Arc 2 - Chapter 9: Land Voyage (2/2)

"Why do we have to travel with these people?"

"Because it's cheap," Yu replied to grumbling Yurine.

On the Second World there were horses like on the first, but in addition to horses, giant komodo dragons and horse-sized dinosaurs that looked like raptors were used for transportation.

Their own vehicle was a horse-drawn carriage, pulled by three horses. There were twelve passengers inside the vehicle.

Dinosaurs and giant lizards were faster and stronger than horses, but they were much more expensive than horses because they fed on meat. They were often used in armies or for the transportation of rich people, while among ordinary people horses and donkeys were the most popular riding animals.

"Your stinginess will drive me mad."

"I am not stingy at all, just frugal, and I spared no expense, choosing the best clothes for us and the most expensive inn room."

"You did all this for yourself!"

"What's wrong with that? And not only for me, but for you too."

Those who stayed in the normal rooms of the inn used the communal bathrooms and toilets. Yu Valarfin couldn't stand it, even in the school restroom he preferred to pee in the stall rather than at the urinal. 

Whenever he had to pee at the urinal, people would come and pee especially near him when there were plenty of empty urinal, and he didn't know enough words to describe how strange it felt.

Shared bathrooms felt like an insult to Yu's heterosexuality. Unless the people in the bathroom were women, Yu didn't want to use the shared bathrooms. He didn't want to see other men's bodies and was uncomfortable being naked around other men.

It wasn't that he had a bad body, he had a very athletic and ideal body that many would envy, but he didn't feel comfortable around naked men.

"Did you want to use the bathroom with other people? I'm sorry, but I can't allow that."

"I don't want that."

The idea of Yurine being alone with strangers was frightening. Yu was afraid of her being alone, of her getting hurt, of losing her.

"It's hard to deal with children, isn't it?" The woman sitting opposite them, who had incredibly large breasts, entered the conversation. She was looking at Yu with a smile. "My name is Lylphia."

"I'm such a pussy magnet, look how she wants to meet me directly. I'm so handsome."

She was not his type. He didn't care much about height or breast size in girls, but he preferred everything to be in proportion. Although Lylphia was short, she had huge breasts and the way she flaunted them in public made the proportion-obsessed Yu uncomfortable.

She wore her long black hair in a twin ponytail down either side of her head, with a round white face and round orange eyes.

"Yu Valarfin," he said, putting a hand to his chest, then pointed to Yurine. "And Yurine Valarfin."

"Are you siblings?" Lylphia asked.

"Hmm... Do we look like siblings?"

"You have the same name."

Lylphia wore a brown robe and held a large staff in her hand. It was easy to tell at first sight that she was a mage.

"If she is a mage, she might also recognize Yurine as a sword fairy. I must be careful."

He still remembered what Lucia had said about sword fairies and he didn't want to let anyone steal Yurine.

"Yurine is actually my daughter. I look very young, don't I?"

"Aah? There's like ten years between you two at most."

Even though Yu was already young, Lylphia's surprise brought a smile to his face. Meanwhile, Yurine closed her eyes and made an inverted V shape with her lips in response to Yu's answer.

"How did you make that shape?"

Her lips were perfectly curved downwards, even though it wasn't exactly a V. Even professional actors would have a hard time making such a shape, Yurine looked like an anime character.

"So why are you going to Urta? Do you have business at the Wizarding Academy?"

"There are matters that need to be resolved."

"Is it like detective work? Tell me about it, maybe I can help!"

"No."

Unlike some people, Yu had the ability to say no, and when Yu said no, it meant no. He wasn't going to tell Lylphia or anyone else about his affairs unnecessarily.

"But I love mysterious things…" Lylphia pursed her lips, "So, have you heard about the recent events in Redchapel?"

Yu thought she was upset, but she quickly pulled herself together and decided to continue the conversation herself.

"The Redchapel Killer? I've heard of him, but I don't know what you mean by recent events."

"He broke into a rich man's mansion outside of town and killed three people."

Yu hadn't heard of it. In fact, the most recent one he had heard of was a murder two months ago. He didn't know much about the killer and what he knew about him he had learned in a casual conversation.

"The owner of the mansion, Richard Henry, had lived in fear of his house being attacked for years, so he had all the windows covered with steel bars and all the doors fitted with the strongest locks."

"But he couldn't stop this murderer?"

Lylphia shook her head. "He broke into the house, killed Richard and nailed him to the wall. He also killed the butler and the maid. He gouged out the butler's eyes and stuffed coins in them and in his mouth. He also killed the servant girl, but her death was more merciful, he strangled her to death and dressed her in the finest clothes in the mansion, then laid her on the floor and surrounded her with roses. After stealing some silver, he ran away."

The other passengers in the carriage were disturbed by the story. Yu ignored them and, out of habit, came up with a scenario in his head.

"The murderer made a deal with the butler for money beforehand, and when night came, the butler opened the doors and let him in." Yu's impression of the dead butler was that of someone who sold his house for money. "First he killed the butler and put the money they had agreed on in his eyes and mouth. Since he calls himself an artist, he might have seen it as a work of greed." He believed the connection he had made was of high quality. "Then it was the owner's turn. He went up to his room and after he killed him and nailed him to the wall, he received some payment for his art. On his way out of the mansion to escape, he was confronted by the maid who heard the noise and left her safe room to see what had happened. The unfortunate woman was the killer's last victim that night. Perhaps because she was unfortunate, he gave her a cleaner death than the others."

"Whoaa! Is that really what happened?"

When Lylphia jumped up, her breasts moved with her, bobbing up and down.

"People don't like such exaggerated reactions." He didn't like people who shouted, and people who overreacted made him feel 'embarrassed for someone else' or shortly cringe. "I just told you the scenario in my head, I don't know what happened that night."

