Chapter - 9

Lunch was curry made with garlic rice instead of white rice.

It seemed to be a recipe from the time at Wakaba House, when there wasn't much money to spend and everyone couldn't make feasts to rejoice over, so Touka, Utakata, and Kanata put it together through trial and error.

Touka had dissolved ample amounts of savory beef tendon into the homemade curry roux she brought to camp in Tupperware, and together with the fragrant aroma of garlic rice, there was no way it could be unappetizing.

Because Ikki had never eaten such delicious curry before, he had unfortunately stuffed himself too much unintentionally. But in the other direction, unlike the four people who were eating normally, Stella didn't have very much. Maybe she wasn't hungry.

Then after lunch, Touka chose how to settle their stomachs by splitting them into groups so that they could walk around.

After all, though they were Blazers, it was too dangerous for people to walk in the mountains alone.

The groups were Touka and Utakata, Saijou and Renren, and lastly Ikki and Stella. As a provision for emergencies, only Kanata remained in the training camp building, and the party finally set out on their mountain hunt.

The objective was to find a giant and secure it.

The Ikki/Stella group was walking around the area that they were entrusted with, the mountain forest on the west side.

This location was different from the ordinary mountains that a mountaineer would go through. It was part of a facility for Blazer training. Consequently, there the trails were not well maintained, and vegetation grew dense and abundantly all over the place. In addition the slope of the terrain was severe. It was very much a precipitous trail.

No, if it was simply precipitous, then for Ikki and Stella who regularly trained their bodies, it wouldn't be anything special, but―

"Huh, again?"

Ikki caught in his left hand a shadow that leaped from the thickets with a crunching sound. It was a pit viper with its fangs bared.

This was already the third time. The ruggedness of the trail aside, for surprise attacks to continue like this was a little tiresome.

Ikki threw the viper far away with a snap of his wrist, and tentatively called for Stella's attention as she followed behind him.

"It looks like this side of the river has a lot of poisonous snakes. They're not the type to kill with a bite, but Stella, you should be careful."

"…Right."

Stella's answer wasn't energetic. How should he put it, at a glance, Stella didn't have much ambition right now. With the spirit she had shown at the student council office before, she should probably be leading the charge, pushing her way through the thicket. That was how she should be, but Stella right now was sagging her shoulders and slouching, and only following Ikki from behind sluggishly.

"What's wrong? You don't look too lively, but did losing at badminton shock you that much?"

It seemed that the badminton match with Renren had ended with Stella's utter defeat. Stella had miscalculated the force of her smashes, ruining herself by hitting the birdie out of the court again and again.

Certainly the matter would make her sulk, he thought, but….

"It's not really about that…."

Stella answered with a denial. But as she answered, there was an indecisiveness in her voice, as if the person herself didn't entirely understand why she wasn't energetic.

I wonder what's really the matter?

Ikki tilted his head in puzzlement at his sweetheart who was acting different from usual.

But at that moment, he didn't grasp how huge the change was.

I wonder if she's just a little worn out from not being used to mountain trails.

"Follow me properly so you don't get lost, okay?"

Saying that, Ikki cleared the way forward through the thicket so that Stella would have an easier path.

But he was mistaken. This abnormality of Stella's wasn't something that should be disregarded.

At around two hours of walking the unpaved trail―

…Looks like the weather's getting bad, huh?

Ikki stared at the sky through spaces in the dense foliage above. The sky visible through the leaves that had been dazzlingly green just a while ago was now darkened into an ashen shadow of itself. It was a color that suggested it could start raining at any time. He had heard that the weather in the mountains can change quickly, but this much? And since they were high above sea level, he also felt unpleasantly cold.

Could it be that rain is coming?

"Hmm?"

Lowering his eyes back down from the sky, Ikki suddenly saw something unusual.

Fallen trees.

And not just one or two of them. Ten or twenty trees had collapsed, opening a clearing in the mountain forest.

That cause was the ground, as if something gigantic had crawled out of the ground, turning over the brown earth as it came up and bringing the deep scent of soil in doing so. The trees that were standing there were similarly uprooted.

