Chapter 3:
Bubbles High Above
IT WAS JUST PAST NOON on our regular day off.
I was spacing out in the living room when I heard a pleased voice in the kitchen. “Noela! Look, look! Rainbow balls!”
“Garrooo!”
“Aw. When you touched them, you popped them!”
“Again, Mina! Again!”
I peeked into the kitchen, curious about what the girls were getting excited about. I spotted Mina and Noela at the sink, making suds with dish detergent.
“Rainbow balls”? And they pop when you touch them…? Ah, yeah, I see what they’re doing.
“Soap bubbles are fun, huh?” I called out.
Hearing my voice, the girls turned around, confused expressions on their faces. One after the other, they tilted their heads.
“Soap bubbles?”
“Boobles?”
“Uh… You’ve never heard of them?” Huh. Guess bubbles aren’t a thing in this world.
“Master can make?!” Noela asked with sparkling eyes, tugging my pants.
“Pretty easily, actually.”
“Pop?”
“If you touch them, yeah. They’re just bubbles, after all.” They were extremely fragile.
Unfortunately, Noela seemed deeply disappointed. “So, boobles tricky… Even for Master…”
I bet she’s never blown bubbles before. If I’m just going to hang out in the living room all day, why not have some fun?
“Okay, I know what we’ll do this afternoon,” I told them. “Leave it to me, fluffball.”
“Amazing, Master!” Noela said admiringly, wagging her soft tail back and forth.
“Are you going to make rainbow balls, Sir Reiji?”
Mina’s eyes are sparkling with excitement as well. I guess she’s never blown bubbles either. “That’s right. You’ll get a turn too, Mina. Just hold on a bit.”
“Absolutely!”
Shouldering the girls’ expectations, I gathered the necessary ingredients and holed up in the lab. Making liquid for bubbles that didn’t pop when touched wasn’t too hard, since it didn’t include anything special.
Bubble Liquid: Fluid required to blow sturdy bubbles.
Perfect. All I needed to do to blow bubbles was cut a small hole in the end of a straw.
“Let’s give this a try.” I put some bubble liquid on the straw and blew through it, toward the sky. Then…
Blup! Blup! Bluuuuup!
Just like that, several large, iridescent bubbles were floating in the lab.
“Mission accomplished,” I said to myself. How many years has it been since I last blew bubbles? Maybe not since I was a little kid…?
“Garrooooo! Look! Tons of boobles!”
Noela rushed through the lab door, wagging her tail. She must’ve been watching curiously the whole time. She poked one of the bubbles I’d blown.
“Whoa! Be careful,” I warned. “If you jab them hard like that, they’ll pop.”
Except they didn’t.
“Master! Amazing! No pop!” The bubble Noela had poked floated peacefully through the air and bounced into another one. Noela slapped it back with her tail. “Groo!”
Boing. Boing. The bubbles smacked against each other, drifting all over the place.
Whoa. They really aren’t bursting at all.
Mina came in to check on things. “Ah! You should’ve told me you finished!” she exclaimed, poking at the bubbles immediately.
“That’s not really how you’re supposed to play with bubbles, but…eh.”
Smirking, I locked on to a bubble floating in front of me. I bet it’ll pop if I do this…
I clapped my hands together as if I were killing a mosquito, but the bubble simply flattened and slid from my palms.
If these bubbles are that sturdy, no wonder they don’t burst when you touch them.
“Let’s head outside,” I suggested to Mina and Noela.
Carrying the bubble liquid and straw, I guided them out of the house.
“This is how you make bubbles.” I repeated the same thing I’d done with the straw and bubble liquid earlier, this time in front of the girls.
“Garooroooo! Tons of boobles all over!”
I handed Noela the straw. She blew into it quickly, producing a giant bubble.
“Dang! That’s huge.”
“Oh my! Look how big it is, Noela!”
As we watched from the ground, the bubble rode the wind high into the air, floating away.
You know, bubbles are fun, no matter how old you get. I nodded like some old fart.
Soon, Noela pulled on my sleeve. “Master! Want to ride one.”
“Er… Excuse me?”
“Then Noela can fly!”
“That’s impossible.”
Even if Noela got inside one of the super-sturdy bubbles, it was too fantastical to think it would still float through the air. Though…it feels awfully hypocritical considering things “fantastical,” since I live in a fantasy parallel world…but that’s not the point.
“I’m sure it’ll work!” Mina interjected, as if safeguarding a small child’s dream.
Noela herself was ignoring my uncertainty, so I agreed, “Let’s give it a shot, then.”
I poured bubble liquid into a cooking tray, twisting some wire into a “U” shape so we could blow an enormous bubble, and then dipped the wire in the liquid. “Ready, Noela?”
“Bring it!”
I raised the wire and swung it over Noela, enclosing her in a bubble from head to toe.
It’ll either burst or just dissolve. Or so I thought.
Noela hopped slightly off the ground, and the bubble’s edges joined fully under her feet. “Groo!”
“Amazing! Noela’s floating!” Mina cried.
“Isn’t there gravity inside that bubble? Th-this is unbelievable!” Or is the bubble liquid just that durable?
However, no matter how much Noela poked and prodded the bubble, it showed no sign of bursting. Still, I guessed that it would pop if she really ripped into it.
A gust of wind blew by, and Noela began floating through the air in her bubble.
“Bubbles certainly are amazing, Mr. Reiji!”
Er…I’m pretty sure they aren’t supposed to work like this. “Noela! That’s dangerous. Come back down!”
Unfortunately, she didn’t appear to hear me at all. Is that because she’s inside the bubble?
Mina and I simply watched Noela, smiles on our faces. Then another wind gusted, blowing her higher in the air and farther into the distance. Just how far will that bubble drift? I’m getting major balloon-floating-away vibes now.
“M-Mr. Reiji, er… Will Noela be all right?”
If that bubble popped, even Noela wouldn’t come away completely unscathed, as spry and athletic as she was. “Sh-she might not be,” I admitted. “Griffy!”
I headed to the stable where we kept our griffin, Griffy, so I could rush to Noela’s aid. Once I got on its back, we took off in a hurry. The bubble didn’t stand a chance of outflying us, considering the griffin’s incredible top speed.
Griffy and I aligned ourselves with the bubble.
“Noela! That’s dangerous! Get on Griffy.”
Having enjoyed her aerial outing to the fullest, Noela reached over to us. I grabbed her hand and sat her behind me as the huge bubble burst.
Whoa. That sure was something. Talk about an insanely tough bubble.
“Master! Noela flew!”
“It was more like you were sent flying.”
“One more booble! One more booble!”
“Not happening. It’s too dangerous. No more bubble-flying.”
“Groo?!”
“You’re not supposed to fly in those.”
I had Griffy descend, and Kirio Drugs came into view. Back on the ground, Mina had used a straw to blow a bunch of bubbles.
“That’s how you’re supposed to play with bubbles,” I told Noela.
“Aroo…” She seemed displeased. “Make flying treatment later, Master.”
“I can’t—” But my medicine-making skill reacted, explaining the ingredients and process to create such a product. “I guess I can make something like that…” Not that I will.
And so, I got Noela back home in one piece.
✦ ✦ ✦
I went on to sell the liquid as a product for making bubbles. At first, I had to explain what those even were, but once I did, they became instantly popular with kids.
Before putting the bubble liquid on sale, I made a point of watering it down a lot to ensure nobody else tried riding inside one.