Princess Knight 4

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.

 

Prev    Index    Next


If you like this translation and want more, kindly consider supporting through here.

Next PostNewer Post Previous PostOlder Post Home

1 comment: