Sleeping with the Enemy (2)
Clothing, food, firewood, shelter. The four things a person needs to live.
Of those, clothing was no concern. Both the Valkyrie and I were still in our uniforms.
Food was settled too—we'd just eaten.
Firewood was plentiful. I'd hauled plenty up from the beach. Happy days.
That left a roof to keep out the wind and rain…
The lifeboat would make for a far softer bed. I'd left it drying all day, so the damp was gone. At four or five seats, it was just big enough for one or two people to stretch out in relative comfort.
"We take turns with the lifeboat. Like a bed."
I sketched a picture to get the idea across.
It was a kindness, of a sort. The kind of kindness built on cold calculation.
"If either of us gets sick, the other one's stuck doing everything. Better than sleeping on bare ground, right?"
Had the meaning landed?
I snuck a glance at the Valkyrie's face.
Apparently not. The kid looked like she was rotting from the inside out.
"Share a bed? With you?"
Her voice wasn't doing any better.
Something felt off, so I looked back at the drawing I'd made.
One lifeboat. A man and a woman. Lines connecting them—one dotted, one solid.
It was meant to show that while one person stood watch, the other could rest inside the boat.
Was there any other way to read that?
No matter how I turned it over, I couldn't see one.
"Hold on. Draw something else. Please tell me this isn't what I think it is."
The Valkyrie pointed at the sketch and waved her hands, clearly asking for a clearer version. So I divided the page into comic panels and drew the two of us rotating shifts, step by step.
"…"
Her expression only grew more profound.
"Hoo."
She fanned herself with one hand and sighed.
"Haa."
I was getting just as heated on my end.
"Just a second."
She said that and propped her chin in her hand. Shadow fell across her face. Fine. While she sat there lost in silence, I pulled a rock from my pocket.
The smooth, star-shaped stone I'd picked up yesterday.
I wasn't going to turn it into a magic stone or anything. Purely a pet.
Now then. What to name it.
"David. From now on, your name is David."
I decided to chat with David until the Valkyrie opened her mouth again.
"David. Think we can get off this island alive?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"When we escape this hell, I'm taking you with me."
"Thank you."
"If I make it home, you're part of the family."
"Really?"
David was thrilled.
Rocks really were the best. The connection was real.
"…?"
I felt a stare and looked up. The Valkyrie was looking at me like I was a lunatic. So I glared right back.
"Crazy bastard."
So what. He talks better than you do.
The Holy Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom faced each other across an ocean. They belonged to different continents entirely.
Different continents meant different environments. Different environments meant different cultures.
Few people ever registered that fact in the moment.
Rachel was no exception.
Share a bed.
Strictly speaking, he meant using the lifeboat as a substitute mattress. One person stood night watch while the other rested in the boat; after the shift change, the one who'd been on watch climbed in to sleep.
The intent itself had come through fine.
The problem was that in the Holy Kingdom, the phrase "share a bed" was far more commonly used as a marriage proposal.
"Hoo."
Rachel cooled her head for a moment. She managed to recall that she and the man came from different cultural spheres.
The capital of the Magic Kingdom—Hazkail.
Where was that, again?
High-latitude wasteland. Barren snow mountains.
She'd heard it was so cold that people froze to death every year. Sharing a bed for warmth, or splitting a scarce mattress, would be ordinary there.
Right. In context, that made sense.
Satisfied, Rachel looked at the man. And the man was talking to a rock.
For a brief instant, Rachel's thoughts simply stopped.
She'd been a fool to decide he seemed relatively sane for a mage. Anyone could see his soul had been stolen by some dark god. He must have burned through powerful magic more times than he could count.
Rachel clicked her tongue and shot him a sidelong glare. Sensing it, the man glared right back.
As expected. Every last mage was out of their mind.
"Hoo."
Rachel checked her own condition. Her body felt raw, and her face was a little hot.
She was probably coming down with a cold.
Before long, the sun was setting.
Unlike the near-total lack of preparation the day before, today we were locked and loaded.
I'd woven breath techniques in the gaps to top up my mana, and drawn on my specialty knowledge and unit experience to craft a few military-grade magic stones.
And that wasn't all. I'd eaten well, too.
Nothing to fear.
"Grrk. Grrk."
