Chapter 4
…That old man, seriously.
He's grinning like he's never been happier in his life.
“Captain. You look like an idiot.”
“What, you little—? Pfft!”
I found his unusually bright smile irritating, so I stretched out a wing and brushed the feathers across the captain's face once.
“Well, since that's how things turned out… I look forward to working with you.”
Then I held out a wing toward the bookworm staring blankly at the scene.
“…Are you asleep?”
The bookworm was simply staring blankly at my wings.
“Was it Huey…? Is this guy really an adventurer?”
“Master.”
“Ah, no! Yes. I look forward to working with you.”
The foul-tempered-looking girl beside him poked him in the side, and only then did he come to his senses.
“We'll be traveling together for a while anyway, so just relax around me.”
The guy looked about my age, even at a glance. Are otherworlders all this socially inept?
Anyway, my arms were starting to hurt, so I waved my wings several times to show that I wanted to shake hands already.
“Yes… I mean, yeah.”
After finally managing to shake hands with him,
I ignored him staring blankly at his own hand, apparently fascinated by the feel of my feathers, and spoke to the girl sighing beside him.
“You said your name was Luciela, right?”
“Yes.”
“As I said earlier, call me Ren.”
“I would prefer that you call me Lucy.”
This one seemed more dependable, at least.
“Please try to understand. It's just that, with you… Mmph!”
“I was in the wrong, so could you keep your mouth shut for a moment?”
Huey hurriedly clapped a hand over Lucy's mouth and gestured frantically.
I sighed as I watched the two of them dart their eyes around as though they were haggling over something.
“Haa….”
“Ah, young love.”
“Ah, yes. Since we're young, don't go sticking your nose between us, old man. And another thing….”
I pretended not to know anything as I watched the captain lounging across his desk and laughing unpleasantly as though my response didn't matter, then gave my wings one mighty shake.
So the papers on the captain's desk would fly away nicely.
“I told you to wait and see, didn't I?”
-Flap!
“Huh? Hey, Reeeeen!!”
“Good luck!”
While the captain panicked at the sight of the papers flying off his desk,
I stuck out my tongue and jeered, then called out to the two who had continued exchanging glances until then.
“Huey! Lucy! Let's go!”
“Huh?”
“…Understood.”
There wouldn't even be anyone to pick up his papers for him today.
“I'll give you a tour of the building another time if we ever come back, so let's just grab my luggage and go for now!”
Leaving the captain behind as he watched the pile of papers fly out the window and wondered whether he should jump after them,
I took Huey and Lucy with me, ran to my room on the opposite side of the hallway, slung on the bag I always kept packed in preparation for missions, and left the house.
“Ha-ha-ha! Serves you right!!”
“You brat―!! Just you wait!!”
“Hmph! I've never seen anyone scary among people who say ‘Just you wait’!”
“Wait… Gaaah―!! I'm wet!!”
Apparently, the rain that had fallen briefly last night had made a puddle somewhere.
With the captain's screams serving as background music, we left through the main gate.
“Ahh, that feels so refreshing.”
“Um… Is it really all right for us to leave like this?”
I was stretching, feeling refreshed after finally getting one over on the captain for the first time in a while, when
Huey asked me with an uneasy expression.
“It's fine. It's not like this is anything new.”
It had happened often before my body changed, after all.
“Besides, we have ways to contact each other.”
“If that's the case, then I suppose it's fine….”
“It's already in the past; what's the point of worrying about it?”
“You know a thing or two.”
Life was meant to be enjoyed.
The present moment only ever comes around once!
That aside,
“I've been wondering—what's that coffin?”
“Ah, this?”
It had seemed fairly heavy when it was set down earlier, too.
And seeing someone carry a coffin larger than themselves in one hand as though it were nothing, even I couldn't help but wonder.
“…I don't know.”
“Huh?”
“Other than knowing it's important to me, I don't know anything about it.”
I couldn't understand how it could be important to Lucy when she didn't even know what it was, so I watched her in silence.
“I'll explain that.”
Huey cut in.
“Since we're going to be traveling together anyway, it's better for you to know.”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“What do you mean?”
“It happened about half a year ago….”
And so the explanation began.
If I cut out the useless parts of the long-winded explanation, which began by talking about half a year ago…
“So it was an item found alongside Lucy, who was sleeping at the end of the ruins?”
“Yeah.”
“Why does she call you Master?”
“Apparently, she was made to call whoever awakened her Master.”
And here I thought…
Since she called someone who was obviously no nobleman Master,
“I thought you two were doing some sort of master-and-servant role-play.”
I was even thinking of giving them some privacy at night.
“It's not like that!?”
“Even as a joke, that's offensive. How could you compare a beautiful young lady like me to something like this….”
