185 – Paradise – 5

Chapter 35. Paradise – 5

Gi-jun’s party ended up staying in the guest lodging within the grounds.

Although they initially felt bewildered about having to stay for as long as a month in a suddenly changed environment, they also thought that it might not be such a bad thing when they considered what had happened right before coming here.

“Staying in Uralta would have only attracted hunters anyway.”

“You will have to keep fighting those kinds of people to a sickening degree in the future as well, Jun.”

To the words Gi-jun had casually muttered while sitting on the veranda after washing up from a session of training, there was a voice responding as it approached from behind him.

Tilla, who had gone to take a bath separately after finishing a fierce duel with Gi-jun, had returned.

“Right, so while we’re staying here, even if it’s just for a moment, forget about that… Tilla?”

“How is it? Am I pretty?”

Receiving Gi-jun’s gaze, Tilla gently lifted the hem of her skirt with both hands and spun around on the spot.

The red hakama fluttering in the wind was beautiful, matching her red hair exceptionally well.

“I borrowed it from the shrine maidens. Because it seemed like you cared, Jun… How is it?”

“You look pretty.”

“Ah—I’m so happy! So much!”

With a broad smile on her face, Tilla walked over lightly and sat down next to Gi-jun.

“When I asked, they said the god enshrined in this temple… no, shrine, also symbolizes abundance. Since a seed is a life that sleeps in the earth all winter and blooms again when spring comes.”

“Meanings are always made to fit.”

“So they said this land is also effective for fertility.”

Tilla’s gaze as she looked at Gi-jun grew strangely sticky.

Just as Gi-jun tensed slightly, recalling the time they had once drunk together, her hand reached out without fail and grabbed his hand.

“I was planning to yield the first child to Beatrice, but… now that the conditions are so well-established, I feel a little like cutting in line.”

“Just what on earth is going on inside your head, Tilla?”

Gi-jun, who easily pulled his hand out, gave Tilla a flick on the forehead.

Although he had heard from Lucy during their previous conversation not to treat her too harshly, he couldn’t help it if Tilla suddenly accelerated like this.

Wouldn’t it be better to tell her clearly before she became any more serious and ended up getting hurt even worse…?

“I’m sorry, Tilla. I already have someone I like very much, so I can’t accept your feelings.”

“That’s nothing new. If your heart isn’t ready yet, won’t you accept my body first?”

“No, wait.”

A casual response returned, making him wonder what all of Gi-jun’s agony over trying not to hurt her until now was for.

Gi-jun pushed Tilla away with all his might, resisting as she closed the distance without caring about the rejection.

“I absolutely cannot keep up with your view on love, Tilla!”

“Once we join our bodies first, won’t we naturally understand each other’s hearts? Jun, you’re a strong person who leads a pack. You don’t need to cling to only one person. Rather, it’s to the point where I don’t understand why you insist on such a strange stubbornness.”

Normally, whenever she came on so actively like this, Lucy would immediately subdue her, but unfortunately, Lucy was currently doing other work at Gi-jun’s request.

No, it was clear that Tilla had detected Lucy’s absence from the beginning and made her bold approach!

“I don’t mean to burden you, Jun. You’re lonely without Beatrice too, aren’t you? I’m satisfied just to fill her empty space a little.”

“Stop saying things that only the other woman in a morning soap opera would say!”

“Phew, why on earth is this man so stubborn?”

Gi-jun, who panted heavily after barely managing to shake Tilla off.

She sighed, twirling her hair, which was tied to one side, around her finger.

“Though that makes me like you even more… You care about Beatrice that deeply, huh?”

“Why are you doing this when you already know?”

“I wanted to win Jun over by my own power if possible, though.”

“It’s not like I’m Frau Eva…”

In the novel Demian by the great writer and artist Hermann Hesse, Demian’s mother, Frau Eva, noticed the feelings of the boy Sinclair, who felt love for her, and told him.

Love was not something to entreat, nor to demand, nor to be offered like a gift.

That it was something one must attract and win over on one’s own.

Although it was a passage that had left a very deep impression on him when he first read the novel, thinking about it now, he also felt it might have just been a roundabout way of saying, ‘Know your place, kid.’

“But I guess it won’t work after all. It seems breaking Jun’s preconceptions is not my role.”

“I’d prefer it if you called it pure love, though.”

“I’ll have to persuade Beatrice as planned in the first place.”

“Eh?”

Before Gi-jun, who was relieved that Tilla seemed to have finally accepted it and backed down, she suddenly dropped a bombshell.

