Side Story: I Need to Put on Some Clothes If I’m Going to Town

Side Story:
I Need to Put on Some Clothes
If I’m Going to Town

ONE MORNING, when I was out tending to the fields, as usual, Wak’wakgoro came to see me.

“Hey, Shooter! I got something good for ya!” he shouted, giving me a toothy grin as he waved at me. He looked pretty cheerful, his red scarf fluttering as he approached. A dog obediently followed at his side, or, well, maybe a wolf? Whatever it was, its tail wagged.

“Morning, Wak’wakgoro. You’re looking chipper as ever.”

“’Course I am! I’m always ready and rarin’ to go, my man. Wyvern’s gone! We can finally do our jobs and get on with our lives, yeah?”

“For sure. But c’mon, man, you’re the new leader of the hunters. Don’t tell me you’re not psyched about that.”

With Saki’cho lost in the wyvern attacks, the village chief named Wak’wakgoro to replace him. At first I thought that would make things rougher for him, what with all the hunting dogs he’d have to feed, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Apparently, not only was the lead hunter exempt from paying taxes, they got a hefty pay raise as well.

“Meat! My family, my siblings, we get some real meat now! Of course I’m gonna be in a good mood!” Wak’wakgoro said, giving his hunting dog a scratch between the ears. It didn’t seem too attached to him yet, and only yawned in response. “Here, these are some fresh onions from our place. Bring ’em to Cassandra for me.”

“Thanks, man, I will. Talk about a ‘good’ thing!”

“Oh, I’m not talkin’ onions. Take a gander!” Wak’wakgoro broke into an even wider grin and handed me a fur pelt. “Rejoice, my friend! Remember that fox we hunted a while back? Well, they just finished skinning it, and I’m giving it to you.”

“Oh yeah, that feels like ages ago! Ah, but look at the poor thing now. I think the fox shrunk in the wash. What a pity,” I joked.

“Well damn, you don’t seem all that happy about it! You like being naked that much, do ya?”

“I’m not naked naked. Just sorta naked. Everybody forgets about the vest!”

“The vest doesn’t hang low enough, my guy. You’re going to town, right? Then shut up and wear this so you don’t embarrass the village.”

“Well, yeah, it’s not like I enjoy bumbling around in the buff. Happy to have it. Is this a fur loincloth, then?”

“Fitting for a hunter like yourself, right? And here, some clean cloth as well. Give it to Cassandra for underwear.”

“Thank you so much for all this.”

I bowed over and over to show my gratitude for the gift of new clothes.

Though we were called hunters, it wasn’t like we went on expeditions into the forest every single day. Since I was about to go to town, all I could really do for the next few days was help my fellow hunters by gathering traps with them. If I tried to set any new ones now, I wouldn’t be able to collect any prey I captured while I was away. That’s why I was getting some practice in with my shortbow, trying to hit a stump. Trying very hard to hit a stump.

“What the hell was that, doofnuts? Your elbows are all over the place! You don’t use brawn to shoot a shortbow! It’s all in the chest.”

The “fellow hunter” with me this time happened to be Nishka the Scalesplitter, of course. She yelled at me pretty much nonstop.

“You’re supposed to be escorting those village big-wigs to town, right? Then at least learn how to use a friggin’ bow!”

“I’m a beginner, so I kind of need you to spell things out for me.”

“Hand it over, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Nishka snatched the bow away. After glaring at me and giving a dismissive snort, she nocked an arrow. She puffed out her chest as she pulled back the bowstring, and on her chest were two very valuable assets, puffing up her leather vest. Geez, how the hell did she shoot a bow with those things?

“First, you do it like this. Got it? Then you do…this!”

I could almost hear a “twang” as she let go of the arrow. It wasn’t the arrow making the noise, though, but the sound of those planet-killer asteroids jiggling on her chest. (Fine, maybe that sound was in my head.). Anyway, the arrow sailed through the air and embedded itself in the stump.

“Now you do it,” Nishka said, handing the bow back to me.

When I went to nock my own arrow into the bow, she came up behind me to correct my posture. I was totally expecting her to press herself up against me, but I got something even better. Since Nishka was shorter than me, her face came up just above my shoulders. Every time she breathed out through her nose, her hot breath tickled the back of my neck.

“All right, I’m gonna say it again: use your chest when you’re drawing the bowstring. Don’t use your arms, but your chest. Yeah. Yeah, just, like that.”