“…That hurts in its own way.”
“And besides, the person Master has fallen for is someone else… Mmph, mmph!”
“Lucy. Didn't we finish our deal earlier?”
So that really was a deal.
Well, I had gotten answers to most of what I was curious about, so that was enough.
“Anyway, I'll be a burden to you from now on, but I look forward to working with you.”
I didn't want to, but I was going to cause them plenty of trouble from now on.
I said that to the two of them, who were whispering among themselves.
“Don't mention it.”
“Now I won't be bored anymore.”
The two of them smiled at me as they said that.
After that, we continued walking and chatting, until the house we'd left disappeared from sight and a huge mountain appeared before us.
There seemed to be a city beyond that mountain… Was its name Dublin?
“We'll have to camp in the mountains tonight.”
As I was trying to recall the name of the city beyond the mountain, Huey spoke, unfolding a map he had somehow taken out.
It was indeed a fairly large mountain to cross on foot, and there was no way we could continue hiking at night.
“Will you be all right, Ren?”
As we headed into the mountains, Huey asked me with concern.
I'd never had anyone worry about me like this before.
“I'm sturdier than you think, so you don't need to worry.”
“Then that's good.”
Had this guy forgotten that I belonged to a mercenary corps?
“Oh, hold on a moment.”
Huey suddenly stopped while we were climbing the mountain, apparently having spotted something.
“What is it?”
“It happens fairly often.”
In response, he raised a hand as if telling me to wait, then began inspecting a tree stump a short distance away.
He soon crouched down, dug a little around the base of the stump, and pulled something out.
“…A mushroom?”
Looking closely at what Huey held, I saw a large mushroom with an eye-catching, rounded red cap.
Why was a mushroom buried underground?
“Heh, dinner's going to be a feast tonight.”
“Isn't that a poisonous mushroom?”
I said that uneasily as I watched Huey continue digging with an excited look on his face.
I seem to remember all mushrooms that flashy being poisonous.
“Oh, this? It's called an underground mushroom. It looks like this, but it's harmless. It smells nice, too.”
Huh, they had all sorts of things.
“They usually only grow underground, so they're hard to find. We got lucky.”
He said it had probably been pushed slightly above the ground because it grew near the tree roots.
Huey came over with both hands full of mushrooms.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
Lucy took out one of the several bundles hanging from the top of the coffin as though she were used to it, then held out the opening so Huey could put the mushrooms inside.
Apparently, most of the luggage Lucy carried around consisted of ingredients.
Come to think of it, this was the first time I'd even heard of anything like that….
“Mushrooms like that must be common in this other world.”
“Huh? No, they aren't.”
“Huh?”
“This is just a hobby.”
As he said that, Huey pulled a small notebook from inside his clothes and opened it toward me.
“Oh….”
The notebook was filled with unfamiliar writing and simple sketches here and there.
“Cooking has been my hobby since I was in my original world.”
Huey smiled gently as he explained that it was a notebook in which he recorded the ingredients of this world.
“Getting home is important, but when else would I get to have experiences like this?”
“At this rate, you're going to kill me.”
Lucy complained with a face full of dissatisfaction, apparently because quite a few of Huey's dishes had ended in failure.
“Well, anyway, you can look forward to dinner tonight.”
Since we had some good ingredients, he said he'd put in some effort to celebrate my joining them.
Huey folded the notebook, tucked it back inside his clothes, and confidently thumped his chest.
“Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.”
We climbed a little farther up the mountain, and as the sun began to set, we came across a suitably spacious clearing, so we decided to camp there for the night.
It was still a little early to eat, so we lit a fire, tidied up the area, and began deciding who would stand watch.
“Lucy and I will stand watch, so you can just rest, Ren.”
“Huh?”
“You must be tired from following us all this way.”
“Huh?”
“Still, this is a surprise. I thought you'd complain about being tired at least once or twice.”
“Huh?”
I found myself responding with a series of incomprehensible noises.
What kind of treatment was this, exactly?
Ah, don't tell me.
“Girls around your age practically pass out after climbing just a little.”
“Our last escort job was really something.”
…That confirmed it.
These two had been thinking of me as nothing more than a winged girl.
“Let me ask first: How old do I look?”
“Twenty at most, if I'm being generous.”
“Late teens, perhaps?”
This was driving me crazy.
“Sorry, but I'm twenty-seven this year.”
“…Whoa.”
“You look remarkably… young.”
Only then did they seem to recall the sight of me being thrown from the second floor earlier, or the story of how I'd ended up like this while exploring the ruins.
They looked at me with expressions that suggested they had finally realized something.
“To begin with….”
This was all the captain's fault.
He should have explained things properly.
“I used to be a man!”