Chapter 62
Since my encounter with that horned colt I could have torn to pieces and still not felt satisfied.
Before we knew it, two days had passed.
“Come to think of it.”
While we were walking along the road as usual.
Lucy opened her mouth, looking at me as if puzzled.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while.”
“Huh? What is it?”
More precisely, she said she’d been curious ever since seeing me use a sword.
Lucy looked at me with curiosity-filled eyes, while Huey pricked up his ears despite pretending not to care.
“That person you call your master, Ren. Just who are they that you’re so afraid of?”
…….
“…Who?”
“Your master.”
My body froze at the unexpected question.
“Even now, look. You’re trembling.”
“I-I’m not!”
Aw, damn it.
Why are my legs trembling on their own today of all days?
“…That reaction only makes me more curious.”
“Well, it’s getting pretty dark now. How about we get set up a little early today and talk at our leisure?”
As I kept smacking my trembling legs with my wings, trying to stop them.
For some reason, the two of them looked at me with faces full of interest.
“Who said I was going to tell you?”
Just hearing the word master makes my body tremble like this.
And they want me to dredge up memories from that time?
That’s ridiculous.
“Really? We even got some expensive meat, so I thought I’d put some effort into cooking it….”
“Oh, what a shame.”
Actually, now that I think about it, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Yeah.
“…Put that meat back where it was.”
Wiping the drool from the corner of my mouth with a wing,
I decided to dig up a few memories from the past for the first time in a while.
“Where do you want to start?”
…I know.
I know exactly how stupid I look right now.
But when meat that looked that good was dangling right in front of me….
“Slurp.”
“Sorry, but this will take a while, so wait a bit.”
“…Master. I’m fine, so please give lots to Ren instead.”
Apparently, I’d been far too obvious.
Lucy looked at me with pity, and it stung a little.
“Ahem.”
And so.
Huey, who had lit two campfires, bustled around for a while.
Finally, he poured a bottle of liquor into a large pot, closed the lid, hung it over the fire, and adjusted its height.
“There. It should take about an hour.”
“More importantly, you were carrying liquor too?”
“Oh, Ms. Chloe gave it to me in the desert.”
None of us was much of a drinker anyway.
He said he’d gladly accepted it, planning to use it for cooking.
“…That drunkard gave you liquor?”
“Obviously to buy our silence.”
“Apparently she didn’t want Mr. Sion to find out what she’d done while she was with us.”
“Ah, that zombie horde.”
As I recalled the incident, which hadn’t happened long ago but already felt like a distant memory, I chuckled.
“Anyway, we have plenty of time….”
“Shall we hear it now?”
The two of them came closer and spoke with smiles on their faces.
“…Urk.”
Now that I actually had to start, I didn’t know where to begin.
“Nnngh.”
After thinking for a long while.
“My master’s name was… Martha.”
I decided to start there, at least.
“Martha the Tyrant.”
I don’t know who gave her that name.
But no title could have suited my master better.
“She’s the most foul-tempered woman in the world, as far as I know.”
Ah, but since she was still single at that age, technically she wasn’t an ajumma.
“Anyway, to start with the part you two are probably most curious about….”
Her combat ability, I suppose.
“Among everyone I’ve met, she was one of the top three in terms of strength.”
Even when I last ran away from my master, she was still that strong.
I wonder how strong she is now.
“Well, I’m probably stronger than her now, though.”
Of course, that’s only if I had my original body.
“That’s not how someone who claims to be stronger acts.”
“At least do something about that trembling body first. It’s distracting.”
…T-this is just a conditioned reflex.
It’s not like I instinctively cower every time my master raises a hand!
“Being stronger and being scared are two different things, okay!?”
“It’s still surprising. I didn’t know there was anything you were afraid of.”
“Indeed. Judging by your behavior, I thought you had no respect for masters or anything.”
What the hell did they think I was?
“Just try being beaten for three days straight under the pretext of education.”
On the first day, I got beaten for speaking casually.
On the second day, I got beaten because I held my head too stiffly.
On the third day, I got beaten because my gaze was defiant.
As I explained how I’d been beaten for three days, their expressions changed by the moment.
