Seram Is My Wife?

“Jin-dono, I’m going out for a short walk.”

“By yourself?”

“Indeed. I’m still unfamiliar with the surrounding terrain, so I’d like to get to know the area as quickly as possible.”

I was a little worried about letting Seram wander around alone, but this was the countryside, not a major city like Tokyo. She probably wouldn’t get lost just walking around the neighborhood.

“Make sure you’re back before we start work.”

“Understood! Well then, I’m off!”

After I gave her permission, Seram strapped her sword to her waist and headed out.

She even carried her sword on a casual walk…?

As a knight from Another World, Seram was an extremely early riser.

Farmers like me were already known for getting up early, but she woke up just as early as I did, if not earlier. That should give you an idea of just how early she rose. Of course, she also went to bed ridiculously early, practically like a child.

I took my time finishing breakfast alone.

Once I was done eating, I washed the dishes, read the morning newspaper, turned on the television, and checked the weather forecast.

I spent the remaining time lounging around until it was finally time to start work.

However, Seram still hadn’t returned from her walk.

“…Just how far did she go?”

I was pretty sure I’d told her to return before work started…

I’d already taught Seram how clocks and time worked in this world. Although I hadn’t given her a watch, she’d confidently declared that she could estimate the passage of time fairly accurately.

Could she have gotten lost?

“Guess I have no choice. I’d better go look for her.”

Growing concerned, I decided to head outside.

“Jin-chan!”

Just as I was about to climb into the Kei Truck parked behind the house, someone called out to me.

I turned around and saw an elderly woman with a gentle expression standing at the entrance to my property.

“Good morning, Minori-san.”

“Good morning, Jin-chan.”

This elderly woman was Minori Sekiya, a farmer who lived next door.

Of course, this was the countryside, so “next door” meant her house was about a hundred meters away on foot.

Incidentally, she got upset if I didn’t address her by her given name.

“I’m getting pretty old myself, you know. Couldn’t you stop calling me Jin-chan?”

“No matter how old you get, Jin-chan will always be Jin-chan.”

“I see.”

Minori-san said that with a warm, good-natured smile.

She’d known me since I was a baby, so apparently she had no intention of changing how she addressed me.

It seemed convincing her to change her ways would remain an uphill battle.

“Anyway, what brings you here?”

“I came to let you know that your wife, Seram-chan, is helping out at our place.”

“Oh, she’s helping you out, Minori-san… No wonder she hasn’t come back yet—wait, my wife?”

I was pretty sure I’d just heard something I couldn’t let slide.

When I turned serious and questioned her, Minori-san gave me a sly grin.

“Well, well, Jin-chan! You’ve got more going for you than I thought! When did you find yourself such a beautiful wife?”

“No, Seram isn’t my wife.”

Seram was an employee who lived and worked at my house. She most certainly wasn’t my wife.

“There’s no need to hide it. Seram-chan said so herself.”

“What?”

I’d assumed Minori-san had simply jumped to conclusions, but apparently Seram herself had been telling people that.

How on earth had things ended up like this? I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Would you mind if I came over to see how she’s doing?”

“Of course not.”

I decided to accompany Minori-san home to find out what was going on.

After walking about a hundred meters down the road, we arrived at an old-fashioned house that was considerably larger than mine.

There, up on the roof, was Seram, holding a rubber mallet and tapping away at the roof tiles.

“Hey!”

“Ah, Jin-dono! My apologies. I’m repairing the roof of Minori-dono’s house.”

“I was actually thinking of asking you to help, Jin-chan, but Seram-chan offered to do it, so I decided to let her give it a try.”

I see. That explained how Seram had ended up helping out during her walk.

Seram had a strong sense of justice, enough to become a knight, so she probably couldn’t bring herself to ignore an elderly person in need.

It certainly would have been difficult work for the Sekiyas, who were an elderly couple.

Their house had an old-fashioned tiled roof, with the tiles laid on a bed of earth rather than secured with nails.

Because of that, the tiles sometimes shifted or slipped out of place over time.

“Still, I’m surprised you know how to repair a tiled roof.”

