Vermillion

She had a fun night, huh?

Little birds were chirping outside.

Kei was woken up by the morning light spilling into the room through the window.

His consciousness was murky, making it hard for him to tell whether it was morning or noon, coupled with the sense of fatigue that usually accompanied waking up. His left arm was strangely numb, and he could barely feel it. As he tried to turn over while still half-conscious, he realized that something was clinging to a side of his body.

Something very soft and warm…

Heaving his sleepy eyes in that direction, he was met with sparkling blue eyes. Aileen was observing him with a big, bright smile while resting her head on his left arm.

“…Morning.”

She shyly averted her eyes, her cheeks faintly red. Seeing her so bashful, yesterday’s events vividly revived in Kei’s mind. Ah, right, yesterday we slept with each other. Such feelings filled his heart.

“…Good morning.”

Kei was unconsciously drawn into lifting the corners of his mouth. Aileen’s golden hair flowed down her bare shoulders visible underneath the blanket. As if lured in, he half-reflexively reached out for her cheek.

The pleasant, smooth sensation on his fingers fascinated him, making him wonder how humans of different genders could feel so differently.

Seeing her squint her eyes in pleasure, Kei succumbed to his newfound desire to tease her, and traced her skin from her back to her armpit with his finger. She squirmed and giggled sweetly due to the ticklish sensation, just to retaliate by leaping on top of Kei.

They continued to play around for some time, but since the sun had already risen quite high into the sky and as their stomachs and dry throats started to bother them, they decided to give it a rest and get up.

“By the way, are you alright?”

Kei asked while pulling over his hemp shirt. Aileen tilted her head in response, being in the middle of tying her hair while holding the hairband in her mouth.

“Whash?”

“I… I mean your body.”

“Yeah, no problems.”

Aileen answered quite indifferently at Kei’s somewhat insinuating question.

“…I see, that’s great.”

For both it was their first experience, so he was somewhat worried, but it turned out to be needless. Kei smiled, feeling a little let-down but at the same time relieved.

Having finished tying her ponytail, Aileen nimbly stretched on the bed. She looked the same as usual, aside from the fact of her being stark naked.

Suddenly…

Kei felt a strange sense of unease, fearing that everything might just have been one big illusion — both the Aileen before his eyes, her very existence, and all the events that transpired since he came to this world.

That he might actually still be submerged in the life-support tank and was merely dreaming about a girl he did not know and a healthy body he did not have.

Of course, this was just a delusion. A groundless, childish fear, where one would imagine how scary something would be.

This reminded Kei that he tended to stay up late during his childhood, fearing that the next time he opened his eyes there would be no one at his side.

Until now, his life had been full of ups and downs that only progressed towards the worse. For this reason, the gloomy thoughts, which had deeply seeped into his mind all the way down to his soul, tended to rear their head every now and then. Perhaps that was also proof that Kei’s life now was filled with enough happiness to lose his sense of reality.

“…Hmm? What’s wrong, Kei.”

While Kei was being absent-minded, Aileen crawled out of the blanket and peered into his face. Those sapphire eyes, which seemed to suck him in, were colored by a tinge of concern.

“No…”

Unconsciously, Kei extended a hand and embraced her shoulder, almost as if clinging to it. Aileen blinked in surprise, but quietly let him hold her.

“…What’s wrong?”

Eventually, she looked up to him while still in his arms.

Kei was about to tell her that it was nothing, but stopped himself.

“I suddenly felt anxious. Wondering whether all of this was a dream.” Kei answered as he separated from her, but Aileen frowned and instead wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer.

“Me too.” Aileen mumbled as she pressed her forehead against his chest. “Sometimes I’m anxious as well.”

“…I see.”

They tightly hugged once more as if to confirm each other’s presence.

It looked quite similar to how travelers shared their body head when stranded in the snowy mountains.

“…Thanks. I’m alright now.”

Eventually, Kei pulled away. He felt somewhat reluctant, embarrassed after calmly reconsidering things, and grateful towards the person in front of him. Because of this mix of emotions swirling within him, he averted his eyes while scratching his cheek. He wasn’t aware of it himself, but it was his habit to look diagonally upwards whenever he was feeling awkward or embarrassed.

“…Okay.” Having grasped Kei’s current state, Aileen limited it to a sweet smile.

She loved the way he seemed so honest and yet was not at the same time.

But the next moment, she knitted her brows and a suppressed sneeze escaped her lips.

“Whoops, you gonna catch a cold if you stay like that.”