The huge gouge had a diameter of about five meters. And in the horribly muddy, mushed-up ground, there was a footprint of fifty centimeters wide.

"This is…!"

That shape wasn't from the hoof of a beast, but resembled a human's footprint. But there were no humans that big, so the maker of this footprint was no human―perhaps it was the rumored giant.

"Hey Stella, this―"

Ikki called out to report his discovery to Stella behind him―

"Ha… ha…."

When he saw Stella breathing heavily and leaning on a tree for support, he noticed something.

"Stella? Could it be you're worn out…?"

He thought she was leaning on the tree because the mountain trail had fatigued her, but he was wrong. Ikki realized it as he looked at Stella's face. Even though the air was this cold, Stella's face was deeply red, and her forehead was packed with drops of sweat.

It was to an unusual degree. It was strange under any circumstance.

"Stella!? What happened to make you sweat so much?"

"I-I don't know…. It's just, for a while now my body has been really heavy… I've been nauseous, and dizzy…. Hey Ikki, there's something I need to tell you."

Stella raised her red face listlessly, and put on a very serious expression. From her heavy but indecisive seriousness, he easily knew the inquiry was about something very important. What was she going to say?

Ikki gulped, and braced himself.

"What is it?"

And she asked―

"Do kisses cause pregnancy?"

He almost fell to his knees in the aftermath of his exhaustion.

"…No. No they don't."

He didn't want to think about how frightening humanity would be if kissing a girl made her pregnant.

"I mean, Stella, are you not feeling well?"

"Lovesickness…?"

"No. Umm, in English it would be cold, wouldn't it? No, don't they call it fever?"

"O-Oh… I guess I understand it."

Stella managed to dig out Ikki's meaning from his awkward English.

"I see. This is… the 'cold' I've heard about."

"Stella, have you never had a cold?"

"Not once…. Oh, right…. When I was a child, I was envious of people having an excuse to take a break from school, but this doesn't feel like anything to envy."

Stella declared that and forced herself to laugh. For her, it was the first time her body had experienced such a thing. That was why she couldn't figure out until now the reason her body was in a bad condition. Perhaps, in Japan's hot and humid climate which her body hadn't adapted to yet, her immunity had fallen.

"It's impossible to keep investigating with your condition, I guess. Let's go back right now."

"W-Wait a second…. Since we just found a clue after all that work…."

"Even if you say that, you probably can't move anymore, right?"

"That's not true. Something like this… w-what?"

"Stella!"

Stella tried to separate from the tree she was leaning on, when she trembled unexpectedly and began to fall to the ground.

Ikki moved quickly, and just barely caught her on his chest. And he noticed her temperature; it was so abnormally high that he could feel it through her clothes.

This is worse than I thought….

Stella didn't realize she had a cold, and worsened it by pushing herself to the limit. If they didn't get down from the mountain immediately….

Ikki made that judgment, and picked her body up in his arms.

"Even if you don't like it, I'm going to carry you back like this."

"Ah, uuu…."

Stella made a face like she was a little dissatisfied, but gave up resistance at Ikki's forceful tone. But naturally, Stella's intentions aside, her body already had no energy to spare for resistance. As proof, Stella breathed roughly and entrusted her body to Ikki.

If we don't get out of the mountains and have a doctor examine her….

For Ikki, running down a mountain while carrying a person wasn't difficult. Reaching the bottom of the mountain probably wouldn't take much time. That had to be true. But this was when trouble sprang up.

*drip, drop*

Rain fell onto Ikki's head from the gray sky. And soon after, the rain turned to bucketfuls coming down.

Recently, the subtropical parts of Japan had seen lots of squalls and heavy rains.

"Whoa, with this timing…!"

Ikki aside, right now was a bad time for Stella to get rained on. If her body got cold, her immunity would drop even more. Her body was still strong enough to fight the illness, but if her body got worse here, the illness could even become as bad as pneumonia.

If that happened, it would affect her representative selection battle matches. He had to prevent that at all costs.

―That's right! On the way here, there was a small shack at the river for emergency evacuation!

Recalling that, Ikki changed his plan immediately. He gave up the idea of running down the mountain, and decided to wait out the rain in that shack for now.