4 – Princess Knight and Moving Weapons
Night, in the camper.
Naoto was in the driver's seat, holding the steering wheel
and driving the car.
Behind the windshield, the headlights illuminated a dirt
road that stretched out in a straight line.
Compared to the comfort of modern asphalt roads in Japan, it
was a world of difference, but not so much that the car could not drive. At a
speed of about 20 km per hour, Patricia was driving without much shaking.
Behind him, in the six-mat Japanese-style room, there was
Sophia in her armor and a puppy.
The puppy was lying on its stomach on the tatami, and Sophia
was staring at it from a distance.
It reminds him of when he was a student and went on a trip
with his friends in a rented wagon and everyone was playing cards in the back
seat while he was driving.
(That was fun, wasn't
it?).
This thought made him feel the same way this time.
He looked in the rear-view mirror at the one and only who
reminded him of that, and asked the princess knight to confirm it.
“Should we keep going in this direction to the lake?”
“Yes, there is a large lake a little south of here.”
"South?”
Naoto looked at the compass on the side of the speedometer,
it was working and it showed that the course was heading south.
“That'll take care of the water supply for now.”
“Sorry, I must have consumed a lot of water in the shower.”
"No, water is good, because you can replenish it with
lakes and rivers."
If there's a problem, Naoto thought, it's… gasoline.
“I’ll ask just in case, you know what gasoline is?”
“Gasoline? I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Well, if there is such a thing, it's probably crude oil.”
He asked her, he wasn’t expecting anything so he wasn’t
disappointed.
At the same time, he was not pessimistic.
As it turns out, gasoline is not a "necessity" for
him at all costs.
Even without gasoline, Patricia has enough options to run on
electricity for a few minutes on a full day's solar charge, and if not run as a
car, it will have enough electricity for daily use.
The only effect of not having gasoline is whether or not it
is possible to drive long distances.
“If not, I'll just take it easy.”
Naoto thought that it would be fine to drive the car for
five minutes a day and travel leisurely.
In fact, it's better this way. He has been living as a
corporate slave for the past ten years, and now he just wants to relax.
“Did you say something?”
Sophia asks. Instead of answering, Naoto asked a question
about something that had been bothering him since he met her.
“I say, you're not surprised by this.”
“You mean this private house?”
“It's a car.”
He wanted to point out that he didn’t feel bad at it being
called a private house.
“Ah, yes, it has wheels. Oh, yeah, a car.”
“Ah”
“But this habitability… is more like a private house on the move.”
“It's a mobile home, or as we call it in my country, a
camper or a motor home.”
“I've never heard that word before. I've never even seen one
like this before.”
“And yet you're not surprised, you'd be surprised to see
something like this--or this.”
Naoto pressed a switch on his hand, the switch for the LED
lights on the ceiling, and the lights in the six tatami room went out and then
came back on.
“You've never seen anything like it, have you?”
“No. I've never seen a light that didn't have heat in it.”
A magic-using princess knight who was almost attacked by
orcs. I asked her about it because I expected the level of science in this
other world from that information, and it seems that my prediction was mostly
correct.
He thought again that it was probably medieval level.
“You don't seem surprised that you've never seen anything
like it before.”
“That's what my father taught me.”
With that, she straightened her back on the tatami mat.
In the rear view mirror, she looked breathtakingly dignified
and beautiful.
“Don't be surprised by what you see, because everything you
see is within the reason of the world, so don't be surprised if you think
something you don't know is insane, but accept it first.”
“I see, so that's why you weren't surprised.”
(Instead, a lot of things went wrong.)
He thought about it secretly, but didn't say it out loud.
Sophia continued to say.
“Besides, when I went to the western empire with which we
had a previous alliance, I was shown the empire's most powerful mobile fortress.
If they have mobile fortresses, then it is not surprising that they have mobile
homes.”
“An awesome word came out, but yes, it would be backwards
compatible with that.”
