When I went to the desk and asked, they told me the hot spring’s location and bathing procedure.
The center of the square-shaped building was where the hot spring was located. The hot spring was surrounded by a wooden fence, and the inside of the fence was divided into two sections, used as the men’s bath and women’s bath respectively.
The bathing procedure was not very different from our world.
First, you washed your body at the water channel where water flowed, then put on the bathing garment placed in front of the hot spring and entered the bath.
I followed the procedure exactly as the employee had told me.
I went inside the building and washed my body with soap said to be made from egg whites.
Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub.
Then I scooped up the hot water flowing through the channel with a gourd ladle and poured it over my body.
I scrubbed so hard that the folded parts of my skin stung slightly here and there.
Had I been too enthusiastic?
It could not be helped. After lecturing Luna about cleanliness, I would have no persuasiveness if I were not clean myself.
The size of the bath was wide enough to make my mouth fall open.
Roughly 165 square meters.
Inside the bath, dug in the shape of a hexagon, water close to jade in color rippled.
Its depth was about enough to reach the collarbone when one adult sat down.
Perhaps because it was fairly deep, signs with warnings were installed at each corner of the bath.
[The bath is deep. When accompanied by a child, please take special care to ensure the child does not fall into the water.]
There was already someone in the hot spring.
Only one person.
A single person sat there all alone in the wide bath, and now I had just become the second.
I sat about ten meters away from the previous bather and occupied one side of the hexagon.
The distance between us was about ten meters, but the sides of the hexagon each of us occupied touched each other.
The moment I placed my body in the bath, a mechanical voice sounded.
-Arrived at Southern Volter Mountain Hot Spring.
-Omoreo Region Exploration Rate increased to 20 percent.
-2,000,000 won has been added to the Travel Reward Fund.
-Current accumulated fund: 18,000,000 won.
I had gained 2,000,000 won simply by placing my body in the hot spring.
Ordinarily, even entering a luxury inn itself would be a fairly difficult task, so they must have set the accumulated fund amount while accounting for staying a day at a luxury inn.
Thinking that way, I realized all over again just how lucky I had been to stay here for free because our interests had aligned so well.
Next, a ten-minute count began.
-Soaking in a paid hot spring of Volter Mountain.
-There are four paid hot springs in Volter Mountain, and paid hot springs have special effects.
-Soak for at least 10 minutes in each paid hot spring to acquire the region-limited skill ‘Recovery Acceleration.’
-It is recommended to invest skill points obtained through the Hot Spring Experience Event into Recovery Acceleration. This is only a recommendation, and the choice is Mr. Jo Seong-jin’s.
Just by soaking in the hot spring, my level rose by 2 each time.
I had thought it was an extraordinary reward, and now I saw there was a reason they were giving me skill points so generously.
They were giving me points so that, once I obtained them, I would invest them into the Recovery Acceleration skill.
As I chewed over the message, two minutes had already passed.
Only after I escaped my thoughts did the noise beyond the wooden fence dividing the men’s bath and the women’s bath finally reach my ears.
“......!”
“.......!”
“......!”
I could not hear the details, but I could tell that the guests bathing in the women’s bath were chatting excitedly and noisily among themselves.
When I paid attention to the wooden fence, the man sitting ten meters away attempted small talk with me.
“I heard a group of noblewomen from the Kastra Region came here on a group trip.”
He had thrown the words so unexpectedly that it took a few seconds for me to come up with a suitable answer.
I combined words in my head and completed a harmless reply.
“They sound lively and happy.”
“For reference, they are all in their fifties and sixties.”
“Ha. I had not been thinking anything, but thanks to you, I have become conscious of it in a strange direction.”
Just like how, even though I normally did not pay attention to breathing, I would suddenly become conscious of it.
Perhaps my reaction pleased him, because the other man laughed loudly.
Because of the place we were in, I had unconsciously been trying not to keep the other person in my field of vision, but as we talked, my focus had, at some point, settled on his appearance.
He looked to be in his mid-to-late twenties.
Blond hair and blue eyes.
His hair was swept to the left and right on either side of his forehead, and its length was enough to cover his ears.
His features were distinct, and among them, his nose was especially high and sharp.
As I was observing his appearance, my eyes met his unintentionally.
I unconsciously turned my head, and by chance, I discovered another bath placed beside the main bath.
On a sign set up in front of a puddle about fifty centimeters in diameter, so small it felt embarrassing to call it a bath, was written.
[Boiled eggs. Please eat outside the bath.]
Luxury inn, even you are boiled eggs.
It seemed that the basic egg-cooking method in this region was to create a separate small puddle beside the bath and use the natural hot spring to boil eggs.
Eggs poured out in large quantities every day, and if they made a rough puddle and left them there, they cooked, so no separate fuel was necessary.
It was understandable that they would provide them without limit.
When I looked at the puddle beside the bath in fascination, the blond man showed interest in me and continued his small talk.
“It seems this is your first time in the Omoreo Region?”
“Yes, well. I only just arrived today. But how did you know?”
“You seemed fascinated by the puddle beside the bath. It is a common sight in this region.”
“You know it well. You must be a resident here.”
The blond man smiled broadly and shook his head once from side to side.
“I am here for work. If you are interested, please come listen to the evening performance.”
“Evening performance?”
The blond man stood, revealing his body above the water, and disclosed his identity.
“I was invited as a bard. I am scheduled to perform in the banquet hall later this evening. The larger the audience, the more excited I become.”
A bard.
I knew it as an artist who played music and accompanied it with stories.
Was this like a dinner show where one ate dinner while watching a performance?
A service befitting a luxury inn.
