The moment they passed through the gate, Eiji and Yuna headed straight into the house.
The dirt floor was, of course, just as they'd left it that morning. Embers banked under ash in the hearth. A single bowl on the table. Not a hair different from when they'd set out. Proof that not a single person—not even a stray breeze—had entered while they were away.
What had changed was what the two of them brought back. In the storeroom now sat a knife and a full set of dishes. Fragrant herbs, medicinal herbs, and edible greens. And then, one whole rock bear. A return haul so vast it made the morning's light luggage seem like a dream.
Yuna stood in front of the shelf and began placing orders for the storeroom's contents. Eiji's job was simply to take them out in the order he was called and hand them over. The knife, a cutting board, two plates. One more bowl. Two pairs of chopsticks.
"Is this spot okay for the knife? It might be dangerous standing on its edge."
"Point the blade down and it should be fine."
It was Yuna who was deciding where things went. The cutting board stood upright to dry. The plates were stacked, and the chopsticks were slipped into the mouth of a chipped crock as a stand-in for a container. She'd set something down, take half a step back, lean in again, nudging each position a little at a time. Where on the shelf each item belonged, and which hand would reach for it—she already seemed to have her daily routine mapped out in her head.
Come to think of it, everything they'd built in this village had been boxes. The well, the roof, the bath shed, this shelf too. Today was the first time anything had gone inside one.
"Oh, Eiji-kun, could you shift this shelf a little more this way? It might be a bit too close to the hearth."
"Sure."
Along with his reply, he set his hand on the shelf's side board.
And then—it moved easily with one hand. With just a light push.
Until this morning, the two of them would have needed to shove together just to budge it.
"Eiji-kun really is..."
"Hm?"
"...Never mind. It's nothing."
Yuna smiled an awkward smile and swallowed her words halfway again. An exchange much like the earlier one. She'd worn that same face at the stream, and retracted her words in exactly the same way.
It nagged at him, but he decided not to ask. Interrogating her over things she'd decided to keep silent about had never once done him any good.
The shelf organizing continued. Yuna's hand reached into the back row, and stopped there.
"Ah—what should we do with these?"
When she turned around, Yuna was holding two empty bottles. The travel-sized shampoo and conditioner, it seemed. She'd apparently washed them, set them upside down, and stowed them in the back. How meticulous.
"Give them here. I need those to remake what was inside."
He took them and stood them on the table.
Beside them, Eiji brought out magic wolf fat and ash from the storeroom and began chopping the herbs they'd picked that day.
Might as well make the soap first.
Fat, ash, and chopped herbs. When he laid them out on the table, the separate assessments bundled together and offered soap as their evolved form. The procedure was the same as before; the only difference was the one added ingredient. He rolled the incantation around in his mouth, a short pillar of white light rose, and several square blocks remained behind.
He brought his nose close.
"...Oh, it took. The scent took."
"Huh? You can smell it?"
Yuna, who had been at the shelf, stopped and came over. She brought her face close to a block, and her eyes softened.
"Ah, it smells so good~!"
Cupping the block in both hands, Yuna inhaled deeply once more.
Green and slightly sweet. The previous batch had been odorless no matter how close he got his nose. They'd figured out that the missing scent was due to too few herbs on the night they built the bath. Quite a lot of progress in a single day.
Next, the bottles.
He pulled both empty bottles standing on the table closer. Travel bottles from a few days ago. Used down to the last drop, they'd told him only the names of their contents.
The herbs bearing those displayed names—he'd brought them home today.
He piled the fragrant and medicinal herbs next to the bottles. The assessment quietly bundled together.
"To things whose duties have ended, new power—Transcendence Reconstructio."
White light wrapped the bottles and herbs, then receded.
And—the contents had returned inside the bottles.
When he opened the caps, the scent of a thick liquid rose up. Close to that scent Yuna's hair had carried until this morning. A faint tremor came to his fingertips for the umpteenth time today, but that was all.
Yuna rushed over and took the bottles in both hands.
"Wow, they're full to the top!"
"Even if they run out, I can make more right away. You don't have to worry about rationing anymore."
"Yay!"
Yuna sniffed a cap, gazed at the bottle, sniffed again. That back-and-forth went on for a while.
Then, eyes shining, she asked:
"Hey, Eiji-kun. Since we went to the trouble of making them, can I start using them today?"
"Of course. Actually, I'm sweaty and I want a bath too."
A body that had soaked in the stream, then wrestled around with a rock bear, then walked the whole way home. Sweat, mud, and dried, spattered blood. There was no reason to refuse whatsoever.
The two of them headed for the bath shed. When Eiji pulled the plug from the trough, water from the channel ran down the boards, over the wall, and began striking the bottom of the tub. Filling the tub was easy too.
While waiting for the water, he stacked firewood in the firebox. When the water came near the rim, he closed the plug, and Yuna crouched in front of the firebox.
"Kindle flame within this wood... Holy Flame."
With a short incantation, fire caught in the heart of the wood. The back of the firebox glowed orange, and past the stonework, the bottom of the tub began to be seared. All that remained was to wait for the steam.
Eiji carried the new soap and the two bottles in, setting them on the bath shed's shelf.
When he came back outside, Yuna went "Ah!" and ran off toward the house.
While he waited, tending the fire in the firebox, Yuna returned.
She'd changed into her gym clothes, arms full of a folded bundle of cloth. Holding it up at chest height, she shyly offered it out.
"Um... these, please."
He knew what the bundle was before even taking it. Three sets of underwear, top and bottom. Exactly the number of days of the school trip, all of it there.
Apparently she'd been secretly washing them since they got back. The promise had been "I'll wash them when we get home." And dutifully, she'd fulfilled it even before her own bath.
"They're not dry yet... but that's okay?"
"I just need them for the templates."
When he took them, the cloth was indeed a little damp. One of the pieces was as wet as if just washed. Since dryness had nothing to do with duplication, no problem—having reasoned that far in a purely businesslike manner, Eiji caught himself.
Three sets. All of them, right here.
Glancing up, he saw Yuna blushing, fidgeting as if to cover her chest and hips, one hand on each.
"Um. Could it be, right now...?"
"...It feels weird being all, um, breezy."
Face still red, she answered in a small voice.
Just as he'd suspected—right now, under those gym clothes, she apparently wasn't wearing anything at all.
Just as he was about to imagine it—
"Don't make me say it... you pervert."
Yuna scolded him in a voice at its wit's end. She wasn't angry, of course. That somehow made it even cuter, and he nearly ascended to heaven.
By dutifully keeping her promise, she'd hung him with his own rope. Truly, a predicament just like this childhood friend of his.
(Washed or not, she was wearing them until just now, though...)
There, he told himself: "No, don't think about it." If he thought about it, his hands would probably slip.
He fixed his consciousness on the cloth in his hands alone and lined up the duplication procedure in his head. Lay out the template, stack the grass, chant. That was all. Only three steps.
But just as he started looking for a place to spread out the template, Yuna hurriedly tugged at his sleeve.
"Um... having them copied right in front of me is, you know... embarrassing..."
"O-okay. I'll do it while the bath heats up. I'll leave them by the bath shed."
Honestly, that was a relief. Duplicating what the girl in front of him had been wearing until moments ago, under her very eyes, would have been embarrassing for him too, frankly.
"Okay..."
Nodding, Yuna headed for the bath shed's doorway. But then she stopped partway and turned back with an anxious look.
"...You won't use them for anything weird, right?"
"Huh? Weird how?"
Not understanding, he asked back in all innocence.
Instantly, Yuna's face turned red as if brought to a boil.
"—~~! Ugh, I'm not saying anything!"
Turning her face away with a huff, Yuna went into the bath shed for good this time. The door gave a soft click as it closed.
"...Why am I the one getting scolded?"
He tilted his head, but there was no one to answer. Oh well, he thought, turning back to the bundle in his hands.
In his hands, three sets of a girl's underwear. It was the first time he'd ever stared so directly at this much girl's underwear. What he'd stripped off her last night was among them, but it had been dark then and he hadn't been able to make out even the patterns, and he'd had no spare attention for looking at such things anyway.
(Why does underwear feel this nice to touch, of all things...?)
Fidgeting with them in his hands, he'd started getting restless.
There, he snapped out of it.
(D-Don't think weird thoughts! Just multiply them, just multiply!)
He felt like he was already half defeated just telling himself that, but he didn't say it out loud.
He spread out one set of templates at a time, stacked the material grass beside them, and held out his hand.
"To a thing relieved of its duty, one more form of its own—Relicta Replicatio."
Light rose and receded. Three sets of underwear became six. The original three sets had each been a different color and pattern, so each pattern now existed in two sets.
The newly made ones were dry and practically brand-new.
(...How do I fold these?)
He tried folding the new ones and tilted his head.
Having no way of knowing the correct way to fold women's underwear, he decided square was good enough. He stacked the original three sets with the new three, and gently placed them, careful not to make a sound, just inside the doorway. From beyond the door, only the sounds of water being used could be heard.
And then, his own. He almost worried about his surroundings, then stopped. In this village, the concept of being seen did not exist. He removed his own set from duty right there, quickly duplicated two pieces, and changed into them, seen by no one.
It really was embarrassing, being all breezy.
Yesterday, he'd stood outside with his back turned while Yuna bathed. Today, that wasn't necessary. He added one more stick of firewood to the firebox and returned to the dirt floor first.
Perhaps a few dozen minutes had passed since then.
Around the time the sun was beginning to set, Yuna came back through the doorway trailing a lingering wisp of steam.
A hand towel was wrapped around her hair, her cheeks still flushed. The scent of soap reached him first from the collar of her gym clothes.
"I bathed first."
"Yeah."
He gave a short reply to the polite report. While tidying the tabletop, Eiji asked the thing he'd been curious about.
"How were the shampoo and conditioner? I guess the feel really is pretty different?"
"Eiji-kun."
Instead of answering, Yuna called his name.
"Hm?" he asked back, and—
"...Thank you."
Yuna blushed and smiled happily.
She hadn't answered the question.
But seeing those words and that face was more than enough.
"Was it really that good?"
"It was exactly the same as what I used before. The soap smells nice too, and the underwear's like new... really, thank you."
She offered her impressions once more and bowed her head.
Being thanked so formally like that made him embarrassed.
He couldn't really remember doing anything worth thanking for. Yuna had been the one to pick the herbs; Eiji had just laid them out and chanted. Still, he didn't feel like demanding a better explanation.
"Glad to hear it."
He returned that and looked down.
The post-bath scent had spread through the dirt floor. It should be the very same soap and shampoo he himself would be using.
And yet, when it came from her, it oddly unsettled him. He decided not to think about the reason.