Chapter 5

Chapter 5. "The Red Fur Cap Worn by a Werewolf." (2)

"What method do you usually use?"

"Well, it is quite rare for her to get angry, so I have only used it a few times. First, I pull her into my arms while she is angry and kiss her very deeply for about five minutes. If I do that, my wife enters a state where, for a brief while, she will listen to anything I say. So at that moment, I lean close to her ear and tell her I am sorry about a hundred times, and then I carry her straight to the bed...."

The owner of the voice pretending to be El Rantra quietly listened to me, then looked at me with a faint blush on her face, smiled softly, and said,

"That is a fine method as well, but I would like to recommend something a little different."

I rested my chin on my hand, my elbow on the table, and quietly gazed at her slightly flushed face as I sank into thought.

Since when had it been?

Since when had I become able to speak with her this tenderly?

Since when had it been?

Since when had she, once so cold and distant, begun smiling at me like this?

Since when had it been?

Since when had the two of us, after stubbornly butting heads and bickering, ended up laughing together in the end?

Since when had it been?

Since when had I become this happy?

As I floundered in my own pointless fantasies, Rene said,

"As your wife said earlier, grant her the ten things she wants."

"Hm? But Rene, I already grant you anything you want...."

At that, she gave me a wink and raised a finger to her lips.

"Without question."

Surely she would not ask me to do anything dangerous.

Thinking that, I nodded.

"Yeees~ Understood. Just say the word, my queen."

Rene stared blankly at me, as though seriously considering my words. As I tossed the cookie in my hand into my mouth and reached for another, she slowly smiled, then broke into a bright grin and said,

"Han, you really will grant the ten things I want, will you not?"

I held the cookie in my hand up to her slightly parted lips, and she bit into it without the slightest reluctance and began chewing on the cookie she herself had baked.

Half of it remained in my hand. I watched her quietly as she ate, thought to myself how adorable she looked, and then said,

"Yes. Just tell me what you want. I will grant you anything, but those ten wishes of yours in particular, I will fulfill them somehow, no matter what it takes."

"Crunch, crunch~ ...Mmm, I am happy!"

She swallowed the cookie in her mouth and said exactly what she looked—happy. I quietly watched her cheerful face, then lowered my gaze to the half-eaten cookie in my hand, the part Rene had bitten off.

The cookies she baked were unbelievably good.

How in the world did she make them?

We used the same flour, and yet the ones I made tasted so awful they nearly made me want to cry, while hers were perfect.

Come to think of it, whenever she baked cookies, there was always someone who showed up without fail.

Was he not coming today?

Mm.

I quietly looked at the cookie, half of which had vanished into Rene's mouth, and then tossed the rest into my own.

Crunch, crunch~

As expected, it was delicious.

At that moment, Rene, who had been staring blankly at me, said,

"Ah, is that not the one I was eating just now?"

"Mm, it is. Why?"

"Oh, no, it is not really a big deal."

As she said that, she shifted closer and sat down beside me, then quietly looked at me and asked,

"You have not swallowed it yet, have you?"

"Hm?"

"...Mmph!"

Aah—R-Rene!

She suddenly pressed her lips to mine, and a span of time passed filled with a strange and rapturous sensation beyond words.

A moment later, she loosened the arm she had wrapped around my neck, looked at me with a slightly flushed face, and smiled brightly.

I stared stupidly at her with my lips parted a little, and she, still smiling sweetly, lightly wiped the corner of my mouth with a handkerchief and said,

"...You must not waste food."

Ughhh~ I really could not take it anymore.

"Rene...."

That was when it happened.

Just as I was caught in that feverish, peculiar mood and was gazing at Rene with burning eyes, a sharp whistle suddenly rang out from somewhere.

"Fweeeet~!"

Startled, I whipped my reddened face toward the sound, and there, perched on top of one of the tables, sat a wolf with silver-gray fur.

But astonishingly enough, the creature was a werewolf (Wereworf), with the body of a human and the head of a wolf.

He was even bigger than the leader of the Lizard Men I had seen the other day—around two hundred fifty centimeters, perhaps—and his shoulders, arms, and legs looked as though they would not lose out in the slightest even if he fought head-on against an ogre (Oger).

And what was even more interesting was that this fellow wore clothes like a human or an elf.

Despite having silver-gray fur, he wore black leather trousers, and for his upper body he had on nothing but a light shirt.

As I hesitated awkwardly, trying to figure out how to begin speaking, the werewolf beat me to it.

"Well now, what a shame. It has been a long time since I thought I might get such an entertaining show. Go on, do not mind me. Keep doing whatever you were doing. I will watch from here with warm interest."

Despite being a werewolf, he spoke fluently, and with a sly, teasing grin at that. At once, a stream of curses rose inside me.

But I held them back.

I thought of Rene standing quietly behind me. She hated profanity. She called it an improper use of language, or something like that. Just as I was about to snap back at him, Rene, who had been standing there quietly, answered him in my place. Smiling softly, she said,

"Excel, welcome. Nothing troublesome happened, I hope?"

As Rene spoke with that gentle smile of hers, Excel flashed a grin, climbed down from the table, sat in a chair, and went on,

"Aside from seeing some Lizard Men the other day wandering around in half plates and reeking of beer, I have been getting along quite comfortably. And how have you been, Miss Tarsis?"

