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Chapter 17: Do You Like Beautiful Wolves?
“…the die is just a regular one. There’s no magic, right?”
Let’s go again! Shun pulled on Gin’s sleeve and whispered in his ear. For some reason, he was kept at a distance.
“My salary might decrease, so please, don’t get so close to me… dice?”
Shun didn’t know how that would effect his pay but nodded at his suggestion. Gin hid it with his body, so that it wouldn’t be seen by the other person and pointed his thumb at the full table where Dougray was seated.
“It’s not only the dice, but it shouldn’t be possible to cast any magic in casinos. If cheating goes unchecked, they’ll go under immediately. This casino also employs a few skilled magicians to prevent anyone from casting spells. And there it is.”
Gin, who sat back in the chair, pointed to the corner of the table. Clear stones were fitted into the four corners of a beautifully polished wooden structure.
“It’s a magic sealing stone. In contrast to the magic stones that work as a catalyst or a substitute, it weakens or invalidates magical power. The stone is embedded into tables and at key points in the casino. It costs a lot of money, but it’s riskier to not have it.”
Shun was able to find the stones in all four corners of the table. Now that he was looking, he noticed that all the dealers wore transparent brooches on their chests. Was it to protect them from anyone who might try to attack them with magic?
They were broken when the magic was used went beyond its limit, but at that point, the use of it was exposed, so defensive measures could be taken. Although Shun understood it, he couldn’t explain the discomfort he felt. Shun turned his gaze back to the table a few meters away.
“It’s a simple game where you roll a six-sided die and guess the sum, right? It looks like they’re rolling three dice right now, but I think the odds are a bit strange.”
“The odds?”
“The chance of getting eight is seven out of seventy-two rolls, but you’ve rolled it eighteen times, and hit eight three times. The chance of hitting sixteen is four out of thirty-six rolls, and you’ve hit it four times.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Shun continued to stare at the table without noticing Gin, who was keeping his distance from him again, further deepening his suspicions. This time the roll was one, one and one, equaling three. This was the second time this had been rolled even thought the chance of it happening was only one out of twenty-six rolls.
“With three six-sided dice, the common denominator is 216, or six to the third power.”
“Is that a long story?”
“And when the figures are suspicious, Dougray is betting a lot of money on them.”
“…really?”
Soon after Shun pointed this out, a large number of chips were drawn to Dougray.
“If we can figure out the trick, we might be able to get them to back off of Carolina.”
Gin was stunned for a few seconds by Shun, who laughed at him, and he made a slight face and said, “You’re surprisingly brave, aren’t you?”
For the time being, it was getting too late into the night, and Shun was about to leave when he stood up and bumped into someone. In front of him was a brown-skinned man with long, dark brown eyes and visible scars on his forehead.
His glossy, black hair was tied up behind him that seemed about the same color as Shun’s, and he cut a very handsome, Latin figure.
No matter how it looked, the man, who was obviously from a noble background, did not react at all to Shun’s apology but also did not ignore him, simply looking him up and down from twenty centimeters above Shun.
“Uh, do you need something…?”
Shun takes half a step back, wondering if he would be asked for compensation or something. From next to him, Gin quietly put his hand on Shun’s waist.
The man’s gaze ran over Shun from head to toe as if he was licking him. It was as if he was being evaluated, and he was horrified.
“…no, you just looked similar to an acquaintance of mine. Excuse me.”
The man left with a frighteningly gentle smile. His back disappeared into the crowd, and Shun breathed out. He had apparently been quite nervous.
“I thought the curse had been invoked.”
Next to him, Gin let go of his waist. His tone was light, but his eyebrows were creased. Perhaps because he was being careful.
“I don’t know how to describe that feeling, but I’m not a free spirit. Don’t get too close to anyone that you don’t know.”
Shun quietly nodded in response to Gin’s unusually serious advice.
＊＊＊
Shun stood like an idiot in his usual workplace, in the living room of the Dawn Fog’s hideout.
I’ll give you special permission to use my bed! Gin had left him with a smile so refreshing that he wanted to hit him, and it had only been three minutes since Gin had left. When Shun had asked him what happened to his promise to take Shun to a safe place, he had replied that the hideout was protected by Craig’s even more tight protection spell after the attack and so had fulfilled his promise. That was not what Shun thought.
…but, oh well. After many twists and turns, Gin had managed to win the right to have a drink with the casino sister that night. Shun could understand why he couldn’t be bothered with him.
Naturally, there was no one in the living room. When he looked over at his desk, feeling a bit nervous about the unusual atmosphere, he saw a few cinnamon candies next to his abacus. They always appeared on his desk every three days, and it made Shun smile. He went back toward the nap room with renewed determination to do his best to help Evan.
Although he said it was Gin’s bed, it wasn’t really his property, but Shun knew which one to use amongst all the beds. Shun didn’t want to sleep in clothes that weren’t clean and smelt like cigarettes, but he didn’t have a change of clothes either, so he had no choice but to wear his prince clothing after taking a shower. As long as Shun didn’t see anyone, there wouldn’t be any problems. Plus, he had to go back to the castle in the morning.
Shun felt a little heavy when he remembered the events from the morning. An energetic elderly person would get up early in the morning. In Japan, he felt like his governor was an active old man, who would be rubbing dry cloth since around four o’clock.
As expected, it was cold when he got out of the shower. He took a blanket from the nap room and wrapped it around himself and went to make a warm, herbal tea.
“Right, what did that mean?”
Shun remembered something from an adage that someone had told him about that while he was reading out of boredom. “Li” must have been a peach tree. A Korean language teacher and a Chinese literature enthusiast that had sat next to him once had taught him. In other words, his words were probably derived from Chinese historical events. There was also a far East country similar to China mentioned in the game, and it may have been translated into words Shun could understand.
In summary, Don’t do anything suspicious. The old man’s first punch was a direct hit.
Feeling dizzy, Shun found himself heading toward the kitchen to leave his cup. There was light leaking from Craig’s study. Did he come back while Shun was in the shower?
“Craig? Are you there?”
He stretched back and knocked on the door three times. There was no response, and the result was the same when he called out. When he was about to leave, he heard a small noise from inside.
“Craig?”
Shun opened the door nervously. There was only one, milky white indirect light attached to a section of the wall. He looked around the dim room, but there was no one inside. Craig was supposed to be out of town, so the noise had to be his imagination. As he concluded this, he turned his back toward the light. The shadow of it was reflected back on the door. The only shadow in it belonged to Shun.
“… eh?”
Shun could see two horns on a large, round head.
What’s this?
There was no one in front of the light earlier. No, he couldn’t have just seen it. He suddenly remembered the cover of a book that had been forced on him by his former governor. It disappeared and attacked people from behind.
As if roots had grown from Shun’s feet, he stood still as the shadow grew bigger and bigger in his field of vision.
“Eek!”
Suddenly Shun felt a weight on his shoulders and with a pathetic cry, he fell backwards. He closed his eyes in shock. Something jumped on his chest while he was lying there on his back.
There was a cold and wet feeling on his nose. Something similar to hair tickled his cheek. It was very small… and light.
“Meow.”
When Shun opened his eyes, Sui looked down at him mysteriously from his chest. She looked calm as if she was asking what he was doing.
“Oh, it’s you!”
Was he feeling relieved, frustrated, or ashamed of himself for being frightened? Shun placed his hand on Sui’s side and pressed his head against her fluffy belly. Oh, it’s fluffy and comfortable. However, Sui stuck her front foot out against Shun’s cheek and stopped him.
“Well, good night.”
Shun put her down on the floor and pat her head. Whether she was listening or not, Sui began to clean up her disheveled belly that had been caused by Shun.
“Oh no.”
The knot on the bracelet that Craig had given him was coming loose. Maybe he should retie it.
