Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 28 - Chapter 4.6

Group Performance: Two People on a Rainy Day

1

Roughly three months before Darmu and Sheera Ruu’s wedding, when Genos was in the midst of the rainy season at the start of the brown month, Shumiral woke up feeling dull pain in various places, and having difficulty breathing. But also, he found the beloved girl he had been dreaming of right there before his eyes, leaving him rather confused.

Am I still dreaming?

Vina Ruu was sitting beside him. A faint bit of morning sunlight streamed in through the window, beautifully reflecting off of her hair. She was using one of her hands to fiddle with her other wrist at the moment, so she must not have realized that Shumiral was awake.

On her wrist, she was wearing a gleaming bracelet meant to ward off disaster, a gift Shumiral had once given her. Her fingers ran along the small stones as she gave a listless sigh. With her long eyelashes, she had a beautiful profile.

By the standards of beauty in Sym, her face was a bit too plump. But even so, Shumiral still found it dazzling. Regardless of the structure of her face or the presence or absence of fat, the shine in her eyes, her expression, and the feelings she elicited in him all caused him to find Vina Ruu absolutely beautiful.

As thoughts like those wandered through his mind, Vina Ruu casually turned toward him. Her slightly drooping eyes then suddenly shot wide open—yet another expression that Shumiral found quite charming.

“How long have you been awake?” she asked.

“I just, woke up,” Shumiral replied. However, doing so caused a throbbing pain to crop up deep in his chest. He furrowed his brow, which made Vina Ruu lean in with a worried expression.

“You don’t have to force yourself to speak. Should I fetch you some romu leaves?”

“No. It is dangerous, to take too many, romu leaves.”

“Then why don’t you drink some water? You’ve been sweating quite a lot, so you must be feeling terribly parched.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Shumiral turned on his side and tried to sit up, but that caused another stabbing pain in his chest, so it seemed he couldn’t even handle that much movement. It felt as if burning coals had been shoved into his rib cage.

Yesterday, Shumiral had been injured while out hunting giba. They had come across a starving giba and everyone had tried to retreat up into the trees, but he had gotten hurt shielding a Ririn hunter who had been charged at by the beast after failing to escape. Fortunately, its tusks and horns hadn’t pierced his body, but he had still been struck head-on, which had been enough to crack his ribs. Even so, the Ririn clan head Giran Ririn had said that he hadn’t broken any bones.

After being carried back to the Ririn settlement, some of the medicine that he himself had brought there had been applied to his injuries, and then bandages had been wrapped around his chest. The Ririn had provided the pain-relieving romu leaves themselves, though. After taking them last night, he had fallen into a deep sleep. And now, he was finally awake again.

Vina Ruu stood up and drew some water from a jug into a dish, but then she directed a very concerned look at Shumiral. “Can you still not move? Uru Lea Ririn and the others have already left to handle their morning chores.”

“I cannot. My apologies, but could you, lend me a hand?”

Vina Ruu’s eyebrows drooped. She appeared to be quite troubled, but before long, she looked up resolutely, set the dish on the floor, and held out her arm toward Shumiral. After grasping her slender hand, he somehow managed to sit up. The strength she possessed far exceeded his expectations.

Shumiral was still in pain, but it was nothing he couldn’t cope with, and he managed to get his breathing under control as well. Once he did, Vina Ruu leaned in from the side and brought the plate in her hands to his mouth. He drank just a bit of the cold water it held, but even that was enough to cause intense pain to lance through his chest once again.

“You can take your time, but please drink a little more. You didn’t eat yesterday, so if you don’t drink at least some water, your body will give out on you.”

“Of course. Thank you, Vina Ruu.”

This was the first time Shumiral had ever felt her so close to him.

It was currently the rainy season, so Vina Ruu was wearing a long-sleeved overcoat as well as a long skirt. Seeing her dressed like that was rather novel for him, and he found the look quite charming. He continued to stare at her for a long moment, which quickly made her cheeks turn red.

“Could you please not stare at people’s faces so intently? Do you have some sort of issue with me?”

“No. I just, found it strange, to see you here. I thought, we said farewell, last evening.”

Vina Ruu had visited the Ririn settlement along with Asuta and several others the previous evening. However, it wasn’t like they had come to see Shumiral. They’d had business at the Sauti settlement and had simply happened to stop by on the way back. He had taken the romu leaves after they had departed, and that was pretty much the last thing he remembered.

Vina Ruu glared at Shumiral, still blushing quite strongly. “I’m the reason you’re staying with the Ririn clan in the first place, so it’s only natural for me to lend them my aid, isn’t it? I don’t see why anyone would take issue with that.”

“So did you, stay here, last night?”

“Hmph... You were asleep the whole time, so there was nothing for me to do. The clan head Giran Ririn was the one who stayed by your side through the night.” Naturally, it wasn’t permitted for someone of the opposite sex who wasn’t even family to sleep in the same room as him. The people of the forest’s edge lived under stricter rules than the townsfolk. “At daybreak, Giran Ririn returned to his bedroom, and the other women went off to do the washing.”

“I see. I am grateful, Vina Ruu.”

“As I just explained, I haven’t done anything to help yet.”

“No. You sat me up, and gave me water, which was, a great help.”

With an angry look on her red face, Vina Ruu thrust the dish out toward him again. “I told you, don’t look at me like that! Just drink some water already!”

What sort of look did she mean, exactly?

Well, whatever she meant, all that Shumiral could feel in his chest right then was joy over getting an opportunity to talk to Vina Ruu for the first time in a while.