Vol 1 Chapter 12 (1/2)

As the day slowly turned to evening, the three of them managed to reach the camp while there was still light left in the sky.

The t-spot—Misasagi-senpai’s nickname for the tent spot—was on an open plain, and a short distance away down an incline was a stream with abundant water.

Homura carried a complete set of tools as she followed Misasagi-senpai down to the stream.

Senpai piled up rocks from the river to make a hearth, while Homura drew water from the river using a hand-pump equipped with a water filter. It was quite a convenient tool.

Homura was quite excited by the extraordinary atmosphere, but she was still a girl with no prior outdoor life experience. The most she was allowed to do was use a fully-furnished barbecue.

Perhaps due to her efforts in training to make boxed lunches recently, part of her unexpectedly enjoyed the food preparations and touching various cooking tools.

Touya had remained behind further up to set up a tent. It was a cool-looking tent with the UNPIEP logo printed on it in large font, but—

Homura timidly asked Misasagi-senpai a question.

“Umm, senpai… could that tent be meant for three people…?”

“It can fit, three or four people, but we’ll be split up, between a tent, meant for us, and a single tent, meant for Touya.”

“Separate tents! Of course. Naturally. As expected.”

“Yes. You’ll receive detailed, instructions on that, kind of division from, Fujimori-sensei eventually as well…”

“Right.”

“It depends on the time and place, though.” Homura could have sworn hearing senpai murmur that at the end.

After having finished her work in the blink of an eye even while continuing to talk with Homura, Misasagi-senpai piled kindling in the hearth and then stepped back a bit.

“Hinooka-san, please come stand, by me.”

“—? Sure.”

Homura walked over next to her as she was told.

Misasagi-senpai brought her hands together in front of her navel as if clasping something and began concentrating hard.

“…Hi (Hydrogen)1…”

Magic…!

Homura’s eyes widened.

“Ox (Oxygen)… Ph (Phosphate)… Mg (Magnesium)…”

A white light seemed to flash between Misasagi-senpai’s hands as she chanted, and then a deep orange ball of fire appeared there.

“Something came out!”

The coin-sized fireball grew to the size of a baseball while superfine strands of flames whirled and swayed around it.

While maintaining her concentration, Misasagi-senpai moved the fireball downwards at a sloped angle. The fireball maintained a certain speed as it went and was absorbed into the hearth. The moment the fireball touched it, the kindling immediately ignited and burst into flames.

After lowering her hands and relaxing her shoulders, Misasagi-senpai added in more wood while making sure the fire remained stable.

“So that’s also magic!”

“Yes. Fire-type magic isn’t, my speciality… so I’m always tense, when I chant it.”

As she spoke, Misasagi-senpai took out a waterproof lighter from her pocket.

“Ah, a lighter.”

“This would, have worked too, but magic is useful, in its own way, so I use it, as practice at, times like these.”

“Wow… amazing.”

The fire burning in front of them illuminated the rocks around the stream so brightly and naturally that it was hard to believe that it had been created with magic.

“Hinooka-san, do you also, want to give, it a try?”

“S-Seriously? You don’t mind?”

“Here, it won’t turn, into a huge, fire.”

“Please let me do it. This is Hinooka Homura’s first step as a Mage!”

Misasagi-senpai nodded.

“Then, first of all, please imagine, a die painted, in four colors. Two faces, are white, and two faces, are blue. One face, is red, and the last one, is black. The color, arrangement is—”

“????”

After somehow having the rest of the explanation simplified enough for her, Homura followed senpai’s instructions and took her first steps into the realm of magic.

She held out her hands together downwards at a slanted angle and stood in front of the hearth just like senpai had done.

While feeling the heat from the flames of the hearth on her palms, Homura formed the image in her head.

“…Hydrogen…”

“You can’t cut off, your concentration. Otherwise, it will, explode.”

“…O-Oxygen… Phosphate, Ma-Ma-Ma—”

Hearing a m.u.f.fled explosion, Touya came running down to the stream, and there he found a cloud of black smoke enveloping the area.

“Wha… *cough, cough*… What’s this black stuff!?”

Homura jumped out from the smoke while coughing.

“*Cough, cough*! D-Douya-gun, zenpai iz—”

While wringing out her voice, Homura turned around and pointed behind her.

“Senpai is inside this smoke!?”

Homura nodded with tears in her eyes.

My, this has turned into something serious, Touya thought as he prepared to jump in, but immediately after—

The two of them saw movement from the slope high above the river bed where they stood.

