BONUS: WHAT A THRILL! A BALL GAME AT THE INN!
“Phew, this is true nirvana!”
As I soaked in the outdoor bath, I gave a sigh of bliss.
The whole family was bathing in the hot springs at the volcano in Laika’s hometown.
I didn’t have a good grasp of how many geothermal hot spots there were in this world, but at the very least, there were several hot spring inns at the volcano, and most of them had outdoor baths.
Since it would be a waste otherwise, I visited a different inn every single time I came. But it wasn’t like there were dozens of them, so I’d soon be on my second go around. I’d probably find my preferred inn to stay at before too long.
“Lady Azusa, what is nirvana?” Laika asked me. Oh right, she wouldn’t understand that word.
“Well, it’s like heaven. It means a place filled with the most happiness.”
“I see! How informative. I knew you were so abundant in your knowledge, Lady Azusa.”
But it was of course a word that any ex-Japanese person would know, so I sort of felt sorry for receiving that compliment.
“This is more hell than heaven…”
Flatorte lay flat on her stomach outside the outdoor bath.
Blue dragons apparently didn’t handle heat very well, and she’d gotten out of the bath almost right away. Then Halkara started pouring water on her.
“Ooh, my body feels heavy…”
“Flatorte, you were in the bath only for about fifteen seconds. That sounds much too quick to get dizzy…”
“Yeah, I’ll return to normal, then try it again…”
Well, some people couldn’t handle baths very well. Even if the water wasn’t all that hot.
And by the way, my two daughters weren’t breaking any of our rules for manners, like splashing around and swimming. They were perfectly well-behaved. They seemed to enjoy the big bath.
“Halkara, Flatorte seems fine now, so you can come in if you want.”
“Is that so? If you insist, then.”
Halkara came back to the bath.
Her bosom was floating on the water.
Hmm… I always imagined elves as slender, so then what was up with Halkara’s breasts?
“Big Sis Halkara, you really have big boobies!”
“Miss Halkara, when did this happen to you?”
Aah, and now my daughters are interested! But they’ve never asked me stuff like that before…
“Are they? Now that you mention it, there were berries at home that had something in them that increased breast size, and I ate those a lot. Maybe that’s it.”
She said something I couldn’t ignore.
“Halkara, we’re going to go pick those berries next time!”
“Huh?! Really, Madam Teacher?”
“Really, really! If I can get this strong defeating slimes for three hundred years, then I’m sure the effects would be incredible if I ate those berries for thirty years!”
—And putting that aside.
“Ooh, the water was so nice!”
We changed after we got out of the bath and left the dressing rooms. What I wore wasn’t my usual clothes but my pajamas.
Well, I’m not Flatorte, but I guess I should cool off somewhere. Still, the spring was in a volcano, so it was hot even outside the bath.
Then, to the left of the changing room exit, a door that said GAME ROOM on it caught my attention.
“Game room? Do they really have games here?”
I guess hot spring inns in the suburbs often had old shooting games in them. Maybe it was the same here. But there probably wouldn’t be any arcade cabinets.
“Games? Yay, sounds fun!”
Falfa opened the door right away.
Sitting there wasn’t an arcade cabinet, obviously, but it was still something I recognized well.
It was a table with a net in the middle.
Could this be…?
“Oh, it’s a pin-pone table,” Laika said.
“I knew it was Ping-Pong!”
“Pin-pone is a very well-known sport among the dragons. Blue dragons play it a lot, too,” Flatorte said.
I didn’t know why, but there was no question that dragons played Ping-Pong.
“You may not know about it, Lady Azusa, so I’ll explain the rules. We use this pin-pone seed that’s hollow on the inside as a ball, and both players hit it back and forth with rackets. So when you serve, you bounce it once on your side of the court, then hit it with—”
“Oh yeah, I get the gist of it. Actually, you could say I’m experienced.”
It matched the rules for Ping-Pong one for one. I didn’t know if it totally matched up with world conference regulations, but the basics were exactly the same.
“It sounds like you know the game, Lady Azusa, so why don’t we have a match while we’re here? Both rackets and balls are in the basket.”
Laika brought over the Ping-Pong equipment (I’m just going to call it Ping-Pong) from the corner of the room.
“All right, let’s do this! Hot springs and Ping-Pong always go hand in hand!”
“No, Lady Azusa, it’s pin-pone.”
