Wolf Meat
“……You’re not showing any disgust for once.”
“What?”
“Usually you start cursing the moment you see me. Today you’re unusually quiet, so I was wondering.”
Before class, whenever we met—whether by chance on the street—there wasn’t even an ounce of the usual hostility. Just a woman who accepted everything with a blank expression.
“……”
“You’re actually listening to that lowlife elf bastard. What the hell are you thinking? Don’t tell me you’re planning to stab me in the back.”
“Ha, do I look like the type?”
Yes. The black protagonist in the game wouldn’t, but you, a Latin white guy, definitely would.
“Then why are you making this offer to me? Aren’t you the one planning to stab me in the back?”
“If I were, wouldn’t I have done it right here instead of talking?”
The gap in our combat ability was obvious anyway. Smashing someone from the front was far easier and more reliable than some shady backstab.
“Ha!”
She raised her hostility at my provocative remark. I probably should have done the same, but instead I relaxed my fists.
“Doesn’t look like you have any special plans. That’s a relief.”
We moved to another spot. I wandered around her house, which I was starting to get used to. Then I noticed a piece of paper sitting on top of a drawer in one corner. It looked like it had been folded after being taken out of an envelope, covered in English words and numbers. Probably some kind of bill or statement.
Ines quickly approached and blocked the paper from my view.
“Does the East have some custom about casually snooping through other people’s things?”
“Ah, no such custom exists, but I did have a friend who had one.”
Ines shot me a slightly disgusted look, as if to say birds of a feather flock together. That attitude was quite surprising. She was holding back instead of immediately lashing out like before. Whether her personality had improved or her patience had grown, something was definitely progressing. A possibility had briefly shown itself.
I decided to push her even more boldly.
“You need to get a good grade in this class, don’t you?”
“……?”
“From what I can tell, you’re aiming for a scholarship. Am I right?”
“……”
“Looks like I am.”
Ines gave me a look that asked how I knew. I pointed at the paper behind her—the credit card statement.
“How did you figure that out just from……”
“There are other factors too, of course.”
In reality, there weren’t. The numbers on the statement were written rather largely, but it was only natural to have a lot of expenses right after enrolling. The real reason I concluded she was aiming for a scholarship was surprisingly simple: the game had frequently mentioned that her academy days weren’t financially comfortable. I hadn’t thought much of that setting at first, but now it carried a lot of implications.
Arecibo’s cost of living wasn’t exactly cheap to begin with, and academy cadets were basically college students, so they inevitably had typical student expenses. The academy did provide some living stipends to those who needed them, but it clearly wasn’t enough. After the terrorist incident, the academy’s teaching methods had changed, dramatically increasing the burden on cadets. Additional expenses for hospital bills, medicine, and equipment maintenance had become far more likely. Even with free tuition, suddenly having new costs that didn’t exist last year would be difficult in the short term.
In this situation, she would naturally try to earn money somehow. But making money through hunter work had become impossible after the Shareltea campus turned into a mess and switched to a request-based system. Among the few remaining easy options, a scholarship was one of them. She could technically get a part-time job, but looking at Ines’s current state, she probably couldn’t do anything except loading and unloading cargo.
“If you just listen to me, you’ll get a good grade in this class.”
“……”
“Not just the midterm—other evaluations and the final exam too.”
“……You’re talking big. How do you plan to guarantee that?”
“That’s why whether you believe it or not is entirely up to you. On the other hand, if you don’t believe me and go off on your own only to see your grades plummet, that’s also your responsibility.”
Believe me. It’s not like you have anything to lose by not believing anyway. Honestly, refusing this in a situation where you had to choose between two options would be stupid. Even if we set the midterm aside, who would turn down an offer to do well on the final too?
“Pride doesn’t put food on the table, does it? Trust me at least until the final.”
Ines wore an extremely displeased expression. It might have been because every single word I said was irritating, but if she hated it that much, she should’ve treated me better in the first place.
“Haa……”
Ines let out a sigh. Then she spent a long time thinking. No matter how long she thought, nothing would change. She repeatedly clenched and unclenched her fists, as if deliberately showing me. When Ines saw this, she flinched. The sound of her knuckles cracking made her complexion darken slightly.
“……I’ll answer later.”
It sounded like she was just saying it, but her actions said otherwise. She said it while lightly touching her lower abdomen, as if she felt something. Apparently, getting hit there several times had left an impression. It could be dangerous, but since I’d already fed her an elixir, I wasn’t particularly worried.
