LIGHT NOVEL
LIGHT NOVEL
This volume is the long-awaited swimsuit episode!
On a tropical island, the beautiful girls show off their swimsuits and share all the heart-meltingly precious moments you could ask for!
But before that, there are the usual high-handed nobles who need taking down a peg.
After somehow settling the drinking-party uproar carried over from the last volume, the group heads for the county hall to put a stop to the region’s inflated taxes. There they clash with a provincial noble—and end up framed for a crime they never committed. All without the man having the faintest idea just who Tisli really is (lol).
Having put the nobles in their place, the group sets off at last for a tropical island, now that summer vacation has arrived.
Crystal-clear seas, all sorts of leisure, a summer festival—and the girls’ swimsuits standing out in vivid color!
What’s more, Mia—Tisli’s rival in love (?)—ends up coming along, so Alde spends the whole trip in a cold sweat! Can he keep Tisli’s jealousy in check and make it through this vacation in one piece?!
The fourth helping of this isekai romantic comedy, with the love triangle kicking into high gear. Please, do give it a read!
— Alde’s perspective —
The day after the five of us wrapped up our drinking party.
Even as lunchtime rolled around, Tisli showed no sign of coming down from her room on the second floor.
“I wonder if Miss Tisli’s all right…?”
Mom murmured as she carried lunch into the living room. Carrying dishes beside her, I answered that murmur.
“Normally she’d have recovered at least a little by around noon. But yesterday she drank way more than usual, so…”
With the Drinking Magic working against her, last night Tisli had made it all the way to the tail end of the party without passing out—while downing a huge amount of liquor. In sheer quantity, way more than me.
So even if she’d used healing magic, she was probably still suffering through a hangover.
Though in this case, the wound to her heart might be bigger than the hangover.
And so my sister Yuinas, who may have dealt Tisli that fatal blow—though as far as yesterday goes, Yuinas wasn’t in the wrong—spat out as she set the dishes on the living room table.
“That woman should just leave already…!”
At that, Yuinas got a scolding from Dad, who was also helping ready the meal.
“Now, Yuinas. You mustn’t say such things about someone who’s been so good to us.”
“But! She put me through so much yesterday!”
“It was just a bit of playing around over drinks, wasn’t it?”
“What kind of ‘playing around’ involves mussing up a person’s head nonstop?!”
“Getting your head patted—surely there’s no harm in that.”
“Yes there is!”
Even after a night’s sleep, it seemed Yuinas’s anger hadn’t cooled.
Well, once Tisli got dead drunk, Yuinas did bear the brunt of her clinging.
What’s more, Tisli excels at the martial arts too, and she’d locked Yuinas’s body in an exquisite hold, so Yuinas absolutely could not get away.
Even smashed, the close-combat skills she’s mastered don’t suffer one bit—that’s Tisli for you. Is that genius at work too?
And so, still trapped in the hug, Yuinas got her head “there-there-there-there…!”-ed, got told “Yuinas, sweetie, aren’t you just so adowable~,” and when Tisli shouted “Oh, I simply cannot bear it any longer! Perhaps I should just kiss you?!”—that’s when I finally figured things were getting bad and stepped in myself.
By then, though, Yuinas was too worn out to manage even a single word of protest.
“Just remembering it makes my skin crawl—that woman!”
And so, Yuinas was still boiling mad.
Well, I did catch myself thinking, way too late, that maybe I should’ve stepped in a bit sooner… but honestly? It was a pain.
Besides, I had my own hands full, desperately trying to clear up Mia’s misunderstanding. And in the end, the party closed with it pretty unclear whether the misunderstanding ever got cleared at all…
I envied Naavin, who at some point had started snoring away. Honestly.
As I was looking back on last night’s carnage, Mom spoke up.
“Say, Alde. Would you go look in on Miss Tisli for a moment?”
“Hmm, well…”
I gave it a moment’s thought, eyes on the ceiling.
