Worried our day might not progress past this if we stayed still for too long, I offered her a hand and she took it with a happy grin. I made sure to plant a long kiss on her as thanks before we pulled off the rest of our clothes and headed to the bath.

            Feeling refreshed and excited to finally take a proper bath again, I went ahead and stepped in first. Due to the short delay, the water had cooled just a bit, but was still plenty hot. Feeling its heat surround and relax my muscles was the perfect reminder that the muscles I’d been forcing myself to train needed to relax.

            Eager to try out the hot bath, Yua placed her foot in the water and, with a yelp of surprise, instantly lost her balance and collapsed into me. While I was happy to have this naked beauty jump into my arms, I made sure to catch her. I knew cats on Earth usually weren’t fans of baths, but I didn’t think Yua would be so sensitive to the heat when she looked fine testing it earlier.

            Once she was ready, I held onto her by the hip as I slowly lowered us both into the water. The further down we went, the more she seemed to stiffen. Her tail jerked about wildly once its base sank below the surface, but once it got use to the heat, it relaxed enough to poke out of the water’s surface like a periscope. Squatting in the water, her breasts just barely submerged, Yua’s shoulders slackened as tension slowly faded away.

            “It’s not too hot, is it?”

            “No. It feels… Kind of nice. I just never had a hot bath before.”

            The life she led up to my buying her, and probably even before she was enslaved, must have not given her very many chances to bathe properly. While she was mostly clean the day we met, that was likely only because the slave house kept their products clean so they could meet with potential buyers at a moment’s notice. And they likely did so with cold water, as we had been all month. It was because of the rough life she suffered that I wanted to give her as many luxuries as I could.

            While that was the main reason for making her this huge tub, it was also because I personally hated cold baths. In all the time I’d spent in this world so far, having to do most everything the hard and slow way, I was really starting to miss the conveniences of modernity. So, I wanted to bring as many of them into our home as I could.

            “You ready to sit down?”

            “Yup. This heat is nothing.”

            “Good, could you sit on my lap, please?”

            As shameful as it might be, one of my greatest desires was to take a bath with a lover. Just a bath. No extra funny business required. We’d just sit there with her on my lap, my arms wrapped tight around her waist and with her leaning into me, so we could both relax in our shared vulnerability and let the heat of the water sooth our daily worries for a little while.

            It was a simple, probably even laughable desire, I know, but now that I had Yua at my side, I really wanted to make it a reality. And as unbelievable as it may seem, this was even more important to me than the little favor I asked of her a moment ago. My only regret on the matter is not building this bath sooner.

            Not knowing any of this, Yua seemed to have misinterpreted my request. With her back to me, her hips hovering right over mine, she reached into the water and took hold of my penis and started guiding it toward her.

            “Yua, wait. Thank you, but that’s not what I meant.”

            “Eh? But your penis is hard again.”

            I couldn’t deny that. Even if my fantasy didn’t require what she was attempting, there was no way I couldn’t react to her trying. But I truly just wanted to enjoy this moment for a while.

            “I know, but try to ignore it. Let’s just enjoy the water.”

            I put my hands on her hips and guided her away from the monster trying to steal my reason away and had her sit on my lap. The soft, pleasant pressure of having a girl sit on top of me was almost enough to make me regret stopping her advances. So, I steeled myself by wrapping my arms around her stomach and pulled her closer.

            “Is it really okay for me to sit on you like this?”

            “Definitely,” I said, already on cloud nine. “In fact, from now on, when we take a bath together, this is how I want us to do it.”

            “Hehe. If you say so.~”

            Smiling at me over her shoulder, Yua let herself lean against my chest.

            I buried my chin into her chestnut hair and her ears twitched playfully against my cheeks. While we let the heat of the water soothe the muscles we’d been overworking every day, and every night, I quickly found myself almost comfortable enough to fall asleep on the spot. My buddy downstairs had wilted after her touch abandoned it and, while the softness of her bottom pressing it down under the water was powerful in its own way, he didn’t rise up again.

            “Mmm…”

            Cooing comfortably herself, Yua rolled her shoulders to work out a few of the kinks she’d built up fighting imaginary opponents. She brought up a hand and squeezed her right shoulder, seemingly the one most affected by her training.

            As a silent thanks for everything she’d done for me up until now, I placed my hands on her shoulders and helped press the soreness out of her. Her ears flicked, but as soon as I started, she let her hand fall back into the water and let me take over. So, I added some more pressure and started massaging her.

