Mealtimes, Toilets, and Baths: Romantic Comedy Time

♪ Adagio (present) ♪

“Sorry. There’s something I want to buy. You two wait in line here for a bit.”

Growl stepped out of the line.

After arriving in town, we had joined the queue for a restaurant so we could fill our stomachs. It had a reputation for containing nutrients that improved resonance with resonance particles. We wanted to get to the royal castle as soon as possible, of course, but it wouldn’t do to collapse from hunger halfway there.

“Could you hold this? I’ve got too much to carry.”

“O-okay.”

Poet handed me a strange plastic triangular thing.

“A megaphone?”

“Yeah. I don’t really get it either, but apparently it’s called a Come-Come Megaphone. They said that when the line is finished, you’re supposed to shout ‘Growl’ into it.”

Huh. Weird.

The wind blew. Ugh… I was getting a little cold.

“Sorry, Poet. Can I slip out for a bit too? I need to go pick some flowers.”

“Hm? Were there flowers blooming around here? It seems more like a stone-paved street.”

“I mean the toilet.”

“Oh… sorry.”

He lowered his head, looking embarrassed. Cute.

Somehow I’d ended up in the girl position, scolding a boy for being tactless. Even though I still thought of myself as a man, it gave me a strange feeling.

W-why was a conversation like this making my heart flutter a little? Seeing his embarrassed face tickled my pride. I might actually be a pervert. How embarrassing.

My body began glowing green.

N-no. If too much maidenly feeling charged up inside me, I’d transform into the Emerald Princess right here in the middle of town. I had to get my heart back into man mode. Right—think of something masculine. Like a broad, burning chest. Like Growl’s. Ahhh…

My body glowed even more brightly. Gyaaah! This was all wrong. I had to calm down.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form!

Reciting a line from the Heart Sutra that I’d learned a little of at the temple helped me recover my composure.

I was falling for Poet and for Growl too. That made me just like some cheating woman!

There was a line for the women’s toilet. Life as a woman might be harder than I’d thought. You saw scenes like this at sightseeing spots sometimes, sure, but actually having to line up yourself was a pain. In a town where you couldn’t casually go to the toilet, maybe you couldn’t afford to drink too much water.

It was surprisingly peaceful considering there was a civil war going on. Well, maybe that was because this was a rural area a little removed from the front lines. It might not mean anything. But somehow it felt eerie, like the calm before a storm.

There were a lot of dragonfolk in line. No, not just at the toilet—the street corners too… I had heard this was a tourist spot that dragonfolk found easy to visit, but I hadn’t expected it to be this full of them. There might even be more dragonfolk than rabbitfolk here.

I hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. How would I even explain myself? Becoming a woman was considered shameful among dragonfolk. There was no way I could say it. They’d laugh at me.

While I was turning that over and over in my mind, my turn finally came. Time to go in.

Oh, right. Wasn’t I supposed to call a name into the megaphone when I was done lining up? I wondered what it would do.

“Growl!”

Ah. The woman behind me flinched. Maybe I shouted too loudly.

“Eek! This is the women’s toilet!”

“S-sorry!”

Before I knew it, Growl was right in front of me.

“That megaphone was for calling me when the restaurant line was finished! Not the toilet line!”

“Oh… sorry.”

So it was a device that made a person come when you called their name. I’d used it carelessly without even understanding how it worked. Still, at least it hadn’t turned into a huge incident.

At the restaurant, they served ethnic food full of local vegetables and spices. Since it was a rabbitfolk town, there was no meat, and beans were used for protein instead.

“Meat… meat…”

Growl slumped. Together with how flustered he’d been earlier, it was kind of cute.

…No. I had stopped my body from glowing. My maternal instincts were not being stirred. Absolutely not.

“Munch munch nom nom.”

Poet’s desperate way of eating was cute too. Gyaaah. My body had started glowing again. Stop, stop.

I had to stay calm. I was a man.

“Thank you for the meal!”

“You’ve got a grain of rice stuck there.”

I wiped the messy mouths of the two hopeless boys with a handkerchief. I found myself fussing over them automatically. Each time I stretched up to reach, I became aware of the fact that I was wearing a skirt. I was completely a mother now, wasn’t I?

“Let’s hit the hot springs!”

“Great idea!”

The two of them instantly agreed.

“Honestly! You’re both so selfish. Still… traveling at night would be dangerous, so maybe it’s better to rest here a little.”

Even though I’d bought perfume at the department store, it would still be bad to go to the castle without bathing for days. Maybe it was best to wash off the sweat here.

Oh, right. The women’s bath. E-even though I was a man, that meant I’d be seeing naked women.

That was wrong. But if I kept getting embarrassed over everyday things like this, I’d never survive the life ahead of me. I had to be brave.

The three of us headed for a large hot spring facility. It was a huge place, probably because it served both tourists and townspeople.

There were two kinds of hot spring cultures: mixed bathing in swimsuits, and separate men’s and women’s baths in the nude. This place was apparently the latter.

Wh-what was I supposed to do? If my gaze looked pervy at all… they’d call me a creep and throw me out. No way, no way!

While I was thinking that, I somehow got through paying at the entrance, entering the changing room, shutting my eyes, and taking everything off before I knew it. Covering myself with a towel, I headed toward the bath.

Huh? Once I was actually in there, it felt a little different from what I’d expected.

It seemed my gaze toward the other women wasn’t nearly as indecent as I’d feared. Instead, what was overwhelmingly embarrassing was the thought of my naked body being seen.

My chest and waistline looked basically the same as any normal woman’s, right? But I couldn’t exactly stare at the others and compare. Waaah, nooo.

Fine. I decided to hurry up and scrub myself. Since I didn’t really understand the basics of women’s hair washing, I used hair-washing magic and let it clean me automatically.

Once I had washed off all the grime, I sank into the bath.

Ahh. This was nice. So calming. I gazed out over the forest scenery.

If the war spread here, this place might become a sea of flames too, mightn’t it? I recoiled at my own terrifying imagination.

“Um, excuse me… is it okay if I sit next to you? I wanted to look at the view.”

Since it was a woman’s voice, I instinctively shrank up, knees turned inward.

“Hah hah hah. You’re not some man who snuck into the women’s bath, so you don’t have to panic like that.”

I am a man, though.

Then I glanced at her face and froze in shock.

“Kanon!?”

“Huh? How do you know my name? I think this is our first time meeting. You’re dragonfolk too, right?”

When I looked up, I saw a very familiar dragonfolk woman—one of Allegro’s female classmates. To run into her in a place like this of all places!

I followed the thread of memory.

When Allegro was in elementary school, he often used to play with Kanon. The two of them would enjoy drawing together. Then one day, a rowdy boy flipped up Kanon’s skirt. At that moment, Allegro’s hidden passion—his jealousy—had flared fiercely.

At that time, the personality called Adagio—me—didn’t yet exist, not even as a shadow. So I couldn’t pull up every detail. But judging from the circumstances, Allegro must have been in love with her. That was why he felt jealous…

Maybe the reason he’d been so desperate to rise as a bureaucrat when he was young was because he wanted to return to his hometown and bring her back with him. That was only a guess, though.

“Ah, ahaha. I met someone named Allegro once through another person.”

The moment I said it, I thought, Crap! Allegro was an escaped convict. That excuse would only sound suspicious.

But whether she knew that or not, she answered me coolly.

“Oh. Him. How many decades has it been since I last saw him? I figured he hated me, honestly.”

“Huh?”

That answer caught me completely off guard. The information in my memories and the information from the person in front of me didn’t match. What was going on?

Were my memories all tangled up? Had I mistaken false information for the truth?

It was a mystery.