15 - Leonardo's Debt
Leonardo told me today's plan while he filled the bath with water.
First, since we might be infected with the disease, we would wash our entire bodies thoroughly. That was step one.
After that, we'd change clothes, and then Aurelia would do a house call examination.
We'd live in the valley for a while, and if no symptoms appeared, we could return to the city.
I went outside right away to gather firewood for the bath, and spotted Aurelia stacking firewood beside the bath furnace.
Our eyes met and she beckoned me over, then directed me to carry firewood from the house she lived in.
...It was gestures, though. But that's probably what she was saying.
Rather than gathering new firewood, she must have meant I should wash my body first.
When I started carrying the firewood as prompted, Aurelia's figure had vanished.
Aurelia returned with a basket tucked under her arm just as the bathtub was full of water and the furnace was being lit.
Inside the basket were clothes with a hemp-like texture, a light brown lump that seemed to be soap, and a towel.
When I showed Leonardo the basket Aurelia had handed me, preparations for the bath were complete.
"...Alright, a full wash. We're scrubbing you from the top of your head to the tips of your toes."
With that, Leonardo's hand reached toward me.
As his hand moved to take off my clothes just like that, I stepped back several paces in surprise, putting distance between us.
"We're going in togewer!?"
I said it in a rush, stumbling over the words, and Leonardo looked puzzled.
"Tina, have you ever taken a bath before?"
"...No, I haven't."
I'd seen Goemon baths on television, but I'd never tried the bathing method of standing on a submerged board.
I understood that you simply stand on the board and get in, but was there some other trick to it?
"Then we've got no choice but to go in together. You don't know how to use the bath, right?"
"Ugh..."
A perfectly sound argument.
It was sound, but even if I'm a little girl right now, I'd like to politely decline getting naked and bathing together with an adult man — and a total stranger, not even family at that.
Or rather, it's out of the question. As a person, and as a girl.
"I, I don't wanna take a bath with a man. It's embarrassing."
I tried presenting what was, from my perspective, an argument consisting solely of sound logic, but Leonardo merely blinked once before laughing uproariously.
"A kid doesn't need to get all embarrassed like a grown-up."
"I'm a girl, you know! I have modesty!"
"Save that kind of modesty for when you grow up and your chest and ass get bigger."
Leonardo declared that since he currently felt nothing, being modest was a waste of effort.
I think someone who feels something toward a little girl is the bigger problem, honestly.
But one thing I can say for certain is —
"I don't wanna!"
I shouted and bit down hard on the pinky finger of Leonardo's outstretched left hand.
"Oww!?"
Leonardo's cheek twitched, but I didn't loosen my bite.
On the contrary, I ground my jaw back and forth, sinking my teeth deeper into his skin.
"Tina, I get it. I get it, so... the hand..."
"Eben if I'm small, a girl is still a girl, so please refrain, mister man."
Since he seemed to have accepted my assertion, at least nominally, I released Leonardo's pinky.
Leonardo, who flipped his freed left hand back and forth checking the bite mark, let slip yet another ill-advised remark.
"A little girl who can't get her tongue around words and keeps biting, but even a young girl is still a woman, they say... Oww!?"
I didn't let him finish and bit his pinky again — the very one I'd just released.
The first time, I'd bitten broadly across the pinky from the side, but this time I targeted only the tip up to the first joint, and I made sure my teeth clicked sharply as I bit down.
"Tiiina!"
He could've just swatted my small child's body away and freed himself instantly, but Leonardo merely trembled, enduring the pain without doing so.
He likely understood that such an act could easily kill an infant like me.
He may be somewhat lacking in delicacy, but he seems to have self-restraint.
"Alright, I was wrong. Tina takes a bath alone. Your baby talk is cute... Oww!?"
No sooner had I released him — thinking "that's enough" — than he made another ill-advised remark, and I bit his pinky again.
There was no end to it, so this time I didn't bite down hard; just one sharp chomp and I let go.