            I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right, but when I squeezed the parts of her that might have been sore, she fully surrendered to the massage and tilted her head back. Her cheeks were flushed, probably more from the water than my efforts, but when she opened her mouth to let out a cute moan of pleasure, I could have easily been confused.

            “… That feels good.”

            I laughed. “It’s supposed to.”

            Yua was strong, both physically and mentally. Stronger than me when it came to our stats, for sure. So, I felt it safe to put a bit more force into my massage by pushing my thumbs roughly into both her shoulder blades and the back of her neck, trying to further rub out the kinks and sooth the parts of her the hot water couldn’t reach. Definitely going to have to make the bath deeper later.

            I had no prior experience massaging another person, but thanks again to my perfect memory, I quickly caught on to which spots and at what pressures I used that made her voice slip out in little gasps of relaxed pleasure. It was similar to how I used my every effort in bed to find her weak spots in order to attack them repeatedly and keep her moaning throughout the night. But because of this mental comparison, I thought to put an end to this train of thought. I didn’t want to ruin the mood.

            Once she’d been kneaded into complete submission and her body had gone a little limp in my arms, I put the massage on hold to help her wash up. Until now, I’d been keeping our soap in my item box, but thanks to the little cubby hole I built into the side of the bath, we had a proper place for it. But for now, I lathered up my hands and turned the shoulder massage into a full-body experience.

            When we had both been cleaned and rinsed properly, Yua slipped off my lap to sit beside me. I’d been about to suggest we get out before we got sick from staying in for too long, but seeing her with that supremely contented smile she wore, I was suddenly and overwhelmingly overcome with the fact that removing her from the water now would be seen as a cardinal sin. So, I draped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her a little closer.

            She took the hand I dangled over her with both of hers and leaned into me. As she snuggled up to me in the water, I enjoyed myself by watching her ears flick off the droplets still clinging to them after rinsing her hair.

            With her body as dangerously arousing as it was, and thanks to how thoroughly I washed her, I made sure to only look anywhere but her most tempting places to let her fully enjoy her first hot bath.

            As I put my every muscle into holding back, the only part of her body that I allowed myself to touch was where I rubbed my thumb up and down her arm. It was then that I noticed something. Well, I noticed it plenty our first night together and every night since, but I was gracefully reminded of just how soft she was. Especially after the hot water relaxed any and all of the tension her muscles had been clinging to.

            It was these muscles, however, that reminded me of something important. Soft as she may be, I’d never let myself forget that the first time I laid eyes on her, she was beating the ever-loving shit out of a group of thugs. She’d even left trembling in their boots when it was done. Thinking back to that day, which already seemed to have happened years ago, I had only one question in mind.

            “Hey, Yua, back when we first met. When I, uh… came to buy you and you were fighting all those men. Why did you suddenly stop to look at me?”

            I didn’t want to go and get ahead of myself and assume it had anything to do with my looks. The goddess may have given me a youthful, toned body and a weapon of pure destruction between my legs, but I actually hadn’t had the chance to look at my face just yet. I probably missed several opportunities in catching a glimpse of myself in a window or in a body of water, but I didn’t. I never let the water grow calm enough to take a look and I certainly didn’t think to buy us a mirror during our little shopping date a month ago. I had other things on my mind and my appearance just wasn’t one of them.

            So, I felt like I needed to know why she’d been so captivated by me in that moment. Especially if after that, she still ended up being an understandably snarky bitch to me right after I bought her and until she grew to like me enough to stop.

            “Hmm?” she cooed sleepily. “Oh, it was because you smelled.”

            “O-oh…”

            Well shit… Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

            Giggling to herself, Yua squeezed my hand and shook her head, seemingly forever unawares of how her ears tickled me.

            “That’s not what I mean. You smelled… spicy.”

            Ah, yes. I’d stowed away in the back of a traveling spice merchant’s cart to sneak into the city and some of his spices spilled on me when we hit a bump in the road. I had forced myself to have a very awkward wash out in the semi-public space of the Lazy Cat Inn’s backyard and I thought I’d gotten all of the spice out of my hair, but apparently I was mistaken. It was because of the slave girl that’d come to wash herself and whose brazen openness with her body that caused me to make an early retreat. Despite being a dog-kin herself, she didn’t say a word on how I smelled. She was much too busy trying to give me a visual education on how the birds and the bees worked. However, unbeknownst to her she’d convinced me to visit the slave house where I met Yua in the first place. So, I suppose I have a lot to thank her for.

