59 — Chapter 58

When I opened my eyes, there was an unfamiliar ceiling above me.

It was a phrase I had heard somewhere before, but as my vision gradually came into focus, I realized it simply meant this was not the room I usually slept in, and that I was in Nodon’s mansion.

But why in the large hall on the first floor… that thought only lasted a moment before the boozy stink of my own yawn reminded me.

Last night had been an enormous uproar.

A dragon had appeared on an island with nowhere to run, and the entire island had briefly fallen into a state of panic. As a result, after the dragon subjugation, it truly turned into festival-level chaos.

The townspeople poured out into the streets to drink through the night and dance wildly, and we too gathered the workshop craftsmen and the company people, and held a drinking feast in old Nodon’s mansion. And when Gerario and the others came back from butchering the dragon and brought freshly slaughtered dragon meat with them, that only made things even more lively.

After all, a dragon was apparently so valuable that it was like a walking golden statue, with every part of its body worth a fortune. Which meant dragon meat was something commoners would never get to taste even once in their lives.

And since every part of a dragon’s body was supposedly an aphrodisiac, bringing it to a drinking party was like throwing oil onto a fire.

That said, from what I had heard, in a world like this, an aphrodisiac mostly just meant something extremely nutritious.

In fact, meat in this world usually meant skinny chickens and pigs that scavenged through the town garbage, or goats and wild animals with distinctive odors, so tender, fatty meat was already a feast beyond imagination just by itself.

And on top of that, the one that had appeared in the mine was a young dragon, so the meat had been soft enough to bite through with your lips.

A large fire had been lit in a makeshift stove built in the courtyard, and huge chunks of meat skewered on spits had been set down heavily upon it.

Fat dripped in thick drops from the sizzling dragon meat, and every time it did, everyone swallowed their saliva.

Before long the meat was done, and since Gerario had been awarded the highest honor for dragon subjugation, the choicest flank meat was presented to him.

The moment he bit into that thing, which looked like meat from a comic, cheers and applause immediately erupted. Gerario raising the meat high like some king of the plains became the signal for the feast to begin.

Amid the uproar of drinking and singing, the remaining meat attached to the ribs, said to be the tastiest part, was presented first to the lord, Iiria. Then to Balan and Dodol, who had risked themselves to lure out the dragon.

And then, under the pretense that he had borne witness to divine miracle, we made sure to keep that worldly priest in a good mood too. When we sent meat to the church, he had been so overjoyed it almost put me off. We also sent some through the guild to the master craftsmen of magic stone processing, who had urgently made the missing magic stones needed for the dragon subjugation.

And the final chunk was given to Kururu.

Kururu bit into the meat with a wildness that was excessive even for a growing girl, and her eyes lit up at once as she greedily went for a second bite, then a third, making Iiria laugh.

After wiping the grease smeared around her mouth with her wrist, Kururu flipped over the enormous bone-in piece of meat and thrust it toward me as though pressing it into my hands.

“If you hadn’t been there, I’d have died.”

When the unexpected second one appeared, not a single part of our planned movement had gone as intended. Kururu’s first spell had practically misfired, and she had been doing all she could just to deal with the tremendous backlash. Then the wyvern struck us by surprise, and the two of us fell unconscious together.

As the dragon looked down at us like prey, Kururu, who had fallen with me, lay unmoving atop my body. But even in that situation, I had been able to believe that Kururu had not lost her fighting spirit.

That was why I handed the composite magic stone I had kept hidden to Kururu, whose consciousness I was not even sure of, and then—

“It was thanks to your strength, Kururu-san.”

I took the meat from Kururu and bit into it.

Juices of fat spread through my mouth, and it tasted richer than any meat I had ever eaten before.

I could see why it would make you want to swallow at once and go straight for another bite.

When I tried to go without hesitation for a second bite, I noticed Kururu’s eyes.

They looked sad, anxious, like that.

I froze with my mouth still open, looked at the meat in my hand, and awkwardly started to close my mouth again.

At that point Iiria, laughing in exasperation, said,

“Kururu, I can’t eat this much.”

Kururu’s face lit up at once, and saying something like, “Well, if you insist,” she started biting into the meat together with Iiria.

A lively drinking feast like that, full of laughter and cheers, seeming as though it would go on forever—

“…”

Recalling what the banquet had been like, I found that my memory of what happened after that became hazy. Since if there was rich, delicious meat full of fat, naturally there would also be alcohol brought out to wash it down.

Needless to say for the meathead team of Kengo and Gerario, but even Kururu and Iiria, who in my old world would have looked like minors, could drink perfectly well.

And then, Kururu had quite a bit of a clingy-drunk side to her, so I had been made to drink a great deal too…

“Hmm…”

I could not remember anything at all, but somehow my shoulders felt strangely cold, and that was when I finally realized it.

I was not wearing any clothes.

And when I noticed that my whole body felt terribly gritty, I saw black patterns covering my upper arms.

Fragments of memory returned like a flashback.

That’s right.

The banquet had reached its height, and by the time people were dropping one after another in order of weakest to strongest drinker, Kururu brought up the matter of the tattoo and started drunkenly complaining, in a slurred voice, that the magical backlash had been so severe because Yorinobu had not gotten a tattoo to serve as a passage for magic.

