I Prepared an All-Out Date Course for the Leopard Beastkin (4)
After the hunt, they stopped in at a cat café. She carried the traits of the feline family, and he had thought that meeting creatures who were her kin in form, if nothing else, might go well enough.
"Hsss...!"
It had not, it seemed, been a good choice. The moment Reshi stepped into the café and drew near the spot where the cats were gathered, they hissed as one and swatted kitty-punches at the empty air, threatening her.
"......"
At the sight of them threatening her, she slowly slid out her own sharp claws—but Arang and Yuyeong just managed to soothe her and haul her back outside.
So that's a bust.
He had thought at first that they would get along. That, it seemed, had been nothing but arrogance. Choosing this as the second stop on the strength of a shared feline lineage alone had been a serious mistake.
...There are still plenty of places left. I can make up for it next time.
If the cat café had been his last resort, he would have been in a tight spot. But he still had plenty of cards left to smooth this over.
I didn't raise our affinity just to burn the whole thing down.
What remained of his lifespan was not so tight. Years were still left to him—enough that he could even call it comfortable.
Even so, I won't feel easy until I'm carrying at least a hundred years' worth.
A hundred years was a proper span for an ordinary person who could be said to have lived long.
Of course, in this world the average isn't a hundred. It's closer to a hundred and fifty.
With the advancement of traits and abilities, the human lifespan was stretching little by little. If the world kept developing without a hitch, it might not be long before humanity's life expectancy was looking toward two hundred.
Of course, if the world ends before then, all of it goes straight down the drain.
Someday, when the ending drew near, the Outer Gods would descend from that sky. They would drag everything into ruin, devour this world itself, and move on in search of another.
To the goddess it's nothing more than a single world... but if I fail, I die, no question. So I'd better thrash for all I'm worth.
He did not think it was impossible. No—even if it was, he would still move. Thrash hard enough, and couldn't you manage to accomplish something?
With that resolve, he set out for the next stop on the date. It was not over yet.
After that, he ran the date along a course planned with her in mind as far as he could. Yuyeong was reduced to a folding screen along the way, but it could not be helped. He had no attention to spare for her just now.
Working from Reshi's active nature, he had prepared a course where she could move hard—dance arcades like Disco Pangpang, climbing, parkour, that sort of thing, all of it done at proper facilities. Honestly, none of it would tax an A-rank Hero's body in the slightest. Even so, she seemed to take a real joy in the simple fact that she could move with an easy heart, as play rather than work.
Because the only fuel she's running on is her own happiness.
Heroes were no grand symbol of heroism or liberty. The further they transcended ordinary people, the more those same people fastened shackles on them, and the ones who smashed those shackles were vanishingly few. That was why the lower the rank, the more readily one was used as a tool.
From B-rank upward, people said things improved—but unless you stood at the level of SS-rank, being used like a tool was much the same. The only difference lay in where the tool was put to work, how much it was worth, and how carefully it was kept.
Lost in thoughts of that kind, Arang enjoyed the date with Reshi. Before he knew it the day had darkened, and with dinnertime upon them they headed for the restaurant he had reserved.
She's a leopard, so I picked a place that cuts the vegetables to almost nothing and builds the menu around good meat.
As it happened, there was a restaurant in the area around Neo City that dealt in nothing but meat. The price was insane—hundreds of dollars a serving—but he had decided to put every bit of this on Yuyeong's card as well.
...Swiping it like this, over and over, does nag at me a little.
Still, it could not be helped. She had agreed to this part herself, and every operation had been carried out under that understanding.
They settled into their seats and ordered meat of every kind. Pork, chicken, beef, duck, goat, horse, lamb—generous plates of all of it came out.
Reshi stared at the meat as it arrived, drool dripping, but she held it in and waited for the grilling.
Out hunting she tears into raw meat just fine, but here she's holding back.
A woman he could never quite get a read on. It seemed, at least, that she disliked showing a savage side where people were watching. Even now she was nothing but things he could not understand.
Meat began to sear across two broad grills, fat spitting with a fierce hiss. When it was about halfway cooked, Reshi picked up a piece with her chopsticks and popped it straight into her mouth. She chewed.
