episode_0019

The hero, who had collected the herbal fruits requested by Killua, returned late in the evening as the sun was setting.

He came into the house, vigorously shaking a leather pouch full of fruits as if it were a great trophy.

“Eheheh. Is this it?”

Even though half a day had passed, Killua’s alcohol addiction symptoms hadn’t improved. She sat almost leaning on the chair and extended her hand to the hero without a word.

The hero, still grinning foolishly, handed Killua the leather pouch he had brought.

“Yes. You brought exactly what I needed.”

Opening the leather pouch and checking the condition of the fruits inside, Killua nodded as if thoroughly satisfied.

Then she picked up the fruits the hero had brought and tried to get up from her seat.

“I’ll do it.”

As she tried to rise from the chair, dizziness and lightheadedness surged, stopping Killua’s movement and causing her to frown slightly.

I snatched the leather pouch of fruits from her hand, as if taking it away, while she stood there in an awkward, halted posture after trying to get up.

“Please. You need to squeeze out the juice, so mash them well.”

Realizing her own physical discomfort, Killua didn’t insist and meekly asked me to process the fruits.

Nodding at her request, I put the fruits into the bowl prepared for mashing herbs and slowly mashed them with a mortar to extract the juice.

“I’m back.”

Just then, the door opened again and Rai came in, roughly shaking off the leaves stuck to his body.

He hung his bow and quiver on the wall and scanned us, who had returned from the deep forest.

“Nothing happened, right?”

Once he confirmed that all of us had returned safe and sound, Rai smiled brightly.

But no one could smile at Rai’s welcoming grin.

Only Killua managed an awkward, wry smile.

“Surely not…”

Rai, who instantly sensed our stiff atmosphere, intuited that something had happened and his face hardened.

His gaze fixed first on Killua, who was giving an awkward, wry smile.

Upon seeing Killua’s face, slightly reddened from the effects of alcohol addiction, Rai’s expression twisted into a fierce scowl.

“Hero!!!”

He called out to the hero in a booming voice loud enough to shake the house.

Startled by Rai’s sudden shout, the hero flinched and looked at him with trembling, frightened eyes.

“I asked you to protect her well, didn’t I?! Did you not take any action?!”

“Th-that… I’m s-sorry…”

The hero, whose trembling eyes darted around searching for an excuse, found nothing to say and apologized to Rai in a meek voice.

“Don’t reprimand the hero too much. It’s also my fault for letting my guard down.”

Seeing the pitiful sight of the hero, who had cowered in fear at Rai’s anger, which was greater than imagined, Killua defended him.

But despite Killua’s defense, Rai’s deeply furrowed brow showed no sign of relaxing.

“You could have prevented it by applying beeswax powder to her neck!!! You were the one who discovered that prevention method, so why didn’t you take any action!!!”

“Huh?”

However, Rai’s subsequent interrogation made the reason for his anger instantly understandable.

The hero already knew an easy prevention method to stop slimes from getting into clothes beforehand.

It even seemed that the hero himself had discovered that prevention method.

“I-I’m sorry…”

“Don’t just apologize, explain yourself!! Why did you do that!!”

Rai interrogated the hero, his anger making his breathing ragged.

But I, who understood why he was so angry, couldn’t stop him as his fury intensified.

“Stop it, Rai.”

At that moment, Killua’s calm and quiet words pacified the fiercely charged atmosphere in the room.

When Killua, the biggest victim of the hero’s foolish actions, told him to stop, Rai pressed his lips tightly together, holding back the torrent of angry words, and looked at her.

“The water’s already spilled, hasn’t it? Complaining about why it spilled won’t put the spilled water back into the cup.”

“Whew… Yes… That’s true.”

At Killua’s calm advice, the worsening atmosphere barely managed to settle down.

Rai, as if agreeing with her words, let out a long sigh and suppressed the anger welling up within his chest.

“How’s your body? Are you very uncomfortable?”

Rai, after giving the hero a sharp glare, approached Killua and asked about her physical condition.

I merely took a step back, holding the bowl of mashing fruits, to make it easier for Rai and Killua to talk.

“How long were you exposed to the slime’s poison?”

“Well…”

Killua didn’t know when the slime had gotten into her clothes.

She looked at me, the one who had first noticed the slime entering her clothes, conveying a look that asked me to answer for her.

“About… 15 minutes?”

After confirming the slime in her clothes, collecting a chunk of the mucus, and returning, that amount of time would have likely passed.

At my answer, Rai’s face darkened as he bit his lower lip tightly.

“If you were exposed for about 15 minutes, it’ll take about 3 days for the poison injected under your skin to naturally detoxify.”

“T-Three days?!”

At Rai’s words, Killua’s face turned pale.

Until now, Killua had been acting as if she was fine, but it seemed she hadn’t imagined having to endure this state for three days.

Even though it was a low-level slime, its poison, full of malice to incapacitate a person, had a significant effect and duration.

“Fortunately, since this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, I already have an antidote and tools to remove the toxins.”

Rai, observing Killua’s pale face, offered a solution with difficulty.

At Rai’s words that there was an antidote and tools to remove the poison injected under her skin, Killua breathed a sigh of relief.

However, Rai continued to speak with a serious expression, as if detoxifying the poison itself was no easy task.

“Where is the affected area where the poison was injected?”

“Below my chest… a little above my solar plexus?”

At Rai’s question, Killua recalled her memory of the forest and touched the area near her lower chest with her fingertips, where I had put my mouth to extract the poison.

At that, Rai’s face stiffened, as if he had expected it.

“This treatment isn’t something you can do alone.”

“Can’t do it alone? Isn’t it just a matter of applying the antidote to the affected area and being done with it?!”

Killua argued with a beet-red face, as if she couldn’t believe Rai’s words that she couldn’t do it alone.

Not being able to handle the treatment alone meant she would have to expose her embarrassing chest to another person, not just any other body part.

“No. It’s not just about applying it. It requires a bit of massage and a medical procedure to extract the poison.”

At Rai’s mention of a medical procedure to extract the poison, Killua’s face flushed beet-red, as if recalling my previous action, to the point where it couldn’t get any redder.

“F-First, show me if you have the medicine.”

Killua, who had no intention of showing her bare skin to others, demanded that Rai show her the antidote.

Rai nodded slightly, as if understanding Killua’s stubbornness, and rummaged through a tea cabinet in one corner of the room.

From there, he took out a glass bottle filled with a bluish liquid, stored at the very back, and a bundle of sharp needles stored next to the medicine bottle.

“This is it.”

Killua took the glass bottle containing the antidote from Rai with hands that trembled subtly, unable to hide her agitation, and began to examine it.

“W-What kind of medical procedure is it?”

Killua asked in a trembling voice about the medical procedure Rai had mentioned for extracting the poison.

At her question, this time Rai’s face turned beet-red.

But Rai, as if struggling to maintain composure, covered his reddened face with his hand and answered in a low, subdued voice.

“When you apply the medicine, the pain in that area will dull, and the injected toxins will clot. After that… you make a small hole in the wound with a sterilized needle, then… you extract the clotted toxins from under the skin by suctioning them out with your mouth.”

“……”

At his frank answer, the blush that filled Killua’s face eventually spread down to her neck.

“W-With your mouth? Is there no other way?”

As if recalling my embarrassing action, Killua asked in a trembling voice about an alternative method.

At that, Rai also shook his head with difficulty, his face similarly beet-red.

“You have to extract it as delicately as possible, suppressing temperature changes. If you do it wrong, the clotted toxins could burst and seep back into the wound, which would be troublesome.”

As if Rai’s explanation had somewhat convinced her, Killua nodded gravely.

Then she stared intently at the glass bottle containing the antidote she had received from Rai.

“I-If you’re too embarrassed, I can prepare herbs that suppress the symptoms until it naturally detoxifies. Three days might be a bit uncomfortable… but you wouldn’t have to go through anything embarrassing.”

Rai, observing Killua’s hesitation, cautiously suggested an alternative.

But Killua, who couldn’t waste even a single day, shook her head as if Rai’s alternative wasn’t worth listening to, and gripped the glass bottle of antidote tightly in her hand.

“Huuuu…”

After exhaling a long sigh, she spoke in a resolute voice, as if having made a great decision.

“I’ll ask you to do it.”

Killua handed him the glass bottle she was holding, as if trusting Rai and entrusting everything to him.

“Understood.”

Rai, respecting Killua’s decision, took the antidote bottle she handed him with a calm voice.

“Go into your room and change into comfortable clothes. I’ll prepare the tools and follow you in a moment.”

Rai placed the antidote bottle, which Killua had given back to him, on the table and began preparing the sharp needles and clean cloth that had been with the medicine bottle.

“Okay. Understood.”

Killua, who had been quietly watching Rai, let out another short sigh and, without another word, slowly walked towards her room on the second floor.

“Whew…”

As Killua ascended to the second floor, where her room was, with an unsteady, stumbling gait, Rai took out the tools needed for the medical procedure, placed them on the table, and let out a small sigh as he looked down at them.

“Is that really the only way?”

I, who had stepped back and was mashing the fruits, confirmed that Killua had gone up to the second floor and then asked Rai a question.

“Yes. There’s no other way.”

Looking down at the sharp needles and clean cloth he had laid out, Rai took a deep breath again, slowly calming his trembling emotions.

Then Rai slowly turned his head and glared at the hero, who was the root cause of all this.

“I-I’ll head back now.”

Sweating coldly under Rai’s fierce gaze, which seemed to scold him harshly, the hero cautiously backed away and left the house as if fleeing.

“Still, the hero protected us from the giant slime’s attack by himself. There was probably no malice.”

Although the hero was foolish, as if he had a screw loose, there was no malice detectable in him that would put us in danger.

Feeling a small amount of pity for the hero, who was foolish but not malicious, I cautiously tried to defend him.

“If Killua hadn’t been affected by the small slime in the first place, the giant slime that tries to harvest its prey wouldn’t have appeared, would it?”

“I-Is that so?”

However, it was a useless defense to Rai, who already knew the slime’s ecology and hunting methods well from the Lime Forest.

Rai also seemed to be trying to understand the hero’s actions in various ways.

But no matter how positively he tried to think, it seemed the hero’s actions were unforgivable, as his brow remained deeply furrowed.

“I-I’m ready.”

Just then, Killua’s voice, full of embarrassment, softly echoed from her room on the second floor.

“Understood. I’ll come up now.”

At her call, Rai put the tools he had placed on the table onto a tray and ascended the stairs to the second floor, where her room was.