Chapter 254: The Bear Tells Her Secrets

Chapter 254:
The Bear Tells Her Secrets

 

WE’D FINISHED CASTING contract magic on the three of them.

“Now, then…what is this oh-so-guarded secret you wish to share?”

“I want to build a house,” I said.

“That is no issue, but what will you do with a house?” asked Mumulute. “You told me days ago that you do not intend to live here.”

“Yeah. Well, I want to put one of these in the house.” I pulled out a bear transporter gate in front of them.

“Yuna! What is this thing?!” Sanya cried. The three of them were shaken by the sudden appearance of the door.

“It’s a transporter gate. If I open this, I can get to my house in the capital. If I set up a house, it’ll be easier for me to come and go as I please in your village.”

“That’s impossible…” muttered Mumulute.

Sure, it was impossible…but not for me. I took my puppeted hand and opened the door to demonstrate. They expected to see the inside of Mumulute’s room, but instead they got a glimpse of a room in my capital-location bear house.

The three of them gazed through the door at the impossible scene.

“What is going on here?”

“That door, it’s...”

“Hrm...”

Wide-eyed, they stared through the open bear door. Sanya looked behind the transporter gate and circled around it, looking confounded. Luimin peeked in through the door but didn’t try to enter.

“Does this really lead to the capital?” she whispered.

“It’s connected to my home in the capital, yeah.”

I headed through the door first into my room. After I demonstrated how to go through it, Sanya gingerly stepped inside, followed by Luimin and Mumulute. The three of them stared all around the room—my room, the place where I’d put the bear gate. I hadn’t really decorated, so it was kind of dreary.

“Is this really your room in the capital?” asked Sanya.

I nodded. “I think you’ll recognize it if you go outside.”

Since they couldn’t know for sure that this was the capital yet, I led them outside. The capital spread out before us. Sanya and Luimin recognized it immediately—the former from her years there, the latter from collapsing right in front of my place all that time ago.

It was as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. They stared looking at two identical buildings ahead, the tallest structures in the capital.

“The castle…” started Sanya. “Is this really the capital?”

“I can’t believe it,” said Luimin.

“In but a fleeting moment, we…” Mumulute trailed off.

Sanya was flabbergasted by the familiar scenery and Luimin couldn’t stop turning her head to look at our surroundings. Mumulute just stared in surprise at the castle.

Suddenly, Sanya tried to start walking, but I grabbed her arm with my bear puppet.

“Sanya, where are you going?!”

“To check...”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t need to check anything to know this is the capital.”

“You have a point, but...” She knew this was the capital on some level, but I guess it was hard to fully accept.

“If someone you know sees you, that’s going to cause problems. You’re not supposed to be here, remember? So let’s go back.”

It’d be such a pain if someone spotted her because we were standing around gawking outside of the bear house. I pulled on Sanya’s arm, patted Luimin on the back, and called Mumulute back.

Before long, the whole bunch was back in the bear house. From there, we went back through the bear gate to Mumulute’s place and I closed the gate behind us.

“I cannot believe it,” Mumulute said as he sat cross-legged on the ground.

“Yuna, what is this?” Sanya asked. She reached out and touched the transporter gate.

“It’s one of my magical devices.” I couldn’t tell them it was a skill some god had given me, but this was close enough.

“A magical device?”

“It’s a device that lets me connect two gates so I can travel between them.”

“Where did you get something like this?”

“Sorry, but that’s as much as I can tell you. I’m really pushing it as it is.” That was about as much as I could say about the transporter gates.

“But—” Sanya started.

“Sanya!” Mumulute barked. “She said that she cannot tell us more. There are things that we cannot speak of either, as you well know. And she has already revealed so much about her secrets. That is enough. Regardless of how she acquired the device, she is the same girl as before.”

“Grandfather...” Sanya bit back her words and went silent.

It felt like she was holding back a lot of questions. But however she felt, I couldn’t tell her more than this.

