Chapter 184: What Did You Give Me? My Body Feels So Hot... (Patreon)

"My body... it's heating up?"

After her first bite of venison, Yukinoshita Yukino didn't rush into a second, no matter how delicious it was. Instead, she paid careful attention to how her body felt.

One thing was certain: the meat wasn't poisonous. She could clearly feel a warmth spreading through her lower belly, like a hand warmer tucked against her stomach, driving out the chill that had settled deep in her limbs. Even the day's exhaustion had mostly melted away.

And that wasn't all. She also seemed to be... not hungry at all.

She'd put in a full day of work, then hauled supplies on her back for over an hour on the walk home from the south outpost. Whatever little dinner she'd eaten had long since been digested.

Not starving, exactly, but she'd definitely felt that hollow ache in her stomach.

Yet after just one piece of meat, that hollow feeling was gone completely.

Was this meat really that filling?

Yukinoshita Yukino couldn't tell, so she gestured for Isac and the others to try some too.

One after another, Isac, Kaguya and Hayasaka Ai picked up their chopsticks, took a piece of venison steak and put it in their mouths. All three of them wore the same expression Yukinoshita Yukino had a moment ago.

This meat was way too good, wasn't it?!

If grouse was a rare delicacy in this polar wasteland, then the meat they were eating now was at least five times as delicious!

Even Kaguya, who had been raised in silk and caviar, couldn't hide her astonishment after tasting it.

"This meat... I bet someone would pay a hundred million a pound for it," Kaguya murmured.

Her capitalist instincts had kicked in, apparently.

"Bucks?" Isac blurted when he heard her.

Kaguya rolled her eyes at him. "Yen."

Paying that much for a piece of meat? Capitalists had money, sure, but they weren't fools. Unless the meat had some other use...

"Do you guys feel your bodies heating up?" Yukinoshita Yukino asked.

"Mm, a little. It feels nice, like sitting by a fire." Hayasaka Ai nodded. She clenched her fist, then added, a bit unsure, "And besides the warmth, my body feels a little lighter."

Living in an extreme environment like the pole for four months, spending most of that time outdoors doing heavy labor — there was no way their bodies hadn't taken a toll.

Their physical condition was better than before, but that hadn't come for free. In places they couldn't feel, their bodies had already suffered subtle damage.

It was like an athlete who trains for years and inevitably collects lingering injuries. After four months of surviving at the pole, the four members of the survival squad couldn't avoid it either.

Barring some miracle, even if they made it home, they'd probably spend their old age plagued by arthritis and achy, cold-sensitive knees.

But after eating this meat, Hayasaka Ai had a faint sense that the damage in her body was slowly being repaired. It reminded her of her early training days, when the instructors prepared herbal tonic meals for the trainees after every session. Supposedly they were simmered from all kinds of rare, expensive herbs, and even the Shinomiya family could only supply them to a small handful of elites.

Drinking them left her body warm all over too — the taste was just a bit bitter.

The effect... might not even match this piece of meat?

Hayasaka Ai said what she was thinking out loud.

"You mean this meat has medicinal value?" Isac asked. He couldn't feel any repair happening in his own body. It just tasted great, and at most made him a little warm.

"Maybe it's because your body's already been enhanced?" Hayasaka Ai thought it over. "During the enhancement, your old hidden injuries might have been fixed as a side effect."

"Sounds like the only explanation." Isac didn't dwell on it. As long as he knew the meat was good stuff, that was enough.

Kaguya suddenly spoke up. "By the way, are any of you still hungry?"

"I'm full. This meat is unusually filling," Yukinoshita Yukino said.

"Me too, I'm not hungry anymore." Hayasaka Ai patted her flat belly, looking a little amazed.

"I'm okay."

Maybe Isac just had a bigger appetite, or maybe one bite of meat didn't hold enough energy to fill him up. At best he was about half full.

"Want me to fry up another piece?" Yukinoshita Yukino asked.

"Nah, no need." Isac waved a hand. Eating too much at night wasn't great anyway, and it was already late. By the time they washed up and got into bed, it'd be nearly midnight.

The meat wasn't going to vanish if they left it there. It would taste just as good tomorrow.

