“All right, good job defeating him, Filia. Uh, Filia?” But Filia wasn’t anywhere in sight. She’d been there just a moment ago, right?
“H-help me, please. I can’t move…” I lowered my gaze and found Filia lying face down on the ground for some reason.
“What’s the matter, Filia? Afternoon nap?”
“You can’t think I’d really take an afternoon nap in a forest like this. Oof, it kind of feels like I twisted my leg… Ow.” Filia groggily tried to push herself up with her forearms, but with her strength drained, she just flopped back flat onto the ground.
“Hey, don’t push yourself too hard.”
“As you surely saw, I used the Wind God spectacularly, but I’m so exhausted now…” Filia tried to get up once more, but the moment she got her feet on the ground, she crouched back down. Her complexion looked a little worse too, a little paler. Filia’s leg injury definitely wasn’t negligible.
“You okay? You didn’t need to push yourself so hard.”
“If I didn’t defeat him right away, then you’d just keep making fun of me…” said Filia, pouting and turning away in a huff.
So that’s why she’d been so gung ho. “Sorry. I teased you too much.”
“You really did. If you wish to make it right with me…you’ll give me a piggyback ride,” replied Filia, glaring at me with resentment in her eyes.
Even if her mood was only a little bit my fault, I couldn’t exactly refuse. The least I could do for an apology would be to do what Filia asked. “All right.”
I hefted Filia up and ended with a soft, gentle sensation on my back.
“Interesting, Yuri: a strong, muscle-bound man picking up a woman of peerless beauty and carrying her on his back. Why, the scenario looks positively criminal, doesn’t it?”
“It’s nothin’ to write home about.” Besides—just putting this out there—wasn’t she the one who’d asked for this? Well, she couldn’t walk, so I guess there wasn’t a point in arguing, but all the same! “Wait a minute, you can use recovery magic, Filia. Can’t you just cure your injury that way?”
“Err.”
“Hey!”
“Ahhhhhh…hmm. Yes, I can heal myself, but I don’t want to waste the energy. It’s easier this way. For me, I mean,” said Filia, holding her hands over her ears and shaking her head.
This girl… Ugh, she was getting into one of those moods of hers again. Well, no biggie. Given the low rank of the monsters in this forest, it’d honestly be better training to have a handicap like carrying Filia around on my back. Kinda fired me up, actually!
Hauling Filia onward, I continued keeping an eye out for the Sun Flower, our real goal for the day. As Filia looked around with me, she started talking.
“Do you have any favorite animals or anything, Yuri? Or favorite things in general? Oh, your favorite thing is me? Oh, Yuri, you’re too much!”
“Give me time to answer.” Jeez, how far did she push ahead on her own? She was like an adventurer of conversation.
“An adventurer of conversation, hmm?”
“…”
“An adventurer…of con-ver-sa-tion.”
“Hey, stop exposing what I said in my mind out loud, lookin’ all serious like that…” I didn’t know why, but it was real embarrassing.
“Oh, but making Yuri look all flustered is my calling in life. It sustains me. I can’t help it!”
“Please, I’m begging you, find a better calling in life, and do it fast.” Seriously, she had a twisted personality, huh?
Filia replied to the bitter look on my face with a laugh. “I’m joking, it was only a joke. Sorry.”
Man, she had to straighten out that personality.
Filia suddenly pointed up toward the sky. “Oh, look, Yuri! It’s a rainbow! A rainbow!”
Oh man, that was a rainbow all right—the arch positively glowed with seven colors. Filia’s eyes lit up as she stared up at the sky, almost childlike. Nah, I couldn’t get too mad at her despite her awful personality. Not when she could admire stuff like this with such innocence.
“It’s beautiful, Yuri, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s sparkling, just like yours truly.”
“If you say so.”
We stopped in place for just a few minutes just to gaze at it.
A short while later, Filia pointed her arm out from her place on my back. “Oh, isn’t that it? The Sun Flower?”
I looked where she was pointing, and yep—flower, 10 o’clock.
“Looks like it.” I approached the flower, still carrying Filia. The Sun Flower was definitely worthy of its name. It was a bright, passionate red, so vibrant it felt like the power to live welled up inside me just from looking at it.
“Oh, I’ll go and pick it. I’d feel anxious if you did, Yuri,” said Filia, hopping off my back to go over and pick the flower, puffing out her modest chest proudly as she spoke.
I stared intently at Filia’s ankles.
“Hey, what happened to your supposedly injured leg?” I asked.
“Oh, as soon as you started giving me a piggyback ride, I used recovery magic. I couldn’t stand the pain. Thank you very much for carrying me up until now.”
I studied Filia as she expressed her gratitude. And there I’d been, trying to keep the impact of my movements to a minimum as we moved forward, thinking about her aching leg. But my efforts had meant absolutely nothing at all, huh? I see, I see…
“Hm. Yuri, are you angry?”
“Nah, not really.” Not at something like that. Why? Because I was a true gentle muscle man.
Buuut I was still a little frustrated, so I’d give her a warning. Not that I was angry, though. Nope.
“Walk home on your own two legs, okay?”
“That’s what I was planning on. It would be embarrassing if someone saw me, the transcendentally beautiful elf girl Filia, getting a piggyback ride from anyone.” As Filia spoke, she picked the Sun Flower, her hand movements steady and careful. I wasn’t very good at that kind of delicate work myself. I was honestly glad Filia was around to help me out with stuff like this.
“Wow!” Filia’s face lit up with a broad smile as she glanced at the nearby thicket. I’d felt a presence there earlier, but I hadn’t really done anything about it—whatever was there was too weak to worry about.