“Mngh…”
Before Shinomiya Kaguya could even register what was happening, two painkiller tablets were already inside her mouth.
By the time it clicked, her almond-shaped eyes had gone round as saucers.
“Drink some water.” Isac paid no mind to the girl’s disbelieving stare and simply pressed the rim of the thermos straight to her lips.
“Gulp.”
Maybe it was because Isac said it so matter-of-factly, or maybe because the cup was already at her mouth — either way, Shinomiya Kaguya found herself instinctively obeying his instruction, swallowing a big, full mouthful of water.
The warm water carried the pills down across her throat.
The inflammation from her high fever was bad enough that even just drinking water sent a sharp, stabbing pain through Shinomiya Kaguya’s throat.
Watching the young lady’s delicate brows knit together in pain, Isac — like he was pulling off some magic trick — produced a piece of hard candy from his pocket.
“Good job.
Here, have a piece of candy.”
Aside from that first day, when she’d still been conscious enough to eat a small amount of food, Shinomiya Kaguya had spent the remaining two days more or less out cold.
The only thing in her stomach was whatever hot water she’d managed to drink during the rare moments she’d come around.
So right now, she was in urgent need of an energy boost — and nothing delivers fast energy quite like a piece of candy.
As a bonus, it would also soothe her throat and take the edge off the pain.
Sure enough, the moment the candy was in her mouth, Shinomiya Kaguya’s furrowed brows smoothed right back out.
As if she’d already forgotten Isac’s strong-arm medicine-shoving from a moment ago, a sweet smile spread across her face, and in a slightly hoarse, pitched-up little girl voice, she said:
“Thank you, big bro!”
Okay — this whole “turns into a clingy little kid the second she gets sick” routine was all the confirmation Isac needed that the girl in front of him really was the Shinomiya Kaguya he remembered.
Watching Shinomiya Kaguya sway gently from side to side with that smile on her face, Isac conjured up another item out of his pocket — this time, a chocolate bar — and held it out to her.
“Here.
Eat.”
“Whoa — chocolate!”
The instant Kaguya laid eyes on the chocolate bar in Isac’s hand, her wine-red eyes lit up into literal stars.
In a single bite, she’d already devoured half the bar.
She glanced down at the half still left in her hand, then glanced back up at Isac.
After hesitating for just a beat, she lifted the remaining half of the chocolate bar back up — straight to Isac’s mouth.
“Big bro should have some too!”
Honestly, the only difference between fever-mode Shinomiya Kaguya and an actual angel was probably just the missing halo and wings.
“You eat it.
Big bro isn’t hungry.” There was zero chance Isac was going to fight Shinomiya Kaguya over a snack.
Between the two of them, she was very obviously the one who needed the calories more. Get faster updates on g.com.
Shinomiya Kaguya was clearly not satisfied with that answer.
She kept the chocolate bar held up to him, her eyes welling up with tears at lightning speed, and insisted stubbornly:
“Eat it!”
The look on her face all but screamed, “if you don’t eat this, I am going to cry.
Right now.
Right in front of you.”
Isac could only curse the fact that his phone had already martyred itself, leaving him with no way to record the scene playing out in front of him.
Seeing the girl push the chocolate bar toward his mouth a second time, Isac caved and took a token little nibble off the end.
Sweet, with a kind of light fragrance to it… that was probably what chocolate tasted like, right?
Watching Isac actually eat the chocolate, Shinomiya Kaguya’s eyes curved into happy little crescents.
She crammed the remaining piece into her mouth in two big bites instead of three, then, all on her own initiative, picked up the thermos and gulped down a couple more swallows of water.
Off to the side, Hayasaka Ai couldn’t actually see any of this — but the moment she heard Shinomiya Kaguya say the word “chocolate,” she knew Isac had given her young lady a chocolate bar, and she understood exactly what he was doing: getting some energy back into the girl who’d been out cold for two whole days.
