to ripping off everyone else's fucking crap?’
I knew perfectly well that currency reform was anything but easy. Still, if they were going to copy Romania, shouldn't they have started there?
Thanks to that, Britannia had installed bathhouses all over the country, then turned around and introduced a separate pass system for using them. If they charged one cooper per visit, nobody would go because the price would be so outrageous it'd have everyone cursing the bastard's mother.
On top of that, Britannia was roughly a country with a feudal system like Earth's old one, so there were also cases where lords refused the king's orders, saying, “I can't accept that!”
In domains with many residents who didn't use the bathhouses, the maintenance costs meant they simply ran pointless deficits.
Romania was governed by a senate and a citizen assembly. If Britannia copied it wholesale without adapting it to its own circumstances, it was more likely than not to fail.
For the king to intervene in the policies of the nobles' domains, he had no choice but to wield royal authority. That was a burden for the king too. He probably had to be as careful as a duty officer ordering a live-ammo-carrying soldier on the verge of discharge to report for weekly sunbathing.
Our dear motherfucking king had apparently decided to just leave it at, “Do it if you want, don't if you don't.” It was a fine example of a development policy that had gone completely to shit. Truly, it was a lamentable state of affairs.
Fortunately, Sargadis was one of the domains that had adopted and operated a city library and public bathhouse copied from Romania. That was because its lord was a genuinely sensible person.
‘What was his name again? Jo… Joteru? Joteru von Henne?’
Anyway, thanks to him, I could wash myself often. That was a relief.
Despite the existence of water pipes in this world, it was hard to find a shower in a cheap inn. The prevailing attitude was, “Why build showers when there are bathhouses?” It gave me a headache. What kind of idiots used wells and water pipes at the same time?
“Do you go to the bathhouse often?”
Frang asked as she walked beside me.
“Almost every day. What about you, Frang?”
“I go every day too. That's how it was in Nidavellir.”
Nidavellir was the nation of the dwarves. In genuine Norse mythology, it was apparently an entirely separate world, but in this otherworld it was merely a foreign underground city.
Fuck, to be honest, I found an underground city more amazing than an entirely separate world.
How did people live underground? What about oxygen? Drinking water? Waste disposal? Didn't people die of disease from never seeing sunlight? It was a country that left me endlessly curious in every possible way.
Even so, I didn't particularly want to visit. Unless Frang asked me to go, of course.
“Ah, but Nord probably didn't bring a bathhouse pass.”
Frang said that while touching the basket she had brought. At this bathhouse, people had to bring their own towels and bathing supplies.
Bathhouse passes cost three for one cooper. That worked out to three thousand won per visit, making it cheaper than in Korea. They probably kept it that cheap because people wouldn't use the bathhouse if it cost more. I shrugged and said:
“I brought my wallet, so I'll buy some new passes. I'll use them eventually anyway, and they say you can exchange one pass for two towels.”
That meant buying two decent cloth towels for three thousand won, since a pass was worth one-third of a cooper.
“Really? Oh, or should we stop by your inn for a moment?”
“Our innkeeper would act just like Ms. Beinya, though.”
“……I'll pay for your bath, Nord….”
Frang said that gloomily. It was the unmistakable expression of someone who absolutely did not want to go.
Anyway, we went to the bathhouse.
Jingle-jingle─.
Britannia also had a custom of hanging bells on doors. Lost in memories of home, I entered the bathhouse. A young woman was working reception behind a broad stone counter.
“Hello, sir?”
“Yes. Hello. Could I have one pass?”
I said that while taking out one cooper. The receptionist smiled, her eyes curving like bows, and answered:
“Of course. But, sir? Are you and the person beside you a couple?”
“Y-yes, wha?!”
Frang jumped in surprise. I was inwardly startled too by such a direct question out of nowhere. But I kicked the engine of otherworldly machismo into full throttle and answered calmly.
“We are. We're in love with each other.”
Frang had said that before falling asleep last night, and I had fallen for her too, so it was 100% true hontoni fact.
“Ah, aah….”
Frang lowered her head as though failing to bring her hood was her life's greatest regret. Even so, she gripped my hand tightly with one of hers.
“…Yes. We are a couple.”
When I glanced over and our eyes met, she looked embarrassed but leaned her body against my waist.
Wow, why was she so damn adorable? My girlfriend was so cute I felt like I was going to die.
“Hehe. What a lovely pair you make.”
The receptionist said that while looking fondly at us.
“Then, sir? Would you be interested in our couples-only bath?”