"......I think it would be better to eat it once it's fully cooked."
Watching her, Arang put on a faintly incredulous look and offered the advice.
"It's fine. I eat raw meat and animal guts uncooked, so this much isn't going to make me sick. If anything, I don't really care for it fully cooked."
"......"
True to form for a beast—she disliked the cooked stuff on top of everything else. Animal-type traits, following as they did some portion of each animal's nature, were a truly outrageous thing.
And so she went on filling her stomach, popping half-cooked meat into her mouth. At first she seemed to be chewing each bite thoroughly, and he had thought she ate like anyone else. That had been a grave miscalculation. Somewhere around the middle of the meal she started giving the meat one chew, maybe two, and gulping it straight down—pieces nearly as wide as her own throat. And yet not one of them caught. They slid smooth down her gullet.
This isn't even a magic trick...
She put away so much that he could not begin to see how it was all fitting inside her. Plates of every kind of meat had piled up more than ten high. A single meal had burned through thousands of dollars.
"Are you satisfied now?"
"Yeah. Satisfied doesn't cover it. I was so happy I started thinking this might be the best day of my life."
"I'm glad."
At the word happy, Arang finally wiped his sweat and let out a deep sigh of relief. Grilling dozens of servings had left him a little worn out. Endless meat over the grill—it was bound to be tiring. His body was still stuck at a human level.
Once they had paid at the barbecue house, they came outside with an ice cream apiece held in their mouths.
"......I'm sorry. And thank you."
"......For what?"
The moment they stepped outside, Arang tilted his head at her apology and her thanks.
"For misunderstanding you however I liked, and attacking you, and thinking what I thought. Not trusting Unnie's boyfriend means the same thing as not trusting Unnie, and I went and did exactly that..."
She looked as if she truly regretted it. And that regret came back to Arang as a sweeter fruit.
We've gone past mere acquaintance. We're close now.
If there had been a machine or a system that measured favorability, an alert would have chimed to say that, out of a perfect hundred, he had filled in sixty. A critical hit might even have pushed it to seventy. Of course, that was nothing but imagination.
"For tonight, since it's late, I've arranged a hotel nearby. Transit has all stopped, and we didn't bring a car, so let's rest and part ways once it's light."
They had grown closer, but Arang still had not let go of his polite speech. Part of it was that the formality was more comfortable for him—but until Reshi herself allowed it, he had no intention of setting it down. Getting a little friendlier, a little more at ease, did not mean they had become truly close.
The two of them made straight for the hotel nearby, where he had reserved rooms in advance. And Yuyeong, watching the pair from behind, followed them with her teeth grinding, ever so faintly.
"I've reserved three rooms, so each of you can take one."
"Nnngh... Today was fun."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it."
"......"
To the very end Arang spoke to Reshi in that gentle tone, and she went into her room. Arang followed after, stepping into his own.
"......"
In the end, Yuyeong was the last one left in the hallway.
All day she had worn a look that seemed somehow cold, somehow unsettled, laying a wordless pressure on him—but her Master never noticed.
What do I do? What am I supposed to do...?
At first she had felt no particular envy, no jealousy. She had known her Master was too great, too wonderful, to be satisfied with her alone. But knowing it and witnessing the scene in the moment were different things. She felt as if she had been dropped alone onto some distant star, able only to watch their story unfold.
She was sad. She was miserable. She envied them. She was jealous. She was angry.
I should be the one standing there. That place was supposed to be mine...
Again and again she found herself taking on an ugly heart. She could feel the heart that had once been so soft and round beginning to bristle with sharp thorns.
"...Even so, I won't give up."
She had fallen into despair, and still she would not give up. Give up, and everything ended. She would keep going, with this feeling as her fuel.
And for that... I'll need a little preparation.
Taking her anger as volatile fuel, she hastily laid a single plan.
I don't care if I get scolded for it later.
Right now, she only wanted him to look at her. If he would whisper his love not to that wench but to her—if he would let her feel an affectionate gaze and an affectionate touch—then she did not care what it took. Just for this one night, let him look at her.
She prayed it with everything she had.