Chapter 10
“Phew..”
I managed to wash up and come out..
After agonizing for quite a while over whether I should get into the bathwater Lumia had used, I suddenly wondered if that would be incredibly perverted and barely managed to come to my senses.
If Lumia found out I was agonizing over something like this, how much would she despise me?
With a reverent heart, I drained the water.
After making fresh water, heating it, and soaking in it until I'd washed away every last worldly desire, I stepped outside with a peaceful expression. I was filled with enough confidence to believe I could shake off any temptation Lumia might offer me now.
The first thing I saw upon leaving the room was none other than Lumia, lying on the bed.
Unlike me, whose mind had been tangled in all sorts of worldly thoughts just moments ago, Lumia's expression as she looked at me didn't change at all, as if she truly wasn't thinking about anything. Still, she had seemed somewhat embarrassed earlier, so why was that?
“Lumia.”
At my call, Lumia, who had been lying on the bed and staring blankly at the ceiling, turned her head and looked at me.
“I’ll sleep on the floor, so you sleep on the bed.”
“..?”
Lumia looked as though she didn't understand.
Had I misspoken?
Even so, it wasn't as though we could sleep together in the same bed.
Even Lumia would simply tell me to do as I pleased, since whether we slept together had nothing to do with efficiency.
However, Lumia completely shattered that assumption.
Lumia pointed at the bed with an expression of incomprehension, then held up two fingers.
She might not have known it, but I had spent so long with her that I immediately understood what she meant.
The bed was wide enough for two people to lie down comfortably.
It was so wide that anyone would think it was meant for two, so Lumia was probably wondering why I was sleeping on the floor when it was a double bed.
The landlady had said she'd given us the room that was left, but no matter how I thought about it, it was obvious she'd deliberately given us this room.
The thoughts I'd barely managed to wash away earlier seemed to begin flooding back.
“It’s really fine..”
Of course, the floor wasn't comfortable enough to sleep on and was dirty, so I couldn't simply sleep there.
“I’ll go downstairs and get a blanket.”
It would be bad enough to spread a blanket on the floor and sleep there, but sleeping together on the bed would be even crazier. Lumia, who had been watching me with an unreadable, vacant expression, then sat up and folded the blanket, then folded it again, and again.
“Lumia..?”
She seemed to be having quite a hard time folding and refolding a blanket longer than her body.
After a while, Lumia finished folding it into a long, narrow shape, stood up from the bed, and placed it neatly down the middle. Since it was such a large blanket, putting it there made the bed seem divided in two.
Lumia wiped away the slight sweat beading on her forehead as if she'd accomplished something great, then pointed to the side opposite where she was sitting.
Was she telling me to sleep here?
“Uh..”
I stared blankly, unable to believe she'd thought to split the bed itself like this.
Even so, who on earth would think to divide a bed with a blanket?
“...”
I lay down on the bed without a word.
The blanket blocked my view of Lumia, but the fact remained that she was beside me, so I was a little—no, very—embarrassed. It was even more embarrassing because it was my first time sharing a bed with her.
Lumia must have laid out the blanket like this deliberately to be considerate of me, yet I was reacting this way, and I felt terrible.
“Sigh..”
I don't know anymore.
For now, I would get a good night's rest, collect the bounty tomorrow, and leave for the next city immediately afterward.
Because I had to meet Cecilia as soon as possible.
I couldn't keep thinking like this.
I cast aside all my thoughts and tried to fall asleep.
This was going to be a long battle.
* * *
Hmm.
Did I make a mistake?
It didn't seem like I'd made any particular mistake, though.
Of course, at first I was happy at the thought of having the bed to myself, so I planned to leave the Hero to sleep on the floor and take the bed for myself. But this room had been rented with the Hero's money, and it was because of me that we'd gotten a single room instead of the double room we'd originally planned to book.
If I hogged the bed on top of that, it would be no different from taking the Hero's bed away from him.