The dark and heavy smoke whirled and suddenly rose up in the form of a dome.

The dome gradually swelled and expanded, becoming a wall that quickly approached the two of them. Touya frantically moved to stand in front of Homura.

Just when it seemed like their ears were being subjected to pressure, a chilling thin membrane of water traced against their skin and pa.s.sed by them, dampening their hair and clothes slightly in the process.

Afterwards, the black smoke completely scattered away, leaving only the stream which reflected the twilight sky and the dying residue of fire.

In the center of the now vanished dome, Misasagi-senpai stood alone as if nothing had happened.

Even when Touya and Homura ran up to her, she remained calm.

“What an, unfortunate failure. Let’s try again, next time.”

“—No, no, more importantly, are you really all right, senpai?” Touya asked.

“I’m fine,” Misasagi-senpai said with a nod.

“Umm, I’m sorry. I messed up the chant… Did you also use magic just now, senpai?”

“That was my, specialty magic.”

Senpai spoke with a strangely proud expression.

“What, so it was just Hinooka’s magic exploding?”

“Wait, could it be that you knew that I would fail?”

“No, I believed, you could do it, you know? —About 50%, anyway.”

“J-Just 50%?”

“Just having a 50% success rate when you first start using magic is pretty good on its own.”

Homura felt relieved, but her stomach grumbled right afterward.

“Then I’ll get it right for sure, this time! All right…”

Homura once again posed to chant in front of the hearth, while Misasagi-senpai immediately prepared to use her own magic and Touya pinched his nose in exasperation and stepped back.

“……”

In the end, they used the lighter.

The sun had completely set.

While listening to the murmuring of the river, the three of them cooked their dinner with the fire from the hearth.

Their main dish was soup cooked with dried vegetables and meat.

At Misasagi-senpai’s suggestion, they chose their respective side dishes by drawn lot.

Three very similar looking packages were laid out on the ground.

“One of them, is the bad option. The expiration date, is very strict.”

“Eeh~?”

“Fine, I’ll accept your challenge. But you’ll be the one eating your own words in the end.”

“Hey, Touya-kun, that’s a death flag right there, you know.”

“Hmm,” Touya hummed in concentration as he glared at the packages, while Misasagi-senpai just grinned.

“These preserved meals, were all thought up, and chosen by members, of the Exploration Club.”

“Are the ingredients from here on Nutella?”

“Yes. We search for, edible mountain plants, make vegetable gardens, cook bread, go fis.h.i.+ng, smoke the food, and even use magic, to restrain decomposition…”

“Wow, you made it all the way from cultivating crops in the field? That’s a lot of work. My boxed lunch ideas pale in comparison.”

“It’s the same, you know? Both of them, are quite fun.”

Suddenly, Touya grabbed one of the packages.

“I’ve decided on this one!”

“Then I’ll take this one.”

Misasagi-senpai took the remaining one.

“Kuh—I got the bad option! Darn it! Just what is [h.e.l.l’s lunch] supposed to mean?”

Touya fell back with a flop.

The expiration date written in large letters on the package was dated to last month.

“Make sure to, properly eat it.”

Misasagi-senpai consoled him while smiling.

When Homura checked over her own package, it had the expiration date, the dish name [Chicken & Dumplings], and a handmade stamp on it.

“What’s this stamp with a goldfish and cat mark on it…?”

“Those are the, marks of me… and Inari-san. It’s a dish, we thought up, together.”

“……”

Touya’s face suddenly became clouded under the illumination from the firelight.

“Inari-san? You mean that Inari-san?”

“She’s an, Exploration Club, member… formerly, that is.”

“Ooh. Then she’s our senpai. But, even though her name is Inari, she has a cat mark? Not a fox2?”

“Yes, it’s a fox-cat3.”

Misasagi-senpai smiled amusingly as she explained.

Meanwhile, Touya was challenging his preserved meal while feebly complaining.

“For it to taste so bad… or rather, it should be tasty, but… Anyway, it’s just so spicy…”

“So it was, still spicy, huh?”

Misasagi-senpai held out some water to him apologetically.

“What!? Were you waiting for the spiciness to go away!?”

“There was a senpai who was fond of spicy food, huh? And Touya-kun likes spiciness. Doesn’t everything work out that way?”

“This thing isn’t a preserved meal! Once we return to base camp, I’m going to write a warning in red letters on it.”

“Why don’t you just throw it away?”

After this and that, they finished their dinner.

“Oww… My legs stiffened up while I was sitting…”

Standing up, Homura patted her legs while staggering.

