The Banished Black Swordsman Wants a Peaceful Life with the White Saint in the Frontier ~Huh? You Want Him to Come Back with the Saint? It’s Already Too Late~ - 74

Chapter 74: A Noisy Night

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Now that they had settled on a candidate house, it was time for a final inspection.

Lloyd and the others returned home for the moment and asked Lusha, who had been tidying up the kitchen, to come take a look at the condition of the house. The Repair Magic <Repair> was not an all-purpose solution. How much could be handled by magic alone, and from what point onward manual labor and materials would be required… Those judgments had to be made by Lusha herself.

With Lusha in tow, the four of them returned to the abandoned house that was under consideration. The wind already carried the scent of evening, and the shadows of the trees had grown a little longer.

“This is the house you chose, huh?”

When Lloyd peered inside through the opening where the door was missing, Lusha leaned forward lightly and surveyed the joints between the beams and walls, as well as the seams between the floorboards. Her gestures were cute, but her gaze was deadly serious. She was dependable in moments like this—just as much as, if not more than, when she was in the kitchen.

“If I remember correctly, we had also listed this one as a candidate, didn’t we?”

“Ah—yeah, now that you mention it…”

This was a house they had marked as a possible option on the first day they toured the abandoned village together. The only reason they ultimately chose the current house was that it was larger and needed fewer repairs. At that point, Lusha looked outside and tilted her head in confusion.

“Huh? But there’s another house in between, isn’t there? I thought that one wasn’t bad either—”

“A-ah, that one! There were… Various reasons, and we both said this one was better. Right?”

Lloyd hurriedly cut her off. If the topic of the nighttime noises came up again, that would be unbearable. If it got brought up here, he could clearly picture Lusha turning red all the way to her ears and freezing up. No. There was more than that. If Elena and Fran moved in, there was even a chance that those kinds of things would stop happening altogether. When Lloyd shot a sharp look at Elena and Fran, the two of them gave him knowing, meaningful smiles, as if to say, “We get it.” Of course, the tip of their teasing arrows was still firmly pointed at him.

“Hm…? Is that so? That one would’ve been closer to the neighbors, though.”

Pure and innocent Lusha tilted her head slightly, her eyebrows drawn together. Lloyd clasped his hands together in his heart toward her. At the moment, only her innocence was on his side.

“Anyway, could you take a look at the condition? We’ll reinforce whatever magic can’t fix with other methods.”

Pulling himself together, Lloyd pointed out the places where floorboards were missing and where the walls were cracked. Lusha nodded as she knelt down. She ran the pads of her fingers over the grain of the wood and inhaled gently, as if checking the moisture with her nose.

“Let’s see… this spot, and this hole here. And there are probably several holes in the floor that can’t be fixed either, so those will need reinforcement as well.”

As she spoke, she picked up a fragment that had fallen from a beam and showed them the fractured surface. The fibers were so dead they had turned powdery. Once it reached that state, the fibers could no longer bind together.

“Eh, wait a second. So you’re saying this wall over here can be fixed?”

Elena pointed her staff at a wall where cracks spread like a spiderweb. It looked so dilapidated that it seemed like it might crumble if touched.

“Yes. If it’s only to this extent, it’ll be fine.”

Lusha stood up and held out her hand.

“O Mother who governs the earth… Mend the torn bonds, reconnect the severed paths, and return them to their original form.”

At that moment, a faint light flickered to life in her palm. The light left her hand and slipped silently into the cracks in the wall. Like a living thing, it traced each fracture, found the loosened fibers, gently wrapped them, and stitched them back together. The wall surface, which had been as brittle as sand just moments ago, visibly tightened.

“So this is the rumored <Repair>… Amazing. I’ve never seen magic like this before.”

“That’s incredible! There’s no way I could ever copy something like that.”

The two of them spoke with unrestrained excitement. Lloyd remembered making the exact same face the first time he saw it. No matter how many times he watched it, it was a mysterious magic. Broken things were restored as if they remembered their original shape.

“With this, it really looks like we can restore the house just by buying a few materials.”

At Elena’s words, Lloyd nodded once.

“Yeah. That other house turned out the same way. I’m planning to head to town tomorrow anyway, so I can pick up whatever we need while I’m there.”

“Yeah, please do!”

Fran answered immediately. Her energy and straightforwardness were her strong points. She relied on others when she needed to. From Lloyd’s perspective—someone who tended to do everything himself—it was a little enviable.

“Ah, but… if we’re going back to town, we should probably head back soon. Once it gets dark, it’ll be dangerous with just us.”

Elena murmured that and looked up at the western sky with concern. The shadows had grown long, and the edges of the forest were already beginning to bleed into the color of night. Even on the main road, monsters increased at night. With only the two rear guards, it would understandably feel unreliable. Seeing her like that, Lusha hesitantly made a suggestion.

“About that… how about everyone stays over at our place tonight? If you do, we can head to town together tomorrow.”

“Eh, really!?”

“That would help a lot, but… Wouldn’t we be a bother?”

Fran’s face lit up at the suggestion, but Elena looked at them with concern. Lloyd shrugged, then nodded.

