Chapter 237: The Bear Imposes on Sanya’s House

Chapter 237:
The Bear Imposes on Sanya’s House

 

SOON ENOUGH, Sanya asked Talia about the reason why she had returned. “Is the barrier holding up?”

“Every once in a while, a monster gets through, but it should hold for now,” said Tailia.

“But the barrier is weakening?”

“Yes. A few months ago, monsters started coming through the barrier. At first it was only one or two every few days, but recently, there’s been more. Your grandfather determined that the barrier should be recast, and called for your return.”

When I heard that the barrier was weakening, I thought that’d be a huge deal, but it didn’t actually seem like an emergency. It sounded like I’d get a chance to relax and look around the village.

“No one’s been hurt?” Sanya asked.

“Not so far. Arutul and the others have been patrolling the borders of the village in shifts. We’ve warned the children against venturing out though,” Talia added, looking at Lucca.

If monsters could be about, they couldn’t let the kids go out to play. Fina had been in danger when she’d wandered into the monster-filled forest for herbs too. I could understand why they’d want to keep defenseless children away from dangerous places.

“We’ll have to recast the barrier quickly, then. Is there a set time for that?”

“Ask your grandfather directly tomorrow. He said we’d work out the details once you returned.”

Was the barrier something they could so easily recast? In video games and manga, you usually had to gather a ton of items or do some side quests—that kind of stuff. This seemed nothing like that.

Oh! Maybe they’d let me watch them make the barrier! Would it be a ritual? Some kind of magic? If this were a video game, there would be a huge magic circle and a whole dramatic scene to go with it. I’d come all the way here, so I might as well check it out. Then again, they’d kind of described it as some kind of secret elvish art…. Maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to see it.

“It was Yuna, wasn’t it? It seems that my two daughters owe you quite a bit.” Talia looked over at me.

“No, not at all,” I lied.

“Yuna was such a big help,” said Sanya. “If it wasn’t for her, we’d never have made it back this quick, and it wouldn’t have been such a comfortable trip either.”

“It’s true,” Luimin added, “Yuna’s bears are really fast.”

It was true. If Kumayuru and Kumakyu weren’t around, we wouldn’t have been able to get here so quickly.

“Um…bears?” Lucca asked Luimin. Lucca was the only one who didn’t know about them, after all.

“Yes, bears,” said Talia. “I was confused too when my father-in-law said Labilata talked about Sanya and Luimin coming back riding on bears.”

Fair enough. Hearing your own daughters had come back on top of bears would make at least one or two people second guess what they’d heard.

“But you two really did come in riding bears,” Talia said. “With you dressed as a bear to boot, Yuna. It’s been one surprise after another.”

From behind her I could hear Lucca and Luimin talking: “I want to try riding them too.” “Then go ask Yuna after this!”

Eh, I didn’t mind if they asked. I didn’t have a reason to say no, after all.

“I can’t do anything big to thank you,” said Talia, “but please stay at our house as long as you like.”

I was happy for the offer, but I preferred setting up my own bear house. If I had a bear house, I could set up a bear transporter gate and use my bear phone to call Fina without worrying about any eavesdroppers. I wouldn’t want it to stand out, so the outskirts of the village or somewhere deep in the forest would be ideal.

“Sanya, could I build a house?” I asked. “I’d like to put it somewhere it wouldn’t stand out, if possible.”

“Your own house, huh? I…suppose that would probably be fine, but you’d have to get permission from my grandfather.”

Her grandfather—yeah, wasn’t that the man I’d met earlier? Mumulute or something? Well, I suppose I would need permission from the head of the village for something like that.

“Well Yuna,” said Sanya, “will you be coming with us to see grandfather tomorrow?”

“Is that okay? Don’t you have important stuff to discuss?”

“It’s fine. He’s just informing us about things. Oh, and you can stay in my room for today.”

“She can’t!” Talia said abruptly.

“Why not?”

“…Because we turned it into a storage room.”

“Why would you do that?!”

“You were gone for ten years. The bed is still there, though, so you’ll be fine. I’ve put out new sheets, so you can at least sleep in it.”

Talia gave her a smile…and Sanya leapt up and dashed off. From the back of the house, we heard Sanya let out a scream.

“Um, it’s not that big,” said Luimin, “but…you can sleep in my room?”

Sanya came back and tried to complain to Talia, but Talia responded coolly. “If you have complaints, why don’t you come back at least once a year?”

“You know very well that I can’t just come back like that.”

“In that case, why don’t you just stay put in the village? Yes, what a splendid idea!”

“Mother...” Sanya’s shoulders drooped and she looked worn out. She probably could have made more frequent visits using my transporter gate, but that wasn’t exactly a distance Sanya could travel at the drop of the hat. She was a guild master, after all.

 

As we were talking, I heard the door open. A slender male elf who looked like he was in his early twenties came into the room.

“Luimin, Sanya.”

“Dad!” Luimin greeted him.

