Chapter 132: The Eve of Moving (Patreon)

The logging cabin.

Three days had passed since Isac and Hayasaka Ai set out.

The first two days were fine, but by the third, both Yukinoshita Yukino and Kaguya were glancing at the door far more often than before. Restlessness and worry crept in whether they wanted them or not.

Neither of them let it show. They kept up the shape of an ordinary day as best they could.

The light beyond the window was going gray. Kaguya pulled her gaze back from it and turned to Yukinoshita Yukino. "Today makes three days, doesn't it?"

Yukinoshita Yukino closed the popular science book she'd read more times than she could count — she had most of it memorized by now. "After tonight it's four. Barring trouble, they should already be on the road back."

"And if there is trouble?"

Yukinoshita Yukino glanced at her, and it wasn't clear whether the answer was for Kaguya or for herself. "Even if something went wrong, it'd cost them a day or two at most. A week at the very outside, and they'd be back."

"True enough." Kaguya nodded. She had something else to say, but Yukinoshita Yukino got there first.

"It's about time to start dinner. What do you feel like eating?"

Better to think about dinner than to chase thoughts that led nowhere.

"Whatever you want. I don't have much of an appetite." Kaguya bent back over the bow stave she'd been shaping. With the weather keeping her indoors, she'd spent days on it.

Yukinoshita Yukino gave a small nod and let it drop. She checked the window again. The light was almost gone; by the time the water on the stove boiled, it would be full dark.

Neither of them had any appetite, so she settled on something simple — fish soup stewed with potatoes.

But just as she stood to go out to their "refrigerator" for the fish and the potatoes, she heard the iron door being hauled open outside.

A harsh metal rasp cut through the cold.

Both women went still at the sound. Then the same bright hope broke across their faces.

Yukinoshita Yukino crossed to the door without a second thought, hand already reaching — then remembered what Isac had told her before he left.

Confirm who it is. Then open.

"It's me." The voice was familiar, and she hesitated no longer, pulling the door wide.

Isac stood there with a kerosene lamp in one hand, the sled's tow harness still strapped across his body. Hayasaka Ai came up behind him, the double-barrel shotgun held ready.

To make it back before nightfall, the two of them had left the town before the sky lightened and had barely stopped since. Even lunch had been eaten sitting on the roadside, washed down with water gone cold in the thermos.

They hadn't so much as spared a look to see whether the old wolf's grave had been dug up. Pushing hard the whole way, they'd made it back to the logging cabin just before the last of the light died.

Aside from the guns that kept them alive and their sleeping bags, they'd carried almost nothing home; even the sled rode light. Most of the supplies they'd simply left at the mayor's house in Mountain Town.

Travel light — that was the whole idea.

If they hadn't been planning to move the entire household to Mountain Town, Isac might have left the sled behind there too.

"Ugh, I'm freezing. Let's talk inside." Isac blew out a thick plume of white. A full day on the road, with only that one sit-down at noon, had left his hands and feet stiff.

Even Hayasaka Ai, tough as she was, looked worn thin.

"Get in here." Yukinoshita Yukino stepped aside at once and waved them both through.

The door thudded shut behind them. Isac and Hayasaka Ai settled in around the wood stove, peeling off gloves and boots and setting them to one side.

Kaguya poured them each a cup of Birch Bark Tea, then looked down and saw that both pairs of boots were soaked through with snowmelt, the toes of their socks dark and wet.

"Take the wet socks off too," Kaguya said, stripping off her own.

In cold like this, everyone in the survival squad wore more than one pair of cotton socks. Kaguya pulled off the outer layer and still had another pair underneath.

Yukinoshita Yukino caught on and offered hers up as well.

"I'm fine. I'd only stretch them out." Isac waved her off. Wet socks were survivable; enough time by the fire would dry them.

"Stretched out doesn't make them unwearable." Yukinoshita Yukino ignored the refusal entirely. "Are you taking them off, or am I taking them off for you?"

Isac couldn't shake the feeling that the line belonged in an entirely different sort of scene.

Yukinoshita Yukino seemed to realize it a beat after saying it. Two spots of color rose on her cheeks. She shot him a sour look and pressed on. "Hurry up."

Fine, fine, off they came.

There was no chance he was letting her do it herself. He'd sweated through a full day of walking, and the boots had been on his feet for days without airing or washing. The smell was something else.

Forget Yukinoshita Yukino — Isac could barely stand it himself.

Socks off, he curled his toes in embarrassment and took the pair she held out.

A bit small. Cotton had some give, so he worked them on, barely — though the next time Yukinoshita Yukino wore them, the fit probably wouldn't be what it used to be.

They'd been stretched into the shape of Isac's feet.

Hayasaka Ai had no such worries. Her feet were a little bigger than Kaguya's, but not so much bigger that she'd ruin the socks.

"So what should we make for dinner?" Yukinoshita Yukino asked again. She may not have noticed it herself, but her tone was a world away from the one she'd used on Kaguya earlier.

Even the ends of her words tilted upward.

Yukino was in an excellent mood.

"Just throw something together. Save the good ingredients — once we're set up in Mountain Town, we'll use the kitchen there and cook a real meal," Isac said.

"Then let's open the last of the tomato soup cans," Kaguya put in.

There wasn't much actual food in a can of tomato soup — mostly liquid, low on energy. Its one virtue was flavor. It ranked near the top of everything they had in a can, and with a few flour dumplings dropped in it became a rare luxury out here in the snow.

Hauling it along wasn't worth the weight. Better to treat it like the drinks and finish it before they left.