            Actually, thinking back, that must have been why that dog-kin girl kept telling me she was okay with me staying to wash after I fled from embarrassment. She probably smelled the spices too. Hell, maybe that scent was part of why Yua use to be so cross with me.

            “I hope I at least managed to clean up properly when we first washed together.”

            “Mhmm. You did,” she said with a nod that left her ears rubbing against my chest. “But it wasn’t your scent that made me stop. Not completely. When I noticed you, I thought you’d just come from eating something spicy for lunch or something, but when I really looked at you, you were the only one that wasn’t shaking. Even Alphonse was scared of me back then, but not you.”

            “Haha. Well, to be honest, I kind of was. Right up until I saw you, I was shaking too. But after I saw how beautiful you were, any fear I had in me just sort of vanished. So, it’s not like I deserve any sort of praise for not wetting myself after seeing how you tossed around those thugs.”

            I mean, it was my love for beautiful women that made me stand there gawking at her like an idiot. Not any sort of bravery.

            “Hehe, well thank you,” she said. “But I think you don’t give yourself enough credit. You were weaker than me at the time, right? And you were weaker than everyone else there, too. But you still stood your ground to face me. Even if it wasn’t to challenge me to a fight, that still took a lot of strength.”

            And you fell in love with me right then and there, is what I’d like to say, but I didn’t. I didn’t need to. I know full well that her distain for me that first day was true. As much of a lover of her own strength as she was, the strength she says I showed in that moment, at best, did nothing but catch her interest. Passing as it may be.

            Although, it was almost enough for me to say right here and now that I’d put every point I got from leveling up from now on into my Strength stat, just so I could impress her.

            “Then you showed even more when you chose to stay and buy me instead of run away,” she continued. “Every man that came before you just ran away when they saw how violent I was. Then there was how you saved me from that trap in the dungeon and how crazy your heart beat when you kissed me for the first time. I knew you wanted to do so much more to me from how hard you tensed up after we parted, but you still held back.”

            “Haha… I hope me not assaulting you when you were vulnerable wasn’t the only reason you came to accept me. That’s a little too…”

            Sick? Disgusting? Or maybe just sad? Regardless, I can’t deny that I failed to fight off the urge to kiss her in that hot, sweaty moment we had all alone together, trapped inside the block of stone that nearly killed us. But I really hope that what feelings she held for me now weren’t found just because I didn’t do more when I knew she couldn’t fight back.

            Yua shook her head at my dismissal.

            “No, Alex. You don’t understand. In the three years I spent as a slave in that shop, it was drilled into my head every single day that, should my new master be a male, that I’d be forced to service him in bed whenever and however he wanted, no matter what. But then I met you and, despite your feelings and your want being so clear, you still managed to hold back and not abuse the power you had over me. Then you did it again when you ordered me to sleep besides you to save me from the cold floor of the inn.”

            Yua paused for a moment, less to take a breath than to think back on a bad memory. Her brow furrowed, but only slightly before she continued.

            “That night, I thought for sure you’d have your way with me. But you didn’t. You kept your promise and didn’t touch me. And again, I knew how much you wanted to. Your penis poked against my butt for most of the night after you rolled onto your side, but you still didn’t do anything I would have hated.”

            “Wait… You mean I was, well, hard while I slept?”

            What the hell? I don’t remember that. I mean, sure, sleeping next to a girl for the first time, especially one so beautiful, was bound to cause all sorts of feelings to well up in me. But I don’t recall having any sort of sexy dream involving her, that Goddess, or anyone else for that matter. Way to almost screw everything up, me!

            Yua nodded somberly.

            “Yup. I was so scared that I couldn’t sleep for hours. Not until I was positive you were fully asleep.”

            “… Sorry I put you through that. And after I swore I only wanted us to sleep, too.”

            I don’t know if I was expecting her to forgive me, to brush it off as an accident the way she did when she caught sight of my morning wood the next day, or if she’d use this chance to laugh at my expense for the admittedly embarrassing mistake I didn’t even know I made, but she didn’t. She just readjusted her grip on my hand and squeezed it a little tighter.

            “No. You have nothing to apologize for. You have no idea how happy it made me to know that you cared enough to hold back.”

            Again, was this connection borne from me not assaulting her? Come on, tell me there’s more to it than that!

            “It wasn’t just that,” Yua said, and I had to fight off a sigh of relief. “You went out of your way to care for me every step of the way. Saving me at the risk of your own life. Twice. Buying me boots so I didn’t have to walk on the hard stone humans like to use as floors. Feeding me all sorts of tasty things when all I expected was gruel or hunger. Then, in the clothing shop, you even refused to let the tailor touch my body. You know…. some masters like to let their friends play with their slaves, right? But you protected me. Even though you really didn’t need to.”

            She hit me with a barrage of reasons for her feelings and snuggled up into my chest. Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond and just watched as her movements caused waves to ripple across the water.

            I wanted to say that the things I did for her were just as much for me as they were for her, since my conscious would have killed me if I treated her the way she was expecting me to. Even now, I doubted the authenticity of my actions as being purely to make her happy. I mean, how could I be praised for the things I did when I did at least half of them just to see her smile? Not for the sake of making her happy, but because I didn’t want her to hate me.

            “For my people,” she continued. “Our mates are everything to us. Even more important than we are to ourselves. That’s why I was so scared of you that first night. If you’d taken me, you’d have denied me even the proof that I was still a part of my people. That’s why I stopped you the first time we had sex. We never have sex with anyone but our mates. It’s forbidden. And I wanted to be your mate. But I also wanted you to be mine.”

            Unable to say anything in response as she played with my fingers, I pulled my hand away from hers and slipped it down her side and held her. There, I lifted her chin and planted a kiss right on her lips.

We’d come this far. It no longer matters if the reasons behind my actions back then were pure or not.

            “Yua, I know we haven’t known each other for all that long, and it may be a bit late to say this, but I promise I’ll do right by you. I want you to take everything they taught you in that slave house regarding to how your master might treat you and forget it. All of it. Because I don’t want to see you suffering for even a second.”

            Yua’s emotions were hidden, pinned between the damp bangs that stuck to her forehead to cover her eyes and my chest as she nuzzled in just a little closer.

            “You’re too kind…”

            “Well, you make me want to be kind. I-I mean, like you said, you knew how I felt. And I…” I clenched my thigh, using the pain my fingers drove into it as the fuel I needed to bring up the painful truth of how we met. “I told you before that I only went to the slave house to buy a girl for sex, but when I met you, I just couldn’t. I know you said I was strong, but I wasn’t. After a lifetime full of loneliness, I jumped at the first chance to force someone to be with me. So, I’m sorry.”

            This time, my admission caught her attention and, her ears flicking to the sound of my voice, Yua suddenly looked up. Once more, my expectations for the sheer number of disgusted reactions she might gun me down with had been completely wrong. Whereas I’d expected the repeated admission of my wrong doing to make her return to hating me, she instead only raised a curious brow at me.

            “Eh? You wanted a slave because you were lonely? How did you get like that?”

            “Er, well… I suppose the people around me just didn’t care for me much. But that’s mainly my fault for not caring about them either. Because I thought I was better than them, I avoided them. And because of that, I was alone. That’s why I left my homeland. I suppose… I just have a lot of love to give, but I had nobody back there to give it to. So, I packed my things and left.”

            With packed my things and left being a shitty euphemism for getting hit by a truck and dying, only to be reincarnated in this world, I told her most of the truth. There was much more to it than that, but that was the gist of it. I didn’t want to go complaining about my own life after she reminded me of how terrible hers had been. That could be a conversation for another day.

            Again, there was no furrow to her brow as I told her this. She had the power to listen to my heart and tell when I was lying, but she seemed to have either failed or ignored my little half-truth there and smiled so sweetly, so lovingly back at me that you’d think she was consoling a crying child.

            “So, you have a lot of love to give. Enough to break your own heart by buying a slave?”

            “Y-yes…”

            I still cannot forgive myself for that. Even if doing so allowed me to save Yua’s life, assuming Alphonse, her former master, ever actually intended to follow through on his threats to kill her for the trouble she caused him, what I did was still too wrong to forgive so easily.

            “Then, if you have so much love, can I have some more?”

            My heart melted away the moment she let those beautiful words dance out of those luscious lips of hers. In my vaguest attempts at rationality, I was briefly confused as to why she didn’t start to panic, as she no doubt must have heard that my heart had stopped beating, but she didn’t. She just continued smiling that loving smile of hers.