“Do whatever you want. As long as I get a definite answer by the final, that’s enough.”
After that, I casually placed my hand on her shoulder. I was about to pull her back onto the sofa.
“Hik?!”
Ines was startled and tried to shake off my hand but failed. She then stared at me with a horrified expression while I still held her shoulder. Her brown face seemed to redden slightly—or maybe it didn’t. If it had been white or just yellow, it would’ve been easier to tell, but the ambiguous brown made it hard to distinguish.
“W-What is this……”
One thing was certain: she seemed rather embarrassed. I calmly gestured for her to sit back on the sofa. When I sat on the opposite side, Ines followed and sat down while still looking flustered.
“So…… Anyway! What dish are you planning to make for the midterm?!”
She spoke loudly while avoiding my gaze. Her authoritative tone had subtly softened. That was fine by me. I showed her a photo on my phone.
“Wolf meat?”
“More precisely, meat from a green-maned wolf that lives near the Shareltea campus.”
A wolf with the characteristic green mane. It wasn’t particularly difficult to deal with, but in the current situation, it had become prey that was hard to reach because of its habitat.
“You’re just going to grill this?”
“Out of all the cooking methods we’ve learned so far, grilling is the only one we know, right?”
There was no point in showing off complicated techniques. Submitting some ultimate secret technique as a test result in a room full of newbies would only be a waste of energy. The most reliable approach was to stably demonstrate the methods we’d already learned. Even in the game, grilled dishes weren’t particularly outstanding, but they always performed at least average. In a situation like now where everyone was a beginner, getting a high score was guaranteed as long as you did average.
“But to catch this guy, don’t we have to go pretty far?”
“That’s something you have to accept if you want to cook. The professor already announced that buying main ingredients is one way to get a zero.”
“That’s not what I meant. Why specifically a green-maned wolf as the main ingredient?”
There were plenty of other wolves. If it was too much trouble, we could’ve just used orc meat or something. Why this wolf in particular?
I could answer that very briefly.
“Just because.”
There was no special reason. While I was thinking, I decided this would be good and went with it.
“Just because?”
“Of course, I also chose it because I happen to know the recipe.”
“Ah……”
It was just an excuse. All grilled recipes were pretty similar anyway, so how different could they really be?
“Anyway, this one should be fine, right?”
“Well…… I guess it doesn’t really matter……”
“We might end up going all the way to the black zone. Are you still okay with that?”
I said it somewhat threateningly. It wouldn’t be bad to see the protagonist’s boldness and actual skill while I was at it.
“W-What, do you think I’m some kind of coward? That’s no problem at all.”
On second thought, I probably shouldn’t have high expectations. She sounded confident, but her inner thoughts clearly weren’t.
I’d have to make sure preparations before the hunt were thorough. Just in case.
“Alright, then let’s set the schedule.”
I began organizing every detail for the best possible preparation.
* * *
The day of the midterm was approaching. As promised, the two of us met beyond the World Gate. Our peculiar relationship made the atmosphere feel somewhat tense at first, but it gradually eased as we started walking through the ruined streets.
Our destination was the habitat of the green-maned wolf, which we had already researched and confirmed. It was located roughly between the red and black zones. It was dangerous in its own way, but not to an extreme degree, and since we’d prepared supplies just in case, there wasn’t much to worry about.
“Aren’t you a bit too heavily armed?”
“You’re the one who didn’t come properly equipped.”
Unlike me, Ines looked anxious in every way. She wasn’t wearing any armor, and her only weapon was a single spear.
“Just asking in case, but do you at least have a secondary weapon?”
“Secondary weapon? Only western cowards use that kind of stuff.”
Secondary weapon…… coward…… Ah…… just an idiot……!
“You’re not using one?”
“Yeah, southern white hunters don’t use gay-ass secondary weapons.”
Gay trait) Uses secondary weapons. It was a statement so illogical that even LGBTQIAPK+C people would be impressed.
“A true hunter finishes everything with just their main weapon.”
What exactly were southern hunters being taught as they grew up? Or was their brain so messed up from all the inbreeding that they turned out like this? The way they obsessed over saving face made me seriously suspect they had some kind of trauma.
Because of that, I had a feeling that Ines would soon head not to the Macho Club, but to the Super Coward’s Rest Area. I just hoped she wouldn’t start crying and whining.