Chapter 225: The Bear Shelters from the Rain

Chapter 225:
The Bear Shelters from the Rain

 

I NEVER SLEEP WELL on a journey, so I made sure to set my Kumayuru/Kumakyu alarm clock. When morning came around, they woke me up with their paw punches. I headed downstairs after thanking them.

“Good morning, Yuna.”

“Morning, Yuna!” Luimin said.

Sanya and Luimin were already awake? “You’re up early.”

“Luimin woke me. Oh! And we couldn’t make a breakfast that could compare to yours, but we did prepare something. Would you be kind enough to try it?”

They had set up three people’s worth of bread and drinks on the table.

Feeling grateful, I sat down to eat. “Did you get a good night of rest?”

“Yes. It would be hard not to, with such lovely beds.”

“Yes, the beds were very soft.”

“Good thing I hung the sheets up to dry.” I nibbled on the bread Sanya had prepped.

After our meals, we were off toward the elves’ village. This time we were headed for Laluz, at the border. That’s where Luimin had sold off her bracelet to repay someone after tearing the expensive painting.

“Hmm…maybe we should talk to the adventurers before we go to the merchant you sold your bracelet to,” said Sanya. “If it was the adventurers who gave you the job, they’d likely know more.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I think that’ll make it easier to get through to the merchant.”

From there, Sanya started questioning her sister about the adventurers.

“They were all women,” said Luimin, “and the leader was named Miranda. They really helped me when I was in trouble at the Adventurer Guild. They asked me if I wanted work when they found out I didn’t have money. They even explained everything to me about the work really nicely!” Luimin smiled at the memory. “But then I messed up and caused all that trouble…”

“You said that the job was to carry some baggage around and to put it away, right?”

“Yes, that was it.”

They’d been putting things away when Luimin had torn the painting.

Yeah…hearing her story, it felt like the adventurer and merchant might’ve been in on a plan to hoodwink her. It seemed like the adventurers had seen Luimin’s bracelet and made her destroy a cheap painting on purpose so she’d need to pay them back—that’s how it’d go in a comic or novel, at least.

Still, I didn’t have enough proof, and Luimin seemed to trust these adventurers. But here I was, immediately thinking of the most dramatic tropes possible. Yeesh…maybe I should’ve chilled on all the comics, manga, and games back then.

“And what about the merchant? Do you think they’d give the bracelet back if you could pay for it?”

“I think so...” Then there was no problem, right? “But it’s supposed to be valuable, so there was someone who wanted it...”

Argh. That meant it was probably sold off already.

“I suppose all we can do is hope that it hasn’t been sold yet,” said Sanya.

Yeah, it really seemed like all we had was hope…and also, a really good reason to put our butts into gear as quickly as we could.

Worst-case scenario: If the merchant had already sold it, we could buy it back from whoever had gotten it. If they wouldn’t let us, maybe Ellelaura’s knife with the family crest on it would come in handy. I could show off to imply the Fochrosés would get involved if they didn’t give it back, maybe. Or was that misusing it?

It felt like using it would put me in some kind of invisible debt. For now, I’d think of it as a last resort.

 

I urged my bears to run faster.

“They’re really fast, aren’t they?” said Luimin.

“Agreed,” said Sanya. “Their stamina is amazing!”

“Yeah, I never would have guessed they’d be this fast.”

We were making good progress, but things looked stormy ahead of us…literally. The clouds were dark and heavy ahead. I’m no weather forecaster, but even I knew we were probably in for some rain.

“I thought we could get there today on Kumayuru and Kumakyu,” Luimin said.

Even I couldn’t win against the weather. I couldn’t use some kind of weather-changing magic either. Being able to do that would practically make me a god. As I thought that over, raindrops started coming down. When the rain would fall onto my bear gear, it’d roll off instead of soaking in.

I looked at the sky again. It was only a matter of time until it’d be all-out pouring.

“Yuna, would you be okay with bringing out your house?” Sanya proposed. “Until the rain passes, at least.”

I was more than happy to agree, of course. I didn’t really want my bears running in the rain, and I didn’t personally want to run in it either.

I quickly looked for an inconspicuous place to bring out the bear house before the rain really started coming down.

“Kumayuru, head over there.” Using my bear puppet, I pointed to a small thicket of trees where I could pull out the house. Kumayuru crooned and headed over at a quick clip.

 

“Looks like we made it just in the nick of time.”