“Hey, come on!”
Sui, who jumped at Shun, now held it in her mouth and rushed into the study. She dodged Shun’s hand, pushing with her forefoot and disappeared into the small gap between the illumination stone and the wall.
Something moved under the rug with a low rumble. Sui jumped under the rug and the shape of her body disappeared at a certain point.
Shun hastily pulled up the rug and found a square whole through which a large man could pass through if he pushed himself. There were stairs leading down the dimly lit hole, and in the distance, Sui’s tail was waving.
“There was a secret passage here…”
Shun thought it might be the passage to the door where the safe was where he had been led while blindfolded, but during the recent attack, the ruffians had not entered this room.
If so, then what was ahead?
He would be lying if he said he wasn’t scared, but he couldn’t lose the bracelet Craig had given him. He also didn’t think Sui would go into a dangerous place. Shun thought so and hurried down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs was a simple, paved road. It was wide, and the ceiling was high. There were iron tracks for moving a cart. Was this previously a mine or something? Although it didn’t look like it had been used recently, the orange magic stones that hung from the ceiling managed to keep some visibility.
Sui’s tail was no longer visible. However, since it was a one-way path, it didn’t matter. He needed to hurry up and call for her loudly. It couldn’t be helped that he was scared.
When Shun felt like he had walked more than enough, he found the tiger-striped tail he had been looking for. Sui was looking at him with her front legs aligned in front of her as if she had been waiting for him. Shun saw the bracelet at her feet.
When he hurried over to pick it up, Shun thought she would play with it, and then the cream colored paw rolled it away.
“Ah, you’re a little prankster.”
After several more attempts, the bracelet is finally back in his possession. Sui yawned, unbothered by Shun’s words. Apart from when she was asking for food, Sui usually didn’t do much to annoy anyone. So this was unlike her, but she was an unrestrained cat, to which Shun could only laugh wryly.
Fortunately, there was not a single scratch on the golden stone. Shun decided he would put it back on after he returned to the living room with a sigh of relief and ended up placing it in his chest pocket. When he looked back to pick Sui up to go back, she was no where to be seen.
“…wait, which way did I come from…?”
When Shun confirmed his surroundings, he realized that he had come to a three-way path, with one path to the right and two to the left.
“Idiot…!”
Shun held his hands up in anguish. As he tried to remember the characteristics of the road that he had come from, they all seemed to be the same to his drunken mind thanks to how uniformly dark with the width and appearance so thoroughly uniform. To make matters worse, the cold underground air was unbearable to his body after his bath.
For now, Shun had no choice but to move forward. He marked his current location with a rock and decided to go down a path after marking an arrow toward it.
He walked for five or six minutes, but he became increasingly uneasy as the same scenery continued to repeat. Just as Shun was about to turn back, he heard something along the way. His footsteps quickened as he wondered if it was Sui. However, she was gone, and the road ended in a dead end.
Well, not exactly. The road continued on, but a number of metal bars from the ceiling to the ground blocked the way.
A dungeon. The word quickly sprung to mind.
The gaps between the bars were as wide as Sui. In other words, it was used to lock up something bigger than a human being.
Shun’s heart started beating faster, but nothing happened. He also couldn’t hear anything.
When I approached the dark gate, there was nothing inside but a cool darkness.
There was a very large lock around Shun’s waist. He had never seen such a large padlock.
Shun thought it would be heavy and lifted it out of curiosity. He felt something like static electricity in his palm.
Then something unbelievable happened. In his hands, the lock came off with a dull sound.
“…huh?”
The rusty door opened forwards. As Shun stepped back instinctively, he heard the sound of the hard soles of his boots stepping on pebbles. The lock was kept with magic, and Shun had unlocked it, though he wasn’t sure how.
He could hear something breathing. Two glowing eyes floated in the darkness.
Shun stood there.
He could barely tell that it was on four legs. From what he could see, it also seemed to be three times the size of a large dog from Shun’s world. It slowly emerged from the darkness.
