028: Demons and Bathtubs

September 29, 2020 - 11 minutes read - 2229 words

The wheat harvest is in progress and the villagers are super busy. They’re all harvesting wheat and other crops with the whole family. Some of the harvest will be paid as taxes, but the villagers are happy with their village and the harvest is looking good, so no one has to worry about paying taxes in this village. Even if this year didn’t have a good harvest, we have enough in storage to handle it. In that case, we would distribute the stored crops to both feed and re-plant. Most everybody is busy harvesting, but in five days, we’ll hold a harvest festival.

The festival is set to be held each year when the harvest slows down. For three days, the village of Koriat will be in a festive mood and the villagers will gather to make merry. We’ve seen more immigrants arrive this year than normal, so it’s going to be a bigger celebration than normal. It looks like there will be Reversi and Shogi tournaments, so I’ll have to participate.

In addition, the Slowlette family will be cooking a meal for the entire village, so Bartolo and the maids are very busy preparing for that. I’ve heard we may have some interesting visitors from outside the village, so they won’t be able to get too creative with the dishes. Bartolo stalks around in a surly manner.

With that in mind, I’ve been spending my time in my room, which I’ve been keeping warm with magic. If you leave a fireball in the air, the room will warm up over time. When the room gets warm enough, I’ll stop the fireball.

“Al~ It’s sword practice time” Eleanora

When I was warm and happy in my room, lying down and reading, Eleanora came in without knocking. In some manga, the hero would do this to the heroine, but that’s not something you’d see in this story.

“Well, today’s cold, so I’ll pass.” Al

“No no, if you want to improve you have to keep up with practice.” Eleanora

“Are we ready to welcome the harvest festival guests? Is there anything else we need to prepare?” Al

“It’s been decided to practice today, even if everyone else is busy, we two will practice.” Eleanora

“Eh?” Al

I scrunch up my face to show my displeasure.

“If you don’t stop making that annoying face right now, I’ll straighten it out for you, understood?” Eleanora

“I’ll change clothes right away.” Al

I salute Eleanora with my best attempt at a dignified look. Even if I had an average face, but I’ll still try to give a good impression… Could I get close to handsome?

Hurry up, Silvio and I are heading out now.

Sword practice will be outside in the chilly air, so I’ll want to change from my current pair of pants to a different pair that’s easier to move in and can get dirty. I’ll put on another light pair of pants as well since it’s cold outside.

When I got out to the courtyard, a cold breeze was blowing by. The fallen leaves make a rustling sound as they’re blown around by the wind. This sort of appearance marks the end of summer.

“Al~ What took so long? It’s cold, so I won’t go too hard on you.” Eleanora

“Yes” Al

Silvio and Eleanora are warming up in short sleeves and shorts. Insane?

It it that kind of thing? A young boy wears shorts and a t-shirt even though it’s midwinter. When the girls ask if he’s cold, he says “It’s not cold!” Is it some sort of popularity play?

“Eleanora is Eleanora, but Silvio, aren’t you cold?” Al

“What do you mean, anyway?” Eleanora

“It’ll be fine, since I’ll warm up when I’m moving.” Silvio

Silvio answers with a refreshing response while stretching. I’ll ignore Eleanora’s question, I feel like answering that is dangerous. I’ll act a little smarter today.

“Hey? What do you mean?” Eleanora

Stop asking me, you’re turning too intense for me.

“Are you ready? Let’s start by running around the mansion for a few laps.” Nord

“Yes, father.” Al

Nord! He arrived at a great time, he seems like a dazzling hero today.

“Al looks energetic today, let’s run while keeping up that energy.” Nord

“I’m energetic?” Al

“Eleanora, he responds quicker when a sword is involved.” Nord

“That’s right” Silvio

Why are you agreeing with her Silvio? I was so surprised I almost tripped. I ran around the mansion like instructed, hoping that Eleanora would forget about the previous conversation.

One my body warmed up some from the running, I started on practice swings as usual. It’s been about five months since sword practice started for me, it took a while, but I feel like my moves have improved a little. Nord says I’ve still got work to do before I’m not just shaking my arms around. It’s difficult to move your body smoothly.

Next to Nord, Silvio is trying to be accurate and elegant. His sword cuts through the air with a nice sound and more power than I can muster. It seems he often works with Nord on his stance and movements.

Behind those two, Eleanora is swing a wooden sword too. Wooden swords never seem to like they’re all that fast or sharp, but Eleanora looks to change that…

“Huh” Al

Hmm… what did she just do?

The leaves she should have cut once instead have cuts in the vertical, horizontal, and both diagonal directions, like they’ve been cut in 8 pieces. Wha? How are you slashing four times when I can only see you swing it once? I only heard you make one swing?

It looks like Eleanora is trying to tell me to take this more seriously or she’ll have to use more advanced techniques on me… She can be real scary…

“Eleanora, we’re practicing normal swings right now? And I told you that technique isn’t for playing around, didn’t I?” Nord

“Sorry” Eleanora

“If you do it again, I’ll have to punish you” Nord

Eleanora is acting obedient now. I wonder if it’s true that martial arts discipline can reach even demons? I’m feeling more interested in this now, so I’ll continue swinging my practice sword.

“Al, make sure you’re concentrating when you’re practicing.” Nord

“Sorry” Al

I think there’s too many mind readers in this village.

When you finish with the practice swings, you go one-on-one with another person at the practice. Today I managed to not get paired with Nord or Eleanora, so I’m partnered with Silvio. I’ll find a way to get him back for his earlier comment.

“Al, are you trying to look that combative?” Silvio

“Well, I’ll start with being the offensive one” Al

First, exhale briefly and close the gap to Silvio. He’ll fire off a series of attacks using the stances he learned from Dad. It’s a basic technique to conserve momentum and avoid or block attacks.

“Al is also improving his movements” Silvio

“Silvio is good at blocking all of the attacks” Al

“It’s an indispensable technique when you’re partnered with Eleanora…” Silvio

“Can’t argue with that” Al

“Dad, Al is pretty good when partnered up with Eleanora.” Silvio

People can find hidden depths of their self when pushed to survive. Perhaps I can improve my skills using magic, perhaps I’ll try that next time. We should probably not talk too much, Nord doesn’t want us talking when we should be concentrating on attacking and defending. As usual, Silvio is concentrating on defense, which was the reason I thought of Silvio Barrier.

“Al, did you hear that?” Silvio

From where we were practicing, we could hear Nord and Eleanora’s practice as well. You hear normal sounds like the swords cutting through the air, the sounds of their movements, the sounds of impacts when the swords hit… But the impacts don’t sound like two wooden swords anymore? ‘Kin’ is not a sound a wooden sword should make.

When I looked closer, I could see that both of them were diffusing magic energy into their swords. Eleanora has some skill in Fire Magic, but she’s not that great at controlling it. Is her limit three fireballs effective against weaker monsters per day? Even when I explained how to increase your magic energy by using it every day, she didn’t really keep up with magic practice. Or is she doing it secretly?

Nord has skills in Wind Magic, not that I’ve ever seen him use it. I wonder how he uses it? All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be facing against him using it.

“Silvio, let’s swap up offense and defense” Al

“Sounds good” Silvio

We continued our practice, but stayed well to the side of Nord and Eleanora’s match. We didn’t want to get caught up in anything.

After the practice, I started setting up the bathing room of the mansion for us to clean off. Theoretically, Eleanora would use her Fire Magic to warm the Water Magic that Elna had used, but in reality I’m usually the one doing both sides since I can do both. Furthermore, Eleanora’s Fire Magic is sketchy. One time, she was supposed to warm up some water, but made it near boiling instead. Luckily I threw in a little ice cube to check before using it.

The ice cube went crack, crack, crack in an alarming manner. I ended up cooling off the water, then warming it back up myself. I got a cold that time since I had already taken off my clothes.

To get back at her, I “forgot” to warm up the bath. As I left the bathroom, I heard a cute scream from behind me and started chuckling. Eleanora laughed a little sarcastically, then attacked me, knowing I had caused it by my laughter. She was only wearing a towel at the time, it’s the first time I saw a women in that state and feared for my life.

Well, Eleanora isn’t fond of heavy and complicated clothes, as far as I can tell. She’ll take them off as soon as she can, andWell, I someWell, I sometimes wish I had a unique voice too.times wish I had a unique voice too. will often come into my room to “borrow” clothes. Obviously, the clothes never make it back, she is often seen wearing the shirts originally made for me.

Thinking back, I never got back at Silvio for his comment earlier? Since I was headed to the bathing room, I think I can make something happen. It seems like he’d look for steam to be present before touching the water. Since I’m not going to scald him, I’ll have to find a way to make cold water look like warm water. I’ll try using Fire Magic to vaporize an ice block. Seems like that worked, steam is all around the room, even though the bath water is still cold. Ok, prank is ready, all I need to do is to get the victim.

I managed to find Silvio in the hallway of the first floor.

“Silvio, the bath water is filled now, go on in when you’re ready” Al

“Oh, thanks as always. I’ll get in soon” Silvio

He’s going to run by his room to get a change of clothes, then he’ll get a bath from the North Atlantic! I didn’t lie and say the bath was warmed, I just said the water was filled.

I’ll follow Silvio upstairs so I can know when I can enjoy his reaction.

“Hmm, I’m looking forward to a nice bath…” Silvio

“Hey!” Eleanora

“What?” Al

“It looked all warm with the steam, but the water is as cold as ice!” Eleanora

Even without trying to listen in, I can hear my sister’s voice from my room. But why? Even if her training was over, she should have needed to visit her room and get a change of clothes? What was she doing there?

Eleanora is now racing up the stairs to find a culprit. I’d like to think that each step is a countdown to pain, but I’m pretty sure Eleanora likes to skip every other step, so it’ll be even quicker. I peek out into the hallway from my room, and see the demon just wearing a towel. The moment I saw that, my spine stiffened from the shock and my heard started pounding in my chest. Eleanora glared at me and started running my way. I try to close the door before she can get here, but my nerves are making it hard. Why does my body betray me at this point? The door even slips from my hand from the knob and the door starts to open wider.

“If I close the door, I can win. If I can close the door, I can survive. If I can just close the door, I’ll win.” Al

With a bit of self-encouragement I’ll try to close the door before Eleanora can get to me. I’ve blocked out her approaching footsteps, I just need to focus on the door. Almost closed, almost closed…

“If I close the door, I’ll be fine…” Al

“If I get to Al first, I’ll win, right?” Eleanora

I didn’t make it, and the demon caught me. That day I felt like I saw both of my lives flash before my eyes for the first time.