Play dead when you meet a bear.
Although this advice would later be called superstition, there was a reason it had spread the way it did. Several people across different countries reported to have survived bear attacks by being asleep or completely still.
However, those people had survived only because the bear had already killed prey and wasn’t interested, or because, once it had killed its first prey, the bear had decided that whatever wasn’t moving wasn’t a threat. “Not riling up the bear” was the actually useful advice, and ultimately, the consensus was that it came down to luck.
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Isaac and Miria didn’t even know that, and they kept on giving the bear something new to be interested in.
“Uh, Miria? How can we pretend to be deader than this? How should we move?!”
“We’re corpses, but we’re moving? We’ll basically be vampires, Isaac!”
“That’s it! We’re vampires! If we’re moving corpses, it’ll be easy to tell.”
“Yes, Bram Stoker! Sheridan Le Fanu!”
Naming the authors of vampire novels, Miria slowly got to her feet, pulled a blanket around her shoulders like a cape, and carefully sized up her opponent.
“B-but, Isaac, how should we pretend to be vampires?”
“Well, we could turn into bats…or, uh, drink blood…”
Isaac got to his feet, putting on a blanket cloak of his own, and timidly flapped its tails like bat wings.
When the bear saw that, it stopped moving again and snuffled more curiously.
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“Okay, okay! Just…don’t annoy the bear, you two!” Firo warned. He shoved the unconscious Who into a neighboring room and closed the door. Then he drew his knife and started shouting, hoping to distract the gigantic animal. “Hey! Over here! Come and get me, bear!”
Okay, but what now?
If I let this thing outside, it’ll cause a panic. Definitely can’t kill it with a knife, though.
I’ll just have to ask those two to call the cops…
Ah, dammit. What even happens to immortals who regenerate inside something’s stomach?
Bracing for some uncomfortable time inside a bear, he yelled louder in an effort to get its attention, but—
“Huh…?”
—when he looked over, the bear had scooped up Isaac and Miria by the legs and tossed them onto its back.
“Whoa?!”
“Eeeeek?!”
The pair landed on the dense fur, but they couldn’t get their balance and tumbled to the floor again.
The grizzly cocked its head. Then it turned its back to Isaac and Miria, crouching as low as its joints would allow.
It almost seemed to be telling them to climb on.
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“Was this bear somebody’s pet…?”
A few minutes later, Isaac and Miria were shrieking and laughing up on the bear’s back. Firo exhaled heavily with relief.
Groceries for the soup kitchen had been set in a corner of the room beside the blankets, and a few of the boxes that had held dried meat had been opened and ransacked.
“Did it run away? And then maybe the smell of all that jerky drew it here?”
He couldn’t imagine what it had run away from, though. The circus or something?
Come to think of it, he remembered seeing a tent in the plaza in front of Ra’s Lance.
“What should we do with it, though…? The police? Are we just gonna have to call the cops?”
Fortunately, this bear was friendly, not a man-eater. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.
“If it’s from the circus… No, he’s not an option right now.”
He’d thought of a certain redheaded former circus performer, but they were technically enemies at the moment.
And just having circus experience didn’t make him an animal tamer. Even if he’d asked, the guy might not have been able to help.
While Firo was trying to figure out what to do next, Isaac and Miria were having a great time up on the bear’s back.
“This is incredible, Miria! We’re actually riding a bear!”
“Hooray! Isaac, you’re so cool!”
“I’ve heard of this… There’s this place called Ashigara Mountain, and they say your skill in riding a bear on the mountain determines whether you’ll make a success of yourself. If you make it big, you’re a feudal lord. That means you can do all the sumo wrestling you want, you get to practice with bears, and you can even become a yokozuna!”
“Yes, a god incarnate! A thunderbolt!”
Yaguruma again, huh?
Firo had no idea what the two of them were saying, but if they were using words like yokozuna, he assumed one of his family’s top executives, an Asian man by the name of Yaguruma, had taught Isaac and Miria this stuff for fun.
I’m pretty sure they have the wrong idea about a lot of it, but…I think Yaguruma probably enjoys that part, too.
Firo smiled sheepishly; the old man could be a real kid sometimes. As he watched them, Isaac and Miria went on with their conversation.
“Let’s see. I think there was a Kintarou song, too. ‘High and low, low, high, low, low’… Isn’t that how it went?”
“Yes, it’s hi-lo gambling!”
“This means we’ll be able to win our bets today!”
“Yaaaay! It’s all thanks to Mr. Bear!”
Isaac and Miria had been screaming a minute ago, but as soon as they realized the bear was friendly, their terror had vanished as if someone had flipped a switch.
That’s definitely one of their talents, huh?
Come to think of it, they were always at home around us Camorra, too.
While Isaac and Miria squealed and cheered, the bear somehow seemed to be in high spirits, too. Or was it his imagination?
That said, we got lucky in several ways here.
He and the other two were only calm because they were immortals. If an ordinary person stopped by, they’d have a huge panic on their hands whether the bear looked happy or not. Even so, Firo was grateful their good luck had gotten them through this accidental bear encounter.
Oh, what was that Japanese word? That one Yaguruma likes to use.
After giving it a little thought, he remembered, and he gave a wry smile.
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“For now…maybe this’ll turn out to be one of those things. Genkatsugi. Hope it brings us luck.”