Chapter 48: Unfortunate Beauty

“Those idiots always underestimate me cause I’m a woman y’know…… Do they not think I’m doing my best? The bastards!”

“Ah- Un, y-you’re right. Yeah.”

It has been thirty minutes since we entered the restaurant. We’d actually gotten along quite well while spending time together. But…

(((This person was the type who’s hopeless with everything other than work……!)))

Everything was great at first. I finally got to taste dishes made with real meat and veggies after a long while and had a nice, elegant meal along with some fine wine. But because I was a non-drinker, I only drank water.

However, as the meal progressed, Major Serena drank more and more alcohol. Her eyes soon turned unfocused and her behavior turned for the worse. We tried to warn her y’know. We were like ‘Serena-sama, that’s enough don’t you think…..’ and all. But since it was a rare day off, Major Serena insisted on drinking her fill, resulting in the current situation.

“I kept bowing my head at them when I didn’t want to and kept forcing out fake smiles…… but even then, what’s wrong with them, really!? They keep staring at my chest! I’mma cut you down you damn perverts!”

She’s an unruly drunk!

She said we didn’t have to care about manners earlier, but it actually applies to her more than it does to us, right?

“Uh…… Calm down. Calm down alright. Now, let’s put down the sword, okay?”

We somehow managed to calm down Lady Serena, whose hand was already on her sword’s hilt, removed the sword from her waist and placed it in a corner in the back of the room. Spare me from something like a berserker drunkard, please.

“And youuu! I’ve already pulled out all da stopsh, and yet you shtill refuse to budge!”

“You wanna hear why?”

“I do not……”

Major Serena replied back and blocked both her ears while displaying a tearful expression.

“I already know the reason, okay…… I kept pestering you with annoying recruitment schemes right……?”

“So you’re actually self-aware……”

Elma smiled wryly as she gazed on at Major Serena, who now had her face plastered on the table. But honestly speaking, the merits of joining Major Serena in the imperial military are too little.

“Uh, if I remember correctly, you said I’d be granted the rank of First Class Warrant Officer if I agreed to join the military, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. Are you finally gonna join up?”

“How much is the pay?”

“……4000 Enels per month at the minimum.”

“I can earn up to 10,000 Enels per day at least you know. Do you really think I’ll sign up?”

“……Uu.”

Man, getting stared at by a tearful beauty feels awkward.

Well, it’s not like there’s no advantage to joining up at all y’know. If you somehow manage to make significant achievements during a war, you’d probably be knighted by the empire and become a First Class citizen. And my plan of getting a detached house with a garden on a terrestrial planet would probably proceed more smoothly.

But that method would take a lot of time. There’s no guarantee a major incident that would allow my swift promotion among the ranks would happen in the first place. And if I decided on steadily building up my military career, it would take more than a decade in order for me to reach my goal. I don’t even know what would happen to Krishna. I honestly don’t want to take such a time-consuming and troublesome method.

“Well, that’s how it is, so I hope you give up on roping me into the military please. We’re already all acquainted like this, so It’s not like I won’t consider accepting it if you have a legitimate job you want me to do you know.”

“……You won’t abandon me?”

“Please stop making that tearful expression. It’s unfair. And we’re not in that kind of relationship in the first place okay.”

After giving her my sharpest, coldest gaze to boot, Major Serena pulled back her tears and pressed her lips together sulkily. What a woman. Really.

“I would have given you a piece of my mind if you fell for that.”

“You’re looking down on me too much, don’t you think?”

“H-Hiro-sama is kind after all.”

Mimi hugged my arm and soothed me. Tsk. I’ll let that slide for now, but I’m gonna let you have it one of these days, you nagging elf.

“……Unfair.”

Major Serena whispered while still remaining hunched on the table. What’s unfair?

“Unfair! It’s so unfair–! I was the one who first had my eye on Captain Hiro you know–!”

“Uh……”

She then stamped her feet while still sitting on her chair and cried loudly. Even someone like me would draw away after being shown something like this.

“What does she mean?”

“What did she mean by that?”

Elma and Mimi both grilled me for an answer.

“Well, I got in trouble with Termaine Prime’s port authorities when I first got there y’see. Major Serena ended up bailing me out.”

“That’s right you know. I helped you out, ‘kay. I’m the one who first met Captain Hiro…… But why is it that when I met him again, he already had other women sticking to him!?”

