Chapter 10

Chapter 10. "The Thing Bought from Them with Money."(4)

"Ah! Mister Han! Big Sis Rene!"

"Hehe~ You both look healthy."

"Wow, Jonathan, you have grown a lot. But why is Rene 'Big Sis' while I am 'Mister'?"

"Hehehe~ What does it matter? I am happy to see you."

"That little brat."

I lightly tapped his forehead with my knuckle, and Jonathan beamed at me.

He led the way up the stairs to the second floor and said,

"This way. Business is bad at our place, so the rooms are always empty."

"You little wretch, you will answer for your words and actions!"

Having heard the words of his beloved son, Graham burst out of the kitchen with a ladle in hand and a furious look on his face. The moment Jonathan spotted his father, he hurried up the stairs and shouted,

"Waaah~ I will go on ahead and wait upstairs!"

Rene and I followed behind Jonathan, who had already shot upward like an arrow, both of us smiling. When we reached the second floor, Jonathan was waiting for us with one of the doors already open.

"Here you are. Did you come out to shop at the market again this time?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm, then you must be tired, so get some good rest. Oh, and dinner is only served until midnight. Make sure you eat before then, all right? Getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to cook is hell."

At his words, Rene let out a soft laugh, and just as Jonathan turned to walk back down the corridor, she said,

"Oh, Jonathan, did you practice what I taught you before?"

At that, Jonathan grinned, turned his head back, and held out his hand. At once, a small flame flared to life in his palm.

Magic? Had Rene taught Jonathan magic before?

Jonathan snuffed out the flame in his hand and said,

"I learned it properly. You are going to teach me a new spell this time too, right?"

"Of course. I will teach you something fun this time too."

"Heh. Thank you, Big Sis. Then have a good rest."

Jonathan flashed us another grin, waved, and headed back downstairs. I stared fixedly at Rene.

She smiled brightly, then placed both hands against my back and gently pushed me into the room. As I slowly walked inside, I said,

"Rene, did you teach Jonathan magic?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It was not intentional. There was that time when we stayed here for a few days, remember? I showed the children a bit of magic a few times. You saw it too."

I nodded at her words. She meant things like that magic where she wrote letters in the air. The children had loved it.

When we first came here, the children of this place kept their distance from her because she was an elf, and whenever that happened, Rene would show them little entertaining spells.

I remembered that the children here had taken to her very well because of that. Jonathan, just now, had been one of those children too.

Still being pushed forward by her, I went into the room, set the backpack on the table, and sat down on the bed as I said,

"Yeah, but?"

Rene locked the door, walked over to the bed, and sat beside me. Then she tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling as she said,

"But Jonathan repeated the very same magic I showed him the next day. Is that not amazing? I think that child has the aptitude of a Mana Master."

I was honestly a little surprised.

A Mana Master.

A Mana Master was someone who could use magic through sheer inborn talent even without any knowledge of magic at all.

Then Jonathan was a Mana Master who would succeed that fellow?

I cut in at once.

"Wait. A Mana Master? Do those not only appear once every hundred years or so? I thought that was how it worked."

"That is true, but then how else would you explain Jonathan? That child has the aptitude of a Mana Master. No matter what anyone says."

Right. Life was full of things one could never predict. Just as no one could have imagined that Rene and I, who once fought trying to kill each other, would end up living together like this.

Well, setting that aside for now...

"Rene, you are going to the market early tomorrow morning, right?"

"Yes."

"Then I suppose we should sleep early."

"That is right."

Rene answered as though it were only natural, and I quietly watched her for a moment before smiling faintly and falling back onto the bed. I was sitting on the edge of it, after all.

"Ahh, after running through the forest a bit, my body feels stiff. Then, honey, I am going to sleep first."

Rene stared down at me without saying anything, but she did not object either.

I closed my eyes in that position and tried to fall asleep. A little while later, I kept hearing the rustle of something shifting about, and then suddenly something soft and weighty climbed onto my chest.

When I opened my eyes and looked ahead, I saw beautiful golden hair lit by the moonlight, and long ears poking out from between the strands. Then, close to my right ear, I heard Rene’s slow, slightly warm voice in a small whisper.

"...Are you really just going to sleep?"

Ugh....

"Ah~ Good morning. But why do you look so gaunt? Did something happen last night?"

"...No, it was nothing much."

"Really? But is Miss Tarsis still not up yet?"

After nodding to him, I occupied one of the tables in the hall, then walked over and sat near Exel, who was reading a magazine he had taken from the bar.

"A magazine? What does it say?"

"Nothing much. It is full of miscellaneous stories. That is why it is called a magazine, is it not?"

Exel said it in that humorless way of his, and I let out a small laugh.

"That is true enough."

At that, Exel closed the magazine and set it down on the table. Then he stood up, took the long coat hanging over the chair, slung it over his shoulders, and said,

"Then I will head out first. We all came here looking for different things anyway, did we not?"

"Right. See you later, then."

I said that with a grin, and Exel nodded, picked up the backpack he had brought yesterday, and walked out of the inn.

We had come out to buy food supplies, but what had he come to get? Was he simply out shopping, like we were?

In any case, not long after he left, Jonathan came through the inn door carrying a huge milk can. He practically dropped it onto the floor, then threw himself onto a nearby table and lay there sprawled across it, panting, before somehow managing to offer me a morning greeting.

"Huff, huff~! Ah..., (swallowing hard,) g-good morning, Mister Han...."

"...You sound like a corpse speaking. Are you coming back from the dairy?"

Raising a trembling hand, he pointed at the milk can resting obediently on the floor, the sort of thing that looked too heavy for a child of about fifteen to carry, and said in a pitiable tone,

"The milk cans, the milk cans... Normally I only carry one a day, but today I had rotten luck and ran into Zerna, that bakery girl. She said that if I did not carry one for her, she would tell my father I had assaulted a lady, so I carried two. Ugh! Two of them. Each one weighs twelve kilos, so two makes twenty-four. Amazing, right? Praise me, Mister."

He was so exhausted his tongue was practically tying itself in knots, and most of what he said was barely intelligible.
Still, it was enough for me to understand exactly what kind of morning he had suffered.

Looking at him like that, I could already tell what sort of life awaited him.

You are going to end up living under your wife’s thumb for the rest of your life too... just like me.

As he lay there miserably on the table staring up at the ceiling, I said to him in a sympathetic voice,

"Jonathan, you are going to be henpecked too."

"Huh? What did you just say?"

"If you did not hear it, forget it. Go prepare breakfast. Once Rene wakes up, we have to go to the market."

"Yeees~."

Jonathan got down from the table, glared resentfully at the milk can, then dragged it away and disappeared into the kitchen. A short while later, his voice came drifting out from there.

"Mister! I will get it ready, so wake Big Sis Rene up and bring her down!"

"All right."

After replying, I went back upstairs and flung open the door to our room.

People said that elves naturally woke up early.

That was a lie.

Elves were sleepyheads. They did not wake easily unless someone roused them. But when an elf set out on a journey, things were different. Even if no one woke them, they would rise automatically at dawn, keep watch over their surroundings, and prepare breakfast.

Because elves traveled alone.

But when an elf traveled with someone who protected her and was always by her side...

"Rene. Rene, wake up. We have to eat breakfast and go to the market, remember?"

"...Mm, I want to sleep a little longer."

"Please. Wake up."

I climbed onto the bed, took hold of her shoulders, and shook her. At that, Rene slowly sat up with a slightly annoyed expression and began staring blankly at me from where she sat on the bed. She had probably meant to glare at me at first, but with her eyes only half open, it only made her look as though she was smiling.

In the end, I sat down in front of her, held her shoulders, and started gently shaking her again. As I did, the sheet wrapped around her body slipped off all at once.

And then, without mercy, her upper body was revealed in the warm morning sunlight pouring in through the window.

The important part was that Rene had gone to sleep completely naked the night before.

...Had Rene’s breasts always been this large?

Her snow-white skin shone even more brightly in the morning light, and as I looked at it, my face grew hot enough that I had no choice but to turn my head away.

No matter that we were husband and wife, this was...

Keeping my face turned aside, I reached out and tried to pull the fallen sheet back up to cover her, but Rene was still not fully awake.

When I touched her exposed body while trying to pull the sheet over her, she stared at me blankly for a moment, then began to grin lazily.

Then she crawled across the bed toward me and burrowed into my chest, and I felt utterly at a loss.

Oh, El Rantraaaaa~ why are you giving me such a trial from the very morning!!

Just then, Rene, still nestled against my chest, spoke in a half-asleep voice.

"Haaaan, are you not tired...? First thing in the morning...?"

"N-no, that is not really what I had in mind..."

"Then why are you taking my clothes off...?"

"Th-that was an accident..."

"Mmm, an accident... Come to think of it, I just remembered what Mister Graham said yesterday...."

Ahh~ what was it again?

'You will answer for your words and actions.'

The moment she finished speaking, she pushed me backward and showered me with kisses. I resisted, but I was hopelessly overwhelmed by her attack.

And only when afternoon was drawing near were we finally able to head out to the market.