Seram looked remarkably proficient as she used the rubber mallet to tap the tiles back into position.

I couldn’t imagine that the world she came from had tiled roofs identical to those on traditional Japanese houses.

“Shigeru-dono taught me how!”

“I was surprised myself! Such a young, beautiful woman, and she’s so skilled with her hands!”

Below the roof, Minori-san’s husband, Shigeru-san, was laughing cheerfully.

“I also received training as a combat engineer. I’m quite good at this sort of work.”

Seram puffed out her chest and spoke with obvious pride.

Apparently, a Female Knight with actual combat experience was also skilled at construction and engineering work.

She was ridiculously capable.

“Combat engineer?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

Seeing Minori-san and Shigeru-san tilt their heads in confusion, Seram hurriedly returned to work.

Since I was the only person who knew Seram came from Another World, there was no way they could understand what she meant.

I climbed the ladder propped against the house and approached Seram.

“Hey, Seram. I heard something from Minori-san. What’s this about you telling people you’re my wife?”

The moment I asked her directly, Seram struck a roof tile with considerable force.

Apparently, she’d gotten so flustered that she’d completely lost control of her strength, and I could have sworn the tile shifted dramatically in one go.

Was that thing going to be okay?

“W-w-well, about that… One thing led to another, or rather…”

“How does one thing leading to another end with you being mistaken for my wife?”

“I had trouble explaining my relationship with you, Jin-dono. When Minori-dono asked if I was your wife, I ended up nodding without thinking.”

“Even if you couldn’t explain our relationship, surely you could’ve come up with something other than being my wife.”

“Then what was I supposed to say!? Minori-dono and Shigeru-dono have known you since you were little, haven’t they? I couldn’t just tell them some poorly thought-out lie!”

“Ugh, well, when you put it that way…”

She couldn’t exactly tell them that she was a knight who had arrived from Another World and was living and working at my house because she had nowhere else to go. Even if she did, they would never believe her.

And since she knew nothing about my past or my relationships with other people, she couldn’t safely invent an excuse either.

I supposed I couldn’t blame her for simply nodding when Minori-san asked.

“Even if we tell them you’re an employee now, they probably won’t believe us.”

Judging by the grins on the Sekiya couple’s faces as they looked up at us from below, they were clearly enjoying themselves.

They already knew my entire family situation, so I couldn’t even claim that Seram was a distant relative.

“…Jin-dono, do you dislike the idea of people thinking I’m your wife that much?”

“No, it’s not about whether I dislike it. More importantly, are you really okay with it, Seram? Everyone around here will think you’re my wife, you know?”

“I understand, to some extent, that it would be better not to let people know I’m from Another World. However, I can’t think of a convincing explanation for why I’m living in your house while keeping that fact a secret.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“If being publicly known as your wife allows me to be accepted here without causing you any trouble, then I see no problem with it.”

When she put it that way, it actually sounded like a reasonably good idea.

For better or worse, people in the countryside were particularly sensitive to newcomers from outside the community.

Rather than making up some flimsy excuse and having everyone suspect she was a shady foreigner, it would probably be easier for the locals to accept her if she simply introduced herself as my wife.

“I see.”

Apparently, Seram hadn’t made the claim without thinking it through.

My biggest concern was whether Seram would be uncomfortable being treated as my wife, but that didn’t seem to be an issue.

“However, being your wife is merely a pretense, Jin-dono! Th-th-there will be absolutely no physical intimacy between us!”

“Obviously! Who said I was going to lay a hand on you!?”

“Good. In that case, I shall place my trust in your reason and conscience, Jin-dono.”

The whole idea of Seram being my wife was nothing more than a convenient pretense to help her blend into the community.

Taking advantage of that arrangement to pressure her into a relationship would be completely unacceptable. It wasn’t something a decent man would do.

Perhaps understanding how I felt, Seram said nothing more and resumed working.

“All right, that should do it.”

After securing the tiles with plaster to prevent them from slipping, we finished the temporary roof repairs.

“Shigeru-dono, we’ve finished!”

“Oh, thank you! You’ve been a tremendous help!”

