CIATB Chapter 164: SS-Rank Thighs
Chapter 164: SS-Rank Thighs
Rosemarie finished her soup with a loud slurp straight from the bowl. She let out a satisfied sigh and looked at the waiter attending other customers. She was about to raise her hand to call him over, but the waiter noticed her first and quickly approached before this girl could shout again.
"The bill, please. I’ll pay for everything," she said without hesitation.
"It’s fine, I can pay for my own food," Mitsuki interrupted.
She shook her head.
"I invited you out. I’m paying. You don’t have to worry about anything."
"Oh... Well..."
Mitsuki couldn’t understand the way this girl thought, but he accepted pretty quickly because free food was free food. It wasn’t every day that a cute girl invited you to spend the afternoon together while also paying for the meal and things like that.
Even if she acted strangely, Rosemarie gave off a surprisingly calm feeling.
Yeah, she was a responsible girl.
After paying with a few bronze coins, Rosemarie stood up, dusted off her skirt with a few light pats, and looked at Mitsuki.
"Do you want to keep exploring the city?"
"Well, there are still some places I haven’t seen yet, so we should."
She nodded and walked ahead of him.
Mitsuki stayed silent as he watched her for a moment. Suddenly, he felt someone’s gaze burning against the back of his neck, so he turned around, only to find nobody there.
All he could see were several people calmly walking between the nighttime stalls and a few adventurers returning to the guild.
He figured it was just his imagination, so he calmly followed this Little Red Riding Hood girl.
’Rosemarie Velvet... She’s strange, to say the least, but she’s very kind and overly polite. Besides, from what she told me earlier, she’s an orphan. I know firsthand what it feels like to lose family, so it’s hard for me to believe she could say she can endure something like that.’
The people of this world and the people from his world were completely different in some ways, yet still oddly similar in their strange mentality.
Maybe that was what allowed Mitsuki to understand them better than he expected.
They continued walking through the city.
Business was thriving. Some shops were still selling magical accessories, while others offered street food whose aroma filled the air.
At one point, Rosemarie came across a fluffy little dog, so she stopped to pet it. Mitsuki could only watch her in silence.
The small animal wagged its tail so hard it almost lost balance while Rosemarie stroked its head with a calm expression.
As they walked, some people greeted this girl, but many others moved away from her, perhaps out of fear, just like they usually did with Ellegaard and Jeanne. Mitsuki couldn’t understand that.
Some mothers even subtly pulled their children away when Rosemarie passed nearby.
Rosemarie was a very pleasant girl, at least in his opinion, so he couldn’t understand why other people feared her. Though, the same thing had happened with the princess and the elf.
"There’s a lot of people out at this hour," she said. "Normally, at times like this, I like climbing the tallest tower to eat bread and ham. Do you want to do that?"
That caught Mitsuki off guard.
"But didn’t we just eat?"
"It’s fine if you don’t want to eat more. I like eating. It helps me think better."
"Then if you’re okay with it," Mitsuki said.
She nodded and, without warning, grabbed Mitsuki’s hand. He was startled, but it was too late to react because Rosemarie made a powerful leap high into the air that launched them above the city so absurdly fast that many people below could only stare in shock.
The ground disappeared beneath them in an instant.
As for the Ashen Boy, he didn’t overreact. In fact, he looked quite relaxed.
’I figured she could do something like this already, but I didn’t sense any magic being used in her movements. Was that just pure brute strength pushing her forward?’
Now he was interested in finding out, but for the moment, they were falling.
They descended toward the ground at the same speed they had launched upward, but Rosemarie jumped again in midair, propelling herself off a small wind barrier.
The burst of air beneath her feet produced a sharp sound.
Their capes danced to the symphony of the wind.
Mitsuki could feel the pressure of the air pushing against his body as they cut through the night.
Rosemarie kept jumping through the air. Just as quickly as their journey had started, it ended atop a brick watchtower on the eastern side of the city. From there, the view near the walls was magnificent.
He couldn’t see the entire city, but he could see most of it.
The stone rooftops, the streets full of people, and the distant commotion made it seem as though the world felt no fear toward the Herald of the Unnameable presence.
Before landing, a strong gust of wind softened their descent.
Their feet touched the rooftop gently, and Rosemarie sat down immediately after releasing Mitsuki’s hand.
She looked at him as if expecting him to do the same, so Mitsuki had no choice but to sit beside that girl.
From there, they could faintly hear people’s voices mixed with the distant rumbling of carriages.
’How many times would I have gotten nervous if I still had my emotions? Maybe I’ll only be able to do things like this until I recover them.’
Hopefully, some of this coldness would remain ingrained in his personality when that moment came.
While he was thinking, Rosemarie had already pulled out a slice of bread and a piece of ham from beneath her red cape. She was using a knife to cut the bread.
Mitsuki didn’t even know when she had stored all that food.
’She... isn’t she eating too much? Where does all the fat she consumes even go?’
As if nature itself answered him, a few bread crumbs fell onto Rosemarie’s lap. Mitsuki looked down there; the thighs of an SS-rank adventurer.
Her black skirt barely covered that area.
’Oh...’
SS-rank thighs...
Mitsuki slowly averted his gaze toward the horizon with complete naturalness.
After that, she chewed the bread and ate calmly.
She didn’t speak because her mouth was full, but she did the same thing Mitsuki was doing: staring at the vast stretch of the city beyond the horizon.
"I wanted to ask you something," Mitsuki said.