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Three days passed after the incident with Plum. The sky was covered in dense clouds, which let out a soft rain from time to time. Ruri had just finished her daily chores when she looked at the sky and noticed something there.

“Oh, could that be-”

Thinking of something, she quickly ran to her room to grab her beloved dagger, as well as a bamboo frame with a piece of cloth pulled taut over it, similar to a kite.

“One…two..!”

Using her swift rabbit half-beast legs, she dragged the kite behind her, which quickly gained lift and flew high above the Academy building. If Ruri’s hunch was correct, that thing should be there considering the time of the year and weather.

I clench my fist, open my hand, clench it again, and open it again.

“Heheh, so what do you think? I’m quite proud of it, if I say so myself.”
“It feels really good, I’m sure I’ll be able to work properly with it.”

The arm Annabelle made for me feels strangely numb, but there’s nothing stopping it from moving properly.

“Thank you very much, this is a big help.”
“That’s enough flattery. Do come back if you need anything again though, mheheh.”

I thank Annabelle and leave her laboratory. That’s all I had to do there, so I head back to the dorm. I’m still walking through the corridors when it appears.

Splat!

“Hyahh! The window! It’s on the window!”

Something like a bag with many legs makes a wet sound as it sticks onto the window. At first I step back while squealing loudly, but it’s not really scary, it just took me by surprise.

Soon after, that octopus thing vanishes, pulled down from the window.

I look outside and see a string tied to the octopus, and Ruri on the other side pