After sealing Natsumi, I faced off with Tobiichi, but she ignored us and disappeared.
And so the next day came, and I found myself in a truly troublesome situation.
"Darling...?"
"Um...."
"Heehee~"
When I woke up, Natsumi was sitting beside me in her adult form, wearing black underwear and striking a seductive pose. I screamed in shock, and the Fire Keeper from the next room burst in through the door.
Worse, when the Fire Keeper came in, my hand had accidentally ended up on Natsumi’s chest.
"W-what indecent thing are you doing first thing in the morning――!!!"
The Fire Keeper screaming and covering her eyes with both hands was a perfectly normal reaction.
"I-it’s a misunderstanding!"
"You're pretty lewd too, Hai."
"What the hell are you talking about now!?"
Thanks to Natsumi’s comment, the Fire Keeper’s misunderstanding only got worse, and I broke out in a cold sweat while trying to figure out how to explain myself.
I hadn’t even done anything wrong, and yet I was the one being forced to explain it. Today was definitely turning into Natsumi’s punishment meal day.
"Haah.... What now..."
Mayuri, who came over after hearing the commotion, froze just like the Fire Keeper when she saw me and Natsumi.
Then a giant ghostly shape began to appear behind her, and the atmosphere grew heavy enough to crush everything around us.
"Hai.... What is going on here...?"
"N-no, Mayuri, it’s just that..."
"Darling and Natsumi were doing something naughty!"
"Sachi!?"
"Last night was really rough~"
"Natsumi!?"
"Oh? So that happened?"
Just as I was starting to feel genuine fear at the pressure tightening around my throat, Mayuri suddenly slipped her hand inside her top.
For a brief moment I wondered what she was doing, but I was soon forced to be shocked by what was about to happen.
"If that’s how it is, then I should too—"
"M-Mayuri!!!"
She was trying to take off her top.
At that, the Fire Keeper, Natsumi after her transformation had worn off, and I all grabbed her by the arms and waist.
"Let go! Natsumi did it too! Even that little kid did it!"
"Please calm down! I didn’t do anything!"
"Don’t lie! Then what was Sachi talking about!?"
"Huh? I just said you two slept together..."
Maybe she realized her words could be taken another way, because the Fire Keeper’s face began turning red.
"I-I didn’t mean it like that!"
"I never slept with Hai!"
In the end, unable to hold out any longer, Natsumi confessed, and the morning commotion finally came to an end.
*******
"So, you want me to help cook?"
"Yes. That’s right."
After sending Natsumi out for a bit with Yoshino, I called Mana over and prepared food together in the spirit mansion kitchen.
What we were making was, naturally, a punishment meal for Natsumi to eat when she got back.
Even if I forgave her, that was that, and this was this.
"Hai really doesn’t have a very nice personality, does he?"
"How could a person be all good parts?"
I shrugged at Mana’s remark and opened the lid on the drink.
Its name was zico.
I was going to put rice and various ingredients into a pot with it, then simmer everything down into porridge.
"Ugh. Why would you make something like that...?"
"Because it’s a punishment meal."
Already I could picture the look on Natsumi’s face when she ate it.
Just imagining it made the corners of my mouth lift on their own, and Mana nudged me with her elbow.
"So why did you call me over?"
"This is what I want you to make, Mana."
What I handed her was tamagoyaki.
"Why this...?"
"If I only prepared nasty food, that’d be a little much, wouldn’t it? We should have something edible too."
"That does make sense."
Mana nodded and accepted my explanation, but she had no idea.
No idea what I was really implying.
Mana’s cooking skill was, to put it mildly, atrocious.
It looked fine on the outside, but if you ate it, you could go straight on a trip to the underworld.
Thinking back to the time I ate her food and saw Gyeongsik waving at me from the other side, that said everything.
So I was going to give Natsumi a choice.
For today’s lunch, she could pick between the zico porridge simmered to mush and the tamagoyaki from hell that Mana had made.
A deathly either-or that forced her into a choice she could not possibly win, no matter what she picked.
That was the karma she’d earned for all the pranks she’d pulled on me.
"All right, let’s get started."
"Yes!"
While Mana was turning on the gas stove beside me, I took the rice that had been soaking for about an hour out of the pot.
I drained off the water with a sieve, then poured out the water from the pot the rice had been soaking in.
After that, I coated the pot with sesame oil, added the soaked rice, and stir-fried it over low heat.
The important things here were patience and focus.
Once the rice turned a little translucent, I’d need to add the zico.
