LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 195
Yuki’s mornings are quick.
Unless she’s stayed up late chatting or gaming like last night, she always wakes up early to start her day.
Glug!
The first thing Yuki does when she wakes up is drink some water.
Just like always, instead of the cold water from the fridge, she gulped down lukewarm water and let out a long sigh.
The two glasses beside her showed no signs of waking up from dreamland.
“Uhehe…”
“Uu….”
Just then, Da-eun stirred and pulled the girl sleeping next to her closer.
Kana, now snuggled up unexpectedly, frowned and groaned in discomfort, but there was no way Da-eun, lost in her dreams, would hear her complaints.
After a brief moment of mumbling in discontent, Kana’s face returned to peacefulness.
It seemed she liked Da-eun’s embrace, which was more comforting than her usual habit of burrowing deep under the blankets.
Yuki watched this unfold silently before changing her clothes and stepping out of the pension.
This was another routine Yuki followed every morning.
Whether it was running along the walking trail, doing some light exercise to stretch, or maybe doing both.
This time, she chose the second option.
Yuki stretched her long body and began to loosen up.
Pop!
“…Huh?”
Just then, an unwelcome visitor made an appearance.
As Yuki was moving her body, she noticed something touching her head.
Tap-tap-tap!
As if signaling, raindrops suddenly began to pour down.
“Oh dear.”
Not finished yet.
Since I’ll be showering anyway, maybe I should just do this in the rain.
Yuki shook her head while contemplating.
Pat-pat-pat!
The raindrops intensified suddenly.
Now, it felt more like a downpour as the rain began to drench Yuki’s head.
“…”
Her clothes were quickly soaked, sticking to her skin.
Yuki closed her eyes, feeling the unpleasant, damp sensation all over.
“It was clear not long ago, though.”
* * *
“It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.”
Da-eun said.
I was wondering why she was staring out the window for so long, and it turns out she was thinking about that.
“How do you know?”
“Huh? I just thought so.”
“Aha.”
Tuning out the foolish conversation from beside me, I turned my gaze out the window.
Indeed, looking at the momentum of the pouring rain, it didn’t seem like it was just a passing shower.
The sky was dark, too.
More than just a few hours after sunrise, the scenery outside looked like it was shrouded in night.
“Kana!”
Swoosh!
While leaning against the window frame gazing outside, I felt a heavy weight settle on my back.
Adjusting herself, she must’ve controlled her strength because, despite the sudden pressure, my body only swayed slightly, not tipping forward.
A pair of white arms popped out from behind me.
Of course, they weren’t mine.
“Ehehe.”
“…”
Then, a light weight settled on top of my head.
“Get off.”
“Hehe, Kana’s smell is just so sweet, you know? We use the same shampoo, so why does yours smell different? It’s so weird!”
Telling me to get off, she’s actually making it worse.
What are you doing messing with someone’s head?
“I’ll shower.”
“Huh? No, no, I’m not saying you smell bad; I’m just saying you have a genuinely sweet scent! Oh, did you misinterpret me? I’ll say it’s a fragrance instead.”
“It’s not about the word.”
Sniff-sniff.
Trying to grab a strand of hair by my collarbone to see what scent it carried, but there really was nothing.
If anything, maybe just a hint of shampoo, and even that was so faint that if I wasn’t closing my eyes and focusing, I wouldn’t notice it at all.
I tilted my head…
—only to drop the thought because of the weight I felt on the crown of my head.
“There’s no scent.”
I can’t believe I trusted Da-eun’s words.
“What? What? You sniffed because I said there was a sweet scent? Wow, Kana really loves sweet things, huh?”
“Your premise is wrong. Your conclusion is wrong too.”
“Hmm. That’s not possible. I can let the premise slide, but saying Kana doesn’t love sweet things is an absolute truth!”
“Please don’t use the term ‘absolute truth’ in this context.”
“So I don’t need to eat chocolate anymore, then?”
“…”
“Hehe, just kidding! But I wasn’t joking about that scent.”
With a teasing tone, the breath tickling my neck drifted down.
“Thinking back to when we were in Silia, that scent seemed like it was your unique body scent, not just the shampoo. After all, if it were just shampoo, your body wouldn’t carry the same smell.”
“Da-eun.”
“Sniff-sniff, yeah?”
“That’s seriously creepy.”
What’s more fitting to call someone who buries their face in someone else’s body to comment about it?
