Kira tried to hide his hands for some reason. “Don’t look, Evelyn.”
“Huh? Why no— Eeeeeeeek!”
Startled, I fell on my bum. Wriggling in Kira’s small hands was a mass of earthworms.
“I told you not to look,” Kira said with an exasperated sigh.
Look, when someone tells you not to look, you want to look even harder! That’s human nature!
Sniffling, I moved to get up, and Lady Mamaropa offered me her hand.
“What about the fishing hooks?” she asked Kira.
“We can carve and process the bones from last night’s curry,” he explained. “They’ll do. I’ll take care of that.”
Wow, he’s so cool! I thought. I was still sniffling and couldn’t speak.
As soon as we finished gathering materials, Kira shaped the branches into rods, connected the vines to them, and used stones and a knife to shape the lamb bones into makeshift hooks. In the blink of an eye, we had three proper fishing rods—the kind that could be sold in any tackle shop. Not that I’d expected any less from Kira!
“Now then, here I go,” Lady Mamaropa said after receiving the first rod. She cast her line into the lake, her expression serious.
I watched nervously from behind and recalled the words of an old fisherman in a book I’d once read.
“Fishing is a one-on-one with the fish,” I think it was. “You must face the fish with a heart as calm as still water, and approach it as a duel—”
“I got a bite,” Lady Mamaropa said.
Faster than my reminiscence, the tip of the rod was already wobbling. Lady Mamaropa tugged on it with excellent timing, and a freshwater fish emerged, hooked on the line.
“Oh my! I caught one!”
That was fast! Was she an experienced fisher?!
Lady Mamaropa continued to hook fish after fish at a breakneck pace.
I’d gotten the second rod but wasn’t getting any bites at all, even as Lady Mamaropa continued to announce her catches.
“Evelyn, you’re too restless,” Kira said. “The fish can tell.”
“O-Oh...”
Even the fish could tell I was nervous. I wanted to cry.
“Don’t fidget. Hold the rod firmly. Move it back and forth every so often to entice them.”
“Okay!”
Kira was skillfully using his own fishing rod and giving me advice here and there. Thanks to his help, after several hours, finally the fish began to take the bait.
Eat up, fishies! Eat up! I chanted in my head. Intensely. Very intensely.
Whether the chanting had any effect was unclear, but a fish began to tug at the hook.
“Now! Give it a sharp pull!” Kira said.
“O-Okay!”
“Pull!”
“Okay!”
Following General Kira’s precise instructions, I pulled the rod vigorously, and a smallish fish emerged from the water.
I whooped. “Yay! I did it, Kira! I caught one!”
“You did.”
“I wouldn’t have done it without you! Thank you!”
“Don’t start jumping for joy just yet. We need to remove the fish from the hook first.”
“Right!”
Kira handled the removal. And attaching new bait. I’d lost my nerve and started crying, so he’d grumbled that he’d do it.
I placed the fish in a bucket filled with water. Lady Mamaropa, who’d been watching happily, opened her mouth to speak.
“Evelyn, congratu— Guh.”
“Oh no! Lady Mamaropa!”
Since she’d fainted, we had her rest in a hammock for a while.
I need to catch lots more for her share too!
To the chirping of songbirds, we continued fishing into the afternoon. Some fish had such a strong pull that I couldn’t reel them in.
As I battled numerous fish, the image of Lord Theodore’s face floated into my mind. Ah, my fiancé, whose pull was stronger than that of any large fish...
I wonder what he’s up to right now.
This felt a bit like taking a break from each other after a fight. Knowing Lord Theodore, he was probably worried about Kira and me right now.
“No. That man is hoping you’ll stay gone forever, baaa.”
Huh...?
I jumped and looked around frantically.
“Kira, did you hear that voice just now?”
“What voice?”
“A weird one, that went, like, ‘baaa’...”
Kira, handling his fishing rod with practiced ease, listened carefully for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope, nothing.”
“Really...?”
I could’ve sworn I’d just heard an eerie whisper somewhere close by. I had no time to wonder about it, however, as I got another bite on my fishing rod. But when I reeled in the line, I was shocked. What I’d caught wasn’t a fish.
“K-Kira!” I stammered, feeling like the blood had drained from my face. “This... This isn’t a human bone, is it?”
The bone had algae tangled around it like hair. Some parts had crumbled away, maybe because it was quite old, but it looked like a human skull.
“I don’t think so. Isn’t that an animal bone?” Kira asked, but he didn’t sound very confident.
Still, I didn’t want to examine it too closely. Both of us grew quiet, and since the sun was setting anyway, we decided to stop fishing, having caught twenty-six fish total.
We carried our fishing rods and buckets back to the tent. Lady Mamaropa must’ve regained consciousness, as she slowly sat up on the hammock.
“I’m sorry. I seem to have fainted again,” she said, looking worriedly back and forth between Kira and me. “Neither of you fell into the lake, right?”
“Of course not!” I assured her. “But hey, look!”
I tilted the bucket to show Lady Mamaropa its contents, and she beamed.
“My, how wonderful! Look how many you caught!”
“Eh heh heh...”
I’d only caught one fish, so the other twenty-seven were the work of Kira and Lady Mamaropa, but...regardless, getting praise made me happy.
“With these, we can make seafood curry,” she said. “We could also sprinkle salt on them and grill them.”
“Wow, that sounds delicious!”
I was completely enamored with Lady Mamaropa’s cooking.
Before I could offer to help her prepare the meal, however, she climbed down from the hammock and said, “Ah, by the way, this area is famous for its hot springs. There are many bathhouses for tourists in the village at the foot of the mountain. You must be tired. You should both go there before dinner.”
Oh, hot springs...!
That piqued my interest. I hadn’t been able to bathe properly yesterday, so I really wanted to wash off the sweat and freshen up. But...wait.
So if there are hot springs nearby, why is there no one around?
If the nearby village was thriving due to its hot springs, then the Cradle of Jewels should’ve been a hot tourist spot. But there wasn’t anyone here besides Lady Mamaropa.
“I have towels for you,” Lady Mamaropa said, pulling me back from my thoughts.
“But Lady Mamaropa, aren’t you tired too?” I asked.
“I can go after the meal. Don’t worry.”
Well, in that case, I could go to the mountain village with Kira. My joints were pretty achy from my first-ever foray into fishing.