Beastfolk and the Forest Cat

In the forest, I rescued a black-furred animal called a forest cat. Apparently, she was a messenger of the god worshiped by the beastfolk—the catfolk.

I invited Myaree, a beastfolk woman, into my house and opened the door.

"It isn't all that spacious inside, though."

"Wow, it's so clean~!"

There were plenty of houses in town that were shabbier than this. Even this homemade house ranked among the finer residences in this world, excluding the mansions of wealthy merchants and nobles.

There was still nothing in the room. Just the bed and a rug. There was no need to bring in furniture and the like when I could put everything inside my Item Box.

If I could just enter my Item Box myself, I wouldn't need a house at all, would I?

The forest cat was still curled up on the blanket spread in the corner.

But—she'd eaten some of the canned cat food. It seemed she'd drunk some water too.

"Oh, she ate a little. I hope her appetite comes back like this..."

"Her leg is injured near the base. Poor thing..."

"There was a broken arrow stuck in her."

"It was those guys, after all."

Apparently, "those guys" meant the dogfolk, but was it right to jump to conclusions without any evidence?

I disinfected the wound and applied the medicine again. But perhaps it stung, because the forest cat turned her head and tried to lick the wound.

"Hey, don't lick it—there was something you could wrap around an animal's neck for times like this..."

I searched Shangri-La. Right, an Elizabethan collar. I bought a huge one for large dogs—for 3,000 yen.

I wrapped the transparent cone around the black-furred animal's neck. Even her face, as she let me do whatever I wanted, seemed to wear an utterly indignant expression—but was that just my imagination?

Her eyes seemed to say, "Taking advantage of me because I can't move and doing whatever you want..."

"But I'm doing this for your sake. You have to understand."

As I stroked her body while spouting a line straight out of a third-rate play, Myaree looked puzzled when she saw the Elizabethan collar.

"What's that?"

"It's to keep you from licking the wound. There's medicine on it, you see."

"Are you a doctor, Kenichi?"

"No, but I can at least treat a wound—or so I hope."

I tried to take away the dish so I could replace the cat food the forest cat had eaten from.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"I'm going to replace it, so I thought I'd throw it away..."

"Then I'll eat it!"

"Huh~? Wait a second. There is other food too, you know?"

It was almost dinnertime, so I had been thinking of making something.

"That looks delicious, so that's what I want."

"This is food for animals, you know?"

"If it's safe for an animal to eat, it's safe for me too."

"I mean, you're right, but..."

What could possibly make her want to eat canned cat food? According to her, it looked and smelled delicious. Besides, it wasn't some bargain product; it was fairly expensive.

Well, cats went crazy for it, so I supposed it wasn't strange for a beastfolk to go crazy for it either.

"I'll catch a bird tomorrow and trade it for this."

"No, if you really want to eat it, I don't mind."

I felt uneasy about feeding a customer cat food. This was another world—maybe worrying about it meant I had already lost.

I prepared a dish for Myaree and transferred the half-eaten cat food into it. Even though I offered to get her a fresh can, she insisted this was fine.

I'd heard cat food wasn't very salty, though I'd never eaten it myself, so I brought out some extra salt and pepper from my Item Box for her.

I also brought out some soy sauce for her to try, but apparently she couldn't stand the smell.

It was fermented food, after all, so it probably did have a distinctive smell. Was the reason I didn't mind it simply because I was Japanese?

"It's delicious!"

After sitting at the table and taking a bite of the cat food, she exclaimed in delight.

"Really?"

I'd heard it was harmless for humans to eat, and I vaguely remembered jokes online about eating cat food and dog food, so I figured it was probably fine.

According to her, it was amazingly delicious. Oh, really?

While watching Myaree eat out of the corner of my eye, I gave the forest cat a fresh can of cat food too.

Since cat food alone wouldn't make much of a meal, I brought out some soup and bread as well.

"It's delicious~! Kenichi's food is delicious~!"

It was nice that Myaree was enjoying herself, but I had mixed feelings about it.

As she happily shoveled down the cat food, I asked her about the spices the beastfolk had wanted.

"We use lots of them in dishes from our homeland."

I see. They were their soul food, so to speak. For Japanese people, they were probably the equivalent of rice and soy sauce.

Apparently, they sometimes craved them desperately, but the prices had been deliberately inflated here, leaving them unable to buy any—and that had them worried.

They were apparently supposed to be somewhat cheaper.

I wondered if eating something delicious had made her forget about the forest cat, but that wasn't the case. She was still worried.