As I stirred with the spatula and watched the rice, a delicious smell rose beside me with a sizzle.
Mana was beating eggs and pouring them into the frying pan.
The smell itself was definitely appetizing, but there was no telling what would happen if Mana was the one making it.
Her hands were hands of death.
"All right, that’s enough."
After a little time passed and the rice had turned slightly translucent, I poured in the zico.
I added just enough to cover the rice a little, then started stirring again with the spatula.
Since this was basically how you made rice in a pot, if you didn’t keep stirring it regularly, the grains would stick to the bottom and burn.
"Hmm-hmm-hmm~"
While I hummed to myself at the thought of feeding this to Natsumi, a spectacular fire show was going on beside me.
"...Huh?"
What kind of fire show was this while making tamagoyaki?
"Ah! Hai!"
Along with Mana’s shout, something came into my field of vision.
It was tamagoyaki.
More precisely, it was something that had been just about to become tamagoyaki, and it flew at my face as if it had a will of its own.
"Gaaah!!!"
I collapsed, crying out in pain as the egg landed squarely on my face.
The heat on my face was unlike any heat in this world.
'Just how high did she turn the heat up...!'
How strong had the flame been for the egg to get this hot?
Wondering that, I started feeling around for the faucet.
"H-Hai! Here’s some paper towels!"
"Ah, thank you."
As I groped around the sink looking for the faucet, Mana handed me paper towels.
I wiped the egg off with the paper towels, then tossed it into the trash more or less carelessly.
"S-sorry! I got too excited while I was doing it!"
"N-no, it’s fine."
I wondered how you even got that excited while cooking and ended up sending an egg at someone’s face, but asking would probably only make Mana feel worse, so I didn’t.
"Hmm, you two look very close."
"Kaguya, are you awake?"
"I woke up because of the noise in the living room."
Kaguya, who had gotten up at some point, came into the kitchen and looked over the food we were making.
"Hai is making porridge, and Mana is... wait, Mana is cooking?"
Startled by the fact that Mana was the one cooking, Kaguya dropped her formal speech entirely.
She grabbed both of Mana’s hands tightly and said with a serious look,
"Mana! You are not suited to the path of a cook!"
"W-what are you talking about!?"
"Absolutely not! Cooking is the one thing you must never do!"
Her resolve to stop Mana no matter what happened seemed unshakable.
But there was definitely a way to break that resolve.
"Kaguya. I asked her to do it."
"...Hai, you asked her to?"
"Yes. For Natsumi."
I explained part of my plan to Kaguya.
Since she’d been tossed around by Natsumi too, she was inclined to agree to some extent.
"If that’s the case..."
"Surely she won’t die."
"What are you two talking about?"
"Nothing much. I just said we were cooking for Natsumi."
Mana looked at us suspiciously, but I brushed it off with my most shameless face and got back to cooking.
*******
After some time passed, Natsumi returned from her outing with Yoshino.
I served her two dishes.
"What’s this?"
"Lunch. I prepared it specially for you."
The two dishes placed in front of her.
One was the zico porridge I had made, and the other was the tamagoyaki Mana had made.
"I made the tamagoyaki!"
"Mana...?"
Natsumi, who didn’t know Mana’s cooking skill, tilted her head and then looked behind me.
"Why are all those people collapsed back there?"
"Ah, don’t worry about it."
Behind me, there were currently a great many corpses lined up.
They were the people who had chosen the tamagoyaki over my zico porridge and Mana’s tamagoyaki.
Of course, I hadn’t told them that the tamagoyaki was made by Mana, so that was probably why they made that choice.
"Ugh! What is that smell!?"
Natsumi sniffed the zico porridge once, then pushed it aside immediately.
"What a shame. My ambitious new masterpiece, zico porridge."
"You made porridge out of that thing!?"
Natsumi was horrified by my words, but I didn’t feel bad at all.
I only offered silent condolences for what was about to happen to her.
"Then please eat my tamagoyaki!"
Mana said confidently, holding it out to her.
"This one looks normal... right?"
Natsumi tapped the tamagoyaki, split it in half to check the inside, and only then relaxed and put it in her mouth.
And then she died on the spot.
"...Natsumi?"
"........"
No matter how I waved my hand in front of Natsumi, there was no reaction at all.
I grinned at the fact that my plan had succeeded and muttered,
"Heh. Success."
"Um, Hai? What was that supposed to mean?"
Of course, after that I had to tell Mana the whole truth and got a little hated for it, but in the end, I’d settled Natsumi’s karma.
Today was a very satisfying day.
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