“That shameless woman is holding onto you so you can’t even budge, even though she can’t even stay by your side all the time.”

“Don’t pretend to be considerate of me. You just want to unleash your own desires.”

“Hehe, how did you know?”

Giggling, Tilla let her body fall directly toward Gi-jun.

Because she would have hit her head on the floor if he didn’t catch her, he had no choice but to support her, and she smiled brightly as she lay down using Gi-jun’s lap as a pillow as if she had known he would.

“Still, I like Jun so much for catching me instead of hating me.”

“I think you’re deeply infatuated, Tilla. This isn’t something a party leader should say, but the world is wide and there are plenty of good men.”

“Jun, just who are you discussing the world in front of?”

Tilla, who spoke with narrowed eyes and a smile.

Gi-jun, who could not bring himself to refute her, let out a groan and surrendered.

“Yeah, I misspoke.”

“Yeah, as long as you know. Jun, you are the best man I barely managed to find. I’m going to settle down with you. Even if I have to use my power as a hostage.”

“At that level, you’re a cute hostage-taker.”

The two of them thus sat quietly on the veranda for a while, enjoying their rest as they felt the blowing wind.

Then, Tilla suddenly spoke.

“There is definitely something.”

“Of course there’d be something. A barrier of this scale isn’t ordinary.”

“Yeah, everything is suspicious, but the most suspicious thing is that. The barrier’s ability.”

“Hey, that tickles.”

Tilla reached out toward Gi-jun’s firm abdomen and fiddled with his abs for no reason as she continued speaking.

“I mean, its performance is ridiculously outstanding. Just completely isolating a certain space from the continent of Leta is amazing, but even maintaining it for this long. No matter how great a holy relic is, that makes no sense.”

“Can’t we just think of it as a degraded version of Valahia?”

“Valahia is grand in scale, but it’s not as closed off as this place. There are ways to infiltrate it from the outside. But here… as you’ve probably noticed too, Jun, the flow of time is probably different from the outside as well.”

The flow of time.

It was something Lucy had also mentioned.

“How is the barrier being maintained…? If we can just find that answer, we might be able to escape this place, Jun.”

“In the end, that sounds like you’re saying you’ll destroy the barrier.”

“There’s a high probability it will. Although we can’t hastily approach the holy relic right now when we know nothing.”

Where did the person who said his will was her will go?

However, Tilla’s serious eyes looking up at him kept Gi-jun from easily speaking.

“Don’t trust that person named Kurenai.”

“Did you deliberately pretend to follow my words blindly to deceive her?”

Tilla, nodding in affirmation, spat out as if chewing on her words.

“The gaze she cast at you was unpleasant. The gaze of a hunter looking at their prey.”

“That’s similar to the way you look at me…”

“It is a gaze I have received a lot.”

Cutting off Gi-jun’s joke, she continued her words.

“The gaze of a Civilization Hunter, I mean.”

“She’s weaker than me.”

“But she’s the owner of this barrier.”

“You mean she might use some trick?”

“Of course, I don’t think that would work on Jun. After all, you easily bounced back even the Lord of Thorns’ authority. But.”

Wrapping both hands around his waist and burying her face in his chest, she quietly whispered.

“Including Kurenai… I just hope you don’t give too much of your heart to these people. Because it hurts when you are betrayed.”

“People like them?”

“Huh?”

Tilla, who pulled away from Gi-jun’s embrace, looked in the direction his finger was pointing.

Not knowing since when she had been there, a shrine maiden holding a broom was staring at the two of them with a face so red that one would believe she was sisters with a tomato.

Somehow he thought it was a familiar face—sure enough, it was Renka, the shrine maiden who had first spoken to him in the village.

“I-I didn’t see anything! Please continue what you were doing!”

The girl, who had not yet completely shed her young appearance, was so flustered that she even threw down her broom and backed away while shouting, before completely disappearing from sight.

However, Gi-jun saw a small paper doll rising up from the spot where she had disappeared.

That was also something he had seen a lot somewhere… Right, it was a Shikigami controlled by Onmyouji.

It was not particularly surprising.

‘A shrine maiden even wields a Japanese sword, so there is no reason she cannot handle a Shikigami.’

While thinking that Eun-shin would like it if he saw that, he soon realized that the girl had not yet given up on peeping at the two of them from the way the Shikigami climbed a nearby tree, hid among the leaves, and stealthily poked its head out.

“Fufu, now that we have an audience, how about some more intense skinship—ouch.”

