When Isac opened his eyes again, the sky had already brightened.
Yukinoshita Yukino, beside him, was already up too.
At the moment, she was sitting on the soft hide cushion, her body leaning against the wooden wall on the headboard side, fully absorbed in the book she was holding.
The book in Yukinoshita Yukino’s hands had been left behind by the cabin’s previous occupant.
When they’d arrived at the cabin yesterday, the sky had already gone fully dark, and the only light source in the room had been the firelight squeezing out from the mouth of the stove.
A glow that dim made it hard work enough just to see a person — let alone read a book.
So even if the book might be hiding information about this world inside its pages, neither Isac nor Yukinoshita Yukino had been in any rush to flip through it.
They’d decided to wait until daylight.
Now that day had broken and Yukinoshita Yukino was awake, naturally she had to get a proper handle on whatever info there was about the world they were currently in — at the very minimum, they had to figure out where exactly they were and whether there were any other people in the area.
“Hngh — good morning.”
Isac sat up in bed, let out a yawn, then greeted the girl beside him.
“Good morning.”
Yukinoshita Yukino’s hand turning the page paused for a beat, then she answered back in a put-on calm voice.
Last night… well, more accurately, what had happened in the early-morning hours was still vivid in her memory.
Isac had rigged up an improvised portable toilet from the materials at hand, solving the problem of indoor bathroom needs for her.
At the same time, though, that meant she had gone to the bathroom with a member of the opposite sex right there in the room.
Sure, he’d had his back turned to her, but the soft trickling of water had inevitably reached his ears all the same.
Setting aside her early childhood when she hadn’t been able to take care of herself, Yukinoshita Yukino had never once gone to the bathroom in the presence of another person.
The impact on her was even bigger than helping Isac wipe down his back the day before.
So much so that, thinking back on it now, Yukinoshita Yukino had the sense of having stepped into a different world.
Ever since meeting Isac, a whole lot of her firsts had ended up snatched away by him.
And yet she didn’t have anything she could say about it.
After all, none of it had been intentional on his part — every instance had been a matter of circumstances forcing it, and on top of that he’d been doing it out of kindness, so she was the one who had to thank him.
That left Yukinoshita Yukino with a sense of having all this energy and nowhere to direct it.
Her usually sharp tongue had been temporarily sealed away because she owed him too much.
It wasn’t that she’d stopped being acid-tongued — it was that gratitude had clamped her mouth shut.
“We’ve gotta figure out a pillow today.
Sleeping without one — something just feels off.”
Isac rolled his neck.
Sleeping pillow-less just didn’t feel quite right.
Yukinoshita Yukino shot Isac a sidelong glance and thought to herself: ‘Having a bed to sleep on is already plenty — and now he wants pillows…’ Find the original chapter at g.com.
That said, Yukinoshita Yukino did happen to agree that something always felt missing without a pillow.
So she thought for a moment, then said: “Don’t we still have some fabric left over?
I can find a way to put together two pillows out of that.”
Once she’d finished, she paused again, and added: “But given the materials, don’t expect them to hold up against actual pillows.”
Isac responded eagerly: “I know, I know — having something to use is already plenty; not in any position to be picky.”
“Then I’ll get started on it in a bit.
Before that, though, we need to talk about this.”
Yukinoshita Yukino spread the book open in her hands and laid it down in the middle of the bed.
“Did you find something?” Isac took a glance at the contents in the middle of the book — turned out it was a popular-science book on plants.
“Mm — actually, yes, a few things.
There are plenty of plants in here I recognize, but just as many that I don’t — some of them I haven’t even heard of.
I’m not sure whether these plants are unique to here or not.”
“You think these plants are exclusive to this world?”
“If the book isn’t exaggerating, the effects of some of the plants here are… well, miraculous.
Even without being refined, they hold their own against modern medicine — it’s frankly unbelievable.”
As Yukinoshita Yukino said this, she pointed her finger at a plant described in the book called ‘burdock.’ According to the book, all you had to do was boil burdock in water for fifteen minutes, and the resulting tea would effectively treat colds, diarrhea, fevers, and a whole range of other common illnesses.
“That kind of effect — your everyday herbal medicine ought to be able to pull that off too, no?”
“It can, yes — but the problem is, take a look at the onset time.”
“Effective immediately… after drinking?!”
“It doesn’t even need to be digested!
And the real kicker is the range of conditions — it covers just about every common symptom on the list.
Calling it a cure-all wouldn’t be overstating it.
Now take a look at this ‘rose hip’ — believe it or not, this one can actually relieve pain.”
It wasn’t as if Yukinoshita Yukino had never seen or tasted a rose hip.
She knew it was hailed as ‘the crown of Earth’s plant fruits,’ rich in vitamin C, and a key raw ingredient for developing new health supplements and nutritional drinks.
But she had never once heard that rose hips of all things could relieve pain!
This was unscientific!
“Maybe they’re deliberately overstating the effects?” Isac guessed.
The contents of this book might not be any more reliable than the chat-log screenshots in some internet rumor — no guarantee of accuracy.
Who said something had to be true just because it was written in a book?
For all they knew, the author could have made the whole thing up.
“Can’t rule out the possibility, but what if it really is true? This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Also, I took a look — this book actually seems to be an officially published one, with state backing behind it.”
“State backing?
Which country?”
“It says ‘Canadian’ on it, but I’m not sure if it’s the Canada I know — because the flag on it is different.”
Following Yukinoshita Yukino’s guidance, Isac quickly spotted the flag she was talking about.
It wasn’t the Maple Leaf Flag he was familiar with — it was the leaf of a different plant, shaped similar to a maple leaf but clearly not actually a maple.
How to put it?
It had the vibe of a flag deliberately invented to dodge content review — like one of those plausible-but-not-quite knockoff products you find in a parallel-world setting.
“Are there any other books?
I remember there being more than just this one on the table, right?” Isac asked.
“I looked through the others too.
One of them is a popular-science book on animals — also officially published, also stamped with the flag.
The rest are books and magazines on the social and humanities side.
I didn’t go through those closely, but they mention more than once that the world seems to be going through an ‘apocalypse.'”
“But those don’t carry the official publication mark, so I can’t really verify how accurate that information is either.”
Yukinoshita Yukino shared everything she’d gathered and inferred with Isac, holding nothing back.
Apocalypse… combined with the extreme sub-freezing environment out there, calling it that wouldn’t actually be off the mark.
The problem was, that kind of low-temperature environment wasn’t unheard of in his original world either.
In high-latitude, high-altitude regions — forget steady year-round temperatures in the negative teens Celsius, even daytime highs holding at thirty or forty below Celsius weren’t exactly impossible.
Calling it an ‘apocalypse’ on the basis of that alone was a bit one-sided and arbitrary.
Sigh — the real issue was the lack of intel sources to draw from.
Going off only a handful of books, there was simply no way to confirm whether any of it was true.
“Let’s not worry about all that for now.
Apocalypse or not is a tough one for us to call, but verifying whether the plant effects are real — that we can do.
When I head out later to gather firewood, I’ll see if I can bring some of those plants back.
The ‘beard lichen’ especially — looks like it might even do something for your sprain.
We’ll know once we try it.”
“Practice is the test of truth, after all.”
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