5
After that, the Three Stooges encountered a barrage of problems on their adventure.
Subaru carelessly touched the plant that makes your skin swell, tripped on mossy rocks and fell, cut his hand with his Shooting Stars while trying to harvest the mushrooms, and slipped while climbing the bolk tree. He fell straight to the ground and, after giving a stellar performance in an action-packed drama, our protagonist was nearly sobbing.
Without Rem’s little magic trick, he probably would have been painfully wallowing in a puddle of his own tears by then.
“Rem is the absolute best. How could she know all this was gonna happen to me and give me some helping words…”
“If you ask me, I can’t help but feel sorry for Rem for the fact that you made all her worst worries come true. How can you so precisely ignore every single warning she gave you?”
“Hold up, don’t be so quick to judge! For starters, I didn’t ignore her warnings. I tried really hard but fell short! Don’t obsess over the results—gimme some credit for trying!”
“But results are everything.”
“Fine, fine, I’m so very sorry.”
His whole body was covered in a thin layer of dirt, and Subaru sat as Puck administered first aid to his scrapes. It was a surprising turn of events—he didn’t know Puck could use healing magic.
“I was the one who gave Lia her first lessons in spirit magic, you know?” Puck said. “Then again, I don’t have much aptitude for healing magic, so I can’t cure wounds as well as Betty. But a scrape like this? Ten minutes’ rest will be plenty.”
“Thanks, man. Sorry I made you use up your MP when you’ve got a time limit.”
“Don’t worry, if I suddenly disappear, you’ll be in more trouble than me—and it’ll serve you right.”
“So you won’t bother to stay longer than necessary—thanks, message received.”
His knee and elbow scrapes were now healed. Subaru gave the flying ball of floof a grateful high five. Ram side-eyed them as she crouched beside a tiny creek far too quiet to be called a proper mountain stream. Though they couldn’t drink the water, it was an ideal place to rest.
It was a bit past noon. Given their location and the state of their stomachs, Ram suggested they eat lunch. Subaru was having his wounds cured in conjunction with following her suggestion.
“The path was treacherous, but at least we secured our ingredients,” he said. “We somehow managed to get the mushrooms and the fruit seeds, and we already know where the flowers are. We’re in surprisingly good shape.”
“I thought I told you it wasn’t dangerous, Barusu. You just made it more difficult than it needed to be.”
“Urrrg—I can’t argue with that…”
After his series of blunders, Subaru was in no place to counter Ram’s sass. As he rinsed his swollen right hand in the cool creek and patted the dirt off his tracksuit, he had only just gotten himself back to the state he was in when they first set out.
Just as he rinsed off the Shooting Stars he’d used to forage the mushrooms, he said, “While we’re here, I might as well map out this river.”
Eyeing the bends of the river, Subaru pulled a sheet of paper and something similar to a crayon out of his pack. Then he began sketching. His crayons only came in basic colors, but his drawing of the river was still well done. And he didn’t forget to jot down little notes in Japanese here and there.
“You’ve been doing that ever since we got on this mountain. What kind of game is that?”
“It’s not a game. It has a purpose!” Subaru rebuked the peeping Ram as he fished for his lunch parcel. He then thrust the fresh drawing in her face and said, “Look, it’s a map. When a person explores uncharted territory, he draws a map. If there’s documentation of where everything is, future travelers can avoid falling into the same traps, y’know?”
“Well, that’s clever. But will this map ever need to be used? If I run out of tea, I’ll just come up here to get more ingredients myself. Rem can, too, if I just tell her what I need.”
As Ram questioned the necessity for the map, Subaru rolled it up with a sheepish smile. She was right. As someone who knew where all the ingredients were, she wouldn’t need the map.
“Just a hypothetical…” Subaru began.
“What kind of hypothetical?”
“Let’s say you run out of tea again and you’re so sick you can’t get out of bed. And, by coincidence, Rem is away and Roswaal is out somewhere, too. So, oh, goodness gracious me, you’d have nobody to ask for help! If that happened, I could use this map to get your ingredients.”
It really was a one-in-a-million scenario—a remedy that should only be used as a last resort.
“If this map gives us insurance and peace of mind, it’s served its purpose,” Subaru finished.
It didn’t matter if it never needed to be used. However, on the off chance it was needed, Subaru would be grateful to his past self for making it. He made the lifesaving tool, hoping it would never need to be used. That paradoxical clash of logic and sense of purpose existed in many things.
And hearing Subaru’s answer, Ram fell silent in thought. She looked faintly surprised. Subaru scratched his head, baffled by the uncharacteristic reaction. The declaration he had just made could be rather embarrassing if taken the wrong way.
“W-well, anyway! I’m just making this so if I get lost, I’ll be able to make it home in one piece. When you put survival first, you’ve gotta take on your fair share of hardships.”
Babbling quickly to cover his embarrassment, Subaru slid the rolled-up map into his back pocket. When he returned to the mansion, he would need to make a clean copy of it, including his notes in Japanese. Even though this was his first time making a map outside a game, it was at least serviceable.
A mediocre attention to detail was one of the underconfident Subaru Natsuki’s strong suits.
Clapping his hands to reset the mood, Subaru said, “Okay, let’s eat lunch. If I don’t eat something fast, my stomach’s gonna stick to my spine!”
“Fair point—yes, let’s have lunch,” Ram agreed. She proceeded to pull out a parcel. Then, after a few moments in silent thought, she said, “Since you were uncharacteristically thoughtful, Barusu, I’ll give you a little reward.”
“Uh, what’s with the ‘uncharacteristically’ bit? You’re making me nervous—downright queasy, so I’d rather not get your reward.”
“Oh dear, my horn scar is suddenly throbbing with pain. I think I might have a fever, too.”
“Way to use my goodwill against me! Okay, fine! I’ll take your damn reward! Hit me with your best shot!”
“No need to howl at me. I was just going to give you the largest share of lunch.”
In her left hand, Ram held up the wrapped food parcel to the wishy-washy Subaru. It was about the size of a child’s fist, and upon seeing it, Subaru sighed in relief.
“Way to freak me out. I had no idea what you meant. But that’s a perfectly acceptable size—in fact, it’s basically a normal size.”
“True. Anyway, this is yours.”
And just as Subaru’s guard lowered, Ram took the actual parcel that she had been hiding with her right hand and shoved it into his face. Seeing it was the size of a child’s head, Subaru was speechless.
“And by the clumsy shape, this one was unmistakably made by Emilia,” Ram said.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious! Dammit, when she said, ‘Since I can’t stand to keep it a secret, I’ll tell you I’ve included a special treat of my very own,’ I knew she was full of it! She was never gonna keep that a secret! Not in a million years!”
He had initially envisioned Emilia standing beside Rem and just squeezing the rice balls, but his assumption was wrong. It had to be. If this is what Emilia ended up with despite working alongside Rem, then he dreaded to think about what an entire home-cooked meal might look like if Emilia was in charge.
With a glimmer of hope in his heart, Subaru took a bite. But in his line of vision, he could see the spirit shaking his head. His eyes distant with resignation, Puck said, “Lia is adorable. Maybe that’s enough to excuse her from anything.”
“Dammit all, I know the feeling!” Subaru cursed, deciding to bite the bullet and face reality.
Still, it was hard to believe that a rice ball’s flavor could change so much depending on the hands that shaped it. Just to be sure, he took a bite of Rem’s rice ball first to get a taste of her consideration before challenging his tastebuds with Emilia’s rice ball.
“It’s—heavy.”
The mass on his knees was intensely dense. It was dense enough to deny the very concept of rice balls that existed in his mind. He took a deep breath and reached for the rice ball. Giving it a thorough looking-over—
“Wait…there’s another wrapper underneath?”
Taking the plunge and removing the wrapper, he found another piece of paper protecting the rice ball. She had probably made the rice ball so big that one piece of paper wouldn’t hold it together. It wasn’t until she had layered paper upon paper that the rice ball’s gargantuan mass was successfully contained.
It was no different from containing a powerful monster with layers upon layers of barrier spells.
“Anyway, what’s inside…”
Annoyed by his train of thought, Subaru unwrapped the rice ball to look at its insides. He wrestled with the papers, ripping them off one by one, yet failing to reveal the rice ball inside until—
“—Oops.”
Once breathless in anticipation, Ram, Puck, and Subaru grunted in unison. In his attempt to rip off the stubborn final layer of paper, the rice ball spilled onto Subaru’s lap. The firm sphere bounced off the ground and rolled away.
“Wait, come back!” Subaru jumped to his feet and stumbled after the rolling rice ball. It was as if the old folktale The Tumbling Rice Balls had come to life. It was a freakishly perfect reenactment.
Just as the rice ball hit a slope and began to accelerate, Subaru sprang at it, his fingertips just barely catching it before it rolled downhill. He sighed in relief—but only for a moment.
“Huh?”
His leg suddenly floated, sending him into the air. A look down revealed a sudden steepness in the path beneath him, and the word avalanche popped into his brain.
It was a perfect reenactment of the folktale—in a wrong way, of course.
“Barusu—!”
Hearing Ram’s frantic voice behind him, Subaru fell straight backward down the sudden slope, clutching the rice ball to his chest.
At least the grass is softening the blow—he thought to himself as he screamed.
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