Sanya gave a resigned look to Mumulute and me, then sighed. “All right. I won’t ask anything else. Anyway, I bet any answer you gave about this would keep me up at night. But…why did you tell us about such a great secret? Wouldn’t it have been better to keep it from us?”

That was a great question. “Like I said, I’d like to be able to come and go through the elves’ village as I please. Luimin and Mumulute both know I’ve come from the capital, and Luimin knows exactly how far away it is. If I kept returning to the village, she’d notice something was up.”

“Yes, I would!” Luimin nodded enthusiastically. If anyone knew how arduous it could be to reach the capital, it was her.

“But I want to be able to visit the village whenever I want, so I wanted Luimin and Mumulute to know. I’d like you to get people off my trail if there are any villagers who think there’s something going on.”

“Why tell me?” Sanya asked.

“We’re going home together, aren’t we? If I don’t tell you, getting back to the capital would be a slog. Plus, if there’s anything up at the elves’ village, you’ll be able to use the transporter gate to come right back. It’ll benefit you too.” Although I really hoped there wouldn’t be trouble like this at the elves’ village again any time soon…

“I suppose you have a point. If I can instantly get home, I wouldn’t need to go on such a long journey to get here. And it would be so much easier,” Sanya admitted.

We could take the long trip home to the capital in a second. Who wouldn’t love something like instant travel?

Sanya put a hand on the transporter gate and tried to open it.

“It won’t open for anyone but me,” I said.

“Really?” Sanya tried testing it out for herself, but the door wouldn’t budge. Luimin even tried to help, but no dice. “It really won’t open…”

“Yeah. You won’t be able to travel through it by yourself.”

“That’s a shame. I was hoping I could borrow it every once in a while.”

If just anyone could use these things, that’d be a big problem for a ton of reasons. I had to admit, the god had done a good job keeping these things secure.

They gave up and moved away from the gate.

“We can go to the capital just by opening this doorway,” said Luimin, deflated. “But I went through so much just getting there...” It looked like she thought her trip had been for nothing.

“You can only travel between established gates, so we would’ve had to travel no matter what.”

“That’s true, but...” Luimin didn’t seem very convinced.

She’d gone through some harrowing, tear-jerking stuff on the way over. I mean, when I’d first met her, she’d been a miserable, starving wreck collapsed in front of my house. Apparently finding out that there was a way to get to and from the capital easily had made Luimin feel like her arduous journey to the capital had been for nothing. I figured the experience traveling solo had probably been good for her, though, so it wasn’t all a waste.

“If we’d used the transporter gate,” I said, “you never would’ve met Miranda. You might’ve never met me, either. Don’t take those meetings for granted by wishing you’d never gone on the journey.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I met you and Miranda because of all the things that happened on my trip.”

“I feel like I’ve just figured out why you sometimes pop up out of nowhere in the capital,” said Sanya.

“You keep that to yourself.”

“I know well enough to do that. I’d never imagine telling anyone, and I wouldn’t betray you after you saved the village. And to endure that ordeal? Again? No thanks.” Sanya hugged herself and shivered a little. I guess she was remembering that hellish laughing fit she’d suffered. “I was wondering what your secret could be, but I never expected it to be this ridiculous.” She sighed, exasperated. “Now I understand why the light from the contract was so bright.”

Since they understood now, I put away the bear transporter gate.

“So…is that door your only secret, Yuna?” asked Sanya. “If that’s all, maybe it would have been better to just cast the spell on that instead of basically everything.”

“A young lady has many secrets,” I said.

“Like your bear underwear?”

“Sanya, would you like to make the trek back to the capital on your own?”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” Sanya clasped her hands together. “Sorry.”

“So, do you have other secrets?” Luimin asked.

I looked at her. “Luimin, could you show me your hand?”

Luimin held it out. “What is it?” She wasn’t even suspicious. I placed a cartoonified bear ornament on top of her palm. “It’s so adorable! Is this for me? I’ll put it somewhere in my room!” Luimin happily inspected the bear phone.

“That’s no ordinary bear decoration.”