I knew it. If Lucca was the future head of the village, then they couldn’t have had an older brother. Still, the whole family looked so weird together. They all just looked like brothers and sisters.

“Sanya!” said the father. “It’s been a while.”

Sanya nodded. “It’s nice to be back home.”

“Luimin, I’m glad you came back safely with Sanya.”

“I told you I’d be fine!” Luimin answered, puffing out her chest proudly. I didn’t butt in, but I sure wanted to, considering I knew what she’d been through just getting to the capital. She’d gotten lost in the capital, collapsed from hunger, had sold her precious bracelet, and a whole lot more—and that was just the stuff I knew about. She’d probably gone through even more hardships along the way.

Well, Sanya would fill him in if needed, so I stayed silent. Still, it was crazy just how proud Luimin was acting after having barely made it out fine at all.

“You haven’t changed, Sanya.”

“I’m not going to change very easily,” said Sanya, “that’s for sure.”

“Regardless, it’s good having you back.”

Sanya leaned forward in her seat. “I heard the barrier weakened. How could I not come back?”

He put his hand on her head. Sanya swatted him away, embarrassed. Then he looked over at me. “This is the girl in the bear outfit who came in with you?”

“Yep. I’m Yuna, and I’m the one who accompanied Sanya,” I said, formally introducing myself.

As for him, his name was Arutul. Just like I thought, he was Sanya, Luimin, and Lucca’s father. And like everybody else, he looked so young that I would’ve been convinced that he was everyone else’s older brother.

“You really do look like a bear. When Labilata told me, I just laughed. It sounded ridiculous.” Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up at the bear. Not like I could really fight back on that, considering that I was dressed as a bear.

“I heard you noticed Labilata and his crew were tailing you? He was pretty annoyed,” said Arutul with a laugh. I couldn’t just tell him I did it with my detection skill.

“I noticed too, you know,” Sanya chimed in.

“Oh? You knew where they were? You knew how many of them there were?”

“Well...”

“I heard that the bear girl guessed their exact number and location, correct?”

Yeesh, I’d really dug myself into a hole with my detection skill. The more I opened my mouth, the more I wanted to stuff my foot in it.

“What can I say? Yuna’s just a brilliant adventurer.”

I wish she wouldn’t put me up on a pedestal like that. If I didn’t have my bear onesie, I wouldn’t do so well. Probably wouldn’t even hold up to the average girl.

“That was just my summons noticing stuff,” I said. “It wasn’t me or anything.” Back to my usual cover story, pretending that my detection skills were actually Kumayuru and Kumakyu’s skills.

“Now that you mention it,” said Arutul, “someone did tell me you have bear summons.”

“Oh, that’s right!” said Sanya. “Your bear summons really are amazing!” She bought the…well, calling it a lie wasn’t totally true. Kumayuru and Kumakyu could do just about the same things as me.

“Labilata has gotten a little too big for his boots lately,” said Arutul, “so this will probably be good for him.”

Unless he started to resent me…

“There isn’t much to do around here, but I hope you can relax during your stay,” Arutul said.

 

After that, I introduced my bears to Lucca. Lucca approached nervously at first, but he was happy when he got to stroke Kumayuru and Kumakyu’s fur. He really started getting into it, even climbing up onto their backs! When Luimin saw him, she started playing with them too.

While they were doing that, I went to help Sanya clean her room. There were huge piles of stuff everywhere except on the bed. Yep, they’d totally made it into a storage room.

“I did my best to clean off the bed,” Talia said proudly.

She was right—the bed was clean. But as for the rest of the room...

“You knew I was coming home. You should’ve cleaned the whole room…”

“Well, I did get you fresh sheets,” said Talia, getting in the last word before shutting the door.

“Sorry, Yuna,” said Sanya.

And so, Sanya and I ended up having to clean her room.

 

“Sanya, I made a small storehouse in the yard,” I told her.

“Thank you. That helps a lot.”

I started carrying the stuff in Sanya’s room to the storehouse. When Talia was there, she started bringing things from her room to store too. I guess it was fine—I’d made it for storage, after all. But it’d probably be full soon.

“Talia is…interesting,” I said.

“She’s been like that forever,” said Sanya. “I wish she had it more together. Oh, Yuna—that one’s mine, so it can stay here.”

I was putting the stuff in Sonya’s room into bear storage for the trip to the storehouse. We were steadily making progress cleaning the room. I did wonder what was in the boxes here, though. Tons and tons of stuff—even a few pots just kinda set haphazardly in one spot. I got the sense that the family had been putting all the junk they didn’t need into Sanya’s room. Eventually, I got all the junk into my bear storage and headed out for the storage room.

“I’m going to let my mother organize the storehouse, Yuna. You can leave things wherever you’d like.”

I took everything out and did just that, then returned to Sanya’s room. The room was squeaky clean.

“Thank you, Yuna. I can finally sleep in here now.” Sanya collapsed onto the bed.

I was originally going to sleep in Luimin’s room, but Lucca had claimed my spot, so I ended up bunking with Sanya.