Just thinking about that sweet-sour tang, Kaguya found her appetite miraculously restored.

Yukinoshita Yukino had no objection. There were a few potatoes left in the house, so those went in with it.

While she got dinner going, Kaguya asked, "From the sound of it, you actually found Mountain Town this trip?"

"Reached it by noon on the second day. We didn't search a single house along the road, just went straight for the center of town. Our target was the Mountain Town mayor's house. That place has everything. We barely need to bring anything with us," Isac said.

Food, and more of it than they'd scavenged in the past month. And that was only what sat inside the mayor's house. The homes around it looked well-off too; there was likely plenty stashed in those as well.

It was no exaggeration to say they wouldn't have to worry about food for a long time to come.

That freed them to start gathering and digging into information about this world, and to weigh their next move: dig in permanently in this frozen country, or rest up and push south toward warmer land.

"The way I see it, we bring the electronics that came through the crash more or less intact, plus whatever flour and coal we've got left. That's all."

He wanted the electronics mainly to test what the log had claimed — that the polar night could bring dead electronic components back to life. If that was true, then the log's other conclusion, that the temperature dropped a little more every year, would have to be taken very seriously.

And if it was false, no harm done. Call it something to hold on to.

"Are we still taking the metal drum, then?" Yukinoshita Yukino asked once he'd finished.

"No need. There are bathrooms there, upstairs and down," Hayasaka Ai answered for him.

Besides the bathroom on the first floor, the toilet attached to the second-floor master bedroom came with a small ceramic tub. A quick scrub and it would be ready to use.

Put simply, the old metal oil drum could officially retire.

"Could we use it to carry the coal?" Kaguya said after a moment's thought.

They still had a good amount of coal, and they could hardly dump it loose onto the sled — the sled bed had gaps in it. After a whole trip of jolting, there wouldn't be much left by the time they reached Mountain Town.

Isac had clearly thought that far ahead. He showed the two of them the plastic crates he'd lifted from the Gas Station: line them with two layers of cardboard, lash them down with bark rope.

As long as he didn't steer into a ravine, there was no way the load was tipping.

And they weighed a fraction of what the metal drum did.

"We'll leave the drum here. If we ever come back through, we might still want it for melting snow," Isac said.

The quilts that had kept them company for over a month would stay behind with it.

The hide mats were coming, though. Even if nobody slept on them, hung across a bedroom doorway they held the cold out beautifully.

Worst case, they'd make decent rugs.

A dozen minutes of talk later, feeling had returned to Isac's hands and feet, and dinner was about ready.

Isac and Hayasaka Ai stopped talking, put their heads down, and tore into it.

A full day on the road had left them cold, exhausted, and utterly hollow. The little they'd eaten at noon had burned off hours ago.

"I'm full. You two can split the rest." Yukinoshita Yukino ate like a bird to begin with; she'd gotten through half her tomato-and-potato stew and was already close to satisfied.

Watching the pair of them eat like the starving dead, she realized she'd made too little and handed over what was left of her portion without being asked.

"Works for me." Isac drained the last of the broth in his bowl. He wasn't going to refuse her, but he wasn't going to eat her tomato and potatoes for free either.

He reached back into his pack and pulled out the opened bag of Running River Oats — breakfast and lunch for the two of them on the road. Less than half a bag remained, but that was more than enough for dessert tonight and breakfast tomorrow.

"Stir it into some boiling water, add a little Maple Syrup, and there's your after-dinner dessert."

What?

You say maple oatmeal isn't dessert? Just tell me whether it's sweet. If it's sweet, it's dessert.

"Don't ration it. We're finishing it tomorrow morning before we leave anyway — there's a whole case of the same oats waiting in town."

Isac explained before Yukinoshita Yukino could start calling it wasteful.

Yukinoshita Yukino and Kaguya traded a look, and each found the same disbelief in the other's eyes.

This Mountain Town… was that rich?

But hadn't the diary they'd read said food prices in the town stayed sky-high…

Neither of them had been raised in an ordinary household, though, and they worked out the key to it quickly enough. High prices didn't necessarily mean shortage. They could just as easily mean hoarding and gouging.

Resources always pooled at the top, after all, and the diary's owner had been reduced to fishing to keep himself alive. Hardly one of the wealthy. Naturally food looked expensive to him.

And by Isac's account they'd gone straight for the mayor's house, which made a haul like that perfectly ordinary.

Anyone who could serve as mayor of a town this remote had to be a local power in his own right. There was no chance his pantry was thin.

Deciding to move to Mountain Town the moment they got their hands on the map had been the right call after all.

After the meal, Kaguya and Yukinoshita Yukino took the dishes while Isac and Hayasaka Ai carried the two pairs of sodden boots and socks back to the stove. They set them on the side nearest the window and cracked the window a finger's width, so the smell would drift outside instead of pooling in the cabin.

Even so, a sour reek hung in the air. Fortunately the human nose adapts — olfactory fatigue, it's called. Smell a thing long enough and it stops smelling at all.

Once they reached Mountain Town, those boots and socks were getting a proper wash with soap.

Both of them thought it at the same moment.

Deciding the two travelers had had a hard enough time of it, Kaguya and Yukinoshita Yukino offered to squeeze into the sleeping bags themselves and gave up the quilts and the bed to Isac and Hayasaka Ai.

Hayasaka Ai didn't turn down the two long, straight-haired girls' generosity. Three days of hard physical work had genuinely worn her out, and she needed real rest.

That night Hayasaka Ai didn't even try any of her usual mischief, and Isac was asleep almost the instant his head hit the pillow.

No dreams. They slept straight through to dawn.