It was the twelfth month of the year, which in Canarre meant it was the height of summer. Me and the retainers of House Louvent had chosen to take advantage of the weather by paying a visit to a river that ran near the city.
The war with Seitz was over, and Purledo and Kuat had been occupied by Missian forces. That meant that the fighting had ended and we’d been able to return to Canarre, only for things to get busy in a whole different sort of way. Kuat and Purledo had proven difficult to rule over following their occupation, and Couran had requested that I dispatch some of my retainers to help─a request that I’d been obligated to acquiesce to, in spite of my reluctance. As a result, we’d found ourselves at a lack of helping hands in Canarre, and a mountain of work began to amass that the count─which is to say, I─would have to handle personally.
Unfortunately, in this world, there was no such thing as an air conditioner. If it was hot, you just had to suffer through it and do your job in a puddle of your own sweat. That was what had inspired the river trip: everyone was so worn out from the heat that they hadn’t been able to work efficiently, and a trip to the river to refresh ourselves would be just the thing to get us back into tip-top shape. It was working, too. Just standing by the beautiful, crystal clear water was already making me feel a little cooler.
“It’s so refreshing here, isn’t it?” Licia commented. She was the one who’d proposed that we take a little trip to get ourselves back into the swing of things.
Rietz, Charlotte, Rosell, Musia, Wren, and Kreiz had all come with─in fact, just about everyone in the usual Castle Canarre crowd had tagged along. Well, everyone except for Mireille and the others who were away from the castle, of course.
“Does that water look great, or what? Let’s jump in!” Charlotte said before, without any warning whatsoever, starting to strip her clothes off.
“Wh-What are you thinking, Miss Charlotte?! Stop!” Musia yelped, diving forward to stop her.
“What? It’s fine! I’ve got a swimsuit on underneath!” Charlotte replied. She ignored Musia’s protests and peeled the rest of her outfit off…revealing that she had, in fact, been wearing a bathing suit beneath her clothes.
Swimsuits in this world were like those back on earth in the sense that they were quite revealing, and Charlotte’s put her ample bosom on very prominent display. I couldn’t help but stare, in spite of myself. Her proportions were just plain unreasonable.
“Oh, Ars…?” a voice rang out from behind me, and a shiver ran down my spine. Licia was staring at me, and the look in her eyes was cold as ice.
“Y-Yes…?” I said, tearing my gaze away from Charlotte as quickly as possible. “O-Oh, right─we should change into our swimsuits too,” I followed up before she could say anything.
I headed off to get changed with the other men, while the girls went in a different direction to do the same.
“Is this really a good idea? I can’t swim… I might drown if something goes wrong,” Rosell muttered anxiously.
“You’ll be fine if you stick to the shallows. They’re not deep enough to make you swim at all,” I said.
“Even the shallows of a river like this are a little scary… Can you swim, Ars?” Rosell asked.
“I can, yeah. I’ve actually always been pretty good at it.”
“O-Oh, really? That’s amazing!” Rosell said, sounding rather surprised.
The truth was that I’d actually learned how to swim in my previous life. I remembered being a pretty fast swimmer, too─not the fastest in my grade, or anything, but toward the upper end of average. I hadn’t swam much at all since I was reincarnated, though. This wasn’t the first time I’d gone out to play in a river like this, but since swimming in rivers could be dangerous, I had yet to try to do so. Water was a valuable resource, so pools weren’t a thing, which meant there weren’t many other opportunities to swim on the whole. Apparently, it was common for people to swim on a daily basis when summer came around in regions close to a lake or a beach, though. Places like that were where swimsuits had originated, supposedly.
“How about you, Rietz? Can you swim?” I asked.
“I’m fairly good at it, yes. I used to catch fish by hand in the rivers from time to time, and I polished my skills then,” Rietz replied.
“O-Oh! I, uh, I see.”
He caught fish by hand? Considering how dangerous that would be to do in a river, he must have been literally starving.
“Big Brother, Rietz, I wanna learn how to swim, too! Teach me!” Kreiz excitedly insisted.
“Swimming in rivers is dangerous, Kreiz. Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until you’re a little older,” I replied.
“Booo,” Kreiz huffed with a sullen pout.
We finished getting changed, then headed back to the riverside. A short while later, the ladies finished changing and arrived at the river as well, all wearing their swimsuits. Licia’s was modest in terms of exposure─a frilly, light pink bathing suit that fit her perfectly. She looked adorable.
“W-Well? How do I look, Ars?” Licia noticed my stare and nervously asked for my opinion.
“You look great! I mean, you look really cute in it,” I said. A look of shock flashed across Licia’s face as she let out a gasp, turning beet red a moment later.
Before long, we’d all made our way into the water. Even though it was midsummer, the river was nice and cool.
“All right, let’s do some swimming!” Charlotte said before marching off toward the river’s deeper reaches.
“W-Wait! That’s dangerous!” Musia shouted.
Charlotte, however, paid her no mind. She headed deeper and deeper into the river, and eventually started swimming. I was worried the current might sweep her away, but instead she slipped right through it, swimming swiftly and skillfully. She must have had a lot of experience in the water, judging by how good at it she was.
“I suppose we don’t have to worry about her, then,” Rietz commented. I had to agree─it wasn’t unheard of for rivers to surge without warning, but knowing Charlotte, she’d come swimming right back to us like nothing had happened no matter how fast it ended up running.
“Oh! Is that what I think it is…?” Rietz muttered as he peered into the river’s depths.
An oddly serious look came across his face as he moved deeper into the river. He took a few steps, came to a stop, then thrust his hand down toward the riverbed in one swift motion. A moment later he pulled it out again, holding some sort of squirming, thrashing creature clutched in his grip. Its skin was a light blue, and at a glance, it looked a little like an eel.
“Th-That’s a sapat!” Rosell yelped the moment he caught a glimpse of the creature Rietz had caught.
“A sapat? Is that the species’ name?” I asked. I’d never heard of them before.
“Yeah! It’s a pretty rare type of fish that lives in rivers. I didn’t know there were any in this one, though!”
“Sapats may look a little strange, but they’re tastier than you’d expect,” Rietz explained as he dropped the sapat into a bucket he happened to have on hand.
“I-It certainly is squirming, isn’t it…? Are you certain they taste good…?” Licia asked. It looked like the sapat wasn’t appetizing, by her standards.
I took a closer look at the creature as well. The more I inspected it, the more like an eel it seemed to me. It was a little bigger than the eels that I knew, though, which I suspected meant it would be quite fatty. Eel had been one of my favorite foods in my last life, and while I knew that sapat might taste different from the eels I’d eaten before, if they were similar, then they would indeed be delicious.
“I just can’t believe you caught that thing,” said Rosell. “Sapat are supposed to be slimy and hard to grab.”
“There’s a trick to it… Ah, look, there’s another! We’re in luck today!” Rietz shouted, then snatched up the second sapat as well.
“Oh, wow, is that a sapat? Those are so rare! Two of them, even?!” exclaimed Musia, who was apparently already familiar with the creatures. I turned to look and found her holding a fishing rod.
“Were you about to go fishing?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, I was! I’ve always liked fishing from time to time, and since we were going to a river, I thought this would be a good chance.”
Musia had been a commoner before she entered House Louvent’s service, so that made sense. It seemed like the sort of hobby a townsperson would have.