“…Ugh.”
Da-eun swallowed hard.
If a stranger were to hear me, they might think she was shocked by my words.
But I know.
Da-eun isn’t that kind of person.
“I’m getting rewards this early in the morning. I must be really lucky today…”
“As expected.”
I can’t understand why she enjoys this so much. But if I voiced that thought, Da-eun would bounce around even more.
Of course, I know she’s just joking… but sometimes, I can’t help but think, ‘Is she being serious?’
“Sniff.”
“…?”
As I was contemplating the fine line between her pranks and sincerity, another breath tickled my shoulder.
“…What are you doing?”
Yuki, who had approached without me noticing, asked me.
Regardless, Yuki finally looked up from her phone.
“It’s real.”
“What’s real?”
“It really smells sweet.”
“Even you’re saying that?”
Was it Da-eun unleashing her long-suppressed true self with me or did it spread to Da-eun? It was one of those head-scratching issues where it’s hard to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg.
“How can something smell like this? It’s amazing.”
“Yeah, yeah. I agree. Isn’t it just really fragrant?”
“Indeed.”
“You two are the weird ones.”
All this talk about scents and body smells felt pointless.
“…Ah! Kana ran away! She was quiet until Yuki showed up! So this is all your fault, Yuki!”
“Didn’t you create the cause?”
“Nope. It’s both your faults.”
Having freed myself from both of them, I waddled back under the still-untouched blanket.
Da-eun looked at me with a longing face, but when I glared at her, she quickly averted her gaze.
“By the way, if it keeps raining like this, going out for sightseeing today is going to be tough… Eating out seems unlikely too. Good thing I bought food in advance.”
“It could stop later, too, right?”
“I’d be glad if it did.”
Da-eun murmured, still facing the window.
“Like I said earlier, it doesn’t seem like it will end any time soon. Well, if it does clear up later, we can go out then, so let’s just take it easy for now. But it’s a bit strange, though. The weather forecast didn’t mention any rain.”
“When has the weather forecast been right?”
“Wow, you’ve got some deep-rooted mistrust there.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“I guess that means predicting the weather is tough, huh?”
Da-eun lightly shrugged off Yuki’s comment.
“In any case, I hope it stops. We have to go back tomorrow, and it’d be a shame to just stay in the pension, right?”
However, contrary to Da-eun’s wishes, the knocking sound on the window showed no signs of stopping through the night.
* * *
“Still at it?”
“Yeah. Still at it.”
I nodded while sitting on a chair in front of the window, glancing outside.
“It’s really pouring without a break. I thought it wouldn’t stop soon, but I never imagined it would keep going for a day, and the intensity isn’t lessening at all.”
“The weathercaster was stunned. They didn’t predict that this much rain would fall.”
“They didn’t even predict that it would rain at all.”
Da-eun sighed.
Then she turned to me and said,
“I guess it’s time for Kana to step in.”
“…Huh?”
“Kana can slash the raindrops with her sword!”
She then performed some unclear, silly movements.
…Is this some kind of ritual to wish for the rain to stop?
“That was a magnificent sight of someone slashing raindrops with a sword.”
“No one would think that.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Seriously!”
I softened my words a bit, but Da-eun didn’t catch on at all; she pouted her lips.
I knew she wasn’t seriously upset, so I ignored her pouty lips and said,
“Can you do it, though?”
“I thought you wouldn’t ask,” she grinned.
“I can’t believe you think someone can slash raindrops away.”
“I would think Kana could do it!”
“You’re something else.”
Da-eun ruffled my hair.
“…Okay, thinking about it, I guess Kana could probably do it.”
“Yeah! I’ve never tried it before, but…”
“If that happened, it would probably make the evening news, with a special report titled ‘What’s Behind the Phenomenon That Split the Sky?’”
“That’s true.”
To be able to chase away the dark clouds with that much magic energy means it would definitely catch people’s attention.
Both Da-eun and I understood that we weren’t being serious in this conversation.
But it’s because we had nothing else to do that we fell into such trivial discussions.
We’ll leave today and come back on a day with lovely weather.
Just when I was nodding at Da-eun, as if soothing a child, she said, “Hold on a minute.”
Yuki, while scrolling through her phone, finally chimed in.
“They said the flights have been canceled?”
“…Huh?”
Da-eun’s face turned blank with the sudden bad news.