By rights, as a guy, I shouldn’t be entering a lady’s room, but, well, that ship’s sailed; there’s no way I could send Yuinas, and if Mom went, Tisli would only end up minding her manners.
That’s probably why Mom asked me in the first place.
Part of me feels she’s better left alone for now, but…
Then again, if she’s genuinely unwell, that’s its own problem.
“……Fine, can’t be helped. I’ll go.”
And so I headed for Tisli’s room.
— Alde’s perspective —
I went up to the second floor and knocked on Tisli’s door, but there was no response. So I tried calling out.
“Heeey, Tisli, you awake? Lunch is ready—what do you want to do?”
But even when I called, no answer came from Tisli.
Was she… still asleep? Or was the hangover so rough she couldn’t even raise her voice?
Or maybe she just couldn’t face us…
Well, whichever it was, it spelled trouble all the same.
“Tisli, are you feeling sick or something? I brought a water pitcher, so I’m coming in for a sec, all right?”
The moment I open this door, there’s not gonna be an explosion or a lightning bolt or anything… right? This is my house, after all…
An image of myself burned to a crisp flashed through my mind, but there was no way she’d need to go that far in a house with only family around, so I steeled myself and opened the door.
And so the door opened without incident—
—and on the bed by the window sat a comforter rolled into a perfect ball.
The comforter looked like nothing so much as a giant snail. There was nothing else on the bed besides the balled-up bedding, so Tisli was apparently inside it, but…
“Hey, Tisli, what’s wrong? Are you feeling sick after all?”
Worried now, I called out, but Tisli didn’t react.
“Tisli, you asleep?”
I went over to the bed and gave the balled-up comforter a couple of pats. The bedding flinched, so Tisli was definitely in there, and awake too… maybe her hangover was so bad she couldn’t sit up.
“I’ll leave the pitcher and a cup on the side table, okay?”
Figuring it’d be bad to chatter at her while she felt awful, I made to head right back out—but just then.
A slender arm sprouted from the lump of bedding and grabbed hold of my pant leg.
“Hm? What is it?”
Not knowing why she’d grabbed me, I asked, but Tisli showed no particular reaction. And yet she kept her grip clenched tight on my pant cuff.
“If you don’t tell me what you want, I’ve got no idea what to do here, you know?”
I tried saying—still no response.
We were getting nowhere like this, so I decided to peel the comforter off.
“Heeey, Tisli, if you’re awake, at least show your face.”
And so I pulled at the comforter, but…
Hm?
The instant I tried to lift it, the slender arm gripping my pants whipped back inside and clamped down on the bedding.
Apparently she was pinning it down with both arms and both legs so it couldn’t be stripped away.
“…What, you don’t want to show your face?”
If she hated the idea, I wasn’t about to force her up, so I let go of the comforter and made to leave the room—
—and the moment I did, my pants got grabbed again.
“…Hey, Tisli, what exactly are you trying to do?”
“………”
“I can’t tell a thing if you stay silent, can I?”
“………”
“Say something, come ooon?”
“………”
No matter how many times I called, Tisli stayed mum.
Pant cuff still clenched firmly in her grip.
“Haa… what is this, seriously…”
Out of options, I heaved a colossal sigh and made to lower myself onto the wooden stool beside the bed—
—and in that instant.
“Opening, spotted!”
“Ah…!”
I hoisted the comforter up in one swift motion.
And so, at long last, I succeeded in getting a look at Tisli’s face.
“………Huhh?”
The idiotic sound slipped out of me before I could stop it.
I’d assumed the Tisli curled up in there would be either sulking or fuming, but…
for some reason, her eyes were brimming with tears…?!
— Alde’s perspective —
As I stared in surprise at the teary-eyed Tisli, her cheeks flared red and she covered her face with both hands.
“P-please, don’t look at me…!”
“Eh, ah, eh? Ah… right…”
Tisli sat slumped on the bed in her pajamas, hiding her face in her hands and hanging her head—but she’d gone red to the very tips of her ears, so… I couldn’t help but be flustered.
