Chapter 51: The Bird in the Mockery (1)

“Um… Sir Yubin?”

As we were preparing to leave the campsite after breakfast, Lily suddenly came up to me.

“There's one thing I'd like to ask of you…”

Lily, who said this, kept fidgeting with her clasped hands as if she couldn't easily bring it up.

“…Don't tell me, you want to drink again?”

“What? N-No!”

When I asked, making a guess, Lily hastily waved her hands.

“Thanks to you filling me up last night, I should be fine for a while. …A-And, probably.”

Then, as if embarrassed, she trailed off and slyly averted her gaze.

“Then what's the favor…?”

Lily, who had been fidgeting, soon gathered her courage, looked at me again, and said as if shouting.

“W-Would you, by any chance, let me do your hair!”

“…Huh? My hair?”

When I asked back, slightly flustered by the completely unexpected request, Lily nodded her head once, and this time, she fiddled with her fingertips that were touching each other.

“Ever since I first saw you, Sir Yubin, I thought your hair was very beautiful.”

Then she made a sudden confession.

“So I thought, I'd like to style it just once….”

“Aah.”

So that's what it was.

“Yup, that makes sense.”

Whose hair is it, after all?

Pleased with Lily's compliment, I unnecessarily swept my hair back with a swish for her to see.

“You know your stuff, don't you?”

“Actually… doing hair is my hobby.”

Now that I think about it, I think there was a setting like that.

“But as a cleric, I always had to maintain a chaste appearance… and I couldn't take off my veil…”

“So you were satisfied by styling other people's hair instead?”

Lily nodded her head with a face that seemed happy to be understood.

“I mostly styled the hair of the children the church took care of. Sometimes the women of the village would ask me to do it too.”

I wonder if it's a similar feeling to dressing up dolls.

“You must have been good at it.”

Lily, as if embarrassed, giggled and scratched her cheek.

“Of course. I’d love that.”

“…! R-Really!”

Then, hearing my answer, her face lit up with joy.

“I'll make it look pretty for you!”

Saying I would never regret it, Lily came behind me in the blink of an eye.

It was a speed that almost seemed to say, ‘When did you ever get the illusion that I was in front of you?’.

If she had been an assassin, she would have surely taken my head.

Of course, what Lily took was my hair and the humming she seemed to have started singing out of excitement, without realizing it.

And so Lily began to fix my hair, but.

“…Ah.”

Not long after, Lily's hand suddenly stopped.

Not just her hand, but even the humming she had been humming in excitement stopped.

So when I glanced back, she was frozen like a broken machine, with my hair slightly lifted to be combed.

With a face that had completely turned into a beet.

Lily's eyes were fixed on the nape of my neck, which had naturally been exposed as my hair was lifted.

So much so that she didn't even notice my gaze turning back to her.

To be precise, on the mark that was clearly left on the nape of my neck.

It seemed that seeing that mark had made her recall last night's events.

“Lily?”

At that, when I deliberately feigned ignorance and called her, Lily flinched and hastily looked away from the nape of my neck.

“I-I'll comb it for you first.”

Then she began to carefully comb my hair again.

“What’s that?”

“Hmph.”

At Ibi's question, I puffed out my chest with a triumphant smile.

“Lily braided it. Isn’t it great?”

Then I lightly swished my pigtails to show them off.

“W-Well, the original canvas was so great….”

At that, Lily, from behind me, humbly demurred like an artist presenting their work to the world for the first time.

But from what I had checked in the mirror, Lily's work was worthy of being called a masterpiece.

It was like the final puzzle piece that elevated my already attractive appearance to another level.

It was to a level where I was seriously worried that my mask might not be able to withstand my overflowing charm and break.

“Huhu, feel free to look and be amazed. No, be amazed.”

No, just give me a standing ovation.

“Ah, yes……”

“Waah──”

Unlike Ibi, who was pretending not to be interested, perhaps because she was embarrassed to admit it, Miki's eyes sparkled as soon as he saw my new style.

“──I-It suits you very well, Teacher Yubin!”

And he really sent an enthusiastic ovation.

“As expected of Sir Yubin. It suits you well.”

Next to him, Rine also sent a seal-like applause.

Although it looked like a soulless tone and gesture, by Rine's standards, it was surely the highest praise.

“Right?”

Excited by the two's ovations, I slightly lifted the ends of my pigtails.

Then, to give Ibi, who had not yet revealed her true feelings, one more chance, I stared at her and waited for her reaction.

Though all I got back was a look that said, ‘what do you want from me’.

So dishonest, Well, even if it's not this time, she'll be given a chance to be honest every day from now on.

Because not just this once, but I had already agreed with Lily to have her style my hair every morning from now on.

It's convenient for me since I don't have to manage it myself, and it's good for Lily since she can touch my hair to her heart's content as she wished.

It's a win-win, right?

As for the style, I decided to leave it entirely up to Lily to decide as she pleased each day.

─ R-Really?

Really, really?!

─ Yup.

Really.

─ Th-Th-Then, crown braids too?

Buns?

Dumplings?

Rolls?

Goddess hair?!

(Gulp) M-Maybe… even the World Tree hair!?

─ Yup.

Anything is fine.

I honestly had no idea what the last one would be.