"Do you think the forest cat will get better?"

"When I brought her here, she couldn't move at all, but she seems a little livelier now, and it looks like she ate some food. I think she'll probably recover..."

"I'm glad Kenichi is such a good person~. If it had been someone else, they definitely would have taken her to the guild."

"What would they do at the guild?"

"Sell her for her fur."

I see. According to Myaree, if you killed a beast and brought it to the Adventurers' Guild, they would butcher it for you.

To transport game, you had to remove the organs or cool it in water, or it would spoil, but if you carried it in my Item Box, it wouldn't rot.

"Would it be possible to sell the fur and just take the meat?"

"Meow."

In that case, I might as well join the Adventurers' Guild.

Apparently, the Adventurers' Guild was like a job-placement office in my original world, and it also arranged ordinary work.

In the neighboring country of the Empire, there was apparently a guild called the Job Introduction Guild—a name that was basically the same as "Hello Work." The guild there collected taxes, but this country didn't.

"So I can join the Adventurers' Guild and go there whenever I'm short on work?"

"That's right. Even children work jobs like gathering medicinal herbs."

Gathering medicinal herbs for the Adventurers' Guild... It sounded like the very first fetch quest in an RPG.

But when I listened to Myaree, it really was just like an RPG: hunting game, searching for minerals, looking for unusual plants, and so on.

So besides running a business, there were ways to make money like that too. But the initial registration fee was one silver coin (50,000 yen). Wasn't that a little expensive for a child?

"You can pay in installments too."

Apparently, you could pay it off little by little on credit whenever you had money. There was a one-year limit, though. If you couldn't pay, forced labor awaited you at construction sites and the like.

It sounded a little tough for children, but apparently delinquents were rare, so perhaps it worked out.

Well, if you worked every day, even paying back 500 yen at a time, you could cover that amount in about three and a half months.

After dinner, I lit the gasoline lantern and ended up talking with Myaree for quite a while—but she seemed determined to stay the night. Was that really okay?

"I'm worried about the forest cat..."

"No, I don't mind, but there's only one bed, you know?"

"Then we can sleep together."

She said it so casually, but was that just how beastfolk women were?

"It's not like that. Kenichi is definitely a good person because he saved the forest cat, so it's fine."

Because I'm a good person... I still didn't really understand this world's sense of chastity... Maybe it was because she was beastfolk...

Well, whatever. Myaree was pretty cute, after all.

"Then, shall we take a bath?"

"A bath? You mean a hot bath?"

"That's right. A bath with hot water."

"I will!"

She bounced up and down in delight, but she jumped so high that she nearly hit her head on the beam overhead.

She grabbed onto it, swung herself up, and leaped onto the beam like a ninja.

"Whoa, that's amazing!"

Her movements looked like movie CGI. You could shoot some incredible footage without any special effects. She leaped straight back down from the beam.

"That was incredible!"

"Any beastfolk child can do this much."

What? Their physical abilities were way too high. But apparently beastfolk couldn't read, write, or do arithmetic, so I supposed the heavens hadn't given them everything.

Since Myaree said she wanted to take a bath, I carried the lantern to the bathing area I'd built outside the house. The forest was already pitch-black.

I had built a wooden platform for getting into the drum-barrel bath and installed handrails and other things for support.

I set the lantern beside the bath and lit the firewood.

"Is this the bath?"

"Have you ever had a hot bath before, Myaree?"

"No! Only nobles can take baths with hot water."

"I bet a noble's bath isn't some shabby thing like this, but something made of stone."

Even a shabby drum-barrel bath like this would take an enormous amount of work to reproduce.

You'd have to stretch thin sheets of iron by hand—and since welding probably didn't exist, you'd have to assemble them with brazing or soldering.

Even so, Myaree was hopping around excitedly over this drum-barrel bath. She must have been incredibly happy.

I heated the water for now, but I had no idea what temperature beastfolk preferred. Since people said cats had sensitive tongues, maybe she didn't like heat.

I made the water a little lukewarm.

"If you tip this over, water will come out, so add some if the bath is too hot."

"Got it~"

She energetically stripped off her clothes and stood naked. Since beastfolk wore fur, taking off their clothes didn't really make them look naked.

But if you looked at her chest, she had nipples, and between her legs as she stepped over the rim of the bath, she had all the proper bits. Naturally.

It was Myaree's first drum-barrel bath, but she soaked in it with narrowed eyes, looking utterly blissful.

Apparently, some places had facilities like public saunas, but beastfolk shed their fur, so they weren't allowed inside.

Then even if there were hot-water baths in town, she might not be able to use them.

"How do you like your first bath?"

"It's so warm~"

Was she closing her eyes and feeling as if she'd reached paradise?

When she got out of the bath to wash herself, Myaree rubbed the soap I'd given her into her fur, and white suds rapidly rose until she was covered in foam.

"Aren't you getting in, Kenichi?"

"I suppose I could get in too."

I stripped off my clothes and stood naked as well, but she showed no reaction at all. Apparently, seeing a naked man did nothing for her.

I soaked in the bath and looked at Myaree's body illuminated by the lantern—but the light picked out crisp shadows across her form, making it look like a work of art, almost a sculpture.

She was covered in foam, and she even lathered her own wiggling tail by catching it, but washing every nook and cranny was difficult with fur covering her entire body.

When she got out of the bath, I used a bucket to pour water over Myaree and rinse away the suds.

The washing area was a space made of cement, with the runoff collecting in a plastic tub buried beneath the ground.

It was my first time handling cement, but Shangri-La had plenty of books on construction and related subjects, so I could study to my heart's content.

It would probably be more comfortable if I'd built the house near the river.

"Haha, after rinsing the suds off you, we're out of hot water."

"Meow~"

Even so, Myaree crouched down in the drum and soaked in the water again, but I decided to get out for now.

I put on only my pants and prepared several bath towels for her. Just as when she'd washed herself by the river, one towel wasn't enough to dry fur covering her entire body.

I was wondering whether to prepare a hair dryer for her—but then I had a good idea.

What if I used a kerosene heater like a jet engine, the kind used to send warm air around factories and warehouses?

It would probably be more powerful than an ordinary hair dryer.

When I brought up Shangri-La's screen and searched, I found that it was apparently called a spot heater or jet heater.

I didn't need anything too large, so I decided to buy a small one. It cost 36,000 yen.

It ran on kerosene, and I still had some white kerosene left, so I would use that. But I couldn't use this indoors in a confined room.

I took a table out of my Item Box outside the house and set the heater on top of it. Since it was dark around my hands, I also bought a small battery-powered LED lantern.

Apparently, this world had something called a blue-light magic lantern, so I figured an LED would pass for one.

I filled it with white kerosene, but when I was ready to use it—I needed a 100-volt power supply? I took out a portable battery pack too and connected it to the outlet.

"Switch on!"

Along with a series of clicking sounds, the fan began to turn and started blowing air with a roaring noise. Oh, so it needed power because a fan spun to blow out the air.

Wow! This was incredible. With red flames shooting out, it looked exactly like a jet engine. Myaree's fur would dry in no time with this.

"Myaree, come over here and dry your wet fur."

"What is this? It's blowing hot air."

She looked puzzled as she held her hand out toward the hot air coming from the heater.

"It burns kerosene and uses magic to send out air."

"Is this lantern a magic lantern?"

She seemed to notice the LED lantern emitting a bluish-white light too.

"Pretty much. It's not for sale, though."

"Kenichi has everything~"

Still, she seemed to like the heater blowing hot air. She stood in front of it, running her hands all over her body to dry her fur.

It looked almost like she was dancing, and was quite alluring.

But when she turned around to dry her rear and began lifting one leg to dry between her thighs, I no longer knew where to look... She didn't mind at all, though.

"Wow~ You're so fluffy now!"

"Meow~ When you dry it with hot air, it gets like this. Drying it by a campfire doesn't make it like this."

Even when I touched her fur, it was incredibly fluffy. The sensation was almost addictive.

I put away the table and heater and went inside the house.

"Want something to drink?"

"More importantly..."

Myaree hugged me with her fluffy body and wrapped her tail around my arm.

Whoa—she's warm.

The incredible softness almost swept me away—but...

"No, wait, hold on. The messenger of the gods is suffering, so is it really okay for us to enjoy ourselves beside her?"

"Huh? Meow~"

After I said that, Myaree seemed to come to her senses and reconsider.

I brought up Shangri-La's screen and searched for something to drink after a bath. When you think of a post-bath drink, this is the one—fruit milk.

"It's delicious!"

It was Myaree's first time drinking fruit milk, and she seemed deeply impressed.

According to her, forest cats didn't attack people, so I decided to sleep in the bed. When I told her that I'd let the forest cat sleep inside while I slept in the tent outside, Myaree laughed—but...

Because getting attacked would be scary.

After that—we slept together in one bed. Myaree's fluffy fur was warmer than the finest blanket.