With that in mind, Hayasaka Ai spoke up to Isac: “Behind the rock to Lady Kaguya’s right, there’s some bread I gathered up over the past two days.
Mr.
Isac, please take it out and share it with Lady Kaguya.”
Following Hayasaka Ai’s directions, Isac quickly located the food she’d stashed away.
It was nothing but bread and some hardtack, and not much of either — the supply was nothing compared to the stockpile he and Yukinoshita Yukino had back at the cabin.
And on top of that, he also found some dried cattail stalks tucked underneath everything else as padding.
“There’s three pieces of bread left.
One each — the three of us split it.” Isac didn’t bother with formalities; he just made the call and divvied it up.
To his surprise, Hayasaka Ai shook her head.
“You and Lady Kaguya can split it.
I’ll just eat some cattail — it’s a bit rough going down, but at least it’s edible.”
A slow, oversized question mark formed in Isac’s head.
An absolutely ludicrous suspicion suddenly surfaced, and he stared at Hayasaka Ai in disbelief and asked:
“Don’t tell me you’ve been eating cattails this whole time?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Whew.
Yeah, I figured…”
“There was also moss and some berries.
I’ve already finished it all.” Hayasaka Ai delivered this line in such a flat tone, you’d have thought she was describing regular bread and biscuits instead of moss and berries.
Damn — you can pull off the deadpan delivery routine too?
Isac genuinely didn’t know what to say anymore.
The person sitting across from him didn’t feel like a soft, sweet-smelling blonde beauty anymore — she felt more like a slab of solid steel that could talk.
She’d rather eat literal grass herself than touch the tiny stash of bread and biscuits she was saving for Shinomiya Kaguya?
Hayasaka Ai, you absolute…
“Just eat the bread.
I really don’t want to wake up tomorrow and have to drag two sick people along on the trail.” Isac was a little speechless.
Yukinoshita Yukino, Hayasaka Ai — how was it that every single one of them was this stingy with their own rations?
Wasn’t the standard wilderness-survival plot supposed to go: everyone pigs out at the start, then realizes the food is almost gone, starts going hungry, and ends up turning on each other?
How was it that on his side of things, every single person would rather starve than touch the food they were saving for their companions?
“This… all right.
But hardtack is plenty for me.
Bread is softer — if you soak it in some water, it’ll be easier for Lady Kaguya to eat.” Even now, Hayasaka Ai still couldn’t take her mind off her Lady Kaguya.
Meanwhile, Shinomiya Kaguya, noticing that Hayasaka Ai had her eyes closed, asked in a slightly childlike tone — half curious, half worried: “Hayasaka, what’s wrong with your eyes?”
Clearly, fever-mode Shinomiya Kaguya had only had her personality flipped — her memory was perfectly fine.
She still recognized everyone just like normal.
“It’s temporary blindness brought on by snow blindness.
It heals on its own — please don’t worry about me, Lady Kaguya.” Hayasaka Ai’s voice was gentle, almost the way you’d coo at a small child.
She’d been Shinomiya Kaguya’s personal attendant since the age of seven, so of course she knew that her lady’s personality flipped completely whenever she ran a fever — turning her into a clingy, baby-voiced little girl.
“Oh, I see… then if you’re sick, you have to eat properly, okay!” Shinomiya Kaguya admonished her, then glanced left and right, and proceeded to shove every single piece of food within reach straight into Hayasaka Ai’s arms.
Hayasaka Ai might not have been able to see anything, but from the feel of it in her hands alone, she could tell that Shinomiya Kaguya had just dumped every scrap of food around her right into her lap.
A faint smile she couldn’t quite hold back surfaced at the corner of Hayasaka Ai’s mouth.
Then she answered:
“…Uh — thank you, Lady Kaguya.
But I really can’t eat this much.
How about we split it together with Mr.
Isac instead, okay?”
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
Let’s hit these goals: