36. When Your Tongue Sticks

36. When Your Tongue Sticks

“So that’s why you came all the way here…?”

Her red twin-tails, curled up plumply.

The golden kid and I, standing in front of her.

Priscilla, standing at the dormitory door, said with disbelief after hearing the full story of why the princess had suddenly visited her room.

“Yeah. I have to keep my word.”

It was I who told Claire she could touch my sword. If I hadn’t said anything, it would have been one thing, but since I had spoken, I couldn’t break my promise, so I brought Claire to the room like this.

“I was surprised when the princess suddenly visited….”

“Don’t mind me. Continue what you were doing. I just need my sword!”

“It’s okay. I was resting anyway.”

Priscilla replied to Claire’s words. Hearing her answer, I tilted my head.

Resting?

Looking at Priscilla’s disheveled hair and her panting breaths, no matter how I thought about it, she wasn’t resting; she was clearly doing something.

Of course, if she said she was fine, I couldn’t say anything.

Claire and I entered Priscilla’s dormitory room together. The room’s interior, already familiar to me and Priscilla, greeted us.

… No, it wasn’t familiar. Unlike its usual neat state, the room’s interior was completely in disarray.

Drawers were pulled open, and various items were scattered on the floor. Priscilla’s bed area, in particular, was thoroughly rummaged through. It looked as if someone had been searching for something in the room until just now.

After a brief pause at the slightly bewildering sight, Claire shouted.

“Give me the sword quickly!”

Claire’s eyes were sparkling. Seeing her, I sighed.

My sword is going to be licked a lot again.

It felt like my beloved lover was being snatched away by someone else. Of course, there might be people in the world who enjoy being taken from, but I wasn’t one of them.

In both my past and present lives, I have always liked pure love stories.

Meeting by chance, growing closer, and finally loving each other sincerely… How could I not like that?

A couple in love is beautiful in itself. Interfering with such love, whether by taking or being taken from, is truly the path of evil.

Come to think of it, before I reincarnated, there were even new terms like BSS, right? It was an abbreviation for ‘I liked them first,’ and it described a genre where the protagonist, unable to confess their love, suffers and eventually watches the person they love go to another man.

Hah, to have the person you’ve had a crush on for 20 years snatched away by someone else. How could anyone write such a work? I can’t understand the author who writes it, nor the readers who read it.

… Hmm.

Fortunately, such terrible works do not exist in this world.

At least, that’s how all the novels I’ve read so far were. Most of them featured only female characters, so there was no romantic storyline anyway.

Anyway.

“Haaah….”

“Yahoo!”

I finally drew my sword gently and handed it to Claire. Claire’s eyes sparkled, and she immediately began rubbing her cheek against the blade.

She looked like a child happy to receive a gift.

She was quite cute looking at her like this. If you exclude the fact that the gift was my sword, which was like my alter ego.

“Huh?”

Then, feeling a sudden weight on my tail, I looked back, and my vision was filled with a bright red crown of hair. Priscilla was hanging from my tail.

Priscilla, with her face buried in my tail, inhaling deeply.

Hmm.

It was Priscilla, just like usual.

——

“Uaaanghe!”

“Oh, what should I do with this….”

After entrusting my training clothes to Priscilla and finishing a comfortable shower, I came out to find the room somewhat disheveled.

Claire, muttering unintelligible words with her tongue stuck to the sword, and Priscilla next to her, sweating profusely and looking flustered.

I casually placed the towel on my tail to prevent water from dripping and asked about the situation after coming out of the bathroom.

“What’s going on?”

“Ah, Skadi! This….”

“Aaaangang!!”

As soon as they realized I had arrived, both of them turned their heads. Claire’s appearance as she looked at me… was with her tongue stuck to the sword, mumbling.

“….”

So she licked it after all.

Well, it was a foregone conclusion that she would do it this time, just like last time.

I sighed and sat on the bed. The moisture from my tail, which I hadn’t dried properly, spread onto the blanket, but that wasn’t a significant matter to me. I was just a little displeased.

When I licked it, it tasted like iron, but what was so delicious that she was licking the sword like that?