I said I would come if I had time, and while doing so, I examined the blond man’s physique.
‘A bard?’
When the blond man had been soaking in the bath, I had not known, but once his body was revealed outside the water, his physique drew my eyes.
Broad shoulders, angular muscles packed tightly across his entire body, and countless scars of unknown origin spread across his back and calves.
This was only my personal impression, but he looked closer to a warrior than a bard.
The blond man soon left my field of vision.
I glanced over my own body, which had relatively little muscle mass, then tilted my head back as far as possible and looked up at the high sky.
“Were eggs supposed to be good for building muscle?”
As I enjoyed the way my legs, soaked in fatigue from walking for a long time, softened and melted, ten minutes had already passed since I entered the bath.
[Level increased. Level has risen from 15 to 17.]
-Current remaining skill points: 4
Was it already time?
I had only just begun to get into it.
There would be no problem if I stayed longer, so I decided to remain a little while before leaving.
Even after satisfying the Hot Spring Experience Event’s condition, I went back and forth inside and outside the bath and stayed in the hot spring for another thirty minutes.
***
On the way back to the special suite, I saw foxtail grass growing in a flowerbed and broke off one stalk.
When I returned to the special suite, excited at the thought of playing with Luna in cat form.
What waited for me was an empty room with no one inside.
“Luna?”
On top of the cupboard Luna had chosen as her place of separation.
Under the bed, where it would be easy to hide.
Inside the warm blanket.
Luna was nowhere to be found.
I shook the foxtail grass gently all by myself and muttered in confusion.
“Where did she go? It will be dinner soon, so we need to go to the banquet hall.”
As was always the case with high-class places, one had to match the dress code suited to the location.
I had deliberately asked an employee to rent a fine dress for Luna.
I had been planning to have her check whether it fit, but the person who was supposed to wear the dress was not in the room.
Had she gone out for a walk because she was bored?
The window was open about ten centimeters.
It was a window that had been closed when I went to the hot spring.
“Surely she did not go for a walk in cat form, right?”
The moment I wondered that, thinking surely not, a familiar cry came through the open window.
“Meow~.”
A sweet cat’s meow.
The cry was coming from outside the window.
I stuck my head out the window and looked around, but Luna did not immediately enter my field of vision.
It seemed she was crying from fairly far away.
I went outside and called Luna.
“Luna~ Luna~.”
A garden decorated with garden trees and various statues surrounded the outside of the square-shaped building, and as I walked along the building wall, I was able to reach the source of the cry.
Under one garden tree, a black cat sat neatly.
And beside the black cat, a familiar person was crouched down and extending a hand toward it.
It was the bard I had met in the hot spring earlier.
I recognized the bard immediately and acknowledged him.
“Ah, you are the one I saw in the bath earlier.......”
The bard wore a refreshing smile and bowed his head slightly.
“We meet again. There is still time left until the performance, so I was taking a walk.”
“It is nothing much. I just heard a cat meowing.”
“Haha, then we are the same. While I was walking, I suddenly heard this little one crying, and before I knew it, I had come this way.”
When the bard extended his hand, the black cat stretched its body upward on its own.
Then it shook its body by itself and rubbed its head furiously against the bard’s hand.
Luna, you little......
You ran away to the top of the cupboard when it was me, yet you approach a complete stranger first and entrust your body to him?
For some reason, it felt as if bubbles were boiling up around my solar plexus.
Whoever Luna showed affection to was Luna’s freedom.
A master-servant relationship was a two-way relationship based on loyalty, not a one-way relationship that controlled every little action.
The bard glanced at my expression, then dragged his feet slightly to the side.
“It seems to be a cat raised here. It follows people very well.”
“Well, it seems that way.”
“Would you like to touch?”
It seemed he had mistaken my intense stare for wanting to touch the cat.
Without realizing it, I suddenly turned my body.
Then I scratched the wounds on my arm with my hand and deliberately spoke as if for the black cat to hear.
“I will pass. It does not seem like it would like me touching it anyway.”
As I turned my back to the bard and rounded a corner to return to the special suite.
I almost bumped into someone standing beyond the corner.
But somehow, the person standing beyond the corner looked familiar.
A woman with black hair and golden eyes.
I looked back and forth between beyond the corner and behind me.
“Huh? Why are you here? Then what is that?”
The black cat I had thought was Luna was truly a cat raised by the inn, and the real Luna had briefly left her seat to look for something to eat.
Luna stared at me intently with an indifferent expression.
In Luna’s hand was a paper bag wrapped around cookies, and she was taking out round cookies shaped like egg biscuits by the standards of our world and chewing them one by one at regular intervals.
“.......”
Crunch, crunch.
“.......”
Crunch, crunch.
Luna said nothing, and only after quite some time did she flutter both hands left and right.
Luna’s hands swatted the foxtail grass I was holding left and right.
As the foxtail grass shook rhythmically, Luna spoke in a dry tone with no rise or fall.
“Would you like to touch?”
It was the same question the bard had thrown at me.
What the question meant was self-evident.
It meant she had seen everything I had done in the garden.
I suddenly found myself sweeping my eyes over Luna from top to bottom, then covered my mouth with my hand and looked into the air.
“You mean... in cat form, right?”
Luna held back her answer.
“.......”
Crunch, crunch.
This girl was completely determined to tease me.
***
Meanwhile, the bard left alone in the garden handled his fingers delicately, like plucking a harp, and scratched the cat’s chin.
The black cat purred happily and entrusted itself even more to the bard’s fingers.
The corners of the bard’s mouth rose faintly.
“So that man is the dimension traveler who crossed over recently. He has far more openings than I imagined.”