Hey there, folks. Yoshida Shuta reporting in again, thirty-two years old and just married, now recently returned from being posted long distance for work without said brand-new wife. And during which I hadn’t had any contact with her whatsoever. It had been weeks since we’d last seen each other, and my heart was pounding so much harder than I could’ve expected. What was I, some horny teenager? For God’s sake, at the mere sound of women’s voices fluttering out from the kitchen toward the back of the manor, I could feel my cheeks flushing!
My wife and I didn’t marry for love. We didn’t have a proper arranged marriage, either. We were married because the village chief ordered us to be. Even so, I’d fully welcomed Cassandra into my heart as my wife, and after being apart for so long, I missed her more than ever. Couldn’t help it.
How was she doing? It must’ve been hard for her not having me around to help around the house. I wondered if anything came up. Would she be happy to see me after all this time?
Thinking back to the way she looked when we set out on our journey to Bulka, I remembered watching her wave to us. That made me nostalgic. Seeing her again now, after all this time, was getting me jittery about rejection.
This mix of emotions, unleavened by any tenderness, probably left my face looking pretty unsettling. I steeled myself for any reaction Cassandra might have and then poked my head into the kitchen where I heard the women.
“Pardon me. I heard my wife might be in here?”
“Oh! Shooter!”
As soon as I came into the kitchen, my eyes met Cassandra’s. I took in her long chestnut-colored hair and pale skin. She still wore the same frugal peasant’s shift and held a cooking pot in her hands.
Cassandra’s expression grew troubled and she turned her eyes away from me. Gah. She didn’t want to see me after all. I knew it! I—now, hold on. It couldn’t be… Sure, she looked troubled, but I spotted a slight tinge of scarlet spreading over her pale cheeks.
“Look at you, girl, standing around like a lump when we’ve got new villagers come from town!” An older woman who looked exactly like a pro wrestler was wielding a stick and chastising my poor wife. “They’re going to be right hungry, too. There’s no time for you to be lollygagging!”
It was Gintanen.
“I’m so sorry. Please excuse the interruption. I shouldn’t have come in here. I really do apologize.” I jumped in between Cassandra and Gintanen, but Gintanen turned on me and started beating my arm mercilessly with her stick.
“And who the heck are you? Is that a belly-button piercing? Where’s a slave get off speaking out of turn like that? You’ve got some nerve!”
Brilliant tactics on her part, deliberately targeting spots with well-developed muscle, robbing me of my ability to fight back. Classic karate move.
“Ow! That hurts a lot! Stop!”
“Shut up! A slave who disobeys the people of the village needs to be taught a lesson! I’m sure you ran off from that group of settlers! Didn’t you?!” Gintanen must have completely forgotten about me, zeroing in on my belly-button piercing to the exclusion of everything else. Which meant, apparently, that it was slave-beatin’ time.
“Oh no, Shooter! Gintanen, please stop! This is my husband!” Cassandra hurried to my defense. Our roles as husband and wife had been reversed.
Abruptly, Gimul appeared. He must have heard all the commotion. With him were the half-naked man Dyson and the handsome-if-wildly-butch Electra—the two adventurers we hired together before he left town.
“What’s going on in here?” Gimul thundered.
“Gimul, please help me! Gintanen is being mean to me!”
Gimul sighed. “The old lady’s been mean for a long, long time. Just deal with it.” He pulled Gintanen off of me and calmed everything down, then started barking out instructions. “Anyone who doesn’t have anything to do, take the pots that are done cooking outside. We’ve got just under fifty people in from town. Electra and Dyson will help take dishes out to them. Cassandra, you can go.”
“But, Gimul…”
Gintanen looked annoyed, but Gimul silenced her without a word and then continued, “You go back home with Shooter. You can take some of this food back with you.”
“A-are you sure?” asked Cassandra.
“Don’t look at me like that. Save that happiness for your husband.”
“Um, thank you so much, Gimul. Really, thank you!”
Gimul and my wife looked at each other with a strange fondness as they spoke. Their exchange wrapped up with words I suspected they had heard and spoken to each other many times.
“Anyway, I need a break from your sweaty face, Shooter; don’t you dare leave your house today. Come back here tomorrow,” Gimul said with a rare smile and a hard slap on my back. Weird. He must’ve been pretty proud of himself for saving me from Gintanen.
Cassandra and I took our steamed potatoes and left the village chief’s manor. As we were walking away, we heard Gintanen’s patience snap in an outraged shout. “Who are you callin’ an old lady?! I’ll teach you for talkin’ to people that way!”
Had the old lady really been like that for so long? Jeez. What could I wish Gimul but “good luck”?
“This cloth has a pattern that’s huge in town right now. And here’s some purple cloth, and a little red. You always dress so modestly, so, you know, I thought it might be nice for you to have options like this!”
“All right.”
I spread the packages I had brought home over our bed, describing each item with a bright grin.
I had bought all of them for Cassandra, but I wouldn’t mind if she used some of the cloth to make me some clothes, too. “And then there’s this. I got it from my master, who was so sweet to me while I was working in town. It’s a magic lantern. It’s amazing—look! If I put some blood into it—which hurts a little, but that’s okay—and then turn it on, it’ll draw on my magic power and just burn and burn without using any oil.”
“Um. All right.”
“It’s kind of broken—it won’t react unless it’s my blood, isn’t that weird?—so she let me keep it. So as long as I’m here, we can have light at night and never need oil! We can make plans for our family late at night with the lights on…”
“Um, Shooter?”
“And I want you to have this. It’s lipstick made from safflower dye. The shopkeeper said this would be a nice shade for someone with pale skin, so I got it for you.”
“Shooter!”
Cassandra was always more on the reserved side. Even when I was leaving town, she looked a little uncomfortable talking with me. Now she wore an extremely displeased expression and a glowering sort of pout.
I clicked my heels and saluted. “Present, ma’am.”
“I-I still haven’t welcomed you home…”
Oh. Oh. I gazed intently at Cassandra’s pained expression. She looked uneasy under my scrutiny, and I could tell a riot of emotions roiled beneath the surface of her nervous moue. Was she in a bad mood? But…but why? I wasn’t going to get anywhere just wondering, though. So I turned toward Cassandra and gently wrapped both arms around her shoulders. I parted my lips. “Hey,” I whispered. “I’m home, dear wife.”
“Welcome home, Shooter.”
My pocket rocket achieved liftoff. Sweet, domesticity, the hottest fetish of ’em all.