            I didn’t have her ears or her knowhow on how to use them to their fullest, but I was sure, or maybe just hoped, that there was no joking in what she’d said. So, I forced myself to respond with the full truth.

            “You already have it. You may not have liked me all that much when we met, but I can say for certain that I loved you from the moment I met you.”

            Yes. I had fallen for what I saw as nothing but the pointlessly ridiculous cliché of love at first sight with this girl. It no doubt affected my desire to buy her, but it wasn’t exactly the only reason at the time.

            “I love you too,” she said, lacing her fingers between mine. “Sorry I was mean when we first met.”

            Smiling back at her, I shook my head. She had nothing to apologize for in my book. Anyone would act that way after being bought like an object and, even during the snarky insults directed at my ineptitude, she still helped me learn a lot about this world. So, I hugged her tight enough to nearly pull her back onto my lap and we fell into mutual silence and enjoyed the rest of our bath in peace.

 

            Miraculously, our bath ended without me jumping on her again. Though the longer we stayed in the water’s slowly fading warm embrace, with her pressing herself against me, the harder it became to hold back the way I did back when we first met. So, when the time came to get out, I was the first to extract myself from the water. Just barely managing to keep my arousal to a minimum, I turned and offered her a hand getting out.

            The second Yua’s wet feet touched the floor, she shivered and, despite our intimate talk, I couldn’t help but notice that her arms were covered in goosebumps and that her nipples were rigid as she rubbed herself to reclaim some of the lost warmth.

            “A-Alex, why did it suddenly get so cold?”

            “It’s okay. That happens because the bath was hot and the air outside of it isn’t. It’s normal. Here, just dry off with this and you should warm up a bit.”

            I grabbed us a towel each from my item box and handed her one. She hurried to dry herself off to be rid of the chill causing her to break out in goosebumps. Smirking, knowing she’d have to get used to this if she wanted to keep enjoying the bath, I hurried to finish up myself and moved to help Yua dry her long hair. Now as dry as we could be, we hurried back upstairs to get dressed and to get on with our day.

            The bracing cool air that blew through the open, glassless windows was enough to leave Yua shaking. The pink buds at the center of her breasts were firmly erect as they unapologetically greeted the breeze with an enthusiasm she herself couldn’t seem to muster. She eyed the blanket she’d neatly spread out on the bed this morning longingly, almost like she wanted to dive back under its protection, so I quickly helped her into her clothes. In our post-bath nudity, the bed should probably be avoided at all costs or we’d just dirty ourselves again.

            In our haste to flee The Great City of Amoranth, I stuffed everything we owned into my item box to make traveling easier and we continued to use it like this for about a week, only taking out what we needed when we needed it and put it back when we were done with it, but our clothes weren’t so easy to dismiss. They’d need to be cleaned at some point and while I learned a spell specifically meant to take care of that, Yua refused to let me use it, saying she wanted to do the cleaning. I tried to convince her that letting me cast a spell that could clean a shirt in a second was easier than doing it by hand, but she wouldn’t have it.

            Part of me thinks she wants to do it because her training as a slave made her feel the need to, which she denied vehemently when the issue first cropped up, but the other part says its just because there isn’t much to do out here. Aside from our daily exercising, the majority of our days consisted mainly of four things: talking, eating, sleeping and, of course, sex. And with that last one taking up a particularly large amount of our time, the most I was able to do for her was to make us a dresser to put our things and the various cleaning implements we failed to buy in the city.

            If that weren’t enough to show loving a girl she was, I noticed real quick that she’d purposefully wait until we were done exercising and she was done exhausting me in bed before she jumped into the chores, because she knew I’d be too tired to offer any help.

            I said upon my reincarnation in this world that I didn’t want life to be so easy and, even if that was mostly true after I realized my true faults, I could help myself but smile as this beauty labored to clean the little cabin I made for us while I practiced my magic.

            “Alex, why are you smiling like that? Aren’t you cold?”

            “Er, oh. Yea. Sorry, I was a little distracted.”

            The outfit she’d chose for herself today consisted of a pair of striped panties, a pair of knee-high socks, a short skirt and a shirt we both knew would expose a bit of her cleavage. She, apparently, had no sense for fashion and didn’t seem to want to develop one, so I built her wardrobe based entirely on my tastes. Thankfully, she didn’t protest any of it once she tried them on, and now she almost greedily pulled them on while I found something to wear myself.