“That’s enough.”

Tilla, who got headbutted on the forehead instead of her lips after puckering them up toward Gi-jun, pouted.

“It’s not like my lips will wear out from a single kiss… Can’t you just kiss me once?”

“Tilla, polite speech really doesn’t suit you.”

Actually, her tone, which was different from usual, was quite cute, so he almost gave in, but.

Since he could not let her abuse such a dangerous technique in the future, he hastily attempted to seal it.

“Shin advised me to try using polite speech when acting cute, though.”

“Got it. You are telling me to beat him up.”

―Fireball! Get away from our contractor right now!

“Tch.”

Just then, at the perfect timing, Lucy returned to Gi-jun’s side.

Lucy, who somewhat forcefully pushed away Tilla as she sighed that the good times were all gone, landed on Gi-jun’s palm and reported.

―Contractor, it’s certain. There are absolutely no traces of people outside. No monsters either, and although there are some animals like wild boars, they are at a level that even the weakest shrine maiden in this village could easily handle. Naturally, there are no dangerous mountains where one might slip and fall. Do you understand what this means?

“Yeah.”

―If the shrine maiden named Sakura really disappeared, the answer is one of two things. Either she left the barrier on her own.

“Or she died inside here.”

Having obtained the answer, Gi-jun let out a deep sigh.

Although he had hoped otherwise, as expected, this shrine seemed to have quite a few shady aspects.

What should he do then? Since they did not even know how the shrine maiden died right now, it would be meaningless to question Kurenai with this information.

―I don’t think there will be any big changes right away. Since there’s no rush anyway, how about we wait for a month as they suggested? In the meantime, I will dig up as many of the secrets they are hiding as possible.

“Yeah, since there’s no rush…”

It was just that the vacation he would have spent in Uralta had changed slightly to a vacation spent at a shrine.

Except for the fact that an unidentified discomfort lurked behind this, this place was a peaceful rural village, paradise itself, which was hard to find in Leta.

Deciding that this much rest was enough and thinking of dueling again, Gi-jun, who was standing up, stopped in his tracks at a sudden sense of incongruity.

“Where did Lora and Eun-shin go?”

“Lora said she was curious about the swordsmanship the shrine maidens used and seemed to want to train together.”

―That idiot was just chasing after the shrine maidens.

“…Both of them are fully enjoying their vacation.”

An impulse welled up to tell Ji-hye what Eun-shin was doing, but he suppressed it, thinking that doing so would truly put an end to the guy’s one-sided love.

Still, now that he thought of it, he decided to send a message to the people who would be worrying about them outside, including Ye-min, to let them know they were safe.

“Jun, are you trying to Letok? Earlier, Eun-shin despaired, saying communication with the outside didn’t work.”

“Does this barrier even block that? That’s really amazing…”

Gi-jun, who was nodding in agreement with Tilla’s words that flew in while he was pulling out his Letaphone to Letok, soon widened his eyes.

“No, then this isn’t the time to be leisurely enjoying a vacation here. How worried must the people outside, including Unika, be… Huh?”

“What’s wrong, Jun? Are you going to go kill them right away after all?”

“But Letok works.”

“…Huh?”

* * *

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): What? A space completely independent from Leta?]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Just how on earth do you manage to experience only the things that a summoner would find hard to go through even once, every single time?]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Wait a minute, then you can’t even send me my food?]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): That is the hope of my life! Tear that barrier apart and get out of there right now!]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): …Are you going easy on her because that woman is pretty? Tell me the truth.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Hold on, how are you even sending Letok then?]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Ah, right. It’s not like it’s the first or second time I’ve been surprised by your unique skill.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): There is no need to worry about not being able to get out, then. If worst comes to worst, fully charge the holy relic with mana to create a Unique Territory. Then, it will probably clash with that barrier and destroy it. In terms of compatibility, you are at an overwhelming advantage.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Aha, so that’s why you said a month at most.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Junnie, send a set of that shrine maiden outfit to me too.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): Just send it if I tell you to! Send it while I’m offering to wear it!]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Waiting Room): (This message has been deleted.)]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): Still, they are really strange.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): If they really think they’re going to lose… it is the worst method, but they could just seek asylum by becoming NPCs.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): Ahaha, though it is not my place to say since I am suffering quite a bit due to my choice back then.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): But well, since I also gained something thanks to that.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): Like meeting you, too.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): Don’t misunderstand.]

[Biche♥(Dimensional Rift): Because I am purely telling you that I am glad you came to me.]