"Still a very good deduction!"

Yu greeted him with an arrogant smile, unable to refuse the praise.

"It's like you caught the killer, don't get your ass in a twist."

"Who taught you those vulgar words?"

After their journey, they arrived in Urta later than planned. It was already dark when they arrived in Urta.

Lylphia, who had been talking people's heads off the whole way and finally stopped talking after a few of the passengers' reactions, got out of the vehicle, walked towards the Wizarding Academy and disappeared from sight.

Yu and Yurine asked the driver who had brought them here where they could find a place to stay.

"This is a small place, so there are no inns," driver said. "But a little further into the village there are some small houses you can rent for the night. You can talk to the coffeeman in the square and settle in one of them."

They went in the direction the driver pointed and arrived at the coffeehouse in the square and rented an old house for a few silver pieces.

The Easthelm Island consisted of three regions, separated by mountains. Beyond the mountains in the north was a great forest and monsters lived in it. In the center of the island lived people. The south of the island was also separated by mountains and was the only dry part of the country.

The Wizarding Academy was considered to be the cause of the drought. There was only a small forest, and outside the forest there was no greenery except for drought-adapted plants like cactus.

The house they rented was right in front of the small forest in the area.

"Someone could commit murder here and no one would know, is this really where they give guests a place to stay?"

The house was on top of a low hill and after a fifteen second walk you could enter the forest. Except for the house Yu had rented, all the other houses were ruins.

Yet this one could hardly be called a house. There was only one room in the house and he couldn't understand what this small, empty room was there for.

Apart from a stove, a small bed, a rug and a chair, there was nothing inside the stone box called a house. Yu placed the clean sheets, quilt and two pillows they had been given on the bed.

The house had only one window and was kept closed with a wooden lock. The lock gave Yu no confidence, but there was nothing he could do to make it secure.

He locked the door and tried to prevent the door from opening from the outside by pulling the chair under the doorknob. Although the chances of this measure working were slim, he believed it would be better to do this than nothing.

"Do we need all these precautions? I can kill any idiot who dares to come here."

"Still, it can't hurt to take precautions. Maybe something dangerous will think the door is broken and go back."

It was an uncanny place, it wouldn't be surprising if people who hadn't developed the skills to recognize it at first glance died. Yu wanted to survive and he had to take precautions.

"Get the wall side of the bed."

With a primal instinct for protection, Yu volunteered to lie on the side near the door.

"You disgusting, perverted human! You rented a house with a small bed to sleep near me?"

"You were with me when I rented the house, you know it's not like that." There was only one solid house they could keep, and this was it. "Come on, get in there. We'll get up early in the morning."

He could say sentences like that now that they had established sleep patterns.

"Besides," Yu said. They were both lying on the bed and the rain was pelting down outside. "You know I'm not disgusting, and I think you probably think I'm very handsome."

***

He didn't think he could sleep in a place like this, but the warmth he felt in this small bed with his back against Yurine's made it easy to fall asleep.

It was the most peaceful sleep he had had in months, and if he could sleep like this for the days to come, he would be a happy man.

"Stupid human, wake up! Hey, who am I talking to? Wake up!" 

"Is it morning already?"

Yu opened his eyes and looked out the wooden window. He saw no light that he could call daylight. To his ears he heard the sound of drops falling fast, it was raining and water was seeping down from the window and the ceiling.

"I'm glad it's not on the bed, it would have force me to work."

If he tried to move the bed aside or cover the hole in the ceiling, he might lose sleep and he didn't want that to happen.

"It's not that, listen outside."

"I can't hear anything."

In his sleepy state, he couldn't pick up anything but the rain outside and the sound of water dripping into the room. Yurine put her finger to her lips and signaled him to shut up, Yu was still trying to hear something when a scream finally reached his ears.

"What the fuck?"

Yu held his mouth to keep from speaking out loud. A woman's scream came from outside, followed by a second cry for help from a man.

"IS ANYONE THERE!?"

The question was asked again and again, the voices of the man and the woman shouting at the same time blended together. The deformation of their voices was clearly recognizable, as if they were spitting blood out of their mouths as they spoke.

Soon the woman's voice was separated from the man's. The man's voice was abruptly cut off by a thin scream. The horror in the woman's voice increased.

"Let's go." Yurine sat up to get out of bed.

"Where to?" Yu grabbed her shoulder, preventing her from getting up.

"To help of cour-!!!"

Yu covered Yurine's mouth, who was about to scream, and pushed her back into the bed. "We're not helping anyone, we're staying here until morning and not lifting a finger."

Yurine tried to pull Yu's hand away from her mouth as the woman's screams continued.

"Listen to me; anyone who enters a potentially dangerous forest at this hour, in an uncanny area, especially on an island with monsters and news of murders, will surely be eliminated by natural selection, lest they pass on their stupid brain genes to future generations and produce stupid children who will lower the intelligence level of mankind. Let them die."

It wasn't easy for Yu to say, but he wasn't going to jeopardize his life, especially Yurine's, in the face of something he didn't know what it was.

"I'll take my hand away if you keep your voice down." He was still holding his hand to her mouth to stop Yurine who tried to shout.

Yurine nodded that she would be quiet and spoke when Yu removed his hand.

"We can't leave people to die."

"Just wait and see how we leave people to die." He wanted to be a hero and have the power to protect the innocent, but things were not the way he wanted them to be. "Let them die instead of us, I don't want to argue."

"You make the devil's eyes red!"

"I told you to be quiet."

The woman's screams continued for a while longer and then stopped. Yurine turned over and went to bed, but Yu stayed awake, waiting in bed until morning to make sure they were safe.