CH 49

I winced as I woke up, opening my eyes to the dimly lit room. My head hurt and my tonsils felt like they were swollen. Then I felt a pain in my throat as if something were stuck in it, and my nose didn’t let air pass through it to fuel my lungs.

Oh… this isn’t good. No good, no good.

I blew my nose and sighed.

I knew the cause: my thin, cold blanket.

Blankets in this world were very heavy. Even though they were very effective in trapping heat, it was difficult to sleep with something so heavy draped over your body. I couldn’t begin to count how many nightmares I had about being crushed.

During the rainy season, the mornings and nights were frigid enough that it was unthinkable to sleep without that blanket, so I had to bear the weight. Recently, however, the rain clouds had begun to recede and the weather was growing warmer, greatly shrinking the difference in temperature between noon and midnight.

Seeing that trend, I had put my heavy blanket away for the year, but a rare shower passed overhead last night. It crossed my mind that my other blanket might be too thin, but I didn’t have anything to put on top and I left it as is in my sleepiness.

And when I woke up, this happened.

Lifting myself out of bed and getting dressed, I heard a thump on the door before it burst open.

“Fikar, no. There’s no point in knocking if you do that.”

Fikar walked into the room, ignoring my advice, stopped in front of me, and tilted his head. He put his hand against my forehead and looked in my eyes with an unusual intensity. His deep blue eyes widened in surprise and he quickly pushed me back into bed, wrapped me in my blanket, and made me into a tightly packed spring roll using the heavy blanket in the closet.

He carefully adjusted my pillows before leaning in close to my face and whispering, “Stay still.” I nodded, and he was gone in a flash.

Anemone-chan, who must’ve been woken up by the commotion, shook her legs dry on the rim of her vase and came to the edge of the nightstand. She gently touched me with her lobed leaves, waddling towards my head.

I told her in my stuffy, nasal voice that I was fine, but she frantically climbed on top of me and my blankets and paced from my head to my feet and back and forth, performing a strange dance.

It looked like she was doing a botched solo two-step, moving her leaves and blue flower in irregular, swinging motions.

A magic spell? No, cheering? She wasn’t heavy and it was funny, but it really was alright…

Staring at her dark blue flower in a daze and sensing the slight vibrations she sent through my blankets, I started to feel sleepy despite having just woken up.

In the end, I dozed off, and when I rose again, a doctor Fikar that had brought over diagnosed me with a cold. I took a bitter liquid medicine that came with a nasty acidic sensation near my back teeth, fell asleep again, and was awakened by a variety of smells. I looked out the window and saw that it was probably past noon, but at least my headache was better than it had been in the morning.

I shifted my gaze and landed on a dark blue flower. Anemone-chan carefully stroked my forehead with her leaves.

So cute~

I climbed down the stairs to see what I could do and found Fikar cooking something in a pot. Various ingredients were strewn all over the table.

I washed my hands and returned to the dining room, where Fikar was waiting for me and wrapped me in a blanket. Turning down his attempts to lift me up, I sat down in my own chair and Fikar served me a bowl of soup.

Then, wham!, the smell suddenly hit me and I took a closer look at the ingredients Fikar had laid on the table.

A chill ran down my spine.