Today was quite chilly for an early summer day. Aileen agreed with a laugh as Kei hurriedly pulled the blanket over. This naturally dispersed their own little world, but so did the gloomy atmosphere.

“…By the way, Aileen, what time is it now?”

“Who knows?”

As Kei was checking his wallet, Aileen who was in the middle of dressing stopped her hands and responded with a tilt of her head.

“When I woke up, the bell rang about nine times… But it’s already been like an hour since then.”

“Doesn’t it ring every three hours in this city?”

“Ah, I see.”

Aileen opened the wooden shutters and confirmed the position of the sun.

“…Looks like it’s past eleven.”

“Sounds about right.”

Kei wore his hemp shirt and cotton pants. Because it was cold today, he put on his long vest on top, and affixed the case of Dragon Stinger to his waist. Wearing such a regular city getup, he flicked the room key he was holding.

Aileen on the other hand wore her usual traveling outfit, namely the black “Ninja” suit as a base, a tunic and a leather vest on top. At her waist, she carried the short sword she bought in Satyna while leaving her saber and throwing knives locked away in the room’s chest.

“Okay, let’s wash up and then go grab something to eat.”

Before leaving, they carefully checked that the room was properly locked.

“…I gotta say, being unable to determine what time it is has turned out to be more stressful than I’d imagined.”

Aileen grumbled as they headed downstairs. They had no particular schedule, but modern people still wanted to know the time by nature.

“Not that we’re pressed for time, but I still wanna know.”

“Yeah. I want a clock… a clock…”

Kei couldn’t help but smile wryly at Aileen’s mumbling.

【DEMONDAL】

had a relatively high technological level, so it naturally included clocks as well. They came in all shapes and forms, starting from big ones like clock towers, to mechanical pocket watches, and even magic tools for measuring and displaying time.

Having said that, neither Kei nor Aileen had once used clocks during the game.

The reason was simple – the game menu screen, which could be called up at any time, displayed the time – both the real world time and the in-game time. It was extremely rare for players to actually need clocks as items, and they were basically used for cosplay when roleplaying, or when gifting them to NPCs.

Yes, be it mechanical or magical, clocks were extremely pricey, but there was a demand for them. Players hardly ever used them, but the NPCs highly appreciated them, to the point that handing them over as a gift would raise a NPC’s affection just as much as several hundred low-level quests would.

They were items aimed at high-level players to save them time with their character training. Kei, being both a big whale and a game addict, had used them many times. He remembered Aileen laughing at the clocks for being useless besides being an item for raising a NPC’s favorthem before about how useless they were otherwise, and could not quite suppress smiling in irony.

“I wonder can…we actually make a clock?” Kei muttered while washing his face in the courtyard.

Even if they were to ask Holland, it would cost them a lot to buy one. Thus, it would be best if they could make one themselves. He looked expectantly at Aileen while wiping his face with the towel from his belt.

“…That would be difficult.” Aileen, however, frowned as she answered with her arms folded.

“Even a magical one?”

“There are several problems. First, I don’t know the details on how it’s made. Next, catalysts are precious and hard to obtain. And finally, even if I could make one, I could probably only use it at night via Kerstin.”

“…Hmm.”

“Actually, I think something can be done about the construction if we use spell bestowal. In this world, Kerstin is more flexible so there’s no need for complicated scripting, and if luck’s on our side, we might find the catalyst too. But still…”

“We could only use it once the sun is down, huh? That sure would be a pain.”

Then again, perhaps there would be some demand for it if they explained it was just for night duty.

“Actually, wouldn’t Civ be the better option? She’s a mid-rank spirit too.”

“I have a rough idea on the spell formula, but I just can’t imagine how a wind spirit clock is supposed to work… Plus my magic power probably won’t be enough either.”

“It wouldn’t be funny if you withered to death after making a clock.”

Aileen smiled wryly at Kei who looked downcast. In the end, they reached the conclusion that it would be easier to save up the money and just buy a clock.

Aileen said she was going to the restroom, so Kei went ahead to the dining room on the first floor. The rich smell of an onion-based soup tickled his nose. The dining room, lined up with round tables, had no customers right now, probably because it was an unusual time period for dining.

“Oh, good morning. Would you like a meal?” A young woman stopped wiping the table she had been working on as he stepped inside the room.

It was the light brown-skinned beauty who had welcomed them yesterday. Behind the counter was the dwarfish man who silently poured alcohol from a barrel into a jar. It appeared that this tavern was mostly run by these two.

“Yeah. I’d like a simple lunch for two, and also some water.”