Looking at it from a man's perspective, I was the biggest bastard imaginable.
Worried that the Hero might be disappointed in me, I stopped myself from lying down alone and tried to persuade him, as he attempted to get away somehow, to stay on the bed—but I couldn't speak.
I was too embarrassed to send him a telepathic message suggesting we sleep together.
Besides, even though I'd once been a man, sharing a bed with a man was still a lot to handle.
No—women were one thing, but I could confidently say that no man liked sharing a bed with another man unless he had that sort of proclivity.
Before coming here, whenever my friends came to my house, they would volunteer to sleep on the floor because it was my house, so the bed was still mine. But this wasn't my house—it was an inn the Hero had paid for.
So I couldn't just do as I pleased.
Therefore, I searched for a way to keep the Hero from being disappointed while making it possible for him to lie down and sleep on the bed, and eventually found the best solution.
Namely, separating the middle of the bed with a blanket.
This would make the bed narrower, but it would let the Hero lie on it without making it feel as though we were sleeping together. In any case, since I was fairly petite, the loss of space wasn't much of a problem.
The Hero seemed dumbfounded by what I'd done, but fortunately, perhaps my sincerity had gotten through, and he lay down on the bed.
“Well, whatever.. I hate to say it myself, but wouldn't it feel nice to lie beside a girl as pretty as me..?”
I hadn't even slept beside a woman before, much less a girl as pretty as this.
I couldn't help but find it utterly galling.
‘I want to go home..’
How had I ended up playing a game like this, becoming this body, and falling into this world..? There wasn't even any guarantee that I could return to my original world by somehow falling in love with the Hero, getting pregnant, and defeating the Demon King or something.
To be honest, it was amazing that I was still in my right mind.
Either way, if I didn't sacrifice myself, the party would be annihilated and the world would fall into ruin, so you'd think I'd feel impatient, resentful, and all sorts of other negative emotions. I did feel them, but not so intensely that I couldn't maintain my sanity.
In any case, I had to find a way as soon as possible.
For starters, I should look into everything I can find about the Demon King.
Still, fortunately, this game hadn't been designed to require regression in order to meet the conditions for a happy ending, so I'd heard that if I thoroughly—very thoroughly—searched for information about the Demon King, I could reach a happy ending on my first playthrough.
In fact, once the strategy had been discovered, everyone simply accepted it and easily cleared Lumia's route.
Since I had to uncover information about the Demon King and Lumia's relationship to impregnate Lumia and enter the route leading to a happy ending, I might be able to find a way to survive without having to be impregnated by the Hero if I investigated that part carefully.
To do that, I should probably go to a library in a major city first..
I yawned and closed my eyes.
For now, I'd think about what I needed to do after I slept and woke up.
“...”
Wait.
It suddenly occurred to me.
According to her character settings, Lumia was a terribly restless sleeper despite her appearance: she often hugged whoever slept beside her, threw off the blankets, or, in the worst cases, pushed either herself or the other person off the bed and went tumbling to the floor.
The Hero wouldn't know that, but I did.
I couldn't help wondering what I'd do if I ended up pushing the Hero off the bed.
It was even possible that I'd push the Hero off, fall off myself, and come crashing down on top of him in a catastrophic accident. Of course, nothing would happen to the Hero's body, but the fall itself would still be a problem.
‘It should be fine..?’
Well, still, I'm the one inside this body.
What could possibly happen just because the contents had changed?
I shook my head.
Stop thinking about pointless things and just go to sleep.
From what I'd heard, we were supposed to collect the bounty tomorrow and resume our journey to the Holy Kingdom, so until we reached a major city, we'd have to travel by carriage. I'd always skipped over the time spent traveling by carriage in fantasy worlds, so I'd never known, but traveling by carriage was much more boring than I expected.
And since traveling was so exhausting, it would be best to conserve my energy even now.
So stop thinking about pointless things and go to sleep..
I closed my eyes.