“Still, this is only a temporary fix, you know? You really should hire a professional contractor to repair the roof properly.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll think about it.”

That was what Shigeru-san said, but his cheerful smile and casual response suggested he wasn’t taking my advice particularly seriously.

He was probably thinking he could just ask us to help again next time.

After all, I’d been telling him the same thing every year, and he’d never once called a professional contractor.

“You two, I’ve prepared some cold green tea and sweets for you.”

As we finished the repairs and started putting away the tools, Minori-san appeared on the veranda carrying a tray.

It was probably their way of thanking us. I was thirsty after all that work anyway, so I gladly accepted.

After thoroughly washing our hands, Seram and I sat down together on the veranda.

“What is this food called?”

“It’s called yokan, a sweet bean jelly. It’s made by mashing red beans, adding sugar and agar, and then steaming the mixture until it sets.”

“I see.”

Seram nodded appreciatively as she listened to Shigeru-san’s explanation.

She probably didn’t even know what red beans were, so I doubted she’d understood much of it.

“Well then, let’s eat.”

“Go right ahead.”

I used a small spoon to cut off a piece of the yokan and brought it to my mouth.

The rich sweetness of the red beans immediately spread across my tongue.

“This is delicious!”

“It’s a fairly expensive variety, you know.”

When I expressed my surprise, Minori-san laughed as she explained.

No wonder it tasted so good.

I’d always imagined yokan as something softer and more jelly-like, with a relatively mild flavor, but this was far richer than I’d expected.

The softer kind wasn’t bad either, but I preferred something with a dense, substantial texture like this.

After taking a bite, I drank some cold green tea, which helped balance out the sweetness.

After working up a sweat, the sweetness of the yokan and the refreshing chill of the green tea felt as though they were soaking into my exhausted body.

As I continued eating, I suddenly noticed how quiet Seram had become.

Curious, I glanced over and found her wearing an utterly blissful expression.

“Jin-dono…”

“What is it?”

“This sweet called yokan is absolutely delicious…”

“I-is that so?”

“Where I came from, most sweets were made with excessive amounts of sugar, and a single bite was usually more than enough. But this yokan has such a perfectly balanced sweetness and flavor that I feel I could eat as much as I wanted.”

It seemed she’d fallen in love with the sweets of this world rather than just yokan itself.

Come to think of it, hadn’t sweets in Japan also been little more than hardened lumps of sugar in the distant past?

If she’d only ever eaten sweets that made her feel she’d had enough after a single bite, then the ones here must seem like exquisite delicacies.

“Oh my! Seeing you enjoy it so much makes me happy I served it! Would you like another piece?”

“May I really have another, Minori-dono!?”

“I also have some water dumplings filled with sweet bean paste. Would you like to try those?”

“I don’t know what they are, but I’d love to!”

Minori-san and Shigeru-san began bringing out one traditional Japanese sweet after another.

They seemed to be enjoying Seram’s innocent reactions so much that they couldn’t resist feeding her more treats.

“Still, Jin-chan, you’ve found yourself a wonderful wife.”

“Indeed. She’s such an honest, sweet girl. You hardly see young people like her these days.”

I nearly spat out my green tea at Minori-san and Shigeru-san’s remarks.

Even though it was just an excuse to explain why we lived together, hearing someone say I’d gotten married still caught me off guard.

Nevertheless, if we wanted Seram to fit in around here, I supposed I’d have to start acting the part from now on.

“Yes, well… She’s such a wonderful wife that I hardly deserve her.”

When I said that, Seram, who had been eating her yokan, turned bright red.

Hey, you were the one who said pretending to be my wife was the most natural explanation, so don’t get embarrassed now.

“Where did you find such a cute girl?”

“Come on, tell us all about it!”

Seeing Seram’s innocent reaction, Shigeru-san and Minori-san immediately began questioning me.

The expressions on their faces made it perfectly clear that they were enjoying teasing us.

Presenting Seram as my wife was a good way to help her settle into the community while keeping her origins in Another World a secret.

However, when I considered how much teasing we’d have to endure from everyone around us, I couldn’t help regretting that we hadn’t come up with a better plan.