9 1.9 The Village Festival

I woke up early with Ronald today because we still had some preparations to do for the evening. During the day we were having a fair, where the villagers from the village put stalls to sell various things in the plain area in front of the temple.

"We still have to go to Andrew's house and bring the candles to light in the evening. Ronald, can you go there and bring them?" Nina said.

The tradition in this village was that on the evening of the festival, people from all the houses used to go to the temple and light the candles. Houses here used magic lights which run on mana but since it was the tradition was to use candle on this day, I decided not to question it.

"Arica and Sistina can pick the flowers up from the garden, and the rest of us will finish the clean up at the kitchen." Nina added.

Since we also needed garlands of flowers to worship gods, Nina asked Arica and Sistina to pick them up.

This was the busiest time of the year for the temple and also the time where the largest amount of donation was collected. Andrew and other villagers will help at the temple while also managing the stalls.

Making garlands took us all morning but since we planned to go to the event in the evening we still had the whole afternoon left. I decided to read the book I borrowed from the library about the geography of this world in the meantime. I was surprised to see how little of this world the maps cover. It was probably because people here don't travel very much.

The clothes Andrew brought for me from the city looked like yukata. It was blue colored with light-blue lining. From the fashion sense of earth, it looked strange but here it was expensive cloth for normal people and were only worn on special days and important events. I was wearing this today since the village festival was celebrated only once in a year so the casual clothing may make me look weird.

Once I was ready I went to the dining hall. Marina was waiting there and when I saw her a word slipped my mouth, I subconsciously said "beautiful". She probably didn't hear me properly so she tilted her head in confusion.

'God kill me now. My mission in this life is over, now I can die happily', is what I thought when I saw her. It was not appropriate to stare at someone like this so I averted my gaze somewhere else. But the image was saved as an undeletable file in my head.

She was wearing a light-yellow colored kimono with dark orange flower patterns in it. It suited her pink hair and cat ears so perfectly that she looked like a butterfly. Her beauty was out of this world when she had a look of confusion in her face.

Looking confused she asked, "D-did I mess something up while dressing?" to which I was not sure how to reply. I had never come across this situation in my previous life so I had no idea how to compliment a lady.

"No no, you look so beautiful that I was lost in thought for a while there."

When I said that, I saw her cheeks turn red. I don't know if it is normal for a guy to say that to a girl in such situation but this was just me saying my honest thought.

When we were talking Arica showed up and asked, "ou... what about me? How do I look?"

She was wearing red-colored kimono with many different colored flower-like patterns. Though it was not as cute as Marina, it had its own beauty in a different way. It matched very well with her black hair and her dog ears.

"You look very beautiful too. The red color suits you well." I replied to which she smiled.

Ronald showed up in his grey colored Yukata looked like mine. He looked 10 years older than his actual age but I didn't point out that fact. Who knows, that may be a good look in this world.

Sistina and Nina came together. Sistina was wearing black colored kimono with golden flower patterns which matched her hair and fox ears perfectly and Nina was wearing a light green dress that matched her purple hair perfectly.

I said, "You two look very beautiful" and both of them smiled.

"Okay, let's go. It will get crowded if we are late" Nina said while looking at everyone.

The place was already crowded when we reached there. The temple looked beautiful with all the bright lights. we went inside the temple and placed our garlands among the other and lighted the candles in the area which already had few candles. Miss Rose was busy instructing the visitors so we decided not to disturb her.

"Let's take a walk and see all the stalls now", Sistina said after we finished lighting all the candles that we had. We agreed to that and decided to go around looking at the different stalls.

"Hey there, beautiful miss. Do you want to make a painting of yourself? I will do it for free for you" a main on one of the stalls called Marina.

It looked like a stall where you can buy paintings. They could make someone's painting but it was expensive to do so.

She looked a little shy and confused about how to answer him. In a small voice she said, "Uh-um...thank you very much but sorry, I am not very comfortable doing it."

Looks like the stallkeeper understood so he didn't push the matter and we moved to others stalls.

There were stalls selling children's toys, magical appliances, and household things. We looked at different things that were on sale. We also visited the stalls that sold male and female clothes and makeup kits since girls wanted to go there.

The only things I missed from my previous world was fireworks but sky lantern made of small stone that shined when you put magic into it made up for it. Married and unmarried couples used to make wishes and release them in the sky.

We all brought a souvenir each by the money Andrew gave us. I brought a magic quill that could write without dipping it into ink, marina brought a stuffed bear, Nina brought a magic book, Arica brought a makeup kit, Sistina bought a bracelet that helped with magic control and Ronald bought a pair of black leather gloves. Since it was almost closing time, we got them cheap.

After we finished checking the stalls we decided to go inside the temple where miss Rose was done for the day. We decided to return to the orphanage since we still haven't had our dinner.

On the way, we saw Andrew and other villagers who were busy closing the stalls so we said our byes to them and returned to the orphanage.

Next chapter: A Demon

Note: The picture of sky lantern is available at the Wikimedia Commons which is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license by Visions of Domino. You can find it at the following link:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loi-Krathong-09907_(23409280742).jpg