The moment the sun dropped, the monsters crawled up onto land. Most of them were the same ones from yesterday. Slow and weak, but long-armed fish-people.
I decided to call them Walkers. A name that really captured the walking-fish concept, if I said so myself.
Either way, we intercepted them from atop the bluff.
"That way!"
The Valkyrie shouted. I turned my head in the direction she pointed.
A new one had shown up.
A grotesque thing with a body like an abalone shell and a pair of snail-tentacle eyes. About the size of a large dog.
Six arms sprouted from its torso—three to a side—and it was skittering toward us on those arms. It looked exactly like a cockroach.
"Pierce."
⟨ Chamcheongseok ⟩
I flicked the stone.
A pea-sized magic stone streaked out in a trail of blue light. In an instant it punched straight through the abalone monster's brow. Shraaak! Purple blood fountained up almost before the crack of the air reached my ears.
"Chamcheongseok earning its keep."
Chamcheongseok was a military magic stone I'd developed myself. Maximum penetration for the mana invested. Easy to make, too. Even 4th Class Mages could ignite them without trouble, and they'd seen heavy use across any number of battles.
Efficiency taken to the absolute limit.
The raw output was lower than using them to reinforce ordinary rounds, but in a situation like this, nothing beat them. As long as we were stuck on this island, I'd be leaning on these a lot.
"That incantation… that stone… it can't be—"
The Valkyrie muttered something. A single line thick with emotion I couldn't place—awe or horror, I had no idea. Naturally, I didn't understand a word of it.
"More coming."
That was all either of us said before we split again. Holding our positions came first.
The first wave of fighting only ended once the sun was fully gone. We kicked the monster corpses down the hillside.
"Cleared. Nice and clean."
"Rough cleanup's done. This should be enough for now."
The Valkyrie and I gathered by the campfire.
Post-meal exercise had left me thirsty. We each took a mouthful of the water we'd stored, then sat and warmed ourselves. The Valkyrie caught her breath and spoke first.
"Cough. Not bad today."
"Yeah."
Objectively, there had been more monsters than yesterday. And yet today had been easier. Both of us had been at full strength, we'd fought from advantageous ground, and our coordination had started to click.
"Wow. Never thought I'd live to sync up with an enemy."
"Ha. Never thought I'd live long enough to coordinate with one either."
It was so absurd I laughed.
The Valkyrie rose first. She looked exhausted; her color was bad. She offered a parting line as she climbed into the lifeboat.
"Wake me in three hours."
I'd agreed to take first watch. After about three hours, I'd wake her and switch.
I spent the time picking off the occasional monster that showed and talking with David. I counted to ten thousand and then another eight hundred. Somewhere in there, the moon had shifted.
I let out a long yawn. Time to change shifts.
"Hey."
I walked over to the Valkyrie.
Something was wrong.
"Nngh."
She was making soft, pained sounds—like she was having a nightmare.
Well. Falling asleep under an enemy's protection couldn't be easy on the nerves.
But so what?
Nightmare or not. Restless because of me or not. What mattered right now was that I was extremely sleepy.
"…Haa. Hah."
Wait. Something really was off.
Her breathing didn't sound right. The kind of wet, labored respiration you heard from pneumonia patients. She was sweating cold, too.
On a hunch, I put a hand to her forehead.
"Whoa."
She was a furnace.
"What's wrong with her all of a sudden."
Come to think of it, I'd heard her coughing lightly a few times since morning. She'd been moving around fine, so I'd figured it was nothing.
"Cough! Cough!"
Anyone could see what this was.
A full-body cold.
I could guess the cause well enough. She'd spent last night soaked to the skin. Slept in clothes that never dried. Of course she'd catch something.
Which meant for the next few days, I was doing everything alone.
Finding food. Watching for ships or planes. Holding off the monsters. All of it.
"Haa."
We're screwed.
"We just called a truce and you're pulling this?"
On an uninhabited island like this, even a simple cold could kill you.
If the Valkyrie died like this, my own odds of survival would tank. That was the real problem. Even as dead weight, I couldn't afford to throw her away.
"Hic. Sniff."
"…"
Ah, for real.
I was not the type who looked after people.
"…You can pay me back with your body later."
I pulled off my jacket and draped it over her shoulders.
Another all-nighter, confirmed.