"Tina, violence is not okay. You've got a mouth, so if there's something you want to say, properly..."
"I still can't talk properly, you know that. Mister Leonyaldo laughed. Meanie."
When I glared at him while clicking my teeth, Leonardo finally seemed to recall his own words and actions, and he lowered his head.
"That's true. I was in the wrong on that."
"Mm, as long as you understand."
Having extracted an apology from Leonardo, I was sure of my victory.
I puffed out my chest — no need to cross my arms — when Leonardo's counterattack began.
"An opening!!"
Leonardo grabbed the hem of my dress with a sudden lunge and yanked it upward in one motion.
My arms went up with his — a forced "banzai" — and before I knew it, the dress had slipped clean off from my neck.
In the blink of an eye, I was in my underclothes.
"Eeeeeek! Pervert! Lolicon! Rapist demon!"
I screamed "I'm being assaulted!" at the top of my lungs and tried to flee the bathhouse, but hands were slipped under my arms from behind and I was lifted up.
This left me with no way to escape.
"Where did you even learn a word like 'rapist'? There's no way I'd do something like that to a kid."
So you would to an adult? That kind of thought crossed my mind as I flailed my legs around.
"Come on, get in the bath and behave. Your boobs and butt are both flat as a board, so it's still not embarrassing, not embarrassing."
"Even if my boobs and butt aren't big, embarrassing things are still embarrassing! I'm a girl!! I'm different from a man!"
The moment the heel of my stubbornly thrashing leg connected with Leonardo's vital spot, Aurelia's staff struck Leonardo's head at the same time.
He'd been hit hard in two places at once, but Leonardo crouched down clutching his crotch.
I escaped to the bathhouse wall in that opening, and Aurelia skillfully used her staff to drive Leonardo out of the bathhouse.
When I breathed a sigh of relief, this time Aurelia seized my underclothes with a firm grip.
"I can take them off myself."
I answered that way, a bit calmer now, but it didn't seem to get through to Aurelia, and she stripped off my underclothes just the same.
She was someone I'd met even more recently than Leonardo, but simply because she was the same sex, I didn't feel the strong rejection I'd felt earlier.
I was just a little embarrassed at being treated like an infant, that's all.
We didn't share a language, and I was tired from all the thrashing, so I let myself be taken care of.
Aurelia taught me how to get in the bath and how to use the soap through gestures, then washed my hair and my back — places I couldn't reach myself — and left the bathhouse.
"Aurelia-san... she's a good person."
Left alone in the bathhouse, I relaxed and enjoyed my first bath in this life.
The aim was apparently to wash my body, but since letting the skin soften in hot water makes it easier to remove grime, there was no problem in leisurely soaking in the bath.
When I washed my body after it had softened sufficiently, a terrifying amount of grime came off.
...I thought I'd been cleaning myself fairly frequently and staying pretty clean, but I was absolutely caked in grime, huh. That's a quiet little shock.
I got out of the bath and put my arms through the sleeves of the clothes that had been prepared.
There was no reason clothes for a child who'd suddenly shown up would be in Aurelia's house, and it was a shirt for adults.
It was baggy and loose everywhere, but nothing to be done about that.
The underpants were pumpkin pants, so while they were large, that wasn't much of an issue.
If I hiked them up to my chest and tied them with a cord, I could somehow wear them without the hems dragging.
...Huh? Where are my shoes?
Even Aurelia wouldn't put me in adult shoes, I figured, so I searched for the shoes I'd worn here — but I couldn't find the shoes, or even the clothes I'd worn all the way here.
...Maybe they're getting a full wash just like my body?
I took adult-sized sandals from the basket — probably a substitute for shoes — and tried them on.
The heel area floated a bit loosely, which bothered me, but as long as I didn't run, I probably wouldn't trip.
When I looked for Leonardo, who'd been driven out of the bathhouse, I found him stacking fresh firewood beside the bath furnace.