“Now why’d you have to say it like that……?”

I was baffled.

“It’s not like it’s any of Lady Serena’s business if other women come on to Hiro right?”

“Uguh…… T-That’s right…… You’re right, but–……!”

But? I waited for her to continue, but Major Serena ended up swallowing the rest of her words by gulping down some more alcohol. Oi, oi. You’re already that plastered and you’re still drinking?

“Uu……”

Major Serena ended up passing out in the end. I, Elma, and Mimi looked at each other in bewilderment.

“So, what should we do about this?”

“Can’t we just eat and leave her here?”

“If you have the guts to. We’re talking about a lady from a marquis house here.”

“If her parents got wind of it, we won’t be getting off lightly huh.”

While we were talking like that, the tablet terminal we were provided with for use in ordering dishes rang. I picked it up.

“Yes?”

『You’re reservation time is almost up, dear customers. Would you like to extend it?』

“Um……”

Major Serena was completely down for the count. I looked toward Elma and saw her shake her head.

“The rent for these sorts of establishments is crazily expensive. It’ll blow up on our faces if we agree to extend the time.”

She whispered her reply to me. Mimi already started nursing Major Serena. With Major Serena like that, they wouldn’t be able to support her themselves even if Elma gave a hand. Guess I have to carry her back then.

“We won’t be extending. Please send us the bill.”

『Understood. We will be waiting for you at the lobby.』

The call was then cut. I let out a tired sigh.

We ended up paying quite a lot of money for the meal we had and decided to return to the Krishna for the meantime. It would be bad for Major Serena’s image if we brought her back to the military base while she was down for the count like this. We’re not that heartless.

“Good grief……”

I brought the inebriated Major Serena to the ship’s med pod and left her in Mimi and Elma’s care. Since you can’t get treated inside the med pod while wearing lots of clothes, she had to be stripped down first. I can’t possibly do such a thing myself. It’s quite bad for an unwed noble young lady to be seen mostly naked by a man after all.

I moved to the dining area, took out a bottle of non-carbonated cola, and took a big swig. Un, that hit the spot.

Now then, what should I do now? I ended up thinking about what Major Serena blurted out earlier. The stuff about her having her eye on me first and getting miffed about me getting it on with other women.

I guess it’s nothing but the ramblings of a drunk person. Yep. They weren’t words she said when sober, so I decided not to mind them too much. The other party was a hopeless drunk of a woman who almost swung her sword recklessly in a room after all. It’s not worth considering.

After summing it up like that, my mind felt cleared up. Did the sugar from the non-carbonated cola come up to my head or something?

In any case, it’ll be better for me not to pursue today’s matter further and act as if nothing had happened in front of her. I really didn’t want to be the target of gratitude from a troublesome girl like her. The cost of the meal was really expensive, but…… it’s not really worth making a big deal about anyway. We can easily earn that kind of money back by shooting down one pirate ship slapped with a bounty after all.

But I’m sure it’s the other party who would feel awkward about all this later. Since she’s already shown us such disgraceful behavior, I bet she’d be embarrassed to make aggressive recruitment advances like this from now on. If you think about it that way, the cost of the food would seem cheap.

Even so, to think she’d show us such a side of her in a meal she arranged herself. I kinda find it strange that she’d ended up in that state if it really isn’t her first time drinking alcohol…… Hm. I don’t get it. Maybe she really was hopeless about anything apart from work?

While I was thinking about Major Serena’s matters, Mimi entered the dining room.

“Lady Serena has regained consciousness.”

“Really? Isn’t it too fast?”

“The med pod successfully managed to take out the alcohol from her system, it seems.”

“Man, that med pod’s amazing.”

As expected of a medical machine from the future. As long as you have a personal med pod, wouldn’t you be able to drink all the booze you want? Now that I think about it, Elma did seem to have been entering the med bay often. Was she using the med pod for that purpose?

“Does it look like it would be okay for me to see her?”

“It seems she’s still talking with Elma-san, so it would be best if you stayed here for a while more.”

“That so? I’ll do that then. Do you want something to drink, Mimi?”

“I’m fine.”

Mimi then sat down beside me. It looks like she won’t be starting a conversation any time soon and just sat there quietly. Should I start one myself?

“Those organic dishes sure were delicious.”

“Yes, they sure were…… It was my first time eating fresh meat and vegetables. But you looked like you were used to eating them, Hiro-sama.”

“Well, yeah. In the world I came from, we ate that sort of stuff normally everyday. There was no stuff like food cartridges or auto-cookers, so I kinda found the stuff here novel as well.”

I moved my gaze toward our high-performance auto cooker, Tetsujin V, sitting quietly in the corner of the dining room. I find the fact that you can actually make all sorts of dishes by using those watercress-looking plants and krill as bases really amazing.

“But I have no idea if the organic dishes I’m familiar with and the organic dishes here are actually the same.”

“Are they different somehow?”

“In my world, the thing they call organic cooking involves using ingredients that didn’t make use of stuff like agrichemicals or artificial fertilizers to grow. I don’t know if the ingredients that restaurant used made use of such things or not.”

“Hmh…… That method seems inefficient somehow.”

“They say it’s better for your body’s health and would improve the taste if you do it like that. I’m not sure if that’s true though. In short, it’s a dish made with high-quality ingredients. I haven’t really had the chance to eat those types of dishes yet.”

In the first place, I’m unable to determine the difference between dishes that made use of organic ingredients and dishes which did not, so I didn’t really bother about it. Cola and junk food were my absolute favorites. In that sense, the food made via food cartridges suit me better, I guess.

“What dish did you find delicious, Mimi?”

“I really like the seafood salad. Crisp vegetables paired with chewy shrimp and squid drizzled with tasty dressing……!”

Mimi put both her hands together as her eyes sparkled. Mimi seems to enjoy it very much whenever we talk about food.

“I can also make something like seafood salad on my own. If we had the ingredients for it, that is.”

I imagined the ingredients in my head. There’s the vegetable and seafood mix. Then there’s the vinegar and oil needed to make the dressing. Getting a hold of things like spices and salt is a problem as well.

“Really!?”

Mimi pressed closer to me with her eyes still sparkling. Whoa there. Calm down. Calm down, alright.

“If we have the ingredients for it, then yeah. I did live on my own back in my world, so I do know how to cook for myself. But we don’t have any ingredients here…… There’s no kitchen as well. Oh yeah. Didn’t we see some stuff which looked like cooking implements in the gadget shop we visited a while back?”

They didn’t seem all that useful at the time so we didn’t get them. Would it be better to buy some next time?

“Let’s shop for those next time! I’ll make sure to thoroughly research the places that sell them!”

“Y-Yeah, okay.”

Mimi grasped my hand tightly as her eyes continued sparkling. Tetsujin has made some salads a couple of times already, but it seems she’s really fixated on that seafood salad. I hope she won’t end up disappointed by the one I’d make in the end.

We were in the middle of discussing when we would go out to shop when the door of the dining room opened. When I looked toward the door, I saw Elma and Major Serena entering the room. Major Serena’s clothes no longer looked disheveled, and the color of her face seemed normal. Looks like the alcohol was completely purged from her system.

“Thanks for waiting. The princess has awakened.”

“It looks like she didn’t need a kiss from Prince charming.”

“Ara? Did you want to, perhaps?”

“I’m not the prince charming type.”

Elma smiled and shrugged at my reply. Major Serena was covering her face with both hands and was shivering slightly. Her ears were bright red. She seems really, really embarrassed.

“Man, it sure is hard for people in positions of authority huh. Well, isn’t it nice to let out all of that stress every once in a while?”

“I’m really grateful to you all for this time’s matter.”

“Please don’t mind it. That organic food was really delicious, you know. If we didn’t have you with us, we probably wouldn’t be able to visit such a fancy establishment in the first place. If you really feel like thanking us, then I’d be satisfied if you could introduce us to more places like that from now on.”

We’ll just call it even if she can introduce us to more places like that. Afterward, we won’t be owing each other anything. I’m really afraid of piling on any more debts.

“A-Alright. I shall introduce you to some in the future.”

“That’s great. Do you want me to escort you out of the ship?”

“N-No, I’m alright. Um……”

“I understand that you’re really worried about a lot of stuff. I’ll just treat it as having not heard anything. We ate some good food and drank some fine wine. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

“I’m truly thankful for your consideration.”

Major Serena got off the Krishna with her face still bright red. The three of us saw her off.

“……It must be really hard to be a female military officer.”

Mimi blurted out such a thing while watching that person’s disappearing back.