Stop Making Cold Jokes

It happened while we were eating stew.

“Hmm?”

Daphne-chan, the rabbit beastkin girl, twitched and raised her ears.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone… is approaching it is!”

Daphne-chan had good hearing.

Good enough to distinguish a person’s footsteps even in this raging blizzard.

Which meant someone really was heading here.

What a pain.

“I shall go see what is happening, de gozaru!”

“Nope, nope. Toka-chan, you’re bad with the cold, aren’t you?”

“But thanks to Master-dono’s potion, the cold does not bother me at all, de gozaru?”

“I can’t let someone as cute as you feel cold.”

“Ooh! Master-dono…!”

Toka-chan’s fire drakekin tail happily slapped back and forth.

So cute.

“Cherge?”

“Hmph…”

Our idiot maid still seemed to be in a bad mood.

Good grief.

“Errand Girl Number Two, go.”

“Ehh… It’s cold outside, though.”

“Don’t talk back. Go.”

“Tch… I’m a lizard too, same as Toka-san, so I’m bad with the cold too, you know.”

While grumbling complaints, Errand Girl Number Two, also known as Vivre, went outside the carriage.

Daphne-chan worriedly pressed close to me.

Sui-chan looked uneasy too.

There, there, I thought as I patted their heads.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Even if something happens, I’ll smash it with an Explosive Potion.”

““Wah!””

After a short while, Vivre came back.

“Who’s that…?”

It was an unusually small man.

No, wait.

I might have seen one before.

“Isn’t he a dwarf?”

“Are you humans…?”

The dwarf man climbed into the carriage while trembling from the cold.

“What happened to you?”

“I got stranded…”

“I see… stranded, huh……………………ah.”

…S-Somehow, it ended up sounding like a cold joke.

That wasn’t my intention or anything, but…

I glanced at Toka-chan.

“H-Heh…! I-I see, de gozaru!”

She obviously looked away!

I looked at Zenith-chan.

“…T-That must have been terrible.”

She looked away again.

Oh no, they thought my joke had fallen flat.

No, no! That wasn’t it.

It wasn’t that kind of punny something-or-other!

“Onee-chan… this dwarf-san is pitiful it is.”

Nice one, Daphne-chan.

A chance to change the flow!

“Y-Yes, you’re right. In that case, would you like some stew?”

“Y-You would allow me?”

“Yes, we still have some left.”

Well, part of me did wonder why I had to feed precious food to some old man like this.

But in order to break through that cold atmosphere from earlier, I needed to change the subject.

So I had no choice but to serve him some stew, and then…

“Deliciooooous! I’ve never had stew this good before! This is a revolution in cooking…!”

The dwarf ate the stew while shedding tears.

Good grief…