The Hope They Left Behind (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

  That’s no problem for me, then, I thought.

  “I don’t mind using the annex,” I said. “I’m (probably) used to Tenchi-style buildings.”

  “Really?” Shirley’s mother asked, and I nodded in response.

  “I am fine with it, as well,” said Azurite. “I have yet to experience staying at a Tenchi-style building, and it certainly won’t hurt to try.”

  Thus, it was decided that we’d stay at the annex.

  A short while later, I was standing in front of it, and it was... somewhat different than I’d imagined.

  “Tenchi-style,” I muttered in perplexity. “Tenchi-style, eh...?”

  While choosing my country during character creation, Tenchi had looked much like Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

  However, the building right before my eyes was quite unlike that.

  What’s the best way to describe this...? I thought.

  “Going by your memory, it looks like a depiction of an old Japan you would see in foreign movies,” said Nemesis.

  There. That’s perfect.

  It got some things right, but it also made some really blatant mistakes. The coloring, for instance, was completely off, and all in all, it wasn’t a building I’d expected when I’d heard “Tenchi-style.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder whether this was actually how Tenchi-style buildings had been in her grandpa’s time, or whether the one who’d built it had the wrong image of the country.

  Guess that’s something I’ll have to confirm when I actually go there someday.

  “So this is a Tenchi-style building,” said Azurite, as she looked at a shisa-like komainu. Her eyes were gleaming with curiosity. “What an exotic decoration.”

  I’m really not sure if that thing’s really Tenchi-style, either...

  We entered the building, and Shirley led us to our rooms.

  As I considered the fact that sliding screens couldn’t be locked, I discovered that the rooms here were actually using doors.

  That’s wrong! Wait... I guess this is right for a hot spring inn.

  “Here is your key!” said Shirley. “You can have dinner at the main building between six and eight o’clock!”

  “We’ll keep that in mind.”

  “The annex has an open-air bath, so please use that! We’re really proud of our hot springs!”

  “Ooh, that’s good to hear,” I said. I was the only guy here in the annex, so I’d be able to have a really relaxed bath.

  “Do you have any other questions?!” asked Shirley excitedly.

  “Only one,” said Azurite, as she raised her hand a bit.

  “Ask away!”

  “Does this annex have any... home warashis?”

  “It doesn’t!”

  “I see...” Azurite muttered, seemingly disappointed.

  “What’s a home warashi?” I asked.

  “It’s a creature they speak of in Tenchi. They are ‘yokai’ said to look like young children. They live and play in human households like an odd sort of neighbor, and I hear that having them around is a blessing.”

  “But we’re in Altar.”

  “That matters not. I was recently bathing in the castle and saw a little girl appear out of seemingly nowhere. That must’ve been a home warashi.”

  I stared at her.

  Forget the home warashi, how did you end up bathing in the castle? What are you, even?!

  “Speaking of that home warashi,” she continued, “I couldn’t see all that well due to all the steam, but she looked much like Liliana’s younger sister.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t actually her... Milianne?”

  “The castle’s baths are trapped to prevent assassinations. A child like her could never get in.”

  “You have a point...”

  That made it likely that they actually did have a home warashi. Unless Milianne was some infiltration expert who could bypass those traps, anyway.

  Though, we already had a natural escape artist in the second princess, so that didn’t seem all that unlikely.

  ◇

  Going into the room filled me with relief.

  Though the coloring was still far from Japanese, it had a tatami floor, zabutons, zaisu — more than enough to make it feel like an actual Japanese hot spring inn room.

  I can chill here just fine.

  “The color is discomforting,” said Nemesis. “But the smell of the tatami and the zabuton make me feel... nostalgic, for some reason. This is pleasant.”

  She was finding the atmosphere of this room (which, despite it all, felt Japanese) to be soothing, most likely because of her usual peeking into my memories.

  Also, about four-fifths of all the tea snacks that had come with the room were already gone.

  Oh, well.

  “All right, then...”

  I removed my equipment so I could relax properly.

  I couldn’t really wear my special rewards and VDA in a place like this, so I took it all off and stored it in the pouch-shaped inventory I had bought today.

  Counting my three special rewards, the VDA, my accessory (I hadn’t found anything useful in the shop, so I only had a Lifesaving Brooch right now), my spare weapon, and Silver, I now had seven items inside it.

  You could only put ten types of items inside it, but even with everything unequipped and stored, I still had enough space for three.

  Though I’d unequipped everything, I didn’t want to walk around in just my inner clothing, so I got into the yukata that came along with the room.

  Now this really feels like a hot spring inn, I thought, which made me want to go take a dip right then and there.

  “Hm?” Nemesis read my thoughts. “The sun is still up. You intend to go this early?”

  “Yeah,” I said, but then I remembered something I was planning to do today. “Wait, no. I’ll go in after cleaning Silver outside. You can go first.”

  Having found out just how much of a luxury Silver was, I wanted to give him a cleaning. Once I was done with that, I’d go to the hot spring and get all the dirt off of me.

  Also, as a girl, Nemesis would probably bathe longer than me, so it was probably best to let her go first.

  Hell, there were probably separate baths for guys and girls, so there was no need for us to go at the same time to begin with.

  “This’ll be your first ever hot spring experience,” I said. “Enjoy it for all it’s worth.”

  “Mm-hm,” she nodded. “So I shall.”

  And so, I went to clean Silver, while Nemesis went to the open-air bath that the inn was so proud of.

  ◇◇◇

  Maiden of Vengeance, Nemesis

  “This is exciting,” I muttered.

  As Ray’s Embryo, I’d inherited my general knowledge from him. Thus, of course, I knew of hot springs.

  Warmth, pleasantness, health, hot spring eggs, beauty, hot spring manju, the epitome of anything Japanese, hot spring water, drinks under the moonlight... All such information was already in my head.

  However, I’d never experienced it for myself.

  In fact, most of the time, I relied on Ray logging out to clean me up, so I barely even knew what a normal bath was like.

  And now that we’d chanced upon a hot spring, I simply had to try it out for myself.

  Excited, I walked past a piece of cloth — called “noren,” according to Ray’s knowledge — that said “women” on it in both old Tenchi language and common, opened the sliding door, and entered the changing room.

  “Nh?” I said.

  “...Eh?”

  Someone — Azurite — was already there. She was placing her clothes away into a box-shaped inventory. Her blue blade was placed against the clothing shelves.

  She wasn’t wearing her mask, either. Her face was fully exposed.

  “...?!” A second later, she whipped her mask out of her inventory with a haste that made me wonder if she’d reached supersonic speeds and instantly equipped it.

  “...”


  “...”

  I looked at the girl — fully nude, except for the mask — and wondered what had gotten into her.

  She looked back at me, clearly shaken by the fact that I’d seen her bare face.

  After a brief silence, I opened my mouth. “Keep your mask on if you’d like. Let’s just enter the bath, shall we? Standing naked like that is how you catch illnesses.”

  “G-Good idea!” she nodded as she picked up her blue sword and left the changing room.

  Eh? You’re taking that thing, too? I raised an eyebrow.

  We both followed the instructions on the “Etiquette” sign, cleaned our bodies by dousing ourselves in water, walked into the hot spring, sat next to each other, and heaved a relaxed sigh.

  Truly, this was really something wonderful.

  It was as though pure, undiluted comfort was permeating my body.

  How long is Ray planning to stay here in Quartierlatin, I wonder? I hope we’re here for three or four more days.

  Suddenly, I noticed that Azurite was acting like she wanted to say something.

  The glass on the eye area of her mask was misty, so she probably couldn’t look at me directly. Still, she was facing my direction, and she opened her mouth to say something I more or less expected. “Keep my face a secre—”

  “Just so you are aware,” I cut her words short, “I have no knowledge of what your face implies. Ray doesn’t recognize it, either. That moment back in the changing room was the first time either of us ever saw it. It exists in neither of our memories.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “You can confirm it yourself, no? You seem to have Truth Discernment, after all.”

  That skill was surely the reason why she’d so readily understood that Ray was telling the truth after the battle at noon.

  “Eh? But... is that really so? He’s a Paladin, right?”

  “It really is so.”

  “I... see...” She seemed relieved, yet troubled about something else now. Though, it was hard to tell, considering I could only see the bottom half of her face.

  “If I may ask,” I spoke up again and pointed at something right outside the bath. “For what purpose did you bring that sword here?”

  This was my first time in a hot spring, but even I knew that it was rude to bathe while armed.

  “This sword cannot be stored in inventories,” she explained. “I’ve no choice but to carry it around.”

  “How cumbersome...”

  I’d never heard of an item that couldn’t be stored for any other reason than inventory capacity. Not even Gideon’s rankers spoke of items like that. Then again, it didn’t seem like she was lying, so I assumed she wasn’t.

  Azurite presumably realized that bathing with a blade handy wasn’t good, so she went ahead and began trying to hide it with the tubs and buckets here.

  That changes little, if you ask me...

  “Mh?” I looked at Azurite as she stood there, still trying to hide it, and realized something. “You have quite a nice figure.”

  “I do?”

  I could see her bare body quite well from here. It was well-proportioned and held a good balance between “muscly” and “soft.” Her chest was sizable, but not enough to lose grace, and the curve from her shoulders to her rear was really smooth.

  Mhm, it’s of a fine mold, indeed.

  “But you’re also...” Azurite spoke up before stopping. “Sorry.”

  “Should I take that ‘sorry’ as a declaration of war?”

  So my body looked seedy even through her misty lenses, eh? Well, it wasn’t like I wasn’t aware that there wasn’t much to my chest. In fact, considering my overall frame, a big chest would only make me look unbalanced.

  “No matter,” I continued. “My Master is not the type to care about women’s figures or breast sizes. Being considered ‘flat’ doesn’t bother me all that much.”

  “So he doesn’t judge books by their covers?” Azurite asked. “But then, why did he pick on my mask?”

  “Oh no, that isn’t the reason,” I replied, before explaining why Ray cared little for the female figure. “He said that he lost all interest in nude women after his sister took him to a jungle where he ended up being chased by a horde of naked amazons.”

  “Ehhhh...?”

  When I’d first heard it, I’d also thought, Eh? That happened on Earth? Not here? Needless to say, his sister had left him with quite a bit of trauma.

  Still, even if naked bodies didn’t excite him, he had a decent interest in love and affection, and his heart could still race for reasons related to such things, so he wouldn’t have any trouble entering a relationship or becoming intimate with someone... probably.

  “It certainly looks like he has his share of troubles,” Azurite sighed. She was probably imagining young Ray’s trauma.

  I grinned. “That story is only something to laugh about at this point, though.”

  “Perhaps. But he’s Ray Starling the Unbreakable, is he not? He’s been involved in many things that cannot be laughed off, no? Like the incident at Gideon...”

  “I cannot deny that.”

  After all, he’d been involved in a number of major incidents ever since my hatching.

  In fact, he’d been caught up in such events even before coming here. Though the other side wasn’t nearly as life-threatening as this one, there was, for example, that thing that had happened before Brother Bear’s tournament fight when he was little.

  For all I knew, Ray might’ve been born under just that kind of star.

  “He seems to be predisposed to never ignore any tragedies before him, which makes him end up carrying some heavy burdens,” I said.

  The greatest example of that would be the whole matter that had surrounded the Gouz-Maise Gang. It had been nothing but painful to him, and as his Embryo, I knew that far too well.

  “That nature of his worries me sometimes,” I sighed.

  “I see...”

  I was Ray’s Embryo — his partner. As such, I was confident that I was his closest ally in battle, but I didn’t know if I properly supported his heart and mind.

  I should find more ways to care for him, but...

  “...Hm?” My thoughts were cut short by a changing room’s sliding door opening.

  It wasn’t the same one that Azurite and I had gone through, which made a certain question come to mind — Why are there two doors?

  Before I could figure out the answer, the door opened up... and Ray came through it.

  He had a towel around his waist and still wore the pouch-inventory, but that was the extent of it.

  I, on the other hand, hadn’t gone into the spring wearing a towel, so he could see me clearly through the water.

  Azurite was actually standing, so he could see her whole and bare whether he liked it or not.

  “...” Ray and I didn’t say a word.

  “Umm,” Azurite spoke up. “My lenses are misty, so I can’t see well. Did someone come in?”

  An inexplicable air surrounded us, and Ray, for some reason, turned around and walked back into the changing room... only to come back out again in about ten seconds.

  Then, as though it was nothing, he walked up to the open-air bath, doused himself in water, got inside, and sighed in satisfaction.

  Then, he said two things. “It’s mixed bathing time right now. Also, though the dressing rooms are different, the hot spring is the same.”

  A moment later, I hit him with a drop kick, and Azurite — who must have realized who it was by his voice — crushed him with the broad side of her blade. The combined force of our attacks instantly reaped his consciousness.

  I know I was only just thinking about how to care for him, but he definitely deserved this.

  ◇◇◇

  Paladin, Ray Starling

  “I’m in this dream again,” I muttered.

  Nemesis and Azurite had given me the Faint debuff, sending me to the dreamspace I’d been in a few times now.

  I was
pretty used to Fainting in Dendro by now, so even if this place looked different, I could tell it was that by the feel alone.

  Last time, this had just been an empty space with a “Coming Soon” sign, but now, it looked much like my room in real life. It had probably been recreated from my memories.

  “Honestly, how I ended up Fainting concerns me way more than how this space looks right now,” I muttered as I sat down on a chair — which felt just like the one in real life. “I was properly following the rules of the bath. Isn’t this result a bit unreasonable?”

  I’d gone out to the open-air bath, only to find both Nemesis and Azurite. Thinking I’d made a mistake, I’d gone back to the changing room, but I’d seen a sign saying that it was mixed bathing time. Figuring that meant it was all fine, I’d gone back to the spring, only to be abused like that.

  Incomprehensible.

  “Oh, but you have to comprehend it... don’t you?” said a small girl, sitting formally on my bed.

  I shrugged. “Hey, Shu told me, ‘You must never panic when you accidentally walk in on women bathing. If you falter or turn red, you’ll just make them scream. That’s why you have to keep your cool and act like it’s no big deal, then calmly explain why you came in.’”

  “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is, does that mean that Mr. Bear did it... too?” the reddish-brown girl tilted her head.

  “I think he also said, ‘You just have to make them think like there’s nothing weird about you being there.’”

  “But that’s clearly strange... isn’t it?”

  It is. I nodded. Now that I think about it, Shu might’ve been joking.

  I’d taken a joke seriously and done something bad...

  But, wait, it was mixed bathing time, so it wasn’t against the rules to enter, right?

  “Even if it’s not against the rules, what’s embarrassing is still embarrassing, and what makes you angry still makes you angry. That’s obvious... isn’t it? Manners towards girls are important... right?”

  “Right,” I said. “I guess the sudden event made me lose my composure.”

  I belatedly realized that I’d been a bit out of it back there. Even if I’d felt no sexual excitement, the very fact that I’d been in a bath with girls who weren’t family had made me lose myself.