Again, I sensed more staring and turned around again. Mina was putting a blindfold on Noela, glaring as if Paula and I were doing something salacious. “You mustn’t watch anymore, Noela!” she declared.
“Groo?”
“It may not be clear from there, but I’m just rubbing Paula’s shoulders,” I objected.
“Oh? I assumed you were touching all kinds of lascivious spots…!” Mina definitely jumped to a strange conclusion, but she giggled as if pretending she hadn’t.
“Don’t stop, Rei Rei!” Paula piped up. “Mmm…”
“Mina’s getting the wrong idea because you keep saying things like that.”
“Y-you mustn’t be so lewd, Mr. Reiji!” Mina cried, much to my embarrassment.
“I told you, I’m not!”
Removing the blindfold, Noela trotted to me. “Noela rub your shoulders too, Master.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Yeah. Heal Master!”
I felt tears welling up. Noela had grown so much! I wasn’t exactly stiff, but I accepted her offer anyway, pointing her toward the general areas I wanted massaged. “Go right ahead.”
“Groo. Got it!”
Grind! Creak! Grind!
“Ow, ow! Too hard!!!” I cried.
“Werewolves strong. No forget, Master.” I could only hear Noela’s voice, but it was easy to picture her proud expression.
It didn’t seem like she was going to let up on her own. I grabbed her hands myself. “Stop, Noela!”
“No feel good?”
Unlike Paula, Noela wasn’t bothering me on purpose, which made this especially hard to address. “When you massage someone’s shoulders, you really have to be careful how much strength you use,” I explained.
“Arroo… Difficult.” Noela’s ears drooped. She was so cute that I couldn’t help but give her a pat on the head.
“If you want to make him feel super good, Noela, you need to be gentle sometimes and rough other times,” Paula advised, although I’d never seen Paula rub anyone’s shoulders.
Mina came over, replacing the tool shop owner. “A-ahem! Might I request a shoulder rub as well, Mr. Reiji?”
Her shoulders are tight too? “Okay, sure.”
“Then I’ll massage yours, Rei Rei!”
“Noela rub Paula’s shoulders!” Noela volunteered to try the new task again.
Paula immediately shook her head, smiling. “I’m good, Noela. No worries.”
Noela tilted her head in confusion. Is Paula immune to her werewolf cuteness?!
I began rubbing Mina’s shoulders. They were incredibly firm, as if a metal plate were bolted to her shoulder blades and the base of her neck. “Your shoulders are really tight, Mina.”
“It’s embarrassing to admit, but they are…”
Why is that embarrassing?
Mina helped at the drugstore and handled all the chores around our house. She might’ve been a ghost, but she spent tons of time in a corporeal form, and apparently even she had issues with tense muscles. I kept massaging the knots in her shoulders hard.
“Mmmm,” Mina moaned.
“How do you feel, Mina?”
“Um…really good.” Her face was bright red.
What’s she so embarrassed about?
“Mina feel good?” Now Noela was checking for some reason.
“Yes…”
“Mina feel good, Master.”
“I know. I just asked.”
Meanwhile, Paula rubbed my shoulders. “You’re totally loose, Rei Rei.”
“My muscles don’t usually get tense.”
“What?! That’s not fair.” She gently smacked my back.
What was that for?
“Sometimes when my shoulders are really tense, I even get headaches, Rei Rei.”
“Oh, me too,” Mina agreed.
Really? Tight shoulders tended to cause headaches? That seemed extreme to me. “Out of curiosity, Noela, do your shoulders give you headaches?”
“No. Muscles never tight,” she told me proudly.
I figured. I wondered how many people struggled with this kind of thing. I was sure it depended on someone’s body type and so on, so it might’ve only been an issue for Paula and Mina. On the other hand, I remembered hearing that tense shoulders were an issue for women back on Earth too. I’d have to go ask people I knew.
Leaving the drugstore to Mina, I took Noela to town with me. We ran into Zeral and Feris right off the bat. They seemed to be on a date, but when I called out to them, they responded immediately.
“Have either of you ever had tight shoulders?” I asked.
“Nah, not me,” Zeral said, passing the question to Feris.
“Every now and then,” she said, “but not too bad.”
Huh. Was I already off the mark, assuming tight shoulders bother women more often? Wait… Mina and Paula constantly did chores or worked, but Zeral was a lord, and Feris was a wealthy young woman. Neither had any reason to work, and they probably never did anything without moving for a long stretch of time.
“Thanks, guys.” I decided to put the question to another acquaintance.
The next people we bumped into were Elaine, the daughter of the lord of this area, and her butler Rayne. Elaine seemed to be out shopping. She brushed her proud drill-like ringlets out of her face, greeting us as always. “Good day, Sir Reiji, Noela.” Rayne gently bowed his head as well.
Noela and I, used to Elaine’s greetings at this point, returned them.
“G’day, Drills!”
“Good day, Elaine,” I began. “Do you…” Elaine probably didn’t have stiff shoulders, I quickly realized. She was wealthier than Feris; she even had that hoity-toity hairstyle to boot.
“Yes?”
“Nah. Nothing.”
“You can’t just say that and expect me not to be curious! Please, what is it?”
“Fine, fine. Do you ever get stiff shoulders?”
“Never.”
“I figured. You were the wrong person to ask.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Elaine stomped.
Off to the side, Rayne quietly raised his hand. “My shoulders sometimes do get a bit stiff, Sir Reiji.”
“Oh, really?” Yup, working hard on the job probably had something to do with it.
Saying farewell to Elaine and Rayne shortly after, we left.
Annabelle was the perfect example of a working woman, so we paid her a visit next. She said she got muscle aches more often than stiff shoulders, so I gave her some muscle chill gel. Next, I talked to Rena, the Rabbit Tavern’s waitress. She was fifteen or sixteen at most, but she said her shoulders got tense too.
Eventually, I confirmed that folks who worked or did chores got stiff shoulders with overwhelming frequency. Annabelle was an exception, I decided, because she was a fighter who trained every day.
“All right, Noela, let’s head home.” Our investigation over, the two of us returned to the drugstore.
There, I slipped into my lab to develop a new treatment with Noela’s help. Since I’d found a bunch of people with shoulder tension just by asking around, it’d be worth creating a product for them. I made icy gel to cool muscles, so I figured I could make something that did the opposite.
Warm ’n’ Loose: Heats and relaxes muscles. Promotes blood flow.