“That wasn’t disciplining a pupil. It was taming a wild animal, wasn’t it?”
“…I was thinking the same thing.”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t been much different from a wild animal when I was young.
The only difference was that I used tools, I suppose.
“Well, anyway.”
They weren’t particularly pleasant memories.
Still, they did give me a good foundation.
“Regardless of how strong she is, she’s nothing but a trauma to me.”
No matter how hard I tried, all I could remember was getting beaten by my master.
“Ah, it looks like it’s almost done.”
And so, after talking about my master and all sorts of other things,
Huey rose to his feet, drawn by the appetizing aroma that had been wafting over for a while.
A little while later.
“It turned out well today, too.”
The dish came out with a few pieces of bread.
“Wow.”
“Oh.”
“It’s liquor-braised minotaur meat.”
Vegetables soaked in a dark sauce that gave off a subtle tomato aroma.
Minotaur meat so tender it looked ready to melt in my mouth.
“This all looks great, but how am I supposed to eat it?”
Lately, it feels like more and more foods are becoming impossible for me to eat on my own.
“…Just hold on a little longer. I’m planning to have a set of dishes made just for you at our next destination.”
For some reason, with his gaze subtly averted,
Huey came over beside me and opened his mouth.
“Sometimes, when my enthusiasm gets ahead of me, I forget things like this.”
He said he’d been so intent on making the dish that he hadn’t even considered whether I could eat it.
“It’s not much of a substitute, but I’ll help you eat.”
“…Sure, whatever.”
Lucy, who had told him to give me her share as well, seemed to have forgotten her own words.
She was too absorbed in her meal, her eyes sparkling.
With no choice, I sat quietly and started accepting whatever Huey offered me.
“Ah―.”
I wondered if I’d fallen for some ridiculous excuse,
but it wasn’t as though I was in a position to complain to the one cooking for me.
The moment I wrapped my tongue around the large piece of meat in my mouth.
“Hwaaah….”
A voice that melted like the meat in my mouth escaped me before I knew it.
“It’s delicious….”
The meat melted the moment I put it in my mouth.
Its long-simmered salty richness was laced with sweetness.
“Here, it’ll taste even better with bread.”
“Haup.”
And the warm bread neatly soaked up the aftertaste.
“This is incredible….”
Thus, completely unaware of what I was doing,
I kept opening my mouth and eagerly accepting each bite Huey picked up and held out to me.
“Pfft, khm….”
A sudden laugh reached my ears.
“…What?”
I’d been happily eating my food.
“Pff, hehehe…!”
I turned my head and saw that Lucy had apparently already finished eating.
She had put her bowl away first.
“I can’t hold it in anymore! Ahahaha!”
Lucy was clutching her stomach with both hands, tears streaming as she laughed.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“……Kkh.”
When I asked Huey, staring at Lucy in disbelief,
I heard him similarly trying to hold back a laugh.
I turned to Huey, who had been feeding me until just a moment ago….
…Wait, what?
Who had fed food into whose mouth?
-The otherworlder beside you fed you.
Only after hearing the voice in my head, brimming with laughter, did I realize what I had been doing.
“Ah, wha, ah, nooooooo―!”
I flailed, covering my rapidly heating face with both wings.
-It definitely was. Pfft.
Right.
If I had to summarize what I’d looked like a moment ago, that was exactly it.
Sitting on a rock, stretching my neck out and waiting for food to enter my mouth.
-You looked cute, Baby Bird.
…Baby bird.
“Pfft, hehehe….”
Huey must have been holding it in for quite some time, too.
The laughter that burst out as he dropped down with a thump was extremely irritating.
“Grrrk.”
And so.
“Shut up, all of youuu―!”
After barely calming down the ones laughing noisily on either side of me and inside my head,
“…Why am I more tired after dinner?”
“Because you threw a fit about being embarrassed all by yourself… Kkh.”
“Pff, Master. It’s funny whenever you tell it, so please stop…!”
I lay down on a nearby rock, even more exhausted than I’d been before dinner.
I let out a deep sigh.
“Haa… I’m definitely getting back to my original body somehow.”
It was another day in which I gained yet another reason to get my original body back.