“I really did a lot of walking.”

“Senpai, I can put out the fire here now, right? We can make another one back up at the t-spot.”

As Touya filled a pan with water in preparation, Misasagi-senpai shook her head.

“Please throw in all, the remaining firewood.”

“…We’re going to make a camp fire?” Homura asked.

“Ah, I had a feeling about that.”

As he said that, Touya began throwing in the remaining firewood.

Misasagi-senpai took off her shoes and socks, and then took off her jacket as well, revealing a body suit underneath. She then walked into the shoals of the river.

“I know, you’re tired, but I’d like, you to help, too, Hinooka-san.”

“Eh, ah, sure, but—are we going to be catching fish or something?”

As Homura stepped in too, the clear and cool stream and rocky shoals felt achingly good on her stiff feet.

They began gathering up big rocks and using them to stem the river flow where the stream got a bit deep.

Homura moved the rocks as senpai told her.

“Uwah, there’s something rustling between the rocks… There aren’t any strange bugs or anything here, right?”

“Fortunately, there are no, land leeches, around here. But if you get, stung by something, make sure, to tell me.”

“Stung, you say… I’ll be careful…”

Soon, they completed a small dam on the river bed. It was quite well done for something made on the fly.

“Th… This is a children’s pool! No, it’s more like a bathtub.”

“It’s not a hot spring, like you asked for, though.”

“Even so, it’s quite effective on me! The important point is that it’s an open-air bath! Really, if I was going to have to sleep while all dirty like this, I was considering quitting the Exploration Club.”

“……”

“Ah, that was a joke, okay? Don’t make that sad face, please.”

“Hey, are you troubling senpai? —Anyway, is this good enough, senpai?”

Touya showed a shovel made of thick Y-shaped branches to senpai.

Senpai nodded and pointed at the deepest part of the path with the end of a stick.

“The white rocks, break easily, so avoid them.”

“Roger… Here we go.”

Touya used the wooden shovel to pick up rocks heated within the fire and threw them into the dam one after another, causing the water to noisily let out steam. It was a stone bathtub inside the river.

The water temperature was just right, making Homura eager to get in.

“Then, the female group which contributed to making it gets first dibs…!”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’ll be over at the t-spot.”

“Since it’s a promise, I’ll say it just in case, but—don’t peek! You better not peek!”

“I can ma.s.sage your feet again, you know?”

“Ahaha, please give me a break. That tickled too much.”

Back when Homura had a leg cramp during one of their morning running sessions, Touya had forcefully dug his thumbs into the back of her feet to ma.s.sage it. Just remembering the ticklish feeling of it made Homura reflexively laugh out loud.

After leaving some towels for the girls, Touya went off into the grove of trees along the slope, and Homura warily watched him until his back disappeared from sight.

“…All right, he’s gone… He’s gone, right? Don’t begrudge me for this, young man.”

“Hinooka-san, I’m going, in first.”

“Wah, faaaaaaast! So fast!”

When Homura turned around, Misasagi-senpai was already naked and wearing only a towel. Senpai stuck her toes into the shoals and tested the water temperature.

“I forgot about your changing speed, senpai. Y-You should be a bit more conscious of service for the viewers and such, you know…”

Undaunted, Homura also undressed and put her clothing down next to senpai’s neatly folded clothes.

Observing Misasagi-senpai, Homura washed her body the same way she did with the cool water further downstream.

A stone bathtub they had made themselves. While being careful of the heated stones that were marked by a stick placed in the water, Homura nervously sunk her body into the bath.

It wasn’t that deep, so when they sank down to their shoulders they had to stretch out like in a Western bathtub, but it was still wide enough for the two of them.

Homura let out a sigh and murmured to herself, “Dealing with s.e.xual urges really is a problem for Exploration club members…”

“What was that?”

Misasagi-senpai, having been looking up at the night sky while leaning her back against the rocks and hugging her knees, turned to Homura calmly.

“No, err—huh?”

Homura noticed something unusual about senpai’s hair as it was reflected in the dim light.

“Senpai, your hair color… returned to normal…?”

Misasagi-senpai nodded and lifted up her washed hair with the palm of her hand.

It wasn’t completely black, but her hair had greatly regained its dark hue.

“Yes. My transformation seems, to have the quality, of reaching its peak, at noon, while Nutella’s influence, on me weakens, at night.”

“…Wait, does that mean there are also people for whom Nutella’s influence gets stronger at night instead?”

Senpai nodded.

