Chapter 172: Just Using Milking Time for Reading (Patreon)

"Not sure. Probably not that much more," Yukinoshita Yukino said after thinking it over.

At first, because of her badly sprained ankle, she'd stayed home almost the whole time. Aside from tending the stove fire and preparing the three daily meals, reading had been her only way to pass the time.

The forest cabin only had a handful of books in total, so Yukino read them over and over. By the time they moved to the logging cabin, the books were nearly falling apart from all her handling — she could practically recite the contents from memory.

By comparison, the other three had read those same books, but mostly just skimmed them. Even Kaguya, who'd gone through them the most, had only sped through two or three times, jotting down the important bits before setting them aside for good.

Once they reached Mountain Town, they found quite a few more books, and to sift out anything useful, the four of them would read whenever they had a spare moment.

But with so many books, efficiency became the priority, and Isac and the others took to speed-reading — basically scanning for keywords, sorting them, and moving on to the next book.

This method let them find useful information fast, but the downside was that they read too quickly. The knowledge slid through their minds like butter, leaving no trace behind.

Only books that genuinely caught their interest got a proper read, and those were rare. Even then, Isac and the others wouldn't dive in right away — they'd set them aside and pick them back up later, whenever there was free time and they happened to remember.

If they forgot, that was that.

After all, everyone else was working hard to dig up information useful for survival. Reading some unrelated story for fun in the middle of that would've felt like slacking off.

There was no such thing as goofing off out here. Slack off now, and you might pay with your life later.

Of course, if someone was willing to trade their life for a little slacking, well, forget everything just said.

Worth noting: most of what Isac read had to do with fishing, with the occasional local folk tale thrown in. Kaguya preferred books on economics and psychology — remote little town or not, the local rich apparently liked to buy plenty of that sort of book just for show. Whether anyone actually read them didn't matter, so long as it looked classy on the shelf.

As for Yukinoshita Yukino, that went without saying — literature had always been her favorite, and she didn't turn her nose up at popular science either. Privately, she'd even dabble in the less wholesome stuff. A classic omnivorous reader.

As for Hayasaka Ai... she liked the racy stuff, but not for the plot. She treated it as study material. Most people read that kind of thing for the thrill in the moment; she read it so she could deliver the thrill later.

Anyway, back to the point. The reason Yukinoshita Yukino had picked up so many skills wasn't just because she read with real focus and had a knack for it — it was also closely tied to the mindset she'd carried ever since the plane crash.

Ever since the crash, her injury had kept her bedridden and unable to go outside for a long stretch. Because of that, she'd come to see herself as the one dragging the team down — and for someone as competitive as she'd always been, that was hard to accept.

Once her leg healed, she'd thought she could finally pull her weight, only to discover she had a natural talent for getting lost — which ruled out exploring outside and left her stuck handling logistics close to home.

It wasn't that logistics didn't matter. It was that every time Isac and the others went out, they risked their lives, while all she had to do was stay home, cook, twist some rope — and after they reached Mountain Town, she didn't even need to twist rope anymore. She simply couldn't enjoy all that with a clear conscience.

But it wasn't as if she could just force her way into field duty. Even if she tried, Isac would never agree — that would be reckless with her own life, and in the end it might only cause the team more trouble.

Stubbornness with nowhere left to go, basically.

That was the backdrop for why, once the team settled in Mountain Town and started combing through books, Yukino threw herself into it with such intensity — partly because she genuinely loved reading, and partly because it was the best chance she had to actually contribute.

Put it this way: even though all four of them were speed-reading, Yukino poured far more effort into it than anyone else. If an artist tried to paint the scene of everyone reading, it would probably show Isac, Kaguya, and Hayasaka Ai lounging on the bed.

And if you asked where Yukino was?

She'd be in the study, reading.

Effort beyond the ordinary deserved a payoff beyond expectation.