Naoto smirked at Sophia's words.
He was more happy that his camper was placed in the same
category as the term "mobile fortress" itself, which he had never
heard in real life before.
A mobile fortress, a camper.
Both are words that tickle the hearts of men who like
gadgets and mecha.
“Good for you, Patricia.”
He moved his hand on his dashboard as if he was stroking
Patricia’s head, and just then Sophia’s voice was heard from behind.
“Ah…”
“What’s the matter?”
“No, no nothing.”
Sophia hurriedly denied it, but her reaction made him even
more curious, so Naoto drove on and looked at her through the rear-view mirror.
There was Sophia in her armour and the puppy next to the
kotatsu. Both are next to the kotatsu, but they are slightly far apart.
The distance is so far that it is slightly out of reach.
Sophia was staring intently at the puppy that was lying face
down on the tatami. She has been talking to Naoto since a while ago and has
been staring at the puppy all the time, except when explaining her father's
words.
Her eyes are fidgeting and her hands looks itchy that he can
see through the rear-view mirror.
(I bet you want to touch it.)
Sometimes, she would casually shift in her seat to get
closer to the puppy, but every time she did, the puppy would freak out and
distances himself from her.
She moves and the puppy runs away.
The puppy runs away and she chases.
Each time she let her voice trail off, her shoulders
slumping in disappointment.
Even glancing in the rear-view mirror, he saw it repeated
three times.
If she continued like this, it would be a chase around the
kotatsu and she would be broken down.
Naoto stopped the car to do something about it because he
was starting to feel sorry for Sophia, who was constantly being rejected by the
puppy.
"Naoto?"
Unlocking the driver’s seat, he rotated it 180 degrees to
face the living area.
He stood up straight away and walked past the princess
knight in the six tatami-mat room to the storage room in the rear.
He opened the door to the storage room, which was filled
with miscellaneous items, including a cardboard box that had been given to him as
a container when he had bought a lot of food at the supermarket.
He pulls it out and comes back to the Japanese-style room.
"What is that?"
"Cardboard box"
"What's a cardboard box?"
"Wait a second"
Naoto opened the folded cardboard box, assembled the bottom,
put it in a corner of the room, and put a towel inside.
“Here, puppy, it's a cardboard ...... box of oranges.”
"Kuuun?"
The called puppy stood up and alternately compared the
cardboard boxes with the pictures of Naoto and mandarin oranges.
Box of oranges, Naoto, Box of oranges, Naoto.
As they alternated staring at each other, the puppy
gradually lengthened the interval between staring at the box, as if it sensed
something in the box.
Eventually, it started walking toward the box.
“Ah…”
Sophia raised her voice. Right in front of her, the puppy
crawled into the tangerine box on its own, just as it had done when it had
climbed onto the porch, and rested its chin on the edge of the box, showing
only its face.
It had a full-blown laid back look.
“Wow.”
Sophia, who had been sitting up straight just before,
slumped against the combination of the puppy and the tangerine box, and her
eyes slackened.
Naoto also thought the puppy was cute, but not as cute as
Sophia.
"Sophia"
"Cute..."
"…Sophia"
"Huh"
When he called her strongly, she came to her senses, cleared
her throat, and composed herself.
“Wh-What is it?”
“Do you know what art is?”
“Hmm, don't be ridiculous, I may be naive, but I at least
know the concept of a work of art.”
“It's the same thing. A puppy in a box of oranges... is
another artistic thing to look at, not to touch.”
“…I see! So that's what it was.”
Sophia was exaggeratedly surprised and convinced.
(I thought you weren't surprised.)
“I understand, don’t touch!”
“That’s right.”
The princess knight clenched her fists tightly on her knees
to keep her hands off the puppy in the tangerine box as she had declared, but
soon her fists relaxed and her face became warm.
“…you’re so easy.”
Those impressions, with a hint of favouritism, never reached
the preoccupied Sophia.
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