CH 31

The days were getting sunnier and steamier. Though, it was still at the point where it’d get cold enough to make me wear a jacket in the mornings and evenings. Everyone assured me that, after the rainy season, it would be warmer even after sunset, so the fact that the difference in temperature was so small really dampened my spirits. Houses in Tortea were especially simple, being mostly plaster with wood-frame windows. Warm by day and waking up to the cold of night, I wondered how blessed modern Japan must’ve been.

However, for the past few days, I’ve been able to sleep very peacefully.

That’s because I had a hot water bottle1 hugging me.

“… Fikar…”

The hot water bottle shook me awake. It was still dark inside, with almost no sunlight peeking through the windows. It was just before dawn, and I heard birds beginning to sing in the distance.

“Ahh… Must get up… Cold… Sleepy…”

I stretched, my arms and legs sticking out from under my blanket. Cold. I curled up tightly and groaned. The hot water bottle behind me shrank in turn to wrap around my new shape. Very warm. But a little heavy. And the sun wouldn’t wait just for me.

I reached out for my clothes on the nightstand, dragged them under the covers, warmed them in my arms, and wiggled out of the hot water bottle’s grasp to sit up. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and light pants, not as pajamas but as regular innerwear, and put a one-piece, cinched at the waist with a belt, over that to prepare for the morning. When I stood up and tried to resist the temptation of the hot water bottle’s warmth, the sheets moved, revealing Fikar, the hot water bottle. His iridescent-silver hair was wildly ruffled and sticking up at random angles. As I used my hands to fix it a bit, the squinting and expressionless Fikar sighed.

“Good morning, Fikar.”

Fikar nodded, looking up at me with discontent, and lazily began getting ready for the day. I washed my face with water from a jug, attached a pouch to my belt, and I was all set. I called out to Fikar, who was putting on his sword, and left the room. The delicious smell of breakfast was already wafting through the air.

As I walked into the dining room on the ground floor, the hostess, with two plates in her arms, smiled at me.

“C’mere, eat quickly and get to work!”

Fikar and I were staying in the town of Carcathia.

It was a neighboring town about a quarter-day’s ride by horse west from Tortea. It was not unlike Tortea, surrounded by fields and little forests, and with a center bustling with trade, though it was a little bigger than Tortea.

Agriculture was thriving in the area, with several crops currently at their peak. Many of those crops were harvested by the people of Carcathia, but as the harvest season neared its peak, more people were needed to help transport them to other cities, like the royal capital, and sell them to merchants. As such, requests to help with harvesting work were posted in Tortea.

With the money Fikar earned, we could afford to live without working, but here, helping others was more important than anything else in our lives. It wasn’t enough to just think about yourself, and you should always lend a helping hand to others so that they could enjoy their lives, too. Perhaps it was because this was a world where monsters were a constant threat that the feeling of camaraderie was so strong. It might’ve been the same in Japan, but as a high school student, I’d never really felt it.

Above all, it was genuinely interesting to be a part of the guild, do various jobs, and get to learn about strange plants and animals. The other day, I found an acorn that could roll around on its own and I burst into laughter, but Fikar and the others from the guild looked at me pitifully.

“Gaooo~!”

“Aaa– So noisy! Fikar, Sumire! Get rid of it or do something quickly!”

Our client also arranged a room at an inn for us since we were going to be working in the early mornings for ten days. The hostess, with her sunken eyes and hooked nose and rust-red hair tied in a bun, protected the morals of the inn, kicking men into the fields with so much strength that you just had to wonder where it came from in her slender frame.

By the way, when we arrived in Carcathia, I asked for a room change because there was only one large bed in ours, but I was told, “If you stay together, you’ll feel more like a couple, plus there are no other rooms available. If you don’t like it, you can stay outside.” … Thanks for the advice?

That’s why Fikar and I have been sleeping in the same bed for the past three days.

There was a vine known as “steel ivy”. It was normal as a sprout, but after a day, it turned a smoky silver color and became very firm, and after a week, it gained heat resistance. After two years, it would start growing white and brittle in the light of the early morning sun, which was the part used in basket-weaving. It was also used for gridirons, incense burners to avoid magic beasts, and chainmail, which was normally expensive for beginners. Steel ivy chainmail, tied with a cord that separated the front from the back, supposedly couldn’t be pierced by any local monster’s fangs aside from a few flying species.

In a ridged field, steel ivy vines were planted at regular intervals. I quickly finished a knit from the previous day, moved on to the next one, and so on until I reached the end of the row and moved on to the next. Once my rows were done, I went back to the first seedling and wove with the part that had just grown. After about three rounds of rows, the sun rose too high for the steel ivy to continue growing, so we covered the stalks in a coating of dirt to preserve them for the next day.

“Twist and turn… twist and turn…”

The rows Fikar and I were assigned to were thin, first-season steel ivy, which wasn’t too hard to turn into hemispheric baskets used to hold incense. The first time felt quite difficult, though, so I had to focus completely on my hands and couldn’t enjoy the steel ivy’s fascinatingly rapid growth.

I had my hands full with two rows, but Fikar worked so fast he was given three rows right off the bat. The Hero is amazing.

Incidentally, the older Carcathian ladies were weaving chainmail at an astonishing pace in the next field. That was a craft in its own right, intricately weaving three vines together.

“Mm, looks good. Don’t forget, use a knife to finish your weaves tomorrow.”

“Oka~y”

“Keep up the good work. You’ll be working in the woods next, right? Be careful.”

We waved to the aging man who owned the field and walked towards the forest. As soon as we got there, Su flew in and lined up next to me. Su, with her strong sense of companionship, continued to follow us despite Fikar’s mistreatment of her. It seemed like she went back to Tortea’s forests to sleep at night, but it was still cute how she followed him around during the day while being careful not to get in his way.

“Su, we’ll work together this time.”

She let out a low gurgle and slowly walked up to me, then lowered her back and stretched out her neck to me as if to ask me to ride her. Riding Su made me bob up and down a lot, even when not flying. She didn’t mind being ridden around by Fikar and kindly invited me to join him, but it was still a mode of transportation that I tried to avoid as much as possible.