“Oh, may I ask one thing?”
“What is it?”
“Do you have any requests for the next hunt? This time was unusual in that it was bear, but we were wondering if you tire of the usual deer.”
She was impressed—they were an attentive bunch.
“Let me see.”
What came to mind were smaller animals, like pheasant and squirrel. Smaller game did not have much meat on them, but they were deliciously loaded with flavor.
While she did not mind how hardworking the family was, they were not very adaptable. They did not seem to be adept at making traps for smaller animals, so she refrained from mentioning it.
“No, I am fine with deer. My companion is also quite grateful he does not have to order any deliveries.”
“Very well.”
Selim’s older brother and the rest of her family bowed their heads, like foot soldiers seeing off a king. With a wry smile, Holo looked toward Selim before they ran off.
Holo realized something as they briskly jogged through the nighttime woods, feeling the weight of the bear meat on her back. And that was what Selim’s older brother had said to her.
“We were wondering if you tire of the usual deer.”
It suddenly occurred to her that just maybe she was so disappointed over the worthless puddle of water because she was bored of life in the bathhouse.
As she thought Impossible to herself, her drifting off as she plucked buds from wild vegetables and imagining wild things in her drowsy state sprung fresh from her memory.
Life in the bathhouse was not dissimilar from life in the wheat fields in that she repeated the same things over and over again. What was it that she was hoping to see from Selim in the first place? She was honestly hoping the girl would stir up some trouble.
Anyone could get used to anything. She understood that. She knew that quite well, but that was different from being satisfied with it. Whether or not she could stand it was also another question.
As she told herself she was not that unsatisfied with her current life, something about that was just her own insistence. There was no way today was much more exciting than the day before.
As these thoughts churned in her head, her legs moved forward and carried her all the way to the main house. It was the same as time passing as she idled away.
Selim returned to her human form, and as the young girl undid the bagful of meat hanging from her neck, Holo started to feel restless. If she spent all her days idly like this, she wondered if she would end up like that puddle. She wondered if, even though she would be warm, she would not be a lake and not a river but a place that others could only get their feet wet.
And then, in decades, when everyone was gone, her wet fur would chill her and she would sneeze alone.
She had spent over ten years living in the bathhouse, and she was confident her relationship with her companion had deepened so much that it irritated her. But at the same time, nothing was new anymore. Ever since Myuri was born, every day was like being swept up in a storm, but that only daughter of hers had left the bathhouse with little Col.
She could foresee that their lives from now on would be a repetition of the same things over and over.
Could she recall what she did yesterday, the day before, and the day before that? Would anything happen from here on out that would stay in her memory if she looked back in a hundred years? She grew anxious there was not enough happening if she hoped to bathe in plentiful warm memories.
As she thought about this and that, she tossed the meat hanging from her neck into an underground ice room on the bathhouse grounds. The mounds of snow in the winter could not keep in the summer, but she could enjoy the ice as much as she wanted if they stuffed it in the ice room. It could be called the wisdom of an extraordinary person, but even the squirrels in the woods fervently buried their nuts in the fall.
And she should be doing the same, should she not?
With sleepy, bleary eyes, Selim returned to her room.
Holo saw her off, then returned to her own.
She placed a hand on the door, and faint candlelight was visible through the uneven gaps in the wood. Breathing through her nose, she could smell her companion, the unique scent of tallow burning, parchment, and the smell of ink that reminded her of little Col.
Behind the door, her companion was eagerly sending a pen flying across the page, a blanket draped over his hunched back.
“Oh, welcome back.”
He noticed her and turned around, and though he looked tired, he seemed to be rather enjoying himself.
But that familiar face, too, was a bit different from what it had been when she first met him. It was not just the light of the candle; she could most certainly make out the age on his face. Though life in the bathhouse was an endless repetition of the same things, the flow of time was not.
And baths that once had plenty of water, too, would one day dry out, become a puddle that could only wet one’s feet, and even that would eventually vanish.
Though she understood the end was coming, at the same time, it seemed like her guard had been down.
Had she truly been prepared for this, she should have been able to enjoy everything until the end without any doubts.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?”
She did not respond to his perplexed words, closed the distance between them with long strides, and embraced him from behind.
He did seem a bit surprised, but he must have thought it was one of her typical whims.
He did not say anything in particular as he reached back with both hands and stroked her head.
“You’re really cold. You going to take a dip in the baths before going to sleep?”
“…Mm. You smell quite sour.”
“Huh?”
Though he probably was not that lazy, her companion hurriedly sniffed his own sleeve. He smelled rather sour from the scent of the ink. Of course, she had purposefully said it in a way so he would misunderstand.