Today's bath was for disease prevention purposes, so even once it was empty, the next person couldn't simply hop in.
It felt like a waste of firewood and water, but this too was self-defense against illness.
Fresh water was drawn, and I busily fed firewood to heat the bath.
Once I sent Leonardo off to the bathhouse, my revenge time would begin.
...Even if the other party is a little girl, I'll make you understand firsthand that bathing together is embarrassing.
"Mister Leonyaldo, I'll wash your hair."
Without bothering to ask permission to enter, I charged into the bathhouse without room for debate.
Right now I'm an infant, so like an infant, I won't show the consideration an adult naturally would.
If he happened to be in an embarrassing pose doing some secret grooming or the like, that alone would achieve my objective.
Of course, what he'd done to me earlier was an act that couldn't be settled with just biting his finger.
"Then shall I ask Tina to do it?"
I'd planned to ambush him in the bath and make him feel embarrassed, but.
Leonardo, soaking in the tub, accepted this with perfect composure.
...The "bumped into you in the bath ☆ eek, oh no!" thing only happens to girls in manga, I guess.
Having brought it up myself, once Leonardo accepted, I couldn't exactly say, "Actually, I don't want to get close to a naked man after all."
I was a bit unsure where to look, but since I'd said it, I had no choice but to wash Leonardo's hair.
"...Mister Leonyaldo, not getting embarrassed... is weird."
With my cheeks puffed out in a pout, I approached Leonardo, who was soaking in the tub.
Leonardo had turned his back to make it easier to wash his hair, and it seemed he'd realized I'd come for payback for earlier.
He grinned confidently.
"My body doesn't have any spots I'd be embarrassed to have seen."
See for yourself, he said, lifting his upper arm and flexing a bicep.
As you'd expect of a knight, it wasn't just his arms that were trained.
His back and the nape of his neck also bore sturdy muscles.
"...Act embarrassed. A girl is seeing you naked."
"A knight who shrinks up all embarrassed is pretty pathetic, don't you think? And in front of a kid like this, no less."
"Mm, well, that's... true, I guess?"
I imagined Leonardo curling up to hide his crotch in embarrassment, and the image was so utterly ridiculous that I found myself convinced.
With such an impressive physique, it would be pathetic if he didn't carry himself with dignity even when stark naked.
...Though standing there stark naked with arms folded like a temple guardian is also kind of questionable, honestly.
I scooped water from the tub with a bucket and poured it over Leonardo.
Once his hair was sufficiently wet, I washed it with the soap.
In my previous life I'd used shampoo, so washing hair with a bar of soap felt rather novel.
As I carefully washed his scalp with the pads of my fingers, I felt something slightly off at my fingertips.
Near his temples, there were two raised fleshy spots.
"Here, are these scars?"
Curious, I prodded the raised flesh with my finger, and Leonardo's eyes grew just a little distant as he smiled.
"Scars from a long time ago. When I was almost used as wolf bait."
"Huh? Wolves? Bait?"
Should I be surprised that there are wolves, or that they tried to use a human as bait?
As I stood bewildered, Leonardo turned around and stared into my face from the front.
"...I was about the same age as you are now, Tina, I think? I was sold by my parents, nearly made a slave."
I don't know what kind of face I was making at the weight of the story he'd just casually dropped.
But Leonardo's arm reached out as if to comfort me — though perhaps he remembered his own hand was wet, for he didn't stroke my hair as usual, but instead pinched my round cheek.
"The gathered slaves are taken to a market once, but... during the transport, the wagon carrying us was attacked by a pack of wolves. The merchants scattered a few slaves as bait and fled."
"So, are you okay? What about the others?"
Since Leonardo was right in front of me, it was certain he'd come out of it safely, but.
The fact that several people had been left behind meant Leonardo wasn't the only one used as wolf bait.
"Everyone who was nearly used as bait is fine, because Lord Saromon saved them all. All I ended up with were these scars near my temples."
"...Lord Saromon... Father?"
