An Unexpected Event (3)
Yona might call herself an adventurer, but her physical abilities were nothing special.
She wasn't the type of adventurer who fought with her body, and until the Day of Discernment came, her entire life had consisted of quietly receiving instruction at the cathedral—she'd never had the chance to do any physical training whatsoever.
Which is why Yona, sprinting along, lacked the dynamic vision to dodge Alec flying straight at her.
"Kyaaaak?!"
With a piercing shriek, Yona collided head-on with Alec, and the two of them tumbled backward in a tangled heap.
The first sensation Alec registered was softness.
Soft, plush, the kind of yielding warmth that swallowed his entire fingers whole—that—
...Soft?
Alec snapped back to his senses.
When he came to, he realized that the fingers that should have been braced against the ground were instead buried in something strange and squishy.
There was a person underneath him.
That person was none other than Yona.
And Alec's hand was gripping Yona's breast with magnificent, unmistakable precision.
...Ah.
The sensation was so overwhelming he nearly forgot what situation he was in.
A colossal volume that filled his grip to bursting and then overflowed beyond it.
Plush and pillowy, yielding and springy, that—
"Get off, you bastard... you're heavy...!"
Those words yanked Alec's scattered consciousness back in an instant.
Yona's golden eyes were glaring up at him.
If looks could kill, Alec would probably have died a few dozen times over by now—and under that gaze, he clumsily climbed off of her.
"Ow... you bastard, seriously, ugh..."
Yona glanced at something behind Alec, then fixed her glare back on him.
Then she raised her hand and smacked his bald head with a sharp crack.
"You absolute lunatic, where the hell did you think you were diving into like that? You nearly took me down with you!"
"S-sorry."
"You dense idiot, honestly..."
Yona grumbled as she pulled herself up.
Only then did Alec get a proper look at her face, and his eyes went wide.
"H-hey... your, your face..."
"What about my face?"
Yona's face was scraped and bloody in several places—a complete mess.
Perhaps from the tangled tumble with Alec, her cheek bore a long, deep gash where it had dragged across a stone.
Blood was trickling steadily down—it was clearly no shallow wound.
"Ugh, it stings... you bastard, this is your fault."
Alec hurriedly looked behind him.
The troll lay sprawled in the distance, only its legs visible, but since those legs had stopped moving, Kayak had presumably succeeded in severing its neck.
If so, that was handled—and the real problem now was Yona.
"Hey, you okay?! Your face is really messed up!"
"Oh, drop it. It's just a scratch... Hey, let me look at you instead. Check if anything's broken."
"Your face comes first—"
"Oh, for crying out loud!"
Faced with Yona's flare of temper, Alec didn't know what to do with himself.
Honestly, at the time, his intentions had been good.
If he knocked the troll off balance with one hard shove, they could snag its legs with the rope and bring it crashing down either way—and then Kayak would be able to cut off its head.
Alec had done the best thing he could think of in the moment.
He just hadn't expected to take a swat from the troll's hand and go flying.
"Let me check YOU first! See if anything's hurt!"
Alec's dithering seemed to exasperate her, so Yona took matters into her own hands, pushing him around and inspecting him here and there.
Thanks to Yona serving as his cushion, Alec didn't have any real injuries, though there were a few scrapes from the stones.
"You blockhead, why'd you go charging in like that? You idiot, what if you'd taken the hit wrong and died?"
"Well... I—"
"Oh, enough! Save the excuses! What kind of man makes excuses? Pathetic."
Meanwhile, Kayak slung his axes over his shoulders and approached the two of them.
Kayak arrived, and hard on his heels, James came to stand beside them as well.
"Kayak, the troll?"
"Dead. Managed to take it down one way or another."
Kayak jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
The villagers were busily ferrying over wooden buckets, basins—any container that could hold liquid.
"The blood?"
"Aye. Told them to collect it and sell it to the cathedral—it fetches a good price."
Troll blood was the primary ingredient in potions.
Since the core of a potion's regenerative power came from troll blood, felling a single troll and collecting its blood to sell to the cathedral made for decent money.
Brewing potions was the cathedral's business, after all.
"The cathedral will come running in a hurry, then."
"Probably. It's potion ingredients, after all."
"Still, Miss Yona, you were remarkable this time. The gall of a true man, I'd say."
James was smirking.
Having kept a bit more distance than Kayak, who'd been locked in a head-on fight with the troll, James had gotten a clear view of what happened to Alec and Yona.
"Never thought you'd go so far as to catch Alec with your body like that. Truly impressive."
"I wasn't trying to catch him, okay? He just went charging off on his own and came flying at ME."
"More importantly, Yona—your face. You all right there?"
"It's that bad?"
Even looking at Kayak's face, she couldn't read his expression.
With that shark-like face of his, the most she could make out was whether he was smiling—any other expression was beyond deciphering.
But even without Kayak saying anything, the ache was starting to throb up from her wounds bit by bit, so it must have been worse than she'd thought.
"...Eh, it'll heal on its own."
"You can't heal yourself, can you?"
"Nope. Can't."
I will never understand why healers can't heal themselves—she was grumbling internally when—
"Um, excuse me..."
An elderly man in the early stages of balding, with thin patches of hair left on both sides and a smooth expanse on top.
Still, he had more hair than Alec.
"I, I'm the village chief of this village. W-would you happen to..."
"We're just adventurers passing through."
It was a somewhat blunt answer.
Honestly, Yona wasn't too fond of the villagers, either.
Kayak, Alec, James, and Yona herself had all been fighting for their lives while the townsfolk just stood around watching.
They hadn't even taken a request—they were simply passing through when they saw a girl—
Ah.
"Wait, wasn't there a girl? A little girl?"
"A girl, you say...?"
The man echoed the question back with an awkward expression.
He'd been about to offer his thanks and discuss compensation, but Yona suddenly bringing up a girl struck him as strange.
"We were just going to pass through too, but, well... you know, the girl—black hair, about ten years old..."
"Ah... do you mean Rubina?"
"I don't know her name, but she's the reason we decided to help... Ah, but we're still taking payment for this."
You take what you're owed.
"But what are you going to do about that face? It'll scar."
"Eh, who cares. A few scars will make me look more like a proper adventurer anyway."
"Alec's going to cry."
"Why does Alec keep coming up in this conversation?!"
Watching Yona scream in fury, Kayak snickered.
They had unpacked their gear and settled down onto mattresses for the first time in ages—it was genuinely blissful.
The mattresses were crude things, far removed from anything you'd call plush or comfortable, but they still beat the cold, hard floor by several times over.
The people who had originally lived in this house must have been meticulous souls—the house itself was ancient, but the interior was clean and neatly arranged. Not that it mattered anymore, since the couple who'd owned it were both dead.
"They said they'd call us when dinner's ready, right?"
"Yeah. Best to get some rest for now."
Yona lay sprawled on the mattress, savoring that coziness with her whole body.
The mattress was packed tight not with straw but with properly dried leaves, and while it rustled a little each time she shifted, its softness and warmth were leagues better than any straw mattress.
They'd even hauled in a bed from another room, lining up four beds in the large room so the whole party could gather in one place.
When Yona had asked what reason there was to split up anyway—not that there was much reason to crowd together either, but everyone had gone along with it without complaint when she suggested it.
The house had no living owner, after all.
"Man, I wish I could take this mattress with us."
"Wouldn't you need a dedicated porter for that?"
"Haul four mattresses around? You'd have to hire an ogre for that."
"Then food expenses become the problem. Ogres are carnivores, aren't they?"
"Couldn't we manage it with Yona-brand milk?"
"You crazy bastard."
The conversation had drifted into dangerously serious territory.
"Come to think of it, Alec—you were groping Yona's chest earlier, weren't you."
At Kayak's words, Yona shot upright where she'd been lying down.
It had all happened in a chaotic moment, but she remembered it clearly.
When she'd gone tumbling with Alec, he had definitely grabbed and squeezed her chest.
"Ah, right. That did happen. Alec, you bastard."
"Uh, uhh..."
It was Alec who flinched at Yona's reaction.
Half-lying down and snickering just a moment ago, he shot up with a tense expression and sat rigid on the bed.
"Hey, Alec. You grabbed my chest earlier, didn't you."
"Th—that, uh, yeah... I did."
Face crimson, Alec hung his head halfway and fidgeted, at a complete loss.
Yona glared at him, while Kayak and James sat beside them, snickering at the whole scene.
Such was life, after all—the people involved took it dead seriously while everyone watching found it hilarious.
"Was it good?"
"Uh—"
Alec replayed that sensation in his mind.
Honestly... hmm.
He couldn't exactly say no.
Even now, he could feel that texture—that squishiness, that pliant bounce—reviving at his fingertips.
And if given the chance, he wanted nothing more than to squeeze them just one more time.
"...It was good."
"Was it, now."
Yona grinned, a mischievous look on her face.
"I'm counting that as your ticket used, you bald bastard."
"Wh—hey! Isn't, isn't that a bit unfair?!"
"How is it unfair? You got a full grope in. I never said what situation you'd be allowed to touch me in. Besides, you did grab and squeeze—that's two counts right there."
With Yona putting it that way, Alec had nothing left to say.
It was true he'd touched her. True he'd squeezed her. And true that she'd never limited the circumstances.
One way or another, he had indeed groped Yona's chest.
Still, if he had his way, he'd have preferred to do it freely in a somewhat more proper situation.
- Knock, knock.
And so Alec's wistful musings were shattered by the sound of knocking.
"Who is it?"
- I-it's... d-dinner is ready, they said...
A young voice.
With three of them whose appearances were, to put it mildly, off-putting—a bald Alec, a lizardman Kayak, and James the orc—it would have been awkward to send anyone out to answer, so Yona reluctantly got up and opened the door.
Standing before the door was a black-haired girl.
The very girl whose existence had driven Yona to decide to take down that troll.