So that led into a discussion of what kind of tattoo I should get, and I ended up stripped bare from the waist up and having trial designs drawn on me, and then…

As I felt over my body, covered in magic stone powder mixed with charcoal, I bumped into someone.

“…Mmh.”

“Ah, sorry.”

I reflexively apologized to the naked girl sleeping beneath the same blanket as me, and then, after several beats— cold sweat burst from every pore in my body.

A naked girl?

Who, who, who?

I panicked the moment I became aware of another person’s body heat.

But when a slender, somewhat pointed shoulder moved, and a thin arm as covered in charcoal as mine groped around for the blanket, I noticed the distinctive silver hair and the triangular beast ears and finally understood it was Kururu.

“Achoo.”

Before pulling the blanket closer, the naked Kururu sneezed, flicked her triangular ears, and then casually turned toward me.

Before I could even avert my eyes, I ended up making direct eye contact with Kururu’s sleepy gaze.

What kind of face was I supposed to make, and what was I supposed to say?

A drunken mistake. A youthful indiscretion.

As I sat frozen and unable to move, Kururu closed her eyes and opened her mouth wide.

A scream!

No, I’m innocent, and at the same time, not being fully sure I really was innocent, collided inside me, and I could not get any words out.

But paying no mind to any of that, Kururu simply yawned lazily.

Her sharp fangs shone fully in the morning sunlight, and she stretched with both arms raised high. From beneath the lower edge of the blanket, bare feet stretched out straight.

I ended up thinking something completely out of place, like how the cat back at my family home looked like this too when it woke up, but Kururu, with tears welling faintly in her eyes, shot me a sidelong glance and snorted with a grin.

“What’s with you… you’re covered in charcoal.”

For some reason, the fact that Kururu was not flustered at all made me feel annoyed, so I answered back.

“You’re just as bad, Kururu-san.”

“Hm.”

Kururu brushed at her own cheek and grimaced at the gritty sensation. Then she casually lifted the blanket and checked her body.

“—!?”

It happened so suddenly that it entered my line of sight.

I hurriedly looked away, but thanks to my terrifying memory, it was burned into my mind.

That is to say, I had known they were on the smaller side, but their shape was not bad at all, or things like that.

“You sure drew a lot. My hands are pitch black too.”

Kururu said that and laughed carefree.

I took the opportunity to slip out from under the blanket and get down from the long chair, and I felt somewhat relieved to find I was still wearing something on the bottom.

“Haha, Yorinobu, your back is amazing too.”

Kururu told me that, but I could not see it myself.

Still, when I turned, Kururu, who was hardly covering the front of herself at all, came into view, and I hurriedly averted my face again.

“Could you at least cover yourself, please?”

Her openness was so complete that it irritated me instead, and that was what I said.

Kururu blinked, then burst into amused laughter.

“You say exactly the same thing as Kengo.”

“Huh, what?”

“When Kengo first came to the mansion during the cold season, the fuss he made was unbelievable. Iiria-sama and I laughed our heads off.”

Kururu, undoing her disheveled hair and quickly braiding it again, continued while finding her clothes and putting them on.

“In your world, there isn’t a custom of sleeping naked and using another person’s body heat to stay warm, right? When he found Iiria-sama and me sleeping together, he got so flustered it was hilarious.”

She was talking so cheerfully that I turned back, and though her rough just-woken-up look was still somewhat alluring, for the time being she had covered the important parts.

Also, Kururu was apparently properly wearing something on the bottom too, so it seemed we had not crossed the line in a drunken haze after all.

Probably.

“Ah… there were stories like that in my old world too, but that was an old historical custom…”

In ancient times, when down quilts were impossible to hope for. In countries at high latitudes, crude woolen blankets with poor insulation apparently could not possibly keep out the cold.

So at last I remembered that, regardless of gender, people had slept naked together to keep warm.

“Anyway, we need to wash up quickly. What did you mix into the charcoal? It’s absurdly sticky.”

There had been soap among the items delivered to the mine a little while ago, and there should have been leftovers at the company too.

When I told her that, Kururu seemed to think for a moment, then showed a mischievous grin.

“I’ve got a brilliant idea.”

“Huh?”

Getting down from the long chair, Kururu grabbed my hand and started walking.

When I hurried after her, her loose hair glittered in the morning sun, and through the gap in the jacket she had only lightly thrown on, her slender collarbones flickered in and out of view.

I was flustered by how defenseless she looked, completely like someone fresh out of bed in the morning, when Kururu said something very much like Kururu.

“There’s got to be a mountain of dragon fat fallen into the ashes from last night’s grilling, right? The most luxurious dragon soap in the world!”

Since coming to this world, I had learned that even primitive soap made by mixing ash and fat would clean things properly. So a soap made from dragon fat might well be surprisingly effective, I thought—using that idea to calm myself instead of counting prime numbers, so I could protect my sanity from the magic of Kururu’s healthy beauty.

When I went out into the courtyard with Kururu, the place was strewn with people passed out drunk like a field of corpses.

Kururu immediately plunged her hands into the makeshift stove set in the middle of the courtyard and happily swished her tail as she stirred through the ashes.

Toward Kururu’s back, I quietly said this.

“In my world, unmarried men and women are supposed to bathe separately.”

Kururu turned around, instantly looking bored, and threw the lump of ash she had been holding straight at me.