“Mm. Yeah, that’s pretty good.”

Listen, I’d do anything she asked right then. I was in heaven! For, uh, a second.

“No, what the hell are you—? Get over here, stop hunching over!”

She’d pressed up against me a little too long, and if I didn’t shift a little she’d know for sure that Little Shuta was having a bit too much fun. With another twang, the arrow trailed in an arc far from the stump.

“See, that’s what you get for not aiming with your chest!”

“Err, yeah—I’m paying attention, but I sort of had to bend over.”

“Had to—?”

For a moment Nishka was confused, seeing me cover my crotch with my hands. Then she flushed a deep, deep shade of red. “Y-you. You!”

“Okay, look, sometimes bodies just do things and it’s perfectly natural, and also I’m super sorry about it, ya know?”

“You’re popping a boner and you’re married!”

“I can’t control it, I’m sorry! It was the way your breath hit me, all kinda hot and tingly and stimulating? And such?”

Nishka covered her chest with her arms as she looked at me in disgust.

“I’m telling Cassandra, you horny animal!”

She aimed a swift kick straight at my groin, and I passed out from the pain on the spot.

Another hunter asked me to help them out by plucking some pheasants. Later in the evening, I was doing my work on a table out back when Ossandra came to visit me, looking a bit uneasy.

“Did you change your mind at all?” he asked me in a hushed voice, probably so as not to let Cassandra hear us.

“You mean about running away?”

“You still have time if you want to pull it off.”

“I’d just be heading into unknown territory if I did. I don’t even have any money saved up, so I think I’ll stick around and wait a bit, see how I feel.”

“I can always get some cash together for you.”

“Sorry, I make it a policy to never borrow money from people.”

“O-oh, uh. I see.”

“Yup, there you have it. If that’s all, then I guess we’re done here.”

“W-wait, there’s no need to be that hasty…”

It seemed like Ossandra really wanted to chase me out of the town. Gee, could it be because of Cassandra? Who could say, what a mystery.

“I want you to let me take care of Cassandra while you’re gone,” he managed to ask me after tripping over his words.

“Oh yeah? Sure, I hereby bequeath her unto your capable hands. She was saying she needed some more apple cider vinegar, so I bet she’d be grateful if you brought her some.”

It was incredible watching how fast Ossandra’s mood improved from hearing me say that. I mean, I thought he’d be happy, but he was like a kid pretending to be chill in a free candy store.

Tonight’s dinner was a stew filled with wyvern meat, potatoes, beans, kale, and onions. Pieces of the wyvern had been handed out to the rest of the village as a way to memorialize those who lost their lives to it.

Cassandra and I sat next to each other in silence as we poked at the pot of stew on the table. There were no chopsticks in this world, so I had to use that strange two-pronged fork and a ladle to eat.

Lovely memorial to the dead, I guess, but wyvern meat was godawful. It was way too tough and chewy, with just as much fat as it had flavor—that is, none whatsoever. We tried soaking it in wine overnight to improve the taste, but it hadn’t even softened the meat. I was pretty sure the other villagers were thinking just about the same thing, but meat was a precious commodity. There wasn’t much else we could do besides eat it.

“You’ve had this stuff before, I’m guessing,” I said to Cassandra. When her father passed away, I was sure.

“Yes. I had so much meat delivered to the house I didn’t need to worry about food for quite some time,” Cassandra said, and paused to blow on her soup to cool it down.

Free food or no, life couldn’t have been easy for her back then. There’d been no one around to help her tend the fields, and she even sold off her father’s clothes just to get by.

But she was happy now, right? She had an extra pair of helping hands with me here, and I was learning how to work the fields by watching other people do it. We planted beans, potatoes, and even some herbs that could be harvested without much work. As long as I wasn’t hunting, though, that meant eating into our reserve food stores.

Then there was Ossandra, the friend Cassandra had known since childhood.

“Hey, Cassandra? Are you…happy?”

Shouldn’t have asked, I bet, but the words came tumbling out my mouth all the same.

Cassandra timidly looked up at me. “I don’t have to worry about food, and you’re even providing for me. I suppose I’m the happiest I’ve been.”

“Oh. Uh. Then I guess I have to just keep on aiming to be a better hunter?”

“Yes, please do. You’ll be heading out into town tomorrow, so make sure to eat properly and rest up for your trip.”

Dinnertime was over, and I watched as Cassandra put our wooden dishes into the empty stew pot and carried it away. It was obvious she didn’t really think about herself. Happiness took many forms back in my old world, but the people in this one were too busy focusing on simply surviving to ponder what happiness meant beyond that. Being happy was just keeping yourself alive.

For Cassandra, I bet getting married to Ossandra would have been her own personal happiness. Or maybe not, since the village chief or her father might have stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen. Maybe I just appeared at the right time, and they chose a stranger to be Cassandra’s husband so she wouldn’t get hitched to her cousin? Agh, I made myself more confused the more I thought about it.

Tomorrow I’d head into town to recruit both replacement hunters and new villagers to keep the village growing. Of course, if I really wanted to, I could make a break for it and try and start a new life in town…but then what would happen to Cassandra? Life was bad enough for her as the wife of a hunter, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like with a dead father and a runaway husband.

Damn it… No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a good answer. If she told me she wasn’t happy, I would’ve found a way to get her and Ossandra together. Or maybe they really intended to be together, and it would happen no matter what I did. The only part of Cassandra I’d touched so far was her fingertips, after all.

I was at a loss over what to do. I flopped back onto my bed as a whirlwind of thoughts swirled in my head.

“Um…Shooter?” Cassandra called out to me.

“Hm? What is it, dear?”

“I used the cloth Wak’wakgoro brought to knit you a pair of underwear. I wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed in town.”

“Oh, underwear! Yeah, I’ve heard good things about underwear!”

I got up to take the underwear from Cassandra. I was expecting it to be like another loincloth, but…

All right, you know g-strings? You know how guys generally do not wear g-strings? Well, my wife made me one. A g-string.

“Make sure to wear it so you don’t get your fur loincloth dirty. It’s the only good clothing you have, after all,” she said with a tiny giggle.

God, though, she was so cute. Was that the first time I heard her laugh? I…I really liked it.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” I fought against the urge to just throw my arms around her and tried to put it into words. I wanted to hold her, kiss her, push her down on the spot as if she wasn’t already taken, but Ossandra’s face floated through the back of mind. That was just the way things were.

There was a single two-wheeled wagon waiting in front of the village chief’s manor. It was the only vehicle in the village, and it had no canopy. The only ones riding in it would be me, Gimul, and the bones of our good ol’ wyvern in the back. There wasn’t anything like blue tarp in this world to cover it—just some kind of fur sheet to keep the bones dry. We had to get the remains into town to sell them, and we’d take any price we could get, no matter how small. It was kind of funny. We were selling the bones of the wyvern to recoup the huge cost of killing the damn thing.

The only ones gathered to see us off were the village chief, N’aniwa the woodcutter, and the girl who worked at the village chief’s place.

“Then I will leave the negotiations in your hands, you two,” the village chief said.

“You can count on us, ma’am,” came Gimul’s stiff reply.

The way Gimul and Alexandricia talked to each other made it hard to believe they were actually family, blood or no. Me, I was decked out in my usual hunter garb and ready to go, with my new, more luxurious fur loincloth. I even had underwear.

“I’m leaving the minute details to my son, but Shooter? You guard him well.”

“Leave it to me. I have experience as a self-defense instructor, so I’ll fend off any ruffians or ne’er-do-wells. It shall be nothing, milady,” I said, giving the sword on my hip a pat.

“Good. You’ve already proven your bravery by slaying the wyvern, so I’m expecting great things. Your family, however…did you not want to say goodbye to them?”

“My wife is a bit shy. I think she stayed home.”

“Then we’ll be leaving now, mother,” Gimul said.

“Yes, be well.”

With that final short exchange, I hopped into the back of the wagon as Gimul whipped the horse into action and got the cart moving. I gave a short bow to the village chief, and wouldn’t you know it, she waved me goodbye!

We trundled along at a leisurely pace on the road away from the village chief’s home. Besides the Apegut Forest, I knew absolutely nothing about this world. This would be my first time seeing what it was like outside the village, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it.

“I can see your house from here,” Gimul turned around to tell me. “And your wife, too.”

I was shocked to hear him say that. Taking a look for myself, I saw Cassandra waving goodbye to me. It was a strange feeling, for sure—but not a bad one. You know what? I’d buy her a souvenir. Yeah. Something nice, something cute.

I waved back at her, feeling like I snatched a victory from Ossandra for some childish reason.

I’d get her something to make her happy. I’d make her happy.