She corrected me, but I was just going to stick to Ping-Pong.
The racket was exactly the same as a regular Ping-Pong one. There was even a rubberlike substance stuck to it. But it seemed like all they had were the double-faced ones.
The first match was between Laika and me.
“I won’t lose, Laika! I’ll show you the dignity of the head of the house!”
Laika was the first to serve.
I may not look it, but I was once a part of a Ping-Pong club called Curve that made it its goal to play Ping-Pong at hot springs. The name came from the curved arc the ball went in.
It would be cheeky of me to count myself as an experienced player, but I wasn’t exactly a beginner.
Laika tossed the ball in the air. It was coming straight to my side of the court.
I went at the ball with my racket.
“Ha!”
But the ball flew straight past the table and into next week.
“Wha…? This is pretty tough…”
“The first point goes to me. Let’s go again.”
The ball flew at me once more. I swung my racket.
This time the ball went straight into the net.
“…Hey, Laika, you’re putting a spin on the ball, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Adding a spin to your serve is a basic tactic, of course,” Laika said, her expression suggesting it was the obvious thing to do.
Aww, come on. Isn’t it mean to take hot spring Ping-Pong this seriously? Aren’t we supposed to be exchanging lighter hits?
Which, by the way, I couldn’t do.
“I’m sure you may have your own thoughts about this, but I will not go easy on you. That would be much too rude to my opponent.”
She was as sharp as always, but to have Ping-Pong at a hot springs be the motivation for it…
“Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to step up to the plate now, huh?”
1–11
I got my butt handed to me.
There wasn’t much I could do anyway, since my opponent got all the points when it was her serve. When I got lucky and got the ball in her court, it was high and easy to hit, so she just struck it way far out…
All my serves had high bounces, so she hit them straight back to me with a strong arm.
I remembered when Beelzebub took all the games seriously when we were playing at Pondeli’s place. Sure, it wasn’t good to go easy when playing cerebral games, but when it came to sports, it wouldn’t be a good game without a handicap…
“All right, would anyone else like to play?”
Laika seemed to be having fun. That’s not very grown-up at all! Well, body size doesn’t make her an adult, though.
Afterward, Falfa and Shalsha stepped up to the challenge, but since they didn’t even know the rules, they lost without taking a single point.
Rosalie, who was a ghost and couldn’t even get in the hot springs, also easily lost. I mean, she couldn’t handle the racket well enough to hit the ball, so what could she do? I wanted to praise her just for managing to play a game.
Halkara was also a beginner, so she wasn’t very good, but there was a bigger problem with her.
Her bosom looked like it was going to pop out of her pajamas whenever she moved, so I stepped in during the middle of the match.
“Okay, stop! This is too risky! I can’t say for sure that a male guest isn’t going to come into this room at any time… You should be more discreet about that…”
“I’m sorry. My chest is in the way, which makes it hard to use the racket.”
I was getting extremely irritated by my own personal feelings.
In the end, Laika was undefeated.
It felt cheap, like a member of the Ping-Pong club was playing with a bunch of casuals.
“All right, perhaps I should switch with someone soon.”
“Wait! One of us hasn’t tried yet—Flatorte!”
Flatorte stuck out her right hand and stepped up to the challenge.
“Very well. Actually, I believe this match will come to a quick conclusion.”
“My strategy was to tire you out by making you play against everyone else.”
Flatorte was petty, too!
“I’m sorry, but it’s impossible to return my serves with the spin I put on the ball.”
“Then go ahead and try. I have a secret technique.”
Whether she actually had any secret techniques or not, there was no questioning Flatorte was raring to go.
“Here we go!”
Laika tossed the ball up high and brushed it with her racket.
She put a spin on it this time, too!
Then, Flatorte—
“Roooaaar! Here it comes!”
—practically smashed the ball back into Laika’s court.
Laika couldn’t even begin to match that energy. To think Flatorte was starting out ahead!
“Wow, amazing!” “You did it, Miss Flatorte!” “That was a full-body hit.”
My daughters and I yelled practically all at the same time!
“I—I see! She can deal with the serve by adding even more of a spin on her return hit!”
Halkara sounded like an expository character when she spoke. But it was an easy-to-understand explanation.
“I, Flatorte, don’t really understand that stuff about spins. But a spin naturally occurs when I swing my racket. I’m overwriting Laika’s spin entirely with my own!”
To me, it sounded like a technique that just used force, but it was effective, so I guessed it was fine.
“Impressive. But I haven’t even started yet. You didn’t think I was just planning on winning through my serves, did you?”
Oh, the color in Laika’s eyes changed.
This is gonna be an intense fight…
“All right then, come at me!”
Their match quickly turned into a melee.
It was hard to tell if it was skill or just pure energy, but whenever Laika served, Flatorte would always hit it right back.
Of course, that didn’t knock Laika off her game, and she was fielding it well.
And Flatorte was keeping up, always smacking it right back with an aggressive stance.
This is getting exciting…
Flatorte’s attack sometimes failed and Laika earned a point, but there were also plenty of times when it entered Flatorte’s court and then shot straight past Laika.
The game was complicated right up until the last phase.
16–16
A deuce wouldn’t settle the matter.
How will it turn out…?
We watched with bated breath to see where this was going.
“I see sweat on Miss Laika’s cheek that wasn’t there at the beginning. I believe she might not have much left in her.”
Halkara was right at home explaining to the audience, wasn’t she…?
“Big Sis Halkara, is Big Sis Flatorte at an advantage?”
“It’s not that simple, little Falfa. This is a hot springs in a volcano. With the high temperatures, a blue dragon like Flatorte will be at a disadvantage when it comes to long battles. In actuality, she’s been making more mistakes since the second half started.”
It was a mystery as to why Halkara, who supposedly had never played this game before, could provide such an accurate analysis. My mind was on the match, but now it was also on that…
“This match will come to an end soon.”
Halkara the explainer’s opinion became reality.
“Hey, Laika, let’s get rid of the two-point advantage and say whoever gets the next single point wins.”
Laika would be serving next, so Flatorte offered a suggestion.
“Are you sure? Don’t blame me if you regret it.”
“You’re the one who’ll decide if I’ll catch this one.”
Laika nodded slowly.
A drop of sweat fell to the floor.
“Very well. I’ll end this with my next serve.”
“Heh, and I’ll return it!”
Then, Laika grinned.
“Actually, I have a secret serving technique that I haven’t shown once yet.”
“Whatever serve it may be, I, the great Flatorte, will send it right back! Even if your technique is better than mine, my game sense isn’t to be underestimated!”
Things were getting heated. This didn’t feel like hot spring Ping-Pong…
“Technique versus instinct—a clash of dragon pride. Now, what sort of serve will we see next?”
“Halkara, Laika should naturally have the advantage, since she’ll be using a new move here. What do you think about that?”
“Well, at this point this is a battle of pride, so it’s hard to say how much of an effect it’ll have. Flatorte would be able to push back against a tricky serve with her power!”
For some reason I really wanted to read a sports manga, whether about Ping-Pong or tennis or something else. Unfortunately, they didn’t exist in this world.
“Then this serve will end it all! I will never allow you to receive!”
“Enough talk—just hit the ball!”
The ball slowly rose into the air.
Then Laika moved in a way I had never seen before.
She was holding the racket vertically, like she was going to chop the ball in half.
“Here we go!”
Laika swung the racket at high speed!
And without even touching the ball, it sliced through empty air.
The ball plopped down.
“I—I—I… I won!!!”
Flatorte took on a victorious pose in celebration. Something about this felt unfinished, but there was no questioning she won.
“I beat a red dragon! I beat a red dragon!”
Logically, that was correct, but that phrasing made it sound like it meant something different!
“W-wait! Deciding the winner like that will only leave a bad taste in both our mouths, so we should just do it normally with a two-point advantage!”
Laika, you’re sounding childish!
“Hmm? The great Flatorte won fair and square. No need to play anymore!”
Flatorte was smug as sin. She could look as smug as she wanted today. She had won convincingly.
“Then, then… One more match! Let us have one more match!”
Laika was such a sore loser! She really did take everything seriously.
“No. Actually, I’ll never play with you again. That way, Flatorte’s victory will forever remain etched in history!”
And Flatorte was really petty about this stuff!
Afterward, since the two of them worked up quite a sweat, we all went back into the baths for another soak.
In the water, Laika was still asking Flatorte for a rematch.
“Sheesh, will you cut it out already? No need to obsess over something so trivial!” I scolded.
“How dare you! I have my regrets!”
Next time, we’ll stay at an inn without a Ping-Pong table…
I made a vow to myself as I soaked in the water.
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