The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 7 - Chapter 346

Chapter 346:

A Close Friend?

It was the second day of Festival Eve. Just like yesterday, this was a time for people to buy their festival clothes and get the dye. Then, on days three and four, we would dance on Main Street to welcome the spring. When I first heard about this part, I was surprised that it didn’t happen during the festival proper. I always got the sense that dancing was a festival standard. And on the fifth and final day of Festival Eve, we rested in preparation for the main event.

“What do you want to do today? Go eat at a stall?”

“What? In this mayhem?” I glanced outside. It was incredibly crowded, just like the day before. I turned to my side and saw Sol aimlessly staring out the window. “Sol, you’ve been looking out the window a lot lately, haven’t you? Do you wanna go out and play?”

But Sol didn’t respond.

So I guess that means no? I gave Sol’s head some gentle pats, and it jiggled happily in reply, leaning into my hand. That was the signal for More pats, please.

“Sol, be sure not to lean against the window too much, okay? If somebody spots you, we might get in trouble.”

“Pefu!”

“You’re right, there is quite a crowd. Should we stay in after all?”

I paused in thought. “I still want to know what’s up with that cart we saw yesterday.”

Near the inn, I’d spotted a food cart that sold braised obitsune. The meat was sliced thinly and stewed with white vegetables. It had a unique fragrance that was very alluring when we walked by.

“That stew, right? Yeah, it did smell delicious.”

“I know.”

I looked for the cart from the window and saw it had a huge line, just as I’d anticipated. The question was whether that line was worth standing in.

“It did say it was only available during festival time,” Druid reminded me.

That’s right! If we could eat it after the festival, I’d just wait it out, but it was a festival-exclusive item. Druid said he wondered if that was false advertising, but I would regret not eating it if it were true.

“Pu! Pu, puuu.”

“Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”

Sora’s and Flame’s voices drew my attention back to the room. The two slimes had shaped themselves into spheres and were on my bed, rolling to the right and rolling to the left…then rolling to the right and rolling to the left.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Dunno. Maybe they’re bored?”

They just kept rolling…and rolling. Ciel took one look at them, then turned around and went to sleep. It was like the adandara couldn’t follow the game.

“Well, Sora, Flame, don’t play too hard, okay?” Druid said.

Roll, roll…roll, roll…roll, roll…roll, roll…

“Pu! Puuu, puuu.”

“Te! Ryuuu, ryuuu.”

Maybe they were bored because we hadn’t been to the forest in a week. Now that there were too many people in town for the plaza to hold, adventurers had started camping in the forest. Animals and weaker monsters like obitsune had stopped showing up.

“Okay, what do you want to do?”

“I just have to try it! Can we go buy some obitsune stew?”

“Of course. Let’s go now.”

“Okay. The words festival-exclusive are really lethal, aren’t they?” Seeing that phrase, you couldn’t help but panic.

“Yeah, it makes you take notice.”

“Yup.”

“Okay, kids, we’re gonna go do some shopping. Be good,” I told everyone.

“Pu! Pu, puuu.”

“Pefu!”

“Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”

Meowww. Ciel sounded half-asleep. 

We left our room and locked the door.

“Did you lock the second lock, too?”

“Yeah, we’re all set,” Druid said.

When we first arrived at the inn, we were surprised to see that our door had two keyholes instead of one. We asked Chikar about it, and he said that one lock would normally be enough, but he wanted his guests to use two locks now that so many festivalgoers were in town. There was apparently a lot of crime targeting tourists. Incidentally, if the second lock were opened by any means other than its key, an alarm would sound. I had heard of alarms like that before, and sure enough, I heard one going off yesterday somewhere in the inn. I was startled by how loud it was.

We left the inn and headed for the food cart. I held Druid’s hand so we wouldn’t lose each other, but the crowd was even thicker than yesterday. We got jostled around a little by the waves of people, but we finally managed to reach our destination.

“I already saw it from the window in our room, but it sure is crowded here,” Druid said.

“Yeah, but what a good smell.”

Druid and I stood side by side. Since this was the last day to buy festival clothes, there was an incredible number of shoppers out, but also a massive crowd of sellers. I watched them, in awe of their charisma. We slowly moved along until the food cart sign came into view. It said: Braised Obitsune—A Festival Exclusive. Due to the crowds, we serve it on the lukewarm side.

When it was our turn, we stood at the window and the cook said, “Hello, what’ll ya have?”