Tisli was perfectly decently dressed right now—back when she’d come at me drunk at the inn in the royal capital, for instance, she’d been in a far more risqué state—but for some reason I started feeling like I was doing something I shouldn’t, so I handed back the comforter I’d confiscated.
“U-um… here…”
“…………”
Tisli took the comforter without a word, and after a brief bout of wriggling, she had returned to her original snail form.
And then, silence once more.
“Heeey, Tisli?”
No reply.
“What in the world is going on with you? Should I just clear out?”
At that, the lump of bedding quivered side to side. Apparently… she was performing the gesture of shaking her head with the entire comforter.
“Then what? Is there something you want to talk about?”
“………”
“Heeey, Tisli. I can’t tell anything if you stay quiet.”
“………”
“At least tell me why you were bawling—”
“I was not crying…!”
A muffled voice came from inside the bedding. So she still had the energy to snap back when something hit a nerve.
She’d finally opened her mouth, so I decided to press in from there.
“Your eyes were super teary just now.”
“My hangover is terrible, and my eyes were simply bloodshot!”
“Can’t you just fix that with magic?”
“Hangovers, for whatever reason, cannot be cured by magic!”
“Really?”
“One suffers a good half day at the very minimum! And I still feel sick today!!”
“Well, you did drink like crazy yesterday…”
“………!”
The moment I touched on yesterday, Tisli clammed up again.
Hmmm…
It seemed she hadn’t fully recovered yet, but she could at least manage a chat.
And yet here she was, still holed up like this… so yeah, it had to be that after yesterday’s antics, she couldn’t face me or Yuinas.
Actually, with me it’s way past the point of embarrassment, so the guilt was probably toward Yuinas.
So I decided to poke at exactly that. Couldn’t leave her holed up forever, after all.
“You yesterday? Honestly… you were a disaster, you know?”
“………?!”
The lump of bedding gave a violent flinch! But I pressed on regardless.
“You spent the whole time trading nonsense with Naavin.”
Flinch…!
“Mia watched the whole thing and was completely appalled.”
Flinch-flinch…!
“And as for Yuinas, you were straight-up pestering her nonstop.”
Flinch-flinch-flinch…!!
“After all that goodwill you’d earned with the farming, the spectacle you made more than canceled it out. Seriously, thank goodness yesterday was a small gathering.”
“Y-you…!!”
Unable to bear my accusations any longer, I guess (not that they were accusations—every word was plain fact), Tisli poked just her face out of the bedding and glared at me, eyes still teary after all.
“Comforting your master, encouraging her—are you incapable of that sort of consideration…?!”
“Comforting you won’t undo yesterday’s spectacle, though?”
“………?!!”
Hmmmmm?
Watching Tisli—always so cocky, so high-handed, always wiping the floor with me at every turn—make that frustrated face…
…this might awaken something in me, and that’s kinda bad.
When I showered her with those merciless words, Tisli drew her face back into the bedding like a turtle and said in a trembling voice,
“I never knew you were such a cold human being!”
“I mean, come on. You’re the one who ignored my warning and drank yourself silly. There’s no defending that.”
“If you knew it would end like this, shouldn’t you have stopped me, by force if you had to?!”
“Ehh, no way. I might’ve gotten a hailstorm of offensive magic for my trouble.”
“You could slip right through that magic and stop me anyway, couldn’t you?! You of all people!”
“………So firing the magic is already a given?”
From the bottom of my heart, I was glad Mia’s house hadn’t been demolished.
Well, joking aside—wait, was it a joke? The question flitted through my mind for a second, but I chose to squash it. Tisli, who’d been utterly dejected, seemed to be getting her usual spirit back, so I cut to the main subject.
“If you want comforting, I’ll comfort you, sure. Everybody makes a fool of themselves once or twice before they get used to drinking. So don’t sweat it.”
A little while after I offered that stock consolation, Tisli, who’d been squirming around inside the bedding, slowly rose.
