“Lady Kaguya, I’m heading out.”
Hayasaka Ai turned her head and said her quiet farewell to Shinomiya Kaguya, still unconscious in the deepest part of the mine shaft.
Before leaving, she’d already piled enough firewood onto the fire and set up the necessary defensive measures at the entrance, making sure that during the stretch of time she was gone searching for rescue, Shinomiya Kaguya wouldn’t run into any danger.
It couldn’t eliminate every risk entirely, but it was the best solution she had right now.
If they kept dragging this out, Shinomiya Kaguya wasn’t going to make it anyway — better to throw the dice.
At least that way there was still hope.
Once she was out of the mine, the sky was still that overcast gray.
The one piece of good news was that the snow had stopped, and the wind was considerably gentler than the day before — a rare patch of good weather.
Hayasaka Ai cinched her coat tighter around her, tucked the bottom half of her face down into the collar, pulled her hat brim low, and left only a pair of sapphire-blue eyes fixed on the snowy forest ahead.
The girl gripped a stick she’d picked up along the way; with every step she used the stick to probe the snow in front of her — keeping herself from punching through a soft spot and taking a fall, which would have killed her travel pace.
Every few steps, she’d also pull out the dagger she carried on her and notch a mark into a tree, so she wouldn’t lose the way back.
She didn’t have much time.
The fire back inside the mine would hold out until sunset at the very latest — which meant that if she hadn’t tracked down whoever had fired off the flare last night before noon, she’d have to turn around immediately.
Otherwise Shinomiya Kaguya, back in the cave, would be staring down the risk of hypothermia.
High fever plus hypothermia — those two words stacked together, dropped into conditions like these, were basically a death sentence on paper.
And that was something Hayasaka Ai absolutely would not allow.
Mercifully, because she was traveling light — only the dagger and the gun on her — Hayasaka Ai’s pace was far quicker than it had been before, like a sleek golden snow leopard cutting through the snowy woods.
“Direction… still on track.”
Out in the wild, what was actually trickier than a wild-animal attack was losing your bearings — especially in a snowy forest.
The endless white snow, the trees that all looked alike — it made it absurdly easy to lose your sense of direction and start walking in unintentional circles.
Which was why every time Hayasaka Ai notched a mark into a tree, she’d reconfirm the direction she was heading.
But she didn’t have a compass on her, and the sun overhead was buried under heavy cloud cover the whole time — so all she had to rough out the compass directions was the shape of the canopies and the moss-and-lichen growth at the bases of the trunks.
This method was a pain, inefficient, and there was no real guarantee that you wouldn’t be wrong about it — but there was no denying that, outside of this method, Hayasaka Ai didn’t have any better options.
All she could do was put in the work and let fate handle the rest.
There was no telling how long she’d been walking.
Hayasaka Ai felt like her feet had just about lost all feeling from the cold; her forward motion was running entirely on the momentum of repeated, mechanical steps.
And what was even worse off than her legs were her eyes.
Those jewel-bright, deep-blue eyes felt at this moment like she’d gotten sand in them — wave after wave of stinging pain, tears welling up involuntarily, her vision compromised because of it.
The trees around her had even started showing faint double-images.
Hayasaka Ai recognized immediately what this was: the early symptoms of snow blindness. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
If she kept walking, the symptoms were guaranteed to get worse — and at that point it wouldn’t be as simple as blurry vision and double-images anymore.
It would be outright regression of her sight, and in serious cases, temporary blindness.
Symptoms like these didn’t develop in a single shot — the high-intensity exploration she’d been doing the past two days had likely already pushed her eyes past their limit.
It was just that they’d waited until right now to dump everything on her at once.
Why, of all possible moments, did it have to be this one!
Hayasaka Ai bit down hard, her chest going tight with frustration.
This snow blindness — couldn’t show up earlier, couldn’t show up later, had to hit at exactly this moment.
What really stuck in her throat was that she’d genuinely overlooked this one.
