The sky was starting to darken, and there was bad news on top of that: Hayasaka Ai’s snow blindness had gotten worse.
At this point she couldn’t make anything out at all — everything she saw looked like it was on the other side of a thick pane of frosted glass.
Even with the special eye-shield on, unless she closed her eyes and rested immediately, the shield could only buy a little time before the snow blindness fully set in.
The fact that she’d been able to hold out until they were nearly at their destination was honestly a testament to how tough Hayasaka Ai’s constitution was.
“Sorry — I keep being a burden on you.”
Hayasaka Ai kept her eyes shut, her left hand resting on the elbow of Isac, who was walking half a step ahead of her.
Her voice carried the quiet relief of someone who’d just narrowly dodged death.
Thank God Isac had come along.
Otherwise, once her vision was gone, never mind making it back to the mine shaft — even the most basic movement would’ve been a serious problem.
Add to that the fact that night was falling, and she probably wouldn’t have made it through tonight at all.
“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it.”
Hearing the girl’s heartfelt words from behind him, Isac just smiled a little.
Truthfully, he was glad he’d tagged along too.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be just Shinomiya Kaguya — Hayasaka Ai would’ve ended up dead out here too.
Because even if Hayasaka Ai had somehow made it through tonight, given how severe her snow blindness was, it almost certainly wasn’t going to clear up on its own by the next day.
And when that happened, there was only one way it ended for her.
Seriously, how many more people is your big brother Isac gonna have to save out here?
“I think I can see the mouth of that mine shaft you were talking about — there’s a stone wall stacked up at the entrance, about a meter or so high, right?”
“That’s it.”
Hearing Isac’s description, Hayasaka Ai immediately snapped to attention.
Words came tumbling out of her in a rush: “Don’t go in just yet.
I’ve set up a tripwire trap behind the stone wall, about a meter past it.
It’s a trigger-based one — you can take it out from a distance with a stick.”
Holy crap.
Isac finally understood why Hayasaka Ai had felt comfortable leaving an unconscious Shinomiya Kaguya alone in the mine shaft.
With a setup like this, your average wild animal really had no way of getting in.
Even a stranger would probably get nailed at the second layer of defense.
“This setup of yours — that’s some serious paranoia,” Isac said with a smile, meaning it as a compliment.
“Not paranoid enough — otherwise my eyes wouldn’t have gone temporarily blind on me,” Hayasaka Ai answered, her tone tinged with frustration.
The fact that you could still get snow blindness even on an overcast day really had been one of her blind spots, knowledge-wise.
Let’s just say that of all the wilderness survival training scenarios she’d been put through, most of them had been jungles, oceans, and urban ruins.
Arctic survival had barely come up.
Isac didn’t bother flattening the entire stone pile at the entrance.
He just cleared an opening wide enough for him and Hayasaka Ai to slip through, and once Hayasaka Ai was inside, he turned around and sealed the opening back up again.
They were going to spend the night here, and this stone wall was going to be their first line of defense.
The instant he triggered the tripwire, a massive boulder dropped down from above the cave entrance, hitting the ground hard enough to shake it.
Damn, sis — wasn’t this a little overkill?
Come to think of it, how the hell did you even get a rock that big up there in the first place?
After that little display, Isac was now thoroughly convinced that Hayasaka Ai was, without question, a trap expert.
Going forward, setting up the snares along the game trails was officially her job.
Hayasaka Ai had no idea Isac had already neatly assigned her future workload.
The moment she heard the boulder slam down, she completely relaxed, and said to Isac: “After this, I’m going to have to trouble you to feed Lady Kaguya her medicine for me.”
“No big deal.” Isac took the two painkiller tablets back from Hayasaka Ai, tucked them into a corner at the mine shaft entrance for the moment, and only then walked over to the unconscious Shinomiya Kaguya.
As he passed the campfire, the coals were still burning steadily, and the heat coming off them made the inside of the cave and the world outside feel like two completely different planets.
By the campfire, a dark-haired girl was curled up on her side.
Her hair — which by all rights should have been as silky as fine fabric — was at the moment caked with dirt, matted into uneven clumps.
“Bedraggled” didn’t begin to cover it.
Isac pulled the thermos out from inside his coat, unscrewed the lid and set it aside, then reached out and felt the girl’s forehead.
Yep — alarmingly hot, just like he’d thought.
He took a look at the way Shinomiya Kaguya was curled up.
Obviously there was no way to feed her medicine in that position.
So he tried tentatively shaking her body, calling her name as he did.
“Shinomiya Kaguya.
Shinomiya Kaguya?”
No response.
Still out cold.
Isac frowned.
Now this was a problem.
If she couldn’t regain consciousness, there really was no safe way for Isac to get the medicine into her.
If he tried to force-feed it, there was a very real chance the pills would end up going down her windpipe, and at that point she’d almost certainly choke or develop a lung infection — and that meant Shinomiya Kaguya would die right then and there.
He had to figure out a way to bring her back to consciousness first.
Shinomiya Kaguya’s current state was unconsciousness brought on by a high fever.
Standard tricks like shouting at her or pressing the philtrum point under her nose weren’t going to wake her up.
The only way she had any real shot at coming around was to get her temperature down first.
So step one for Isac was bringing her fever down.
Before he got started on that, though, he needed to explain the situation to Hayasaka Ai, just to make sure there were no unnecessary misunderstandings later.
“Hayasaka Ai.
Your lady’s in a coma right now from the fever.
There’s no way to feed her the medicine in this state — we’ve got to wake her up first.”
“Not really.
I can handle the whole thing on my own.
The thing is, I need to tell you up front — in the process, I’m unavoidably going to be touching some sensitive areas of her body.
I want to be clear that I’m not doing this to take advantage of your lady.”
Hayasaka Ai couldn’t see, but it still needed to be said out loud.
Hearing Isac’s words, Hayasaka Ai didn’t hesitate for a second.
Her answer was immediate and decisive: “Extreme situations call for extreme measures.
Mr.
Isac, please — do whatever you need to do.
If Lady Kaguya asks about it later, I’ll take full responsibility.”
Now that he had someone willing to take the blame, Isac stopped hesitating.
He started undoing the collar of the girl’s shirt at the chest, and at the same time said over his shoulder to Hayasaka Ai: “Tear me off two strips of cloth.”
Riiiip.
Hayasaka Ai didn’t waste a single word.
She pulled open her outer coat, tore two strips off the innermost layer of her shirt — still warm from her own body heat — and pressed them into Isac’s hand.
Taking the strips, Isac poured a little of the warm water from the thermos onto them.
He laid one across the girl’s forehead, and kept the other in his hand, using it to wipe down her arms, legs, and torso over and over.
While he was doing all of that, he had to keep one eye on Shinomiya Kaguya’s body temperature the whole time, to keep her from tipping over into hypothermia.
At the same time, with his free left hand, Isac kept lightly pinching the girl’s earlobe, and right next to her ear he kept calling out her name.
“Wake up.
Shinomiya Kaguya, wake up…”
Several minutes in, the girl’s eyelashes suddenly fluttered, and her brow knit gently, as if she were having a bad dream.
Seeing that, Isac immediately raised his voice and switched from pinching her earlobe to pinching the webbing between her fingers.
Finally, his effort paid off.
With a low, muffled groan, the girl faintly came back to consciousness.
Those wine-red eyes simply gazed quietly up at Isac, as if she were trying to work out where exactly this man hovering over her had even come from.
“Good — you’re awake.
Now be a good girl, open up.
Time to take your medicine.”
Isac didn’t give her a moment to react.
The instant he saw Shinomiya Kaguya was awake, before she even had a chance to say anything on her own, he pinched her cheeks to part her jaw and, without so much as a by-your-leave, popped the two painkiller tablets right into her mouth…
____
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Walnut-chan for more chapters!🔥👻
🔥 New history:Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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