Chapter 82 – Bear-san And Some Free Time
It’s a story linked with the trip to Shinten.
(TL: A place near Hiroshima.)
The shop was now doing well even without me, so I didn’t have to go there recently.
The sales were great, Morin-san was trying to make new types of bread, and the children, who had gotten used to the work, were now doing it happily.
We also increased the number of new dishes.
Rurina-san and Gill also went back to their adventurer jobs.
The two of them left Deborane’s party and accepted jobs alone or made temporary parties.
They often came to the store as customers.
I didn’t have anything to do, so I decided to go to the capital using the transfer gate.
Even though the birthday party had ended, there were still a lot of people there.
I went to the castle to take pudding to Princess Flora.
When I arrived at the gate, the soldiers seemed to remember me and gave a relaxed greeting as I approached them.
「I want to go inside, is that okay?」
I presented my guild card to them.
There was a permit to enter the castle on my guild card, so that I could enter without any problems.
When the guard asked my reason for coming, I told him that I came to see Princess Flora.
As one would expect, I couldn’t just go see the princess alone, so he said that I had to wait until he called Eleanora-san.
「Yuna-chan, it’s been a while.」
「It’s been a while indeed, Eleanora-san.」
「You came to see Princess Flora?」
「Yes, it’s been awhile since I came here, after all.」
「You came from Crimonia just for that?」
「It seems that I won’t be able to come here for some time, so...」
「Well, it’s not easy to come here all the time from Crimonia, right?」
For some reason, when we arrived to Princess Flora’s room, the king was inside.
「Your Highness, are you ditching work again?」
「Eleanora, I am not you. I am just on a break.」
「That’s some bad mouthing. I am here as a duty guide for Yuna-chan.」
「I am talking about your normal behaviour.」
「My normal behaviour? I am a mass of diligence. And why is the king in Princess Flora’s room?」
「That’s because I heard a report that Yuna was coming, of course. I knew that if she was coming, she would go to Flora’s room.」
While the two of them were bickering, Princess Flora approached me.
「Princess Flora, it’s been a while.」
「Bear-san, you came?」
「I promised you, after all.」
I brought out the pudding from the Bear Box.
「I brought some pudding, so let’s eat them together.」
I brought out four servings of pudding and neatly lined them up on the table.
Seeing this, Eleanora and the king approached too.
「Thank you for what you did.」
I thanked the king for what he said during the birthday party.
「What is it, so suddenly?」
「It’s about the pudding. It seems that you have protected my shop for now, so...」
「It’s about that, huh. I forced you to prepare the pudding, so doing just that was absolutely no problem. If something does happen, you can ask either me or the Foschurose family’s Cliff for help.」
「Of course, you can work him hard, you know.」
「Also, I will give you this.」
I gave a piece of paper to the king.
「The pudding recipe. Make some for Princess Flora, please.」
「I don’t know when I will be able to come again, after all.」
「Understood. I will thankfully accept it. To keep it confidential, I will give the recipe to only my personal cook.」
「You don’t really have to keep it a secret, so don’t punish him if it is leaked.」
I didn’t want him to be executed because of the pudding recipe.
「Do not worry. It won’t even leak to the other royal cooks.」
「But there will be people who will want to steal it.」
「If there was someone who tried to steal a royal recipe, he would receive an appropriate punishment.」
The king’s smile was frightening...
「And it’s not really your fault that you can’t come here frequently, right? Crimonia is far, after all. I would be grateful if you just visited from time to time, so that my daughter is happy.」
I couldn’t tell them that I could come here instantly by using the Bear Transfer Gate.
「It’s just, I want to go to the sea, you see.」
「There is a sea east of the capital, right?」
It was information I had received from the information gathering I did awhile back.
「So, you are going to the sea, huh?」
「I want some ingredients from the sea, after all.」
「If you forget the happiness of eating food, you lose something really important in life!」
The king ate a mouthful of pudding.
「It would be great if there was a sea near Crimonia.」
「There is, you know?」
I froze when I heard the information coming out of Eleanora-san’s mouth.
「Oh, you are talking about that, right?」
「What are you talking about?」
「You know how there is a big mountain northeast of Crimonia?」
There was a big mountain that you could see from the town. You could even say that it was a mountain range.
「If you cross that mountain, you’ll be able to reach the sea, you know. But well, it’s quite difficult to cross or to get around it.」
So there was a sea on the other side of the mountain, huh.
If you were talking about distance, it was close.
「There is even a town over there, you know. It is difficult to reach it without a boat, but, with Yuna-chan’s bears, you could do it, I think?」
The king tilted his head.
「Yuna-chan has bears she can summon, you know?」
「You can even do something like that?」
Eleanora-san explained everything for me.
She explained every single detail, telling them that there were two of them, Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear.
Upon listening to this story, Princess Flora’s eyes were sparkling.
The king looked interested too, so after the talk, I was asked to summon the two of them.
Was it really okay to summon them in the princess’s room?
For now, since I had permission, I summoned Hugging Bear.
「It’s really a bear.」
Princess Flora approached Hugging Bear.
The king was only looking and didn’t try to stop her.
Doesn’t he have any sense of crisis?
「Who are you really?」
「I am a D-rank adventurer.」
「Are there any D-rank adventurers who can exterminate more than 10,000 monsters...? 」
「Now that I think about it, Yuna-chan, you killed more than 10,000 monsters, but stayed at D-rank?」
「That’s because it was an unknown A-rank party that killed all of the monsters, you see .」
「It would have been better if we just revealed your name...」
「You don’t want to stand out, even though you are wearing clothes that stand out, something like that, right?」
She said that while looking as if she had given up on the issue.
I wanted to go back quickly after dropping off the pudding, but Princess Flora didn’t want to leave Hugging Bear, so I stayed at the castle until evening.
(TL note: Well, what can Yuna-chan do if she goes to the sea... She can’t wear a swimsuit, because she has to stay in bear mode outside.... Well, we will see, right?)