            Regardless of how her thorough efforts in keeping this place clean might remind her of her past, I have to admit that I occasionally found myself slipping back into a more negative train of thought when I’d remember the little half-truth I’d used to convince myself to buy her, in that I wanted to work on my inability to speak to people casually.

            While the other half of that truth was just lust, I did at least manage to make good on that promise. There were several times this last month where we talked so much that I actually felt the muscles in my neck, cheeks and mouth strain themselves to keep up, but it was all worth it. So, very worth it now that I get to talk to her all I want. I think my past self would have found a chance like this to be just another reminder of what he didn’t have, but I for one have found it entirely blissful to just talk about random nothings and still find Yua smiling as she responded, like she were having the time of her life.

            It wasn’t all fun and games, though. Most of what we talked about consisted of more of what was considered basic knowledge in this world. Meaning that I was effectively studying a great deal of things that any man my age should have learned as a child. One such tidbit of information was how, while Yua’s people didn’t refer to the seasons by name like the humans did, she did manage to convey that we were sitting somewhere in the middle of spring. Which explained why it was so cold when we left the bath.

            While much of the information she shared was based on her personal knowledge, meaning that it was separated from what the humans typically considered the norm, I still felt I’d learned a lot. A good deal of it was something I should have put more effort into learning a few weeks ago, but hey. It’s never too late.

            Once she finished dressing, Yua twisted her hips back and forth to test out the feeling of the loose, fluttering cloth of her skirt with an amused smile. Thinking back, I realized that she did this every time she put on a skirt.

            “Hmm… Yua, before we met, did you wear many skirts?”

            “Nope. I’ve only worn pants until you bought me this.”

            “Really? How do you like it? If they’re no good, we can get you something different.”

            “N-no. They’re great. I’d love anything you picked out for me. It’s just… sort of fun. Like, I’m covered, but not all the way. And it does feel a little breezy between my legs.”

            She turned her back to me and wiggled her hips as if to prove her point and the chestnut-colored tail poking out the back of the skirt swayed along with the thin fabric.

            Aside from the few additions to the house and the things we needed for chores, the only real training I got out of my Material Destruction and Creation abilities came from cutting tail holes in the backs of all Yua’s clothes and ear holes into the hood of her cloak. Thanks to these abilities, the holes I made for her were a perfect fit and were just as unblemished as if a professional seamstress had sewn them by hand.

            This lack of effort towards mastering my abilities wasn’t because of my own laziness, per say, but because I put more time into my magic training.

            Done shaking her hips now that she had my attention, she turned a wry grin at me.

            “Did you want to start on the cabin, or did you want to do something… else?”

            Knowing full well that that something else could only mean one thing when coupled with that grin, I cleared my throat. It killed me to turn down her advances, but if I gave in now, I felt like I’d never get around to expanding the cabin.

            “I would like to finish building this place, but how about we eat first?”

            Instead of letting her grin slip with disappointment, Yua swiftly took on the same loving look I hoped I never got used to. That being said, I did notice her tail jump to attention at the mention of food. As it was her belief that training on an empty stomach was best, neither of us have had breakfast yet.

            “That sounds like a good idea.”

            By this point, she no longer salivated at just the thought of a good meal, but her tail always betrayed her enthusiasm. She only started hiding her reactions because she’d gotten used to my way of living, but I still found the excited tapping of her tail all too endearing.

            I am proud to say that I have been keeping up with my promise to let her eat her fill and she’s been looking all the healthier for it, but as I reached into my item box for our breakfast and my hand disappeared into the purple miasma that basically acted as our fridge to keep everything ripe, I came up empty handed.

            Likely seeing how my own expression portrayed the truth of this surprise, Yua’s dropped almost immediately. Though she at least tried to keep up that beautiful smile of hers as she awaited the bad news we both knew would come eventually.

            “Sorry, Yua. We don’t have anything left.”

            We bought up what felt like an exorbitant amount of food, as we were expecting to have to keep running after we fled the city, but since we were safe and we didn’t need to ration it out as planned, I guess we let our bellies get a little too greedy. We did have some leftover ingredients such as flour, salt and such, but there wasn’t enough to make anything. Not even the apparently well-trained Yua could fathom any recipe with what we had.

            “If you’d like,” she started. “You can teleport me back to Amoranth and I can do some shopping for us.”