We’d fled into the bear house before the rain had really started to pour down, though the two elf sisters had gotten a little wet while running for it. Thanks to my bear gear, I was dry. My bears weren’t wet either.

“This house sure is useful,” said Luimin.

“Definitely,” said Sanya. “We would’ve wound up sopping wet.”

“It’s not as though we’d be completely sheltered, even if we ran under the trees. And if the wind picked up, we’d just be out of luck.”

“Do you think the rain will pass soon?”

The rain was coming down in buckets outside. If we’d been even a little slower, we would have been completely soaked.

“Those clouds were pretty dark, so I really doubt it.” I brought out some hot tea for the two as they talked. When I looked at the clouds myself, it really did look like we’d be cooped up in here all day. I really hoped the rain would pass by the next morning.

Sanya told us we didn’t need to rush ourselves to get there faster, so we settled with having a slow day.

The two of them started up a conversation. Since they hadn’t seen each other in a while, they had a lot to catch up on. Apparently, they hadn’t had much time back in the capital to talk because of Sanya’s job. Still, too bad we couldn’t go anywhere because of the rain.

I decided to leave the two of them alone. I let them know I was going to spend time in my room, then left with my bears.

 

I headed to my desk when I got there, pulled out some paper from my bear storage, and started working on that set of playing cards I’d started a while ago. I’d made the suites into fire, water, wind, and earth symbols, which were familiar for the people in this world.

Now the issue was who I’d draw as the jacks, queens, and kings. Using the king or Cliff would be boring—and might even cause problems—so I passed on that idea. But the only other thing I could think of was using bear designs.

No biggie. I’d probably play with the orphans and Fina, after all, so they’d be more into bears than the king or Cliff. It was a little late in the game to keep denouncing bear stuff, so I decided to make the kings, queens, and jacks into cubified bears.

While the rest of the world was stuck in the rain, I was stuck in my room, sketching away.

The king bear bore a crown, the queen bear wore a royal-looking dress, and the jack of all bears held a sword. Of course, I had to make the jokers into bears too.

The other side was still just plain white paper, but I wanted to print a bear pattern on it if I could. I drew a pattern on the back side just as a sample. While I was zeroing in on my drawings, something suddenly dove onto my back.

I twisted around to find Kumayuru there.

“What’s up?”

Knock knock! There was a sound at the door before Kumayuru could answer me.

“Yuna, are you in? You’re not sleeping, are you? I’m coming in!”

The door opened and Luimin came in.

“What’s wrong, Luimin?” I asked.

“So, you’re awake, then?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I was just caught up in a project.”

I collected the cards scattered on top of my desk and put them away in my bear storage.

“So, what’s up?” I asked again.

“What should we do for dinner?”

“Is it already that late?” I looked outside. It was pitch-black, but that might’ve just been the rain clouds. The rain was still pouring down. It’d probably keep coming down until the morning.

Luimin and I headed downstairs to prep dinner, my bears trailing behind.

In the dining room, we got to work right away…or got to what work there was. I was pulling most of the stuff out of my bear storage, so there really wasn’t much to do. Man, what would I do without my handy-dandy bear storage?

 

I finished eating, and while I was loafing around, Sanya came back in from checking on the rain outside. “Even if we got to Laluz tomorrow,” she said, “I think this rain is going to keep us from moving for a while.”

“Really?”

“I suppose we haven’t told you,” said Sanya. “There’s a large river at Laluz, so we need to use a boat to get to the neighboring kingdom. Even when the rain does subside, it’ll be impossible to cross by boat for a while.”

Nobody had told me that.

A river, though...

I knew that heavy rain could create dangerous conditions, since the river would be flowing quickly. I’d even seen news reports of people getting swept away by rivers in my original world.

Sanya sipped her tea and told me more about Laluz. According to her, the large river there acted as the border between the two countries—the country across the river was called Solzonark. That was our destination now.

There was another large town on the other side, and the two cities had a deep-rooted connection. It was kind of fun just hearing about it…and it sounded like there’d be a ton of cool stuff to buy from both countries.

It seemed like the perfect midway point to set up a bear gate. I guess I’d need to figure that out after we got there.

“Did you travel by boat too, Luimin?” I asked.

“Yes, I did. It was very big. It could carry a lot of carriages too!”

Carriages, huh? Looked like it was a big, full-on boat and not just some dinky li’l ferry.