Chapter 5.1 (1/2)

Chapter 5.1

I’m home.」

「Welcome back.」

Three days had passed since they returned from the nesting area of Giant Spiders. In order to take care of the three survivors (who still haven’t come out of their coma), Hiroshi and Haruna were taking turns going to work. As for the five who didn’t survive, it wasn’t something they could take care of by themselves, so they took the bodies to the Adventurers’ Association for them to handle. When they had to carry them there, they had asked Randy and other adventurers they knew, after telling them what happened honestly. Of course, everyone involved were more exasperated than surprised upon hearing that Hiroshi and Haruna not only went down to faces the spiders just to save some money on clothes, but that they faced Piaranork and survived without wearing so much as an armor.

They had only been operating the food stand when Hiroshi returned early, or when Haruna was out working. Of course, the main reason was that Hiroshi could not work the front end, but another contributing factor was the fact that buying supplies was more difficult because they couldn’t go out at the same time.

The three survivors had taken over a bedroom. The flat they had rented was small, but still a two-bedroom. Needless to say that Hiroshi refused sleeping the same room as Haruna, and Haruna couldn’t allow one of them to sleep in the dining room (that sounded exhausting). After much debate, they had finally found a new room that met the criteria of being the cheapest flat in the city with at least two bedrooms in addition to the kitchen and dining room. They had to use a shared toilet for the floor, but there was rarely a crowd since there were only two other residents on their floor. They used the public bath house every day.

The flat was barely separated into three spaces (including the eat-in kitchen), each bedroom barely had enough room for a bed. Still, two woman could manage to share a room. Haruna slept on a futon, crafted by Hiroshi, in the dining room, which she managed to fit by putting the dining table away. Hiroshi slept in a sleeping bag on the veranda. Part of it was that he didn’t want to spoon an old dude, but even if he wanted to, that man’s build was too muscular. The kitchen was flooded with things like spices and treated herbs to the point where it was no environment for anyone to sleep at, let alone the fact that it was connected to the dining room, making it a deal breaker for Hiroshi.

While Haruna felt guilty that Hiroshi was taking the short ends of all the sticks, but even when they camp, Haruna was the only one in the tent, and he would be in the sleeping bag under the elements.

This may not be so different from that situation, after all. It wasn’t too long ago that she watch Hiroshi as he crafted a catalyst and treated his sleeping bag with some obscure enchantment called Rainproof, just to avoid being in the same tent with her. It was bittersweet, in a sort of way.

「How are ‘em folks?」

「They’re all breathing steady, but no one’s come out yet. How are you doing?」

「Work ain’t much different. I gathered up some food when I went to bunch of places for work, so look forward to that.」

「Okie dokie.」

Haruna answered, as she cleared the table. There wasn’t much to do when staying home, so she had been working on new menu items (as far as ingredients could permit) and preparing materials for Compounding and Metalworking as part of her practice.

While it was only three days (one of which she had gone out to work), it seemed that she had gotten enough practice in to solidify the knacks she was already beginning to grasp. She had even finished processing some that were quite tricky at a Novice level.

「So, anything interesting happen today?」

「Before I get into, I’ll go check on ‘em for a sec. They looked like they’d be comin’ out of it soon.」

「Okay.」

Nodding, Haruna prepared the tea set. Spreading out some sweet-potato-ish snack on the tray, she boiled some water to a perfect temperature for some Houjicha tea, using Hiroshi’s magical kettle. Just like the electric kettles on Earth, and kept the water warm after it was heated to the desired temperature, and best of all, it wouldn’t keep running on empty because it was powered by magic.

As for the Houjicha, they had found and purchased tea leaves that were not fermented, and prepared it themselves. Fermentation in this world had been developed rather lopsidedly. While there was barely any progress with bread or other foods, when it came to alcohol and tea, it was comparable to that on Earth during the 18th century. Apparently, black tea had been accidently developed during the process of trying to create herbal liquor, which meant that the history of tea here had followed a slightly different path than on Earth.

「How are they?」

「Lessee. This ol’ man would come out of it with some sort of trigger, at least. I just can’t be sure, so we shouldn’t go shakin’ him or castin’ spells on him, or tryin’ to get him to react to immediate danger or somethin’ like that.」

「Uh-huh. And the other two?」

「Toudou-san. You wanna kill me?」

「They won’t get on your case just because you check on them medically.」