            “Thanks, but I’m not about to make you do that by yourself. I don’t want to make multiple trips back there every week, so we’d have to buy a lot. Besides, I’m not so sure it’s safe to head back just yet.”

            At this, Yua’s smile finally dropped and faded away into a small grimace.

            While we dealt the finishing blow to Alphonse, there was no way of knowing if any of his men or business partners would come after us if we showed ourselves. After going this long without any form of harassment other than the occasional woodland critter that jumped in through the window in the middle of the night, I was sure we were safe out here. But going back to the city could cause a problem. Alphonse admitted to paying off some of the city’s guards and if we were to run into them… While my conscious remained mostly clear in this regard, I did technically kill a man. Even if not directly. But that’d give them plenty reason to lock me up if they’d connected the dots in the time we’d been gone.

            Then again, regardless of the danger, we needed food. An unfortunate truth about this world was that it refuses the common man the ability to hunt for their food unless they have the appropriate class. Any animal killed by someone without said class evaporates into thin air seconds after death. I did try to use my Easy Class Gain trait to earn myself that class, but it seemed lost on me for some reason. Everything had a limit, but since we live next to a forest, this one is particularly annoying.

            “We could wear our cloaks,” Yua said. “None of Alphonse’s men were beast folk, so as long as our faces aren’t seen…”

            “We should probably be fine.”

            I did buy them so we could keep a low profile, but in that city? I wasn’t born into this world, I was reincarnated into it. Hardly anyone knows me. And Yua was locked away in that slave house for the last three years. And we hardly did anything to warrant recognition, so we should be fine. But if Alphonse’s goons spread our descriptions…

            “I suppose we don’t have much of a choice,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to head back to Amoranth so soon, but… Actually, no. We should go. I need to head to the Adventurer’s guild.”

            When I first signed up with the guild, they told me I had to complete at least one quest per month to stay a member. And it’s almost been one month. How lucky that we ran out of food just in time for me to remember that?

            “Maybe they’ll have a quest that’ll direct us to another city. If we could make our food runs somewhere other than Amoranth… Well, for now, we should probably just hope we can buy ourselves a proper mattress wherever we go.”

            As fun and lively as our nighttime activities have been, the thought of continuing to sleep on that hard block of wood currently masquerading as a bed left me wanting. It was fine as a temporary measure to keep us off the floor, but I didn’t want Yua to have to burn through her stamina just to heal my back every morning once I couldn’t handle it anymore.

            The only thing that made it bearable was having Yua sleeping peacefully next to me, but as I was on top of her for most of our fun, her backside had probably taken a bit of damage as well. That warrior spirit of hers was likely forcing her to put up with it instead of complaining.

            “But can your teleport spell reach that far?” she asked with her tail continuing to swish about, as if my concern for her backside was pointless. “It’d take at least half a day just to get back the same way we left.”

            You’re asking that after offering to do a food run?

            While she was likely wrong about how long it would take, as teleporting our way here made it impossible to tell how far we actually moved, I knew I could handle the distance now no problem. After all, I did spend the last month testing that spell’s limits. My Dimensional Step spell only required that I could either see or remember where I wanted to go and I had a perfect memory of the city.

            I’d actually already tested if I could teleport back to Amoranth and did so. However, in doing this, I’d made the mistake of teleporting to the old room we shared at the Lazy Cat Inn out of habit. And while I only poked my head out of the portal to see if I really connected to the city, I found that the innkeeper had noticed that we’d left and that she rented out our room to someone else. And it was a pair of someones. Not only this, but they were making much better use of the bed than we ever did. The man of the couple was doing his best to impregnate his woman as the bed creaked, while the woman’s relentless moaning put the room’s sound-proofing enchantment to the test.

            After I cancelled my unintended peeping, thankfully without them noticing me, I ran to Yua. And after sensing, or rather seeing my arousal, she dropped her shorts and hopped onto the bed before I could even report to her what I’d been doing. So, it was my lust’s fault she didn’t know what I was capable of, not hers.

            Feeling my cheeks get a little hot at just the mental image of that random couple, which my now perfect memory refused to let me forget, I cleared my throat.

            “I can handle it no problem.”

            “Then I’ll get our things!”

            With her unawares of my pervy thoughts, Yua bolted for the dresser to fetch our cloaks so that we could make our return to the city we met in. And despite my worry, seeing her excitedly wriggling her hips at the thought, I couldn’t fathom a complaint.