“Three helpings of braised obitsune, please.”

Since all they had to do was spoon the food into bowls, their turnaround time was quite fast.

“That looks so good! I can’t wait.”

“Yeah. Excuse me, but do you really only serve this dish during the festival?”

“Yes, that’s right, sir. I normally run a weapons shop; I’m not a cook.”

“Huh? You sell weapons?”

“Yes, sir. This braised obitsune was a specialty of my dad’s back when he ran a tavern. I wanted to bring it back to life for the festival.”

The phrasing of “bring it back to life” made me wonder if his father had passed away.

“Oh, that’s neat.”

“Thanks. Well, here ya go. It tastes much better if ya heat it up.”

“Thanks.”

We took the braised obitsune from the cart owner and headed back. We somehow pushed our way out of the crowd and back to our inn.

“Carrying food makes me nervous,” Druid said.

“Yeah, I’m glad we didn’t spill any.”

We opened the front door to the inn and stepped inside. Two men in beautiful clothes were talking with Chikar…and they didn’t look friendly.

“What’s going on?” I asked Druid.

“This doesn’t look good. Let’s just head upstairs.”

I nodded and walked toward the stairs.

“You two are staying at this inn, right?”

I was startled by the man’s intrusiveness. Druid quickly slipped between me and the men.

“Stop harassing my guests!” Chikar yelled nervously. It looked like he really was being threatened.

“Shut up. You two, let us in your room at once. This is an order from the nobility.”

Yikes… These guys are nuts.

“All the festival’s guests are equal, whether they’re common or noble. That’s festival custom.”

“Oh, hang your custom. You said you couldn’t give us a room, so we’ll take our own. It’s quite simple, really. What are you two doing? Let us in your room at once!”

What should we do? I glanced at Druid. He was angry. Flaming angry, in fact. But these were noblemen…

“Oh, how very droll.”

“Huh?!”

Wait a minute… I think I’ve heard that voice somewhere before.

“What’s your game, man? You got a bone to pick with us?”

I carefully peeked out from behind Druid to look at the owner of the familiar voice. Wait… Lord Foronda? What is he doing here?

“Why, no,” Foronda answered. “I came here to visit an acquaintance of mine only to find some cretins were behaving foolishly, so I came to crush…er, stop them.”

In spite of his smile, he was cold and menacing somehow. And I thought he’d said some rather worrying things. Had he come to see me? I’d mentioned in my fax to Seizerk that we were staying at an inn called Kokoron, so it wouldn’t be entirely out of the question for Lord Foronda to come visit us.

“Do you know him?” Druid whispered to me.

I nodded and whispered back, “That’s Lord Foronda.”

Druid jumped a little and looked up at him in surprise.

“Cretins, are we? You bastard! Do you know who the hell we are?!”

“Why, no, I don’t. Nor do I care.”

Ha ha ha… Lord Foronda’s got murder in his eyes.

“Well, we are representatives of the renowned capital family of Mitche!”

Wow, I didn’t know a person could be spoiled so rotten… You gonna be okay, pal? You’re making the esteemed gentleman quite angry.

“Oh, so you’re with Mitche, eh? The disgraced house.”

“Disgraced, you say?!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, weren’t you the ones who incurred the royal family’s wrath when you tried to get too friendly with them?”

Yikes… Lord Foronda is having too much fun with this.

“H-how did you know that…?”

“A friend of mine was affected by the little problem you caused.”

“Er, your friend? You don’t mean…?”

The two noblemen’s faces drained of color in a flash. They must have figured out who Lord Foronda’s “friend” was.

“That’s right. My aforementioned acquaintance staying at this inn…is that young lady standing right there.”

“What?!”

“And my close friend who was victimized by your family insisted on seeing that young lady, too. That’s right, I seem to remember you gentlemen were rude to this young lady whom my friend and I adore, demanded that she let you in her room or some such nonsense… If I told my friend about this, I’m sure things would get quite interesting around here, don’t you agree?”

Wow… The phrase “close friend” is doing a lot of work here. This friend of his must have quite a bit of power.

“Eep!” The noblemen’s faces paled beyond white into an even grimmer color. They looked like they would keel over any second… Were they going to be okay?

“W-we were o-o-only checking to s-see if there was a r-room available! Excuse us!”

The two noblemen tumbled out of the inn in a frenzy. I don’t know how else to describe them except pathetic.