My heart felt inexplicably gloomy. My tail drooped onto the bed. My heart felt as if it were getting soaked, just like the bedspread that was starting to get wet and gray.

Priscilla called out to me.

“Um, Skadi, could you help me?”

“… With what?”

“The princess’s tongue got stuck to the sword.”

“Huh?”

What was that supposed to mean? Why would her tongue get stuck to a perfectly fine sword?

I tilted my head and stood up. Looking closely, Claire’s tongue was indeed stuck to the sword as if it had adhered to it.

Claire, sitting on the bed, shedding tears and mumbling, ‘Uaaang,’.

“What happened while I was showering?”

“Aaaangang!”

“Well… After Skadi went to shower, the princess brought her tongue to the sword, and it got stuck just like that. I tried to pull it off, but I couldn’t….”

“Hmm.”

It’s common for tongues to get stuck to metal in cold places. However, here, although it was quite cold, it wasn’t cold enough for a tongue to freeze to metal.

“Uaaang!”

“… Just bear with it for a moment. I’ll get it off for you.”

Putting aside the question of how her tongue got stuck to the sword, I approached Claire first to detach her tongue.

The method to detach a stuck tongue was simple. Since the moisture on the tongue had frozen and adhered to the steel, warming it to melt the ice would easily detach it.

I also experienced this frequently in the North when I was young. After catching monsters outside, I once thoughtlessly touched my spoon to my mouth while eating portable rations and it got stuck, causing quite a bit of trouble.

It took me 3 years to break this habit.

Whenever I returned home looking like a fool with a spoon stuck to my tongue because I couldn’t detach it, my sister would always help me.

-Sister. I’ll get it off for you!

-Okay.

-To detach something like this, you need to warm it up to melt it. So, um….

Slurp.

“???!?!”

“S-Skadi?!”

This was how you melt it by intertwining tongues.

The small pink tongue and my tongue touched. Warm breaths collided and swirled between us. Our saliva mixed.

A soft, squishy sensation felt above the cold metallic taste.

Claire and I faced each other at close range. In her trembling golden eyes, a white wolf with slightly damp hair looked at me indifferently.

The distance was so close that our hair flowed and tangled together. If I tilted my head slightly, our noses would almost touch….

Finally, our mingled breaths and warmth began to overcome the cold. The frost gradually melted, and after a few more exchanges of tongues, the sword finally dropped with a thud.

“Hmm. Done.”

I wiped the dripping saliva with my sleeve and looked at Claire.

Even though I had melted her tongue, Claire remained frozen as if her body had been encased in ice. Priscilla was the same.

“Hey, girls?”

“Y-you….”

Claire opened her mouth.

“W-what are you doing! Why, why, why are you kissing…!!”

“Kissing?”

This isn’t kissing. It’s something unavoidable to save someone, a kind of artificial respiration, if you will.

I understood her embarrassment, as I was quite surprised myself the first time my sister helped me, but her strong rejection made me uncomfortable.

“This is how we do it in the North. It’s so cold that if you don’t do it properly, the warmth leaks out, so you have to stick together like this for the tongue to melt.”

“W-what nonsense are you talking about? I’ve been to the North many times!”

Claire shouted, covering her mouth, her face flushed red.

“Claire, has your tongue ever stuck to something in the North like this?”

“… No, but still…!”

“I know it’s embarrassing, Claire. But this is really how they do it in the North. Don’t take it too seriously. Just think of it as a kind of medical procedure.”

Think about a healer undressing a patient to examine their wounds. It might be a little embarrassing, but it’s not wrong, is it? This is the same.

Claire gradually began to accept my words after hearing my best efforts at persuasion.

“… Uh huh.”

“I’m sorry if I startled you. I should have warned you beforehand.”

I apologized, gently stroking Claire’s head. Claire, nestled tightly in my arms, leaned her face against my chest and slowly began to doze off.

My sister also calmed down quickly when I comforted her like this. My sister was small like Claire when she was young, so the memory of that time and the current scene seemed to overlap.

It felt like updating my memories.

Anyway, I continued to stroke Claire’s head to help her calm down.