A big dog with hair that seemed to be a blend between silver and gold… no, it was a wolf.
“Hee.”
Shun, who had been paralyzed by surprise, rallied his whole body, turned heel, and ran away as fast as he could.
However his feet were tangled with fear, and he almost tripped over them again and again, and he was slow. The prison door banged open behind him. Shun turned around to look without thinking. The giant wolf, now completely released from its cage, bent itself and in the next moment, flew towards me.
“You’re chasing me?? Why?!”
He turned forward again and ran with all his might. However, no matter how hard he ran, the animal’s presence did not fade away at all. On the contrary, every moment, it became more and more imminent. In the first place, no human being could outrun a quadruped beast in a sprint. Moreover, it would’ve been better if he had some muscular strength.
“Whoa!”
Shun’s foot was caught in a cart recess, and he fell over. He stretched his arms out in a hurry to quickly get up, but when he raised his head, all his blood drained away.
The wolf was right in front of him.
Before Shun knew it, the beast, who had overtaken him, stepped forward without a sound and approached Shun with its nose.
Ha… ha… Shun was out of breath, and his throat tasted like blood. The wolf’s eyes were so golden they seemed like they could see through anything, and his sharp, carnivorous teeth were fast approaching.
Maybe he was sniffing him to check if he was delicious. Shun’s brain, in an extreme condition, judged this to be the case.
“I don’t taste good! I really don’t! Ever since I came to this world, I’ve being only meat and dairy products, not a good combination! Ok, I’ve been eating vegetables too, but I’ve also had mayonnaise and ponzu and aojiso1 dressing!”
1. Ponzu is a citrus-based sauce commonly used in Japanese cuisine. It is tart, with a thin, watery consistency and a dark brown color. Aojiso dressing is a refreshing Japanese-style dressing with a moderate acidity, made with “Aojiso” exquisitely and seasoned with brewed vinegar and soy sauce as a base with plum meat, lemon juice, and extracts.
In the middle of Shun’s declaration, the wolf lifted Shun up by the back collar of his clothes. Bushy hair and warm breath grazed his nape. He got goosebumps down his spine.
Shun was lifted up like a kitten, and the wolf started walking.
He had thought his throat was going to be bitten. However there wasn’t a single abnormality except for the pain in his neck. Shun was a bit relieved at first, but now that he was thinking about it more carefully he was less grateful.
He was getting taken back to be eaten slowly…!
Shun was in despair. It was many times better for him to be offed without a single thought here.
Shun might have, under normal circumstances, thrown off his clothes, and noticed that the direction that the wolf was carrying him in was in a different direction from his “burrow”, that is, the dungeon. But all Shun was able to do was express his regret over the memories that flowed through him like a light.
He wanted to thank Craig properly and apologize. He also wanted to get along with him better, even without the heroine. He wanted to say goodbye to Gin, Evan, and everyone else who helped him. And…
“I want to eat aojiso dressing… or rather, white rice. I want to eat some salted rice balls.”
Shun felt a huff of breath against the nape of his neck. It was like the wolf was laughing at him.
About five minutes passed, and he was still alive and wondering when he was going to be put on the dinner table. An empty road opened up and a familiar staircase appeared. The wolf went up the stairs with Shun in his mouth.
Shun didn’t notice when he ran down after Sui, but the stairs were forked in the middle. The wolf went up the second set of stairs that led somewhere other than Craig’s study.
It was a calm gait. Shun hoped the wolf doesn’t feel the desire to return to its den as soon as possible to eat to Shun. He hoped it didn’t feel it. He had been in such a cold prison with no food or water, so it should make more sense for it to be excited about its first meal in a while.
It was so frightening that on the contrary, his mind was becoming more and more clear. Was the beast that was holding Shun the demon wolf from the tales of the Butterfly Country, the sacred wolf from the Wolf Country, or the werewolf that should have been killed?
The wolf stopped walking. The ceiling appeared as it came to a dead end. The wolf shook its head and gave a howl.