“So, the baths, yes?”
She let him go and took a step back.
Ever since coming to Nyohhira, where they could enter the baths at their leisure, he, too, began to keep himself tidy and clean. When he had lived in the wagon on the road, he had maintained nothing but a rough sense of cleanliness.
Though he was concerned about his body odor even now, he took the time to lean back in his chair, grab the fur blanket on his shoulders, stand, and stretch.
“Ooohhh…Nngh. Hahhh…I used to be able to work all night long once.”
He said it like a joke, but it was true.
And then one day, he would not open his eyes again.
What was she to do about that?
She felt herself freezing before nature’s providence, but at the very least, he was here now before her eyes.
There was so much she could do.
First, she would not think too hard or too deeply about it and enjoy her time with him. She had forgotten this general rule when she first began her journey with him, and it had brought on quite a lot of trouble.
“We have received bear meat from Selim’s friends. Why not use that for energy?”
“Oh, bear, huh? I don’t know when it was, but I heard that the best part of a bear is its paw. I wonder if that’s true.”
“The paw? How does one eat that?”
As they chatted about such frivolous things, they made their way toward the baths.
But as they walked together, she had to be careful not to grip his hand too tightly.
Though she was supposed to be happy, she was bitter that this was not enough for her.
And again the next day, she was plucking buds from wild vegetables.
She would be doing this work until the snow disappeared from the mountains.
She always considered this work to be a chore, but now she also thought that she should not be using her time for this.
She needed to stock up on as many memories as she could, so that she would be ready for the
cold, harsh days alone that waited for her.
In order to do that, she needed to make events, the ingredients of memory, bubble up like hot springs.
“Are you in a fight with the Sir?”
Hanna asked this casually, looking at the buds in the basket.
“F-for what reason do you ask?”
Holo was so shaken that her wisewolf name could have practically wept.
Hanna shrugged.
“Your plucking is a bit sloppy.”
“…We are not fighting.”
If she had a bigger body, she could easily hide the things in her heart, but so much ended up seeping out from this little frame.
And it was true that they were not fighting, so she found herself annoyed at Hanna’s exasperated expression.
“More importantly, there is a pile of bear meat in the middle of the ice room. Please add plenty of meat to the pot today.”
She mentioned the news as she was about to head off to her next work, then she stopped.
“Do not say anything odd to him. We are not fighting, after all.”
Though that made it seem like they really were fighting, having her companion be attentive to her in that sort of way was a bit different from what she had hoped.
She was not unhappy with their current situation. She just wanted to spend time naturally, having fun.
“Okay, very well. Understood.”
Sometimes, she wondered if it was Hanna that was the one who was twice her age.
No, she told herself that it was simply because her own human form looked like that of a child.
“Oh, would you prefer garlic or ginger in the pot today?”
Holo seriously pondered the question for a moment and answered, “Garlic.”
Next, she made her way to the back of the house.
As she got closer, the peculiar smell of raw meat enveloped her. It was a mysterious thing that it smelled good enough to make her drool when it was being cooked but so horrendous when boiling in a pot.
Behind the building was Selim, stirring the pot, an expression on her face that suggested she had given up on everything.
“Come now, I have come to help. Go breathe some fresh air and take a rest.”
“Lady Hol…Guh, cough, cough—”
Selim spoke through her nose, and her eyes were even watering. She said a bit of thanks, handed the mixing stick to Holo, and unsteadily walked off. Her sense of smell was much better since she was young, so it must have been even more painful for her.
They were separating the plentiful fat from the bear meat with heat for the making of tallow candles.
After she mixed it well, there was still the job of picking out fragments of meat and bone that got into the mixture. If they were lazy about that, then that would cause extra smoke and foul odors once it was used as a candle. Her lungs would be thick with the smell of fat for a while.
It was typically little Col and his dull sense of smell or Myuri, as a punishment after she pulled a prank, who did this work, but now that they were shorthanded, there was no one left to do it except herself and Selim.
She added wood to the fire, mixed the pot, and scooped out some debris that caught her eye.
The first time she did this, she was so impressed to see this was how candles were made that she did not really mind the smell, but now it was just another part of her routine. It was nothing but a bother.
If they had to make candles, they should make the better smelling beeswax ones.
While she daydreamed about the nice scent of honey, she also had to struggle against the reality before her. This was not the only work she had to do.
“Hmm…Once the candles are done, next is checking on the rest of the cheese.”
Spring was also the season of cheese. In preparation for the next season, they had to place an order with a craftsman specifying what kind of cheese they wanted. There were many types: Some kept for a long time and others went bad quickly; there were ones that were easy to make and ones that were more complicated.