“It’s not?” Luimin tilted her head curiously.

“It’s a magical device that lets you talk to me from long distances.”

“From…long distances?” Luimin cocked her head to the side again like she wasn’t getting it.

“Could you explain further?” Sanya asked.

“It’s just what I said. No matter how far away we are, we can use the bear dolls to talk to each other.” I pulled out the other bear phone.

“So Luimin and I can talk even if I’m in the capital and she’s in the village?”

“You and Luimin couldn’t, so no.”

“Why?”

“This device won’t work unless I’m using one of them.”

Sanya seemed bummed out by that part. “I do think it sounds amazing, but is it really possible to talk to each other over long distances?”

How was this unbelievable after seeing the transporter gate? “Um…well, Luimin, I’ll show you how it works. Let’s practice.”

“Sure…” Luimin gripped the bear phone, looking nervous.

“It’s not that hard. All you do is hold it and pour mana into it while thinking about who you want to talk to. This time, you’ll think about me.” I demonstrated just that, and the bear phone in Luimin’s hands started to coo out: “Cwoom, cwoom.”

“The bear is crooning!”

“When the bear calls out, it’s a signal that I want to talk, so you’ll be able to talk to me by pouring some mana into it.”

Luimin poured in some of her mana like I said, and the bear phone stopped crooning.

“Next, you’ll want to talk into the bear phone. You’ll hear my voice coming from the bear’s mouth. You try now, Luimin.”

“O-Okay.” Luimin closed her eyes and grasped the bear phone. This time, my phone was the one to start crooning. Luimin beamed at the bear phone going off in my hand. “The bear is calling out.”

“Now if I pour mana into this, no matter how far away we are, we’ll be able to talk with each other.”

“Yuna,” said Luimin hesitantly, “you’re sure we can really talk with these?”

“Okay. Luimin, you go over there a little way,” I told her. Once I showed her that it worked, she’d probably believe me.

“Um, how far?”

“Into another room where you can’t hear my voice, maybe?”

“Then I’ll go up to the second floor.”

“Once you’re up there, pour that mana into the phone.”

“Okay.”

Luimin pitter-pattered out of the room. After a while, a “Cwoom, cwoom” came over the phone I was holding. I poured some mana into it to get it to stop.

“Um, Yuna? Can you hear me?”

“I can.”

“I really can hear you, Yuna!”

“By the way—Sanya, if I’m holding the phone, you can talk into it too.” I held the bear phone in front of her.

“Luimin, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I can, Sister.”

“Can you hear me too?” Mumulute spoke into the phone too.

“Yeah, I can!”

Test successful! “Okay, now you can come back.”

“Okay!” After she replied, I heard Luimin coming down the stairs.

“That was amazing, Yuna!” she said, rushing back into the room like it was Christmas morning. “I really could hear all of your voices.”

“Can we really talk no matter how far away you are?” Sanya asked.

“We can.” I’d already tried it out to talk to Fina in Crimonia.

“Are you sure I can have this?”

“Yeah. If I’m coming to the elves’ village, I’ll give you a heads-up, and you can let me know if anything happens too.”

“All right. But it’s too bad I can’t speak directly to my sister with it.”

“If anything happens,” said Sanya, “I’ll send you a message, at the very least.”

“Please do.”

“But be careful when you try using the phone,” I told Luimin. “If anyone finds out about it, you’re in for a hell of a lot of laughter.”

“Uh...it can start calling very suddenly, right?”

“Well, yes, when I’m the one calling.”

“All right. If you’re calling, I’ll run over somewhere where no one is around.” Luimin squeezed the bear phone in her hands.

“Does this have a name?” Sanya asked.

“I call it a bear phone.”

“A bear...” Sanya trailed off for a moment.

“A bear fone. What a cute name!” said Luimin. She had the right idea, calling it cute. What a good girl.

“And that door from earlier,” said Sanya, “is called…what?”

“A bear transporter gate.”

“A bear...” Okay, Sanya, jeez. Look, I wasn’t the one to come up with the names…