─ He-Hehe… Ehehe…

Perhaps lost in a reverie of the glorious days of being able to fix my hair every morning, Lily couldn't hide her excitement and kept laughing.

─ Th-This isn't a lie… is it?!

─ It’s not.

And yet, as if she still couldn't believe it, she asked again, but.

─ I’ll leave it all to you.

─ …Waah!

My decision would not change.

Of course, since there is no hairstyle in the world that would not suit me.

I could pull off any bold style.

Because I'm a face genius.

“So? Don't tell me you called us all here just to show off your new hairstyle?”

“Huh? Ah, yup.”

“Haa……”

* * *

Actually, it wasn't that I had no other business at all.

“I’ve changed the plan.”

Just like my hairstyle, our situation had also changed.

“We were originally going to go straight to Daian, right?”

I still had a lot to brag about my new style, but since I had done it to some extent, and to also report on our future schedule, I first spread out the map.

“But, I was thinking of stopping by a dungeon before that.”

Thanks to Lily, the supplies we were able to get from Sista Village were more than I had thought, so I had come to the conclusion that we could take a detour for a few more days.

As for the problem of rest, with sufficient supplies and Lily's [Cooking] skill, the rest at the campsite was almost on par with the rest at an inn in a city, in terms of the buffs we could get.

Most importantly, I was able to satisfy Lily's ‘hunger’ much earlier than expected and bring her to a complete state.

“Here. It’s not far from where we are now.”

So there was no reason to waste time by going back and forth.

“──「The Windbird’s Nest」.”

If we cleared this place, we could get ‘wings’.

Both figuratively and literally.

The original name of the ‘wings’ was 「Aerial Maneuvering Gear」.

But since its appearance and use were just wings, everyone, both inside and outside the game, called it ‘wings’ for convenience.

As befits a city of wind, it's a necessary item in the area around Daian, where wind is used as the main gimmick.

And it would be useful in many ways in the future, not just in Daian.

That's why, originally, we had to first arrive in Daian and learn that you needed to be able to ride the wind in this area, but it was impossible without ‘wings’, and so, when we went to see the meister who would make the ‘wings’, they would tell us to first prove that we could withstand the wind, and most importantly, to secure the main material for the wings, the windbird's feathers, we had to clear the 「The Windbird’s Nest」 first, and so on and so forth… we had to go through that process.

But as I said before, it's a hassle.

We can just raid the nest in advance, pull out a bunch of feathers, and then tell them to just hand over the ‘wings’ without any backtalk.

“A windbird, you say…”

Just then, Miki, who had stroked his chin as if lost in thought, began to roll his die.

“I've read about it in a book before.”

Miki, who had thus succeeded in the [Environment] check, immediately began to recite the habits of the windbird that he had recalled.

“Because it flies as fast as the wind, it's very difficult to even approach, and when you do approach, it creates a strong wind just by flapping its wings and blows the opponent far away.”

“Well, there's nothing more to explain.”

He had said all the key information we needed to know before going to hunt the windbird.

“Literally, it's a ‘bird’ that disappears in the ‘blink of an eye’.”

At that moment.

“──Huhu.”

A small laugh escaped.

“……?”

At the same time, everyone's eyes, except for the owner of the laughter, widened.

Including me, of course.

“You…”

And then those widened eyes all turned to one place.

“Did you just… laugh…?”

To the still-expressionless… Rine.

It was unmistakable.

The one who had just laughed was Rine.

“Yes? Ah, yes. It seems so.”

As you can see from how she coolly admitted it after briefly reflecting on her action.

“I understood the wordplay using the fact that the bird of a blink of an eye and the bird of a windbird have the same pronunciation, and I found it amusing, so I seem to have laughed inadvertently.”

Then she tilted her head as if our reaction was strange.

“What’s with everyone?”

Honestly, I didn't even mean to be funny.

It was just a pun that came to mind without any particular meaning.

No, really.

Who would try to be funny with something like this?

“What do you mean, what's with us, of course…”

Ibi trailed off, unable to continue.

Her eyes were still filled with disbelief.

Even though it wasn't a big difference, besides me, Ibi had watched Rine the longest among us.

So she was all the more surprised.

Even Lily, who had just met her, had that kind of reaction, so how would Ibi, who had seen her expressionless face all this time, feel?

Just now, Rine hadn't just laughed for the first time.

In fact, for the first time, she had shown her ‘emotion’.

“……At something like this?”

Perhaps that's why she seemed very dumbfounded that the cause was ‘something like this’.

…Well.

If you think about it, Rine is an ‘old-timer’.

So she might be weak to this kind of… so-called ‘old-fashioned gag’.

“Well, no matter how fast it is, you don't need to worry just yet. It's not as ‘severe’ as you think, so you can ‘rest assured’.”

“Huh?”

“But I can't tell you to ‘endure’ the wind created by its flapping wings ‘for a while’.”

“Stop it, you crazy bastard.”

“Ah.”

I got greedy and tried to see Rine laugh again, but I ended up getting hit on the back of the head.

But since the fault in this case was entirely mine, it’s okay.

Ahem.

After clearing my throat once, I looked at my companions again and said.

“Anyway. In short, to catch a windbird, we can’t use the method of ‘chasing’ them.”

So, first, we had to make them ‘chase’ us.

To put it more simply, ‘chase’.

“…What? Why are you laughing at me again?”