“Simple, you say? How about a panini with cheese and ham?”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay, please wait a moment.”

Once Kei ordered as he reached a table, the woman winked at him, headed to the back, and quickly returned with a pitcher and wooden goblets in hand.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

She handed him a goblet filled with water. Giving her a short thanks, he drained it in one go, satisfying his thirst. Emptying one cup, he reached for the pitcher to refill his goblet. Seeing how Kei was rehydrating himself, the woman suddenly smiled meaningfully and spoke.

“It looks like you had quite some fun last night.”

“Pfft!”

Kei spurted water out through his nostrils.

“W-What are you-!?”

“What, you ask? We have quite thin floorboards here, you see.”

While Kei was choking on water, the woman put her elbow on the table and drew closer.

“Hey, hey, mister. How did you meet that blonde girl? A Grasslander-Snowlander couple sounds so romantic.”

She was peering into Kei’s face with a fascinated expression, her eyes gleaming with curiosity. Once Kei had coughed the water away and recovered from her surprise attack, he pulled his body and chair away from her.

Topics related to their game days were still one of the things Kei wanted to avoid as much as possible. He needed to talk to Aileen about it to get their “setting” aligned.

As he was thinking about that, he spoke up, trying to make up something for now, “…There’s nothing particularly noteworthy. We met in a tavern in a certain town a few years ago and have been together ever since.”

“Oh really?”

She grinned while tracing the table with her finger, like a chess player thinking about their next move.

“So, which tavern was it?”

“It’s located in a distant area, way too far away from here.”

“…I see. Incidentally, I heard something about a Grassland hunter traveling with a Snowland princess who took down a Grande Urs in a southern village. Does that ring any bells?”

“…Who knows?”

She has sharp ears for rumors, Kei thought while giving an indifferent reply. The woman pouted at his response, and was about to press even further.

“Jamie, give it a rest already!”

A hearty smacking sound could be heard alongside that husky voice.

With an unsexy and unladylike yelp, the woman jumped up.

“Ooouch! What was that fooor!?”

“Don’t ask as if you don’t know! If you’ve got time to hunt men, use it to work instead, you fucking bitch!”

The dwarfish man, who had approached them from the counter unnoticed, raised the tray that he held as he barked at the teary-eyed woman, Jamie, who was rubbing her butt. Apparently he had smacked that place with the tray.

“I’m just trying to deepen my friendship with our customers here!”

“Shut your trap! If you keep whining, I’ll fucking sell you off to some brothel!”

“Eeek, forgive meee!”

She tried to fight back, but the dwarfish man’s threatening attitude made her scurry away at full speed, rushing back to the kitchen behind the counter with her skirt fluttering.

“Hah…” The man sighed and this time looked down at Kei.

Kei’s expression cramped up, thinking he had been dragged into their quarrel, but the man simply put the plate he held in his left hand on the table with a, “Here you go”.

On the plate, there was a panini with melted cheese leaking through the dough.

“Goodness, that woman… The moment I let my eyes off her, she gets absorbed in gossip.”

“…Eh, doesn’t that work perfectly for this business?”

“It does, but being overly friendly isn’t good either. She does have good looks if nothing else. Because of that, some people tend to misunderstand. It happened just the other day as well… Naturally, I sent them flying…”

He seemed to be recalling something as he was glaring at the empty space and baring his teeth like an angry stray dog.

“S-Still, selling her off to a brothel sounds pretty concerning.”

The man snorted in response to Kei’s comment, who was wincing away from the dwarf’s scary aura.

“Hmph. When I picked her up, she was still small and had some charm to her. But recently she’s discovered her interest in love and sex, with just her body keeping growing pointlessly big…”

He grumbled while gesturing at the height of his waist. Picked her up — meant they were not related by blood. That said, despite his reproachful tone, his expression showed a mix of kindness and sorrow. In Kei’s eyes, he looked like a father that did not know how to handle his wild daughter.

“…Oh well. Is this all for your order?”

“Yeah.”

“Eight coppers.”

The man reverted to the curt manner of speaking he used before. Once Kei put the coins on the table, he thanked Kei, casually stuffed them into his apron pocket, and went back to the counter – with an awkward limping.

“Hey, sorry for the wait. What do we have here?”

Aileen passed the dwarf as she arrived at the dining room.

“Apparently panini with ham and cheese. It just arrived so it’s still piping hot.”

“Sounds nice! Let’s eat right away!” She quickly sat down at the table. “I’m digging in!”

While Kei observed her happily sinking her teeth into the panini, he also started on his early lunch.