Then, sitting primly on the bed, hugging the comforter and hiding half her face behind it, she asked,
“……What kind of drunken mess did you make, Alde?”
“Let’s see… in my case… wait.”
I caught myself right there and leveled a half-lidded glare at Tisli.
“What exactly are you planning to do once you’ve wormed my drunken stories out of me?”
“Nothing at all?”
“You’re absolutely going to throw them in my face?!”
“Well! It’s unfair that you alone know my drunken disgraces, isn’t it!”
“That’s your fault for drinking!”
“I wanted to drink, so it couldn’t be helped!”
“You know drinking makes you sick, so exercise a little self-control, would you?!”
“I know! I’m never drinking again!”
Even Tisli seemed to have learned her lesson yesterday—this time she flat-out declared she was done drinking. With that, it looked like my alcohol-related troubles were over.
………Though for some reason, a small part of me couldn’t help feeling it was a bit of a shame.
“Anyway.”
Stuffing that feeling down, I said,
“What’s done is done. What matters is what comes next.”
“………That is… true, but…”
“It’s Yuinas you’re worried about, right? I’m sure Mia’s and Naavin’s reactions weigh on you too, but for some reason you’re awfully smitten with Yuinas, of all people. Rare for you.”
At that, Tisli turned meek and gave a small nod.
Seeing how genuinely pained she looked, a simple question came to me.
“Why do you care that much about Yuinas in the first place? I know you’re the type who’s awfully considerate of commoners despite being a princess, but even so, Yuinas gets the special treatment.”
“Th-that’s…”
Tisli turned her gaze away from me and began, haltingly, to speak.
“The reason I look after commoners—citizens, to be precise—is that I believe citizens are the very cornerstone of the state. Without its citizens, a state cannot stand.”
“Ohh…?”
Unschooled as I am, I couldn’t follow why Tisli thought that way, but I did understand one thing: compared to your average royal or noble, what she was saying was unthinkable. Your garden-variety blue blood tends to regard us commoners as little better than livestock.
All the more reason it was probably a good thing that Tisli, effectively the top of the whole royal-and-noble heap, held views like that. Well, she’s quit being a princess at the moment, though.
While I was mulling that over, Tisli had gone on talking.
“So it’s only natural that I treasure the citizens. And yet the royals and nobles of this country treat those precious citizens with neglect. That is why I—”
“No, look, I’m grateful you value us commoners, but that said—your fixation on Yuinas is kind of a different story, isn’t it?”
“Urk… th-that’s…”
At my pointing that out, Tisli choked on her words. The usual Tisli would produce a clear answer to absolutely anything, yet when it came to Yuinas, vague replies were all she gave.
Then again… maybe feelings about people are always vague like that.
So I added,
“If you really are fond of Yuinas, that makes me happy as her brother, sure. But honestly, if you’re shopping for a friend, I can’t recommend her.”
“Th-that’s not so… Yuinas is charming.”
“You think? If it’s a friend you want, Fottes from the domain capital would be a way better pick, if you ask me.”
“Of course I’d like to grow close with Miss Fottes too, but we can hardly drag her along on our journey…”
“Well, true… in that case, since we’re staying in the village a while, how about Mia? No comparison to Yuinas—she’s got an actually decent personality, you know?”
“O-of course… I’d like to be friends with Miss Mia as well.”
So Tisli said—but for some reason, she didn’t seem to have opened her heart to Mia. She’d hit it off with Fottes right away, as I recall. What the difference was, a guy like me might never figure out.
A loner like Tisli needs a proper friend or two, I’d say…
Also, the word “friend” brought a certain no-good buddy’s face to mind, so I tacked on,
“By the way, pass on Naavin, okay? He’s not a bad guy, but make friends with him and it’ll be nothing but headaches down the road.”
“Yes, you’re right. I shall pass on him.”
Hm… the way she could write Naavin off without a second thought, it wasn’t as if she had no eye for people…
So why the fixation on my little sister?
All I could do was tilt my head.
(Continued in the Kindle edition)
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