After a whole lot of fussing about, he’d finally gotten the personal hygiene situation sorted out.
After pouring out the water, Isac put the door latch back in place.
Then, considering how the latch had gone unmaintained for years and could conceivably give out on him, he grabbed Yukinoshita Yukino’s makeshift crutch and braced it against the door frame, just to make sure no wild animal could break in on them while they were asleep.
Since they’d be sleeping inside a sealed-off room this time, no one needed to take a night watch.
To stretch out how long the firewood would burn, Isac stuck with his usual trick — deliberately dampening the wood with a bit of water to leave it slightly moist, then stuffing it into the wood stove and packing the stove as full as he could, making sure the pieces were jammed tight against each other to minimize the gaps between them.
Last — and most important — he opened the firebox just a sliver, making sure only a trickle of oxygen could get inside.
That way the fire would keep going without ever going out, while burning at the absolute minimum rate.
Mind you, Isac was only willing to pull this trick because the cabin had a chimney, and because timber cabins aren’t fully airtight to begin with.
Otherwise he’d sooner be jolted awake by the cold than run the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning by deliberately burning the wood incompletely.
With the stove loaded up, Isac walked over to the side of the bed.
Yukinoshita Yukino, at some point, had already cleared out a spot for him — and even left him half of the thick quilt.
The message couldn’t have been clearer.
Isac had been bracing for some kind of awkward back-and-forth, but apparently he’d been overthinking it.
Come to think of it, he had already slept next to Yukinoshita Yukino for those two nights back at the plane wreck.
Now it was just a change of venue — from a cabin deck to a wooden bed lined with animal hides.
The actual difference probably wasn’t as big as he’d been making it out to be.
On top of that, sure, they were sharing one quilt — but both of them had every layer of clothing they owned on, several pieces deep, bundled up so thick you could barely tell there was a person underneath.
Once he’d talked himself through all that, the thrill of Isac sharing a bed with a beautiful girl for the first time in his life dropped off quite a bit — the whole thing started to feel rather flat.
He pulled off his shoes, set them on the side closer to the stove, then carefully rolled himself up onto the bed and pulled the quilt over him — and a strange, unaccountable wave of contentment welled up inside him.
Two and a half days of wilderness survival, and at long last, he was sleeping in a bed.
…
The bed wasn’t large.
With two people lying side by side, it was hard to leave any real space in between — though neither Isac nor Yukinoshita Yukino thought much of it, probably because under these conditions just having a bed to sleep in was already a stroke of enormous luck.
Sensing the movement beside her, Yukinoshita Yukino’s body unconsciously shrank toward the far side of the bed, and her limbs went a touch stiff.
True, she had left a spot on the bed for Isac — but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to be nervous about it.
In all her years up to now, this was the first time she’d ever shared a bed with a member of the opposite sex anywhere close to her own age.
Sure, you could chalk it up to circumstances, but sharing a bed was sharing a bed — and before getting in, she’d even helped him wash his face and scrub his back, like some newlywed wife waiting on her husband.
If someone had told her three days ago that she’d be doing things like this, she’d have been dead sure that person was out of their mind.
Thinking it over now, Yukinoshita Yukino had to admit she felt a little out of her mind too — though she didn’t regret a single bit of it, that much was true.
Tomorrow I should be able to take some of the load off you.” Yukinoshita Yukino spoke up, intending to talk over tomorrow’s plan with Isac.
Having said her piece, the girl closed her mouth and waited to hear what the person beside her had to say — but she waited a long time, and no answer came.
“Isac?”
“Hfff…”
Yukinoshita Yukino called Isac’s name quietly.
All she got in response was the slightly heavy sound of his breathing.
He was already asleep?
Yukinoshita Yukino blinked.
From the moment he’d climbed onto the bed to the moment he’d laid down, it couldn’t have been more than three minutes, could it?
He must have been truly exhausted.
With that thought, a wave of sleepiness washed over Yukinoshita Yukino too.
Listening to the breathing of the person next to her, her consciousness gradually slipped away.
…
Daybreak hadn’t come yet.
The wind and snow outside seemed to have eased up a little.
There was still firelight inside the stove — a lot smaller than it had been before they’d gone to sleep, but it was still giving off heat.
Isac was woken by a creak from the wooden bed.
He turned his head toward the source of the sound.
“Sorry — did I wake you?”
“It’s fine.
What’s…”
“…I — I need to use the bathroom.”
Yukinoshita Yukino’s voice came out a bit flustered and squirmy.
The light in the cabin wasn’t great, and Isac couldn’t make out the girl’s face beside him — but he could guess it had to be as red as the coals glowing inside the wood stove.
Yeah — turns out even anime beauties have to use the bathroom.
“Need a hand?” Isac asked.
“On your own, it’s going to be a little tough, isn’t it?”
After all, with one leg sprained, both moving around and squatting down had to be pretty awkward.
Come to think of it, Isac hadn’t seen Yukinoshita Yukino go to the bathroom before — she must have been figuring it out on her own during the day, while he was out scavenging for supplies.
Back then, their camp had been set up in the tail of the plane, with a lavatory right next to it.
He’d torn off the lavatory door to use as a windbreak, but the metal toilet was still inside — that must have been where Yukinoshita Yukino had been taking care of her business.
“No — no, that’s not necessary. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
I can… handle it myself.”
This one thing, and this one thing alone, Yukinoshita Yukino did not want Isac’s help with.
“All right.”
Isac could understand Yukinoshita Yukino’s refusal.
Since Yukinoshita was sleeping on the inside, Isac just climbed out of the bed and gave her room to get off it herself.
Watching the girl struggle to move her body, Isac suddenly thought of something — namely, where exactly was Yukinoshita Yukino supposed to go to relieve herself?
This wasn’t the plane-wreck camp, where a lavatory and toilet had been sitting right next door.
In this cabin — under 200 square feet, at a generous estimate — there was no such thing as a bathroom.
The only containers around that could hold liquid were the flat-bottomed pan on the table and the empty in-flight meal trays they’d already eaten through.
“Yukinoshita, I have to ask — were you planning to handle this outside?”
“…”
Yukinoshita Yukino said nothing.
Her original plan had been to wait until Isac was asleep, slip out of bed, find a corner, use the empty ember box as a makeshift receptacle, and then crack open the door to dump it out.
But now that Isac was awake, she wasn’t seriously going to do that right in front of him…
Going outside, though — never mind whether that wolf had really cleared out, the temperature alone was more than enough to do her in.
Between dignity and safety, it was obvious safety came first.
Well — push forward, no good; pull back, no good.
It was a real damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t kind of moment.
Isac looked at Yukinoshita Yukino, Yukinoshita Yukino looked at Isac.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment.
“You know what — how about I work out a solution for you?”
She really couldn’t go outside to use the bathroom, could she?
What if she froze in place?
Yukinoshita Yukino was silent for a long while, and finally, from somewhere deep in her throat, she let out the faintest possible “Mm.”
At this point, never mind her face being as red as the coals in the wood stove — the temperature of her cheeks was about to match the coals too.
She wanted to die…
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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