“Well, I was planning on that from the start, actually. I want you to try using the shared bath at least once. And after that, you can decide whether you want to live here or not. There’s no need to rush.”

At the word bath, Fran’s and Elena’s eyes sparkled even brighter.

“The rumored bath you can use every day!”

“That alone already sounds like happiness! Can’t we just decide now!?”

“W-well, just try it first before deciding.”

Lloyd exchanged a wry smile with Lusha. Why was it that the word bath boosted girls’ morale so much? Lusha also seemed to look forward to it every day, so it must be something special. Besides, it was nice for the men too when girls smelled good, so it wasn’t exactly a problem.

That said, there was still one issue left: sleeping arrangements. At the moment, the only bed in the village suitable for sleeping was the one in their bedroom. It was large enough for three women, but there was no way Lloyd could sleep there with them.

Well, I guess I’ll sleep in the living room.

They had blankets, and he was the type who could nap anywhere. Sleeping alone was a little lonely, but it couldn’t be helped just for tonight. Just as he reached that conclusion, Lusha gently tugged on his sleeve and spoke in a quiet voice.

“Um, Lloyd… About the sleeping arrangements…”

“I’ll sleep in the living room, so don’t worry about it.”

“…I’m sorry. Thank you very much.”

She smiled awkwardly, her eyebrows drawn together. Her consideration made her look just a little apologetic.

“It’s fine. You wanted to have a sleepover with your friends, right?”

When he brushed it off lightly, Lusha suddenly looked away, her cheeks faintly tinted pink.

“…Lloyd, you’re being a little mean today.”

She said that while shooting him a sideways glare. The way she pouted was adorable. Lloyd suppressed the urge to grin with a small cough in the back of his throat.

After that, they finished the minimum necessary checks. The holes that couldn’t be repaired would be sealed from behind with logs and boards, then bound over with <Repair>. For the collapsed sections of the floor, running beams to create supports seemed best. The roof still had intact sheathing boards, so if they bought nails and waterproof oil tomorrow, it would hold off the rain for the time being. The water source could be drawn from the nearby stream with a hand pump, and airflow wasn’t bad. Since the door would need to be made from scratch, it would be best to measure its length as well.

This distance might actually be just right.

He glanced toward the direction of his own house and thought that. With this much distance, neither light nor voices would reach each other, and they could continue living as they had before… It wasn’t just a rebuttal to the earlier teasing. It actually made sense logically.

By the time they returned home, the upper half of the forest had begun to sink into indigo. When they opened the doorway, the faint warmth left over from the daytime mingled with the light scent of dinner inside. Lusha immediately headed to the kitchen, checked the heat on the pot, took preserved food out of jars, and selected several dishes for tomorrow morning.

Fran and Elena offered to help minimally, but Lusha insisted, saying, “You’re guests,” and in the end, they were only asked to remember where the hand towels and bedding were stored on the hallway shelves. Lloyd took charge of preparing the bath. He opened the window of the bathhouse, generated water using the Element Gem, then submerged the gem in the water to heat it. By the time steam began to rise, the last light of the evening sky tore away like thin paper at the edge of the forest.

After checking the water temperature, Lloyd removed the Element Gem from the tub. He also added fragrant herbs. These, too, were things Lusha had gathered in the forest. Just soaking them in the bath made it smell wonderful and calmed the mind.

“The bath’s ready, so go ahead and use it first.”

When he called out after returning inside, the first to react was Fran.

“Then let’s all go in together, Lusha! The three of us! Doesn’t that totally feel like a sleepover!?”

She cheerfully suggested it to Elena and Lusha. Lloyd accidentally imagined the scene and felt his heart skip, but he averted his gaze before anyone noticed. Lusha blinked once and thought for a moment.

“Space-wise… three people might be a bit tight. Two people could fit, though…”

At that casual remark from the “White Saint,” time froze. Fran’s and Elena’s expressions stiffened simultaneously, and a chill ran down Lloyd’s spine.

No—wait, Lusha. That’s bad. That comment is bad—

He thought that, but there was no way he could come up with a good excuse on the spot.

“Eh?”

“…Could fit?”

Slowly, the two of them turned their cold gazes toward Lloyd. The air grew frigid. Why was that? For some reason, it felt like the room temperature had dropped to that of a snow country.

“Ah… um…”

It seemed Lusha had realized her slip of the tongue. Her cheeks flushed red as she looked down and drew her shoulders in. That reaction only poured oil on the fire.

“Llooooyd~?”

“You absolute—!”

“N-no, wait! There’s a bit of a complicated reason for that—!”

Lloyd desperately tried to explain. It was true that they had “gone in together,” but there was nothing indecent about it. Neither of them could back out, and they had only entered together to gloss over the awkwardness. In fact, at the time, they weren’t even in that kind of relationship. But the atmosphere clearly wasn’t one where explanations would be believed. If he said they had bathed together before even dating, who knew what would be said.

Elena and Fran, still glaring at him like ice, spoke in unison.

“…Pervert.”

“Creep.”

The same words as before pierced him again. Lusha hung her head, red to the tips of her ears, while Lloyd pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a deep sigh.

Why does this always happen!?

Lloyd’s scream from the depths of his heart reached no one at all.

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