In the village he was called "Saro," but.
Leonardo always called Father "Lord Saromon."
"Lord Saromon happened to be patrolling the area and spotted the slave traders' wagon and followed it. Thanks to that, I'm still alive today."
"Father, why is he Lord Sharomon? My father is Saro."
"Back then, Lord Saromon was a knight."
What — an unexpectedly surprising past of Father's, one I was hearing for the first time.
In the village he'd been a soft touch, used freely by the villagers, but apparently he'd once worked as a knight.
...Alf-san said you basically attach '-sama' to knights, so that's why it's Lord Saromon, huh.
I was somehow satisfied about the honorific attached to Father's name, and there was one more thing that bothered me.
"...Slave traders, knights chase... is it bad? But the village chief sold the Daltowas' child. Mister Leonyaldo came to the village. Came to buy a reincarnated person."
The fact that knights would pursue them suggests that treating people as merchandise is a bad thing.
I could understand that, but the village chief had sold the Daltowa couple's child, and this time too he'd tried to sell me and had summoned knights to the village.
If it's prohibited in the first place, then knights coming to buy people would itself be strange.
"At that time, you could say it was prohibited, or you could say the laws weren't fully established yet... What brought about conditional approval of human trafficking in this country was the incident where a reincarnated person from Meiyu Village was sold to a neighboring country. It came to be permitted under certain conditions — the thinking being, better than being sold abroad, better than being abducted to a neighboring country as a slave."
Honestly, I'm relieved it didn't come to buying a reincarnated person in Meiyu Village, Leonardo murmured with a sigh.
The buying and selling of human beings... it is not a desirable thing, he said.
"...But Mister Leonyaldo came to buy."
"It was said they might be Japanese. My personal preferences don't enter into it. Once I'd received word, I couldn't afford to do nothing."
"Reading Japanese... is it that important?"
"Because there's a possibility that the many lost medicines of Yuta Hiraga might be revived. The recipes for the medicines themselves survive in German, but..."
"German?"
What's that? I just heard about it for the first time ever, I said, tilting my head.
After all this talk about how badly they wanted a Japanese person, why was German suddenly coming up now?
"German is the language of some country in another world. Apparently, Yuta Hiraga had some kind of ingrained compulsion that medical records are written in German script, so the research materials and the compiled prescriptions apparently use different writing systems."
"That's a pain."
Why on earth did he do that? I wondered as I moved my hands, which had stopped.
When I carefully washed his hairline with the pads of my fingers, Leonardo narrowed his eyes blissfully.
...Still, prescriptions written in German, huh.
I had absolutely no confidence I could read such a thing, so it would probably be better to keep the fact that I'm a reincarnated former Japanese person a secret for life.
If it were Japanese, I think I could read everything except old-style characters and exceedingly difficult kanji, but if they told me to read German on top of that, I'd be in trouble.
Somehow in this country, there seems to be this strange legend that nothing is impossible for a Japanese person.
...I'll keep quiet my whole life.
I feel bad for the people seeking a Japanese person, but.
I'd rather the matters of this country were handled by the people born in this country among themselves.
...Though, putting it that way, in this life I'd also be "a person born in this country," I guess.
Foreign athletes apparently shave their pubic hair for hygiene reasons (or so I heard on TV). The Middle Ages, which form the basis for the medieval fantasy image, basically had no baths (a prejudice). Medieval fantasy often has no baths (supposedly).
Based on the above, I seriously pondered for about thirty minutes whether Leonardo's pubic hair is shaved (for hygiene) or left natural (on the premise that the setting includes a bathing culture) —————— but in the end, the topic never came up.
Honestly, I had a scene planned afterward where Leonardo stands up to have his back washed, Tina is startled by the thing dangling in front of her face and instinctively grabs it with all her might — that kind of gag, you know? In fact, the whole reason I threw in the bath scene was because I wanted to do that. But that was just too much of a dirty joke, so I held back.