"Not that much more... then what's with all these skills of yours? Fine, brewing medicinal soup I can accept, but how are you even recycling bullet casings?" Kaguya thought — they were both the long, straight, black-haired type here, and for Yukino to suddenly become this competent made her feel useless by comparison.

As Yukino's instructor in archery, marksmanship, and more, Kaguya had always felt she could hold her head high in front of her. In her mind, teaching Yukino skills in exchange for three home-cooked meals a day was a perfectly fair trade.

After all, the two of them usually teamed up, so strengthening Yukino's combat ability was really just looking out for her own safety too.

But things were different now. Yukino no longer needed teaching in archery or gunplay, and thanks to the system's experience bonus, her cooking had leveled up as well — the food wasn't just tastier, it was more nutritionally varied too.

Here she was, the proud young lady of the Shinomiya family, reduced to a freeloader?!

"I picked this up from a book a while back. Remember when I was learning marksmanship from you? I memorized the whole thing in my spare time," Yukino said.

"Memorized it? Where did you even find the time?" Kaguya couldn't believe it. When it came to hours spent with Yukino, she probably outdid even Isac — so how had she never noticed Yukino having that much free time?

Yukino glanced at her. "It was whenever you went off with Isac — to the bathroom, to the study, to the guest room downstairs."

Kaguya: ...

There'd been that much time to spare? Kaguya looked away, a little guilty.

Ai nodded to herself — so Yukino had spent her "milking" time on books instead. Suddenly it all made a lot more sense.

Kaguya let out an exasperated laugh at how convinced Ai looked. "Hold on, what exactly makes sense to you? You're the one who does it the most, if anything."

Ai blinked, looking innocent. Sure, she did it a lot, but always on stolen time.

Sneaking a taste was all about being ruthless, fast, and precise.

Ruthless and precise were easy enough. Fast, though... she herself was plenty fast, but Isac was the problem — he just couldn't manage fast.

Not that slow was bad. In fact, slow mattered more than fast. But it did make scheduling a lot trickier.

Getting caught by Kaguya wasn't so bad — worst case, they could just invite her to join in. But getting caught by Yukino, that would actually be trouble. They could hardly invite her to join too, could they?

Ai herself couldn't care less — they were all sisters who'd weathered hardships together, who'd been through life and death side by side more than once. If it happened, it happened.

The problem was that Yukino clearly hadn't come around to that way of thinking yet — or maybe it was just that they weren't close enough. Either way, Ai doubted Yukino would ever join in. More likely, she'd turn bright red, stammer an apology, and hurry off, leaving the house awkward for days afterward.

Ai might have a bit of an appetite, but she didn't want to wreck the household mood over it. She genuinely liked the vibe the survival squad had going right now.

As the other party involved in all this "sneaking off," Isac cleared his throat and changed the subject without missing a beat.

"So, uh — anyone want to take a bath in a bit?"

Between the weather and the week and a half of daily training before they'd headed to Carter Dam — sweating buckets every single day — they hadn't bathed in nearly half a month.

Honestly, that was the normal bathing frequency for polar survival. Washing once a week like before had been the exception.

No matter how well-insulated the house was, it topped out at five or six degrees above freezing. Near the fireplace it might get a bit warmer, maybe somewhere in the low double digits Celsius.

Isac, being a guy with short hair, dried off fast — he had it easy.

Of the three girls, only Ai had relatively short hair, and even hers reached almost to her armpits. The other two long-black-haired types both had hair down to their waists.

Long hair looked great, sure, but drying it after a wash was a real hassle, and it raised the risk of catching a chill considerably.

Even someone with Ai's monstrous physical stats had gotten caught out by it — the very first time she'd bathed back at the forest cabin, she'd come down with a fever and spent a day laid up, and in her feverish daze, Kaguya had apparently fed her some rather outrageous ideas.

"Sure, but you'll have to wait till I finish making dinner — I need the stove free to heat water," Yukino said, a little tempted at the mention of a bath.

Mainly because it had been nearly two weeks without a proper bath, and she'd been training the whole time. Even wiping down with hot water after every session left her feeling sticky — nothing beat fully submerging in clean water.

"No objection here," Ai agreed.

"The dam was dusty everywhere. I could really use a proper wash — and I might as well do laundry while I'm at it."

Kaguya pulled off her hairband, and her jet-black hair cascaded down like a waterfall.

Her whole presence shifted from crisp and efficient to icy, aloof elegance.

Honestly, though, compared to how she'd been back in the cave, Kaguya's "ice queen" mode these days leaned more toward cool and composed than outright cold.

Unlike the ethereal, snow-lotus kind of coolness that clung to Yukino, Kaguya's version was more forceful, more edged — like a snow queen long accustomed to ruling from above, noble and detached.

Each had her own kind of charm, really.

Isac's attention caught on Kaguya's long hair. "Come to think of it, shouldn't we cut our hair soon?"

Two months ago, he remembered, Kaguya's hair had only reached her waist. Now it was nearly past her hips.

And he was no different — right after the crash, he'd been buzzed short, but now his hair had grown out shaggy enough to pass for a hedgehog. Give it a bit more and he'd be one bad haircut away from looking like some spiky-haired anime hero.

If nobody trimmed it soon, his bangs were going to start poking him in the eyes.

Hearing that, Yukino reached up and touched her own bangs.

They... yeah, they had gotten a bit long.

"I'll go sharpen the scissors, then. I'll cut everyone's hair in a bit," Ai said.

For a maid skilled in disguise, cutting hair was just the basics — honestly, her technique held up fine against any famous celebrity stylist out there.

If she ever gave up being a maid, Ai could make a comfortable living off hairdressing alone — and that wasn't even counting her other skills.

"I'll grab a broom from the storeroom," Isac said.

"I'll go cook. We can cut hair after we eat, no rush," Yukino said.

Seeing everyone else already had something to do, Kaguya turned to Yukino. "I'll come help you out."

After three days apart, the survival household had come back to life now that the survival squad was home again.

Inside the storeroom, most of the space was already stacked full of firewood. From here until Aurora Week, Isac and the others had one job left — fill up whatever space remained.

Before that, though, this had still been where they kept their tools.

Isac came here not just for a broom and dustpan, but also to pick out a cloth to use as a haircutting cape — so the loose clippings wouldn't stick to their clothes and make laundry a pain.

Since it needed to cover a whole body, the cloth had to be big enough. In the end, Isac settled on a white curtain to serve as the cape.

Just as he finished picking the cloth and grabbed the sweeping tools to head downstairs, he found Ai standing in the storeroom doorway.

The blonde girl hadn't blocked the doorway entirely, though — she'd left half the gap open for him to get through.

Isac was a little surprised — not that Ai was there blocking the door, but that she'd come all the way to the doorway and hadn't just walked in.

Going by past experience, she should have already stepped inside, pulled the door shut behind her, and gotten a little pre-dinner dessert going while Kaguya and Yukino were downstairs busy with the meal.

So had the ever-versatile maid cooked up some new game this time?

Surely she wasn't just waiting for him to clear out because the storeroom was too cramped, so she could grab what she needed?

Yeah right — don't make him laugh.

Just as Isac was trying to figure out what Ai was up to, she stepped into the storeroom, and then...

She picked up a dust-covered piece of sandpaper from the corner, glanced at Isac, and asked, a little puzzled, "I was going to wait for you to come out before I grabbed this, but you've been standing there forever without moving. Something on your mind?"

Isac took a deep breath. "Nope."

"Oh, okay... I'll head down first, then." Ai nodded, looking like she genuinely had nothing sneaky in mind.

That reaction completely threw him off.

He'd been braced for her to pull something, and she hadn't — wasn't that itself the trick?

Either way, he was filing this one away.

Kidding aside, there was no way Isac actually believed Ai was being this well-behaved. She was probably cooking up something bigger.

After all, she still hadn't delivered on the reward she'd promised him earlier!