They also had to consider the fact that it was not something they would only place on their own dinner table but also serve to patrons.
As their first guest came much earlier than they expected, they had to place their order quickly, otherwise they would have to serve leftover cheese from the winter. The guests would immediately notice any inferior substitutes, and it would spawn rumors.
“And then…ah yes. Once we order the cheese, I must braid thread from the wool we received. Then I must mend all the frayed ones, like that and that and that…Ah! Foolish Myuri lost the weights for the threads, did she not?! Were there replacements in the shed…? Oh yes…I must clean the shed, otherwise bugs will start breeding by summer…’Tis only the bugs that do not listen to me…What should I do about that? Oohh…”
As she swirled the fat around in the pot, so many thoughts swirled around in her head.
She missed living on the road, relaxing and napping in the bed of the wagon.
No, she was only this busy because little Col and Myuri were gone.
On the other hand, she was now painfully aware of the sort of degenerate lifestyle she had been living.
This was what it meant to have no time to worry, but she shuddered when she thought about life continuing in the same manner forever.
She did not hate work itself.
She only wanted to avoid suddenly realizing that she had let all the good times pass.
“I must do something about this…”
That sad, trickling basin she had found in the mountains was stuck in the back of her mind.
She even started thinking about things she had no control over, like wishing they had instead opened a store in a town, where she could stand next to her companion all day as they tended the shop.
Working in a business like that would surely have its own difficult tasks every day. And living in a town meant being around the eyes of humans, so she would have to worry about how they would treat her since she could not hide her ears and tail and did not age.
“Mmm…”
She groaned, and much like how her dissatisfaction was coming to a boil, bubbles floated to the surface from beneath the churning fat.
That being said, she was looking forward to when Selim grew used to this work and eliminated some of the hustle and bustle. Or maybe when Selim’s family was finished building their lodgings, they could hire another one of them once they had settled.
Indeed. She had to be patient for a while. And then she could start thinking about how she could make more memories with her companion.
She insisted this to herself.
“Well, soon we shall strain this and make the candles.”
She tapped the mixing stick on the edge of the pot, called Selim over, and began their work. All jobs would eventually end as long as they worked at it. Another guest arrived in the afternoon, and finally the sun set.
After finishing dinner, she returned to their room in relief, and there, her companion stood frozen before the desk.
“What is the matter?”
She wondered for a moment if Myuri had doodled on the parchment on the desk, but she then remembered that she was off traveling.
As she wondered what it might be, her companion turned around, and his expression was apologetic.
“Before you get mad, let me apologize.”
“…Hmm?”
He continued.
“The new guest also brought in parchment.”
Behind him, the bundles of parchment had doubled. If one person had an idea, then it seemed someone elsewhere had the same.
Though she was impressed that little Col and Myuri’s journey was making such large waves throughout the world, her companion’s face was dismal, so there had to be more to it.
“Is that all?”
When she asked, he released the breath he had been holding in—strangely, almost as if he had been saved—then slowly shook his head.
Perhaps it was difficult for
him to broach the subject by himself.
“…Others staying elsewhere came over earlier, wanting to talk about the same thing.”
“…”
Their relaxing, affectionate time together at night. Apparently, she would be unable to request it for a while.
But such a pile of work could also be called a notable incident. If she looked back after a while, it might very well become a memory she could recall clearly. And she was glad it was something she could do together with him. Sitting beside each other, she could keep the lid on that dark well tightly shut.
It was not so bad when she thought of it like that.
“Well, we have no choice. Aye?”
So she spoke brightly, and he seemed disappointed.
“What? Did you wish for me to get angry?”
He was always much too straightforward at times like this.
“There won’t be any time for you to take a nap…”
“You fool.”
She smiled, closed the door, and quickly walked over to the desk.
The amount of parchment piled on the desk was intimidating.
“And we may make quite a lot of quick coin, no?”
“It should be enough for our troubles. Ask me for anything. We can probably get honeyed peaches.”
He spoke of a luxury item that was practically worth its weight in gold.
Her former merchant companion was handing her a blank contract, so this job must truly contain great prospects.
“Mm. I shall think about it.”
“But there aren’t infinite amounts of money.”
He did not forget to warn her.
She shrugged and stepped on his foot lightly.
“Well then, shall we get started?”
“Yeah. We can’t even waste time this late in the day. If we don’t manage this well, even more of the same work might come our way.”
“Shall we allot some to Selim?”
She wondered if they should add another duty on top of what the young wolf already had, but her companion looked a bit troubled.
“I’d want her to help, but…”
He spoke vaguely, and after glancing at the door, he drew close to her ear and whispered.
Spring Log II Page 15