Seeing that Isac felt that way, Yukinoshita Yukino nodded. The four of them wrapped the leftover meat in clean cloth, put it in the wooden crate outside, and locked it.

If anything tried to force the crate open and steal the meat, Isac and the others would hear the noise. That pretty much ruled out wild animals sneaking a free meal.

Besides, most of the predators nearby had been wiped out on the aurora night. Instead of worrying about animals stealing it, they were better off worrying about the meat spoiling, or losing its effects.

By the time they finished tidying up, the water on the stove was almost hot.

A proper bath was a bit too late at this point, and the house hadn't warmed up yet, so catching a cold was a real risk. They settled for a simple wipe-down, just slightly more thorough than usual.

Isac went into the bathroom first, since he was a guy and could finish faster.

After he went in, the three girls sat in the living room, chatting while they waited for him to come out.

But as they talked, the three of them began to notice something was off.

Kaguya looked at Yukinoshita Yukino, puzzled. "Yukino, why is your face so red?"

Yukinoshita Yukino instinctively touched her cheek. It was burning hot. And not just hers — "your faces are really red too, and... my body seems to be getting hotter and hotter."

They exchanged glances. Kaguya couldn't help saying, "This meat isn't actually poisonous, is it?"

Hayasaka Ai, who'd been quiet until now, chimed in with an eerie calm. "What if it isn't poison, and the side effect is that it kicks your desire into overdrive? I mean, the aurora here can already do that, after all."

Yukinoshita Yukino and Kaguya: ?

They stared at each other. It... wasn't impossible.

And after Hayasaka Ai said it, Kaguya felt even hotter. Her thighs pressed together without a gap, and her small hands twisted into the hem of her shirt as if she were holding something back.

It wasn't just Kaguya. A mist seemed to cloud Yukinoshita Yukino's lovely eyes. Hayasaka Ai was probably the least affected of the three, with only her breathing a little uneven.

"..."

The living room went quiet. None of them said a word.

After a while, Hayasaka Ai said softly, "How about we take turns using the bathroom?"

"But isn't Isac still in the bathroom?" Yukinoshita Yukino replied automatically, but the next second she understood what Hayasaka Ai meant.

The whole point was that Isac was in the bathroom. If he wasn't, how were they supposed to cool down?

In the instant it clicked, Yukinoshita Yukino's little face turned even redder. Look closely, and you could almost see steam rising from her head.

Seeing her like that, Kaguya decided not to compete. If she didn't cool down soon, she might damage her body.

"Then let's go by the order we ate the steak," she offered, generously.

By that order, Yukinoshita Yukino was first. Isac was second, but since he didn't count, Kaguya took his place, and Hayasaka Ai was third.

Yukinoshita Yukino pressed her lips together and didn't answer. Feeling her body grow ever more restless, she finally stood up in silence and headed for the bathroom.

A moment later, Isac's startled voice drifted out of the bathroom.

"Yukino? Why didn't you knock before coming in? Wait..."

A quarter of an hour later, Yukinoshita Yukino emerged. The flush on her face had faded a good deal, her steps had grown strangely light, and she'd somehow changed into her pajamas.

Stepping out, she didn't dare meet the eyes of her two teammates in the living room. She tossed out a quick "I'm going up first" and climbed to the second floor without slowing down.

Kaguya saw this and said nothing. Just like Yukino before her, she silently stood, silently grabbed a change of clothes, and silently carried a bucket of hot water into the bathroom.

Then Hayasaka Ai, still in the living room, heard Isac's voice again.

"Kaguya? You're not knocking either? Wait, you..."

Another quarter of an hour passed, and Kaguya came out looking refreshed. She nodded at Hayasaka Ai, signaling that it was her turn, and bounced up the stairs.

Hayasaka Ai watched Kaguya's back disappear around the corner of the stairs, then looked away, unzipped her jacket and strolled toward the bathroom without any hurry.

"Hayasaka? You... Never mind, I get it..."

Half an hour later, Hayasaka Ai came out humming a little tune. Unlike the other two, Isac was trailing along behind her.

Suffice it to say, Isac didn't have to come out leaning on the wall, and that was all thanks to his earlier body enhancement. The venison probably helped too. After everything he'd put out, he only felt a bit tired, and was still a long way from running on empty.

Wasn't venison supposed to be a virility booster in traditional Chinese medicine?

Isac mused on that as he used the tongs to move the still-glowing embers from the central fireplace into an iron bucket, then picked up a kerosene lamp and followed Hayasaka Ai upstairs.

In the second-floor master bedroom, Kaguya and Yukinoshita Yukino were already in bed. Judging by their slow, even breathing, they'd sunk into a deep sleep.

Isac tossed the unburned charcoal from downstairs into the master bedroom fireplace, then added two fresh pieces to cover the whole hearth.

"Let's go next door," Isac said to Hayasaka Ai.

Yes, Isac wasn't planning to sleep in the master bedroom tonight.

It wasn't that he wanted to drag Hayasaka Ai into the second bedroom to do something. He just knew exactly what the side effects of the body enhancement were.

If you lay still, it didn't hurt much. But if you moved, even a little, a bone-deep pain stabbed through you.

That was exactly why Isac had slept alone during those first days after his own enhancement.

He'd had no choice. In that state, if the person next to him so much as rolled over, he'd suffer for it, so he had to sleep alone.

Now Yukinoshita Yukino and Kaguya were going through the same enhancement he had, so to avoid accidentally causing them pain later...

As for whether Yukino and Kaguya would hurt each other... they'd only find out tomorrow.

If worse came to worst, he and Hayasaka Ai could give up the second bedroom and sleep in the guest room downstairs instead. They'd just pile on a few extra blankets at night.

The house didn't have much of anything else, but it had plenty of beds.

Hearing Isac, Hayasaka Ai's eyes flickered, as if something had occurred to her. Her voice carried a teasing edge. "Sure, but with just the two of us in a room, you won't do anything to me, will you?"

A giant question mark floated up over Isac's head.

Given how things had gone so far, he honestly couldn't say which of them was the dangerous one.

Maybe because he'd been wrung out in shifts in the bathroom earlier, Isac in the end didn't do anything to Hayasaka Ai. And Hayasaka Ai, knowing he needed rest after being squeezed dry, had no plans to do anything to him for the time being either.

In short, it was a quiet night. A silent night, even.

...

The next morning.

Isac, unusually, slept in. Probably because he'd worn himself out so much the night before.

When he woke, Hayasaka Ai was nowhere to be seen. Her side of the bed had already gone cold, so she must have been up for a while.

Isac yawned, sat up, grabbed a jacket at random to throw over his shoulders, and glanced out the window.

The sky had turned leaden gray again, as if yesterday's blue had been an illusion. The wind was still bitter, and every so often it flung a few snowflakes against the glass, leaving mottled streaks of water.

Snowing again, huh.

Isac threw back the blanket and slipped into his slippers. He meant to check on Yukino and the others in the master bedroom next door, use the master bathroom to take care of business, and brush his teeth and wash his face while he was at it.

The moment he pushed open the door, he saw Yukinoshita Yukino and Kaguya lying perfectly straight on the big bed, covers pulled up so only their heads showed, not moving a muscle. They looked exactly like Isac had back then.

When they heard the master bedroom door open, the two girls instinctively tried to lift their heads. The instant they moved, a sharp, violent pain cut them off.

"Ssss..." Kaguya sucked in a breath.

Beside her, Yukinoshita Yukino gritted her teeth and kept quiet, but judging by her face, which had gone slightly pale, she was probably hurting no less than Kaguya.

One thing was certain, though: the two of them wouldn't need separate beds.

Besides, even if they'd wanted to sleep apart, they'd have had to wait until they felt better. In their current state, just moving them would be a problem.

Isac had been through this himself, so he knew exactly how it felt.

"Don't move, it's me," Isac said, walking into the master bedroom. He didn't rush to the bathroom. Instead he dragged a chair over to the bedside and sat down.

"How are you feeling?"

"Painful." Yukinoshita Yukino's answer was remarkably concise. Her mouth barely moved. She was probably afraid that a bigger motion would set off the pain again.

Hearing that, Isac scratched his head. Even if she said it hurt, he didn't have any great solution.

Yukinoshita Yukino knew he didn't have one either, so after answering his question she closed her eyes again.

Since it had come to this, they might as well go back to sleep.