Homura carefully checked over her body, but no matter how she looked at herself, she was a normal human. There was no sign of seeing magnetic force lines or infrared rays when she strained her eyes to look around her either.

“It’s a bit of, a waste for just, the two of us, to enjoy this view…”

“Yeah, true… Eh?”

Suddenly, Misasagi-senpai whistled with her fingers.

Soon after, a human silhouette came down the slope, and a troubled-sounding voice from beyond the tree thicket called out, “What is it?”

“Touya-kun’s just like a dog…”

Ignoring Homura’s comment, Misasagi-senpai said something unbelievable.

“Touya-kun, you come in, too.”

Senpai called out to the thicket with a loud voice.

Homura doubted her own eyes and ears.

“Wait, senpai, what—”

“The hot water, we went to the, trouble of heating, will chill and, go to waste, by the time, he comes in.”

“W-Well, I admit that’s unfair for him and it might be kinder to Nutella’s environment this way, but—”

Well, it was true that carrying over new heated rocks would be a lot of heavy labor.

“I guess, it’s true that, dealing with s.e.xual urges, is a problem.”

“Wha—”

“Hey, that’s harsh even for a joke,” Touya shouted back while seeming to be heading back within the thicket, but Misasagi-senpai whistled at him again.

After several more whistles rang through area around the river, Touya finally gave up and came over while keeping his face turned to the side.

“Wah, wah, you’re actually coming in—!?”

Homura frantically dragged up her towel, but when she did that it was too high to properly cover her waist…

Even as Homura felt like running away during the time it took for Touya to undress while grumbling to himself, Misasagi-senpai relaxed and stretched her body while taking a hand out from the stone bathtub and enjoying the cold sensation of the river water.

“……Uuugh…”

Homura glared over her shoulder at Touya as he entered the shoals with a towel around his waist.

“…It can’t be helped, it’s the club president’s order.”

“There, come in from there.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Touya grumbled in resignation as he stepped over the rock dam.

“—Thanks for the bath4.”

“Eh, what’s with that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you always say that when you go into the bath?”

“I do.”

“Don’t! It sounds rude in a situation like this.”

“We always say it in my family.”

“It’s weird, weird I say! And it’s kinda lewd too…”

“Don’t say lewd.”

When Touya sunk down into the stone bath, the width of the bathtub was just right to fit them, as if it had been made to fit three people from the beginning.

However, Homura had her body bended forward and was clearly keeping at a distance, while on the other hand, Misasagi-senpai was far too defenceless, and the black speck Touya, who was stuck between them, was unable to look either left or right and so had no choice but to look up.

“Wow… this really is nice…”

Noticing what he meant, Misasagi-senpai also leaned her back against the rocks and gazed up at the night sky.

Homura also took her first hard look up at the night sky.

The sky commanded the view from the shallows of the river where the tree thicket cut off.

Currently, the Bagel was a thin triangle like a cut-up cake, and it shone so brightly in the night sky that you could even read a book under it.

Furthermore, countless stars twinkled brightly, in no way losing to the Bagel, and they could see every detail of the Milky Way.

“Can you see it—Hinooka-san, Touya-kun?”

Misasagi-senpai raised her hand high and drew a huge arc across the sky with her finger.

The s.p.a.ce in the sky normally occupied by the Bagel was, at a glance, a pitch-black and boorish area that hid the stars, but… when you looked closely and strained your eyes, you could see gently-sloping arcs of light that countlessly overlapped.

“A night rainbow…”

It was the rainbow pattern of the Bagel that wasn’t clear during daytime, because of the brightness.

“The color is completely different along with the band.”

“Yes. It looks, even more beautiful, at midnight.”

When you figured out the structure, the patterns could be distinguished even more clearly.

Faced with this wondrous sight that she had never seen before in any planetarium, Homura let out a sigh of awe.

“…There are many, offered explanations for why, the rings that serve, as Nutella’s shadow look, multicolored like that—like it being from, a complex series of, reflected light from, the sunlit side, of the rings, or that it receives, solar wind just like, the aurora phenomenon. There are even, strange theories like, they are supplied with, magnetic energy from, the interior of Nutella, and glow like, a fluorescent lamp.”

“…Even if you take a picture of one of the rings, it’s only when you look at it close up like this that you notice a lot of strange and wondrous things, huh?”

“Yes.”

Just how many mysterious and unknown things were still hidden on this vast planet?

“In winter, the Bagel hides the sun.”

“Eeh, I’m not good with cold.”

“In exchange, it’s quite hot, in the summer.”