Then, a large door opened with a creaking sound appeared and slowly opened. Once again, Shun was lifted by the wolf’s mouth, and they entered a room filled with soft light.
Shun was lowered down onto the plush carpet, and the first thing he saw was a large, tidy bookshelf and a large, wooden, queen-sized bed. The style of the carpet and furnishings were similar to what was in Craig’s study. It smelled good and calming.
The wolf approached the fireplace and let out a long huff. Then an orange fire appeared in the piled firewood and began to burn slowly. It was a familiar movement that made it seem as if it had always done this.
“…is this your den?”
Did the wolves in this world sleep in beds? Shun looked around the room that was warming up and asked the wolf without thinking.
The wolf’s amber eyes slowly turned to Shun. He suddenly remembered the situation he was in, where he couldn’t read its emotions.
“Ah, um, it’s not good! I haven’t eaten onions lately, so my blood is muddy!?”
When he backed away with a line that was probably meaningless, he got caught on the edge of the bed and fell onto his back. When he hurriedly looked up, he saw a wolf’s nose in front of him.
In its mouth was the bracelet he received from Craig.
Shun immediately put his hand inside his breast pocket, but it was empty. He must have dropped it when he fell a little while ago.
“Did… you pick it up by any chance?”
After sitting on the bed for a long time, Shun finally managed to ask the question. It was the only answer he could think of, but was there really such a kind wolf?
The wolf did not answer, but it looked at Shun’s hand that was still inside his breast pocket. He reflexively held his hand out before him, feeling like he had been told to do so. He seemed to have been right and the wolf pressed the bracelet against Shun’s hand with its nose.
“Thank you…”
The wolf still said nothing and stared at Shun. Shun was holding onto what had just been returned to him. The room was warm, and his palm was so hot that it was almost burnt. The wolf’s golden eyes were shining in the soft light and swaying like the fire in the fireplace. The eyes were the same color as the magic stone in his hand.
“Cr… Craig…?”
The golden eyes widened. Shun had thought the wind had blown, but he was wrong. The glossy hair in front of him was rippling.
The waves grew larger and larger. Shun was unable to move, merely witnessing the phenomenon occurring in front of him.
The silvery gold fur swayed and changed shape into clothes. The frightening fangs disappeared, and the wolf became a human just like Shun. Craig stood where the beautiful wolf had been.
Shun blinked his eyes. However, no matter how many times he blinked, it was still Craig standing there. Craig grabbed his wrist before he could say anything, and his vision turned upside down.
“…you idiot, you’re… so…”
Directly above him, Shun could see the ceiling and Craig’s face. The voice was familiar to his ears. But his usual confidence had faded away, and he sounded urgent.
Shun gasped as the tips of their noses seemed to touch. Craig’s beautiful eyebrows were drawn together as if he was enduring something painful, and his lips were open as he breathed heavily. His amber amber eyes were wet and full of lust. Both of his wrists hurt as they were pressed against the sheets.
The color of reason remained faintly in his eyes that reflected Shun, but it was only a matter of time. A chill crawled up Shun’s spine.
“… Shun.”
His name was called out with a heavy breath. He couldn’t answer. Craig’s frighteningly neat face came closer to him, and he eventually lost focus.
************************
TL Note: Part one is complete! Hooray! In other news, Shun would not survive a horror movie. The facts are in. I honestly kept forgetting Shun was drunk when I was TL’ing this. I shall forgive his foolish drunken antics. x’D (without them where would the smut be?)
Never again will I translate four chapters in one day again. This, this is it. This is all I did for like 12 hours. I- I have no words! I was just!! So excited!! For chapter 18!! Which, I need to remind you all, is a NSFW/R18 chapter that is just… 100% smut. And also! Already out. Click the “Next Chapter >>>” button if that’s the content you need in your life. If not, wait until the next chapter comes out (Monday). Love ya’ll. Bye!
Word Count: 4,076
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