Lizard Men reeking of beer...

In any case, Rene, being addressed as Miss Tarsis, smiled brightly, slipped her arm through mine, and said,

"Wherever I may be, as long as I have Han, I can always smile happily."

At that, Excel made a face as though his stomach had turned and said,

"I feel as though I have heard that line from you once before."

"Then hear it again."

When Rene answered with a laugh, Excel gave his broad shoulders a lazy shrug and leaned back in his chair.

"Yes, yes. Understood. That aside, Miss Tarsis, could I trouble you for a mug of beer? The weather is chilly. And if possible, with a little gin mixed in, like last time. Ah, and Reed, as always, a bottle of wine for me."

"All right."

With that, Rene vanished into the kitchen in quick little steps. After watching her open the beer cask, I headed toward the door. As I passed beside him, I said,

"What impeccable timing."

At that, he looked at my face, grinned slyly, gave a shrug, and said,

"Ahh, do not put it that way. I just came because I smelled cookies baking."

I was not exactly in a position to be angry with him either. So I merely gave him a faint smirk, and Excel bared his neat teeth in a grin.

Then he picked up a small bag he had left beneath the table and handed it to me.

"Take it."

"What is it?"

"Payment for the beer and the wine."

Inside the bag he handed me were a few pine nuts carrying a strong scent of resin, along with a generous amount of blue tea leaves.

Pine nuts were a kind of decorative nut used in pastries or tea. In a place like this, where forest stretched in every direction, they were easy enough to obtain, but in the outside world they were rather expensive.

They were difficult to come by, after all. You had to go into the forest to gather them, and if you ran into a monster, that was the end of that.

And as for the blue tea leaves, they were commonly called "Blue Tea." These tea plants grew nowhere except this forsaken forest, so outside it, their leaves ranked among the most luxurious of luxuries, handled only by the royal palace and a handful of noble houses.

I set the bag on the table and glanced at Excel.

He was the first werewolf Rene and I had come to know after settling here, and according to him, he had already been living in this place long before we arrived, so he knew many places where rare plants like the blue tea plant grew.

In any case, as Excel waited for Rene to bring out the beer, he began absently smoothing down his shaggy silver-gray mane, and I turned my back on him and said,

"Rene will be pleased to see this. Wait here. I will go get the wine."

"Ahh."

And with that, I stepped outside.

The wine cellar was the small log hut over there ahead of me. The reason we built the cellar outside was to keep it well ventilated and make good liquor. It was one of the most basic principles there was.

As I made my way toward the cellar, I took a moment to look around.

The first thing that caught my eye was the broad open yard. It was not as though carriages were likely to come rolling in one after another, but even so, this was an inn in name, so a yard of this size was still appropriate.

And beyond that yard stood a cluster of red rosebushes circling the inn like a fence.

Rene had planted them herself, and according to her, their meaning to all the monsters and animals in this forest was, "An elf lives beyond this point, so if you need help, come whenever you wish."

Perhaps because of that, monsters had never once attacked our home.

They had come to visit many times, certainly, but never attacked.

Of course, perhaps it was also because I occasionally went around clearing out the nearby monsters without telling her.

Beside the two-story wooden building made of logs, which served as both our home and our inn, stood a stable where two horses and a goat lived together, a chicken coop with four hens, and beside that, a small shed where I kept my spoils.

Rene called it the place where the most useless things in our home were stored.

Why?

Because it was the armory.

Come to think of it, I ought to buy some more half plates and put them back in there. I had given them all away to the Lizard Men, so now I was short on armor. In any case, I stopped in front of the small log hut, fragrant with that distinct wooden scent, and said,

"I love you."

Saying that to a door felt rather strange.

In any case, the door slid open, and I pushed it wider and stepped inside. None of the doors in our home had locks.

Instead, the locking spells Rene had placed on them served as their keys. If one stood before the door and spoke the agreed-upon phrase, it would quietly open.

Magic really was convenient.

Still, she rarely used magic unless absolutely necessary.

That was partly because there was seldom any need for it.

Inside the cellar, great oak casks were stacked up.

They were all full of beer.

We bought our beer from villages beyond the forest and let it age for several years before using it.

That way, even a light beer developed much greater depth of flavor. So these must have been beers aged for around three years or so.

Come to think of it, there were not many casks left.

I needed to buy more.

Thinking that, I crouched down in front of the beer barrels and grabbed the iron ring attached to a hatch in the floor with one hand, then pulled.

The hatch opened with a burst of dust. I waved my hand a few times to clear it away, then climbed down the ladder.

Feeling along the storage shelves in the darkness, I decided I could not be bothered to light a candle, so I simply grabbed whichever bottle my hand happened to touch and came back out with it.

Most of what was stored down there had been aged for at least ten years, and some bottles were nearly two hundred years old.

So this would tell us which fortune was stronger—mine, in choosing the bottle, or Excel's, in ordering the wine.

But then—

Ah, damn it!

The wine in my hand, seeing sunlight again for the first time in a very long while, was called Blue Sky—a full two-hundred-year-aged wine, one of the bottles I had collected little by little before I was sealed away.

Back then, I had liked liquor.

I looked down at the brown bottle in my hand, with its old paper label faded with age, torn here and there, and hanging on as though it might fall off at any moment.

"Still... What a waste. Should I put this back?"