If she’d anticipated it earlier and taken some precautions in advance, snow blindness was something that could have been completely prevented.
The problem was — who could’ve guessed that even with the sun fully behind thick cloud cover, the UV rays could still punch through the clouds and savagely throw elbows into her eyeballs?!
Ultraviolet radiation, you are playing way too dirty.
(Pro tip: When you’re traveling across snow country, remember to guard against snow blindness even on overcast days!)
Feeling the burning sensation radiating from her eyes, Hayasaka Ai really wanted to rub at them with her hands — but she couldn’t, because doing that would only make things worse.
Her corneas had already been burned by the UV, and rubbing on top of that would just be piling injury on top of injury.
And she couldn’t stop, either.
She had no idea how long whoever had fired the flare last night was going to stick around — and Lady Kaguya was still back in the mine, waiting for her!
There was nothing for it but to keep walking.
Snow blindness didn’t leave any permanent aftereffects anyway — as long as she could find the person, worst case she’d just take her time recovering after the fact.
That said… she might not be able to stop, but there were still some other protective measures she could take.
Hayasaka Ai found a birch tree, drew her dagger, dug a hard cut into the bark, then yanked downward — and with that, a roughly twelve-inch strip of bark was hers.
She trimmed it down with the dagger into a clean rectangle, folded it in half along the center, held it up beside her eyes to size it up, and once she’d lined up the position, cut a narrow slit on each side.
And just like that, a makeshift bark eye-shield was finished.
Hayasaka Ai held the shield in place by wedging it under the brim of her hat and into her collar.
Conditions just weren’t on her side — otherwise the better play would’ve been to rig up a piece of rope and tie the thing around the back of her head.
With the shield on, Hayasaka Ai could feel the burning in her eyes ease up a bit.
The cost was that her field of vision got more restricted — call it trading sight for stamina.
After a few minutes adjusting to it, she set off again.
About another half hour of walking later, she stopped beside a pine tree.
Nearly two hours had passed since Hayasaka Ai had left the mine shaft.
If she hadn’t drifted off course along the way, then by her own pace she should be very close to her destination by now.
After another half hour of circling around, Hayasaka Ai still had nothing to show for it.
The eyes hidden behind the shield couldn’t help but start to leak a touch of impatience.
Deep down, she couldn’t stop wondering whether she’d taken the wrong direction partway through — whether whoever had fired the flare wasn’t anywhere near this area at all.
Her noon ‘deadline’ was creeping closer and closer, and what was even worse, scattered snowflakes had started drifting down from the sky.
Hayasaka Ai gritted her teeth and decided to give it one more half hour.
After that, whether she’d found anything or not, she had to be back at the mine before the weather got any worse.
Minute by minute the time bled away.
Every direction was full of trees that looked alike — and partway through, Hayasaka Ai actually spotted that some of the trees were marked with notches she’d cut not long ago!
Which was proof that she’d been circling in place this whole time.
An inexplicable wave of despair settled over the blonde maid’s heart.
“Tsk…”
As if venting, Hayasaka Ai ripped the eye-shield off and tugged the collar down, exposing a face that — despite looking a little worse for wear — was still gorgeous.
She tipped her head back to look up at the sky, and saw that it was significantly brighter than when she’d first set out.
This was not good news.
A brighter sky meant her ‘noon deadline’ was right around the corner.
“Time to head back.” Hayasaka Ai said to herself.
She couldn’t keep gambling on this.
And looking at it from another angle — even if she did find someone, what if it turned out the other party was in the same boat she was, just other castaways in distress?
After all, who in their right mind would have nothing better to do than fire a flare if they weren’t in trouble themselves?
Cut her losses now — that was the play!
And just as she was about to pull her collar back up, get the eye-shield back on, and turn back for home, a whiff of burning firewood drifted into her nostrils.
Something stirred in the girl’s chest.
She twitched the tip of her nose.
And finally locked her eyes on a specific spot in the distance.
“Maybe… one more try, then.”
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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