5 - Princess Knight and the contents of the box
By the lake at night. Naoto uses an electric pump to pump
water from the lake.
The pump, which connects the water inlet of the camper to
the lake, makes a loud motor noise as it replenishes the water consumed in the
shower.
Naoto's face beamed as he confirmed that the camper was
functioning without any problems.
Suddenly, a breeze blew, creating a wave of grass on the
lakeside. Naoto, still in short sleeves, shivered in the cold wind.
“I think I'll go back inside and get into the kotatsu.”
“Kuuuu”
Naoto turned his head and suddenly heard a puppy crying at
his feet.
The puppy was at his feet, wondering when he had come out of
his room.
He uses his small body to the fullest and pushes against
Naoto's legs.
“Oh puppy, is the box of oranges good?”
Naoto then crouched down and lightly pushed back the puppy's
cheek.
The puppy then pushes back with its whole body, as if to
return the favour.
It was wagging its tail so loudly that you could almost hear
the wind whistling. It must be in a very good mood, and Naoto could feel its happiness.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Haha, I don't know what you're talking about. Since we're
in a different world, why can't you talk too? Hey doggie, what's your name?”
"Kuuun?"
The little puppy stops pressing against its body, but its
tail is still wagging and it nods its head.
“I guess it's no good. Well, it's not going to be that
convenient.”
Naoto laughed and played with the puppy some more. When he
held out his palm, the puppy licked it, and when he raised his hand, it jumped
up and down after him.
“It’s so cute. I've always wanted to get a dog, you know.”
He mumbled, squatted down again, and adjusted his gaze to
the puppy.
“Hey, doggie, you like it here?”
"Kuuun?"
The puppy tilted its head and looked up at him in wonder.
“Here, here.”
Naoto went around to the back of the camper, opened the door
and opened the porch.
This was the stage where the puppy had broken the princess
knight in the evening.
There, the puppy came running up and climbed on the edge, as
if it was getting used to it.
It sat down and looked up at Naoto.
“Woof!”
“Oh, yeah, you like that.”
“Woof! Woof!”
“I've been debating between a dog and a cat ever since we
decided on the porch, but yeah, it's decided.”
Naoto was in a good mood, talking to himself. Ever since he
ordered this porch, he's been imagining a dog or a cat on it.
The veranda is a mysterious space that is both indoors and
outdoors, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is the heart of Japan.
He always thought that it should be a Japanese style dog or
cat that should be there.
For that reason, there were no problems with this puppy that
looked like a Shiba Inu. In fact, it was perfect.
“Its fate, isn't it?”
He mumbled to himself as he joked with the puppy.
As he was smiling like that, he heard a squeaky sound that
often came through the motor of the pump.
It was an easily recognizable belly sound, but it didn't
belong to Naoto.
He looked down and found himself eye to eye with a puppy who
looked up at him with a wistful look.
“Oh, you're hungry, huh? Give me a minute.”
After patting him on the head, Naoto walked into the six
tatami room from the porch and opened the refrigerator in the kitchen space. He
took out a carton of milk from the fridge and poured it into a mug.
“I should heat it up, right?”
Remembering the knowledge he had seen somewhere before, he
warmed the cup in the water heater, transferred it to a plate, and returned to
the porch with it.
As soon as he placed it on the porch, the puppy immediately
jumped on it.
It was a shallow plate with milk on the bottom. The puppy
stuck out his tongue and licked it.
The puppy licked it, then spun around the plate.
The puppy licked and licked, and then spun around the plate.
It was as if he was on a merry-go-round.
“Woof!”
The puppy looked up and whimpered as it came to the front of
Naoto. It licked him again, turned around, came back to the front and whined.
“And what kind of drinking is that?”
Despite saying that, Naoto's face was warm.
“Speaking of which, where's Sophia?”
He remembered the princess knight who seemed to be even more
warm and fuzzy than he was. So he looked up and saw Sophia standing a few
meters away from him before he knew it.
“So-”
“Damn, you’re not fair!”
When he tried to call out to her, he was countered with a
line that he had heard somewhere before.
When she said that, Naoto felt like replying "ogo
ogo", but he was more interested in the reason why she told him that.
“Did I do something?”
“Wait!”
Sophia did not answer the question, but turned and ran.
She ran toward the woods at a distance, her silver hair
fluttering by the lake at night.
“Oh, hey, it's not safe in the woods at night, take a
flashlight!”
Naoto was taken aback and hurriedly used his hand as a
megaphone to call out, but it failed to reach her as she was already out of
sight.
“I wonder if she's okay…”
I'm not sure if I should go after her, Naoto said, wondering
if he should.
“Something shined… Oh, it was her hair”
I saw a red, flickering light beyond the forest. I immediately
recognized it as the colour of Sophia's hair when she wielded her magic.
Even from a distance, one could see that it illuminated the
surroundings well.
Naoto stopped chasing after it and sat on the edge, watching
the red light moving at high speed through the woods and thinking to himself.
“How convenient… magic.”
Naoto sighs to himself. Next to him, a puppy continues to
play the merry-go-round.
It seems to have no interest in Sophia at all.
“Hey, doggie, be nicer to Sofia, okay?”
Naoto spoke to the puppy.
“Probably because she likes you a lot more than I do.”
“Woof!”
The puppy looked up from its plate, wagged its tail and
barked in a high-pitched voice.
It came closer and pressed its body against Naoto.
It was a full course of canine affection.
“No, not for me. For Sofia.”
“Woof! Woof!”
“Well, whatever…”
Naoto decided to give up if he couldn't speak the language.
We'll just have to take things slow again with Sophia, he
thought.
Throwing away his thoughts, Naoto sat on the porch in a
daze.
In the meantime, puppy, who had finished licking the milk,
came up beside him and put its chin on his thigh as if it were the edge of a
tangerine box.
Eyes half-open, dazed look on its face.
The sound of the pump motor, which had been going on for a
while, stopped.
Instead, he heard the sound of a puppy's tail quietly
wagging and tapping on the edge.
Pasat Pasat
The water supply was finished, but Naoto thought that he
could clean up the pump later.
A moment of calm followed.
Suddenly, a red light flew out of the woods and came back to
the camper at breakneck speed.
“I’m back now!”
Sophia came back with such speed that she could have set a
new world record in athletics. She had dashed in her armour and she hadn't even
raised her breath.
Instead, she had a rugged… face that was serious to no end.
“Where have you been…?”
Naoto looks up at her as he sits down and asks her a
question, but is lost for words in the process.
He was speechless at what Sophia was holding, something she
was holding with both arms.
“I got this!”
“Is that… oranges by any chance?”
“Correct!”
She said, taking one of the oranges and thrusting it in
front of Naoto's eyes.
“What are you going to do with it?”
A bad thought crossed his mind, but he asked her to confirm
it.
“That box has a picture on it, right? Of oranges.”
“Yeah, it has…”
Naoto looked into the room from the porch. In the corner,
there was a box of oranges that had contained a puppy.
Sophia was right, there was no mistaking the mandarin
oranges on the side of the box.
“So I took this. Oh, and Naoto, can I borrow your kotatsu?”
“kotatsu?”
“Oh, if only I had a kotatsu and oranges, I could--”
Then she looked at the puppy with expectant eyes.
“Uh, I'm sorry to interrupt your breathing, but you can't do
that.”
"Well, do you want to get in the way?"
“It's not that, it's just that… it's really hard to say.”
“What?”
“Dogs don't like… oranges themselves.”
“Eh?”
“Or rather, they don't like the smell of citrus in general.”
“You’re lying…”
Sophia looks at the puppy with a look of disbelief.
Perhaps it was the sight of the large amount of oranges, but
the puppy's tail stopped and he struck an alarming pose.
“No, no, no…”
Her own efforts were in vain. The mandarin oranges she
believed to be her trump card had the complete opposite effect.
When Sophia realizes this, she makes a face as if the world
is about to end.
In desperation, an orange spilled from her arm and fell to
the ground.
"I… can't believe this stuff!”
With a tearful shake of her head, she threw the last of the
oranges in her hand.
The oranges flew away in the direction of the forest. They
flew with the sadness of Sophia.
Just when Naoto was about to say something to comfort her,
something else happened.
“Woof!”
The puppy suddenly yelped and jumped down from the porch. The
puppy jumped off the porch and ran towards where the oranges had disappeared,
leaving a puzzled Sophia behind.
“What's going on?”
“It’s…”
Sofia doesn't know what happened, and Naoto remembers
something.
Shortly thereafter, the puppy returned with the mandarin
oranges in its mouth.
With the tangerine in its mouth, it dog-sat in front of
Sophia with its tail wagging.
“This, this is…”
“Throw it one more time.”
"Oh, oh..."
She took the oranges from the puppy as she was told and
threw them again.
Then the puppy ran again, took the oranges, and came back,
dog-sitting and wagging its tail.
“Whoa.”
The princess knight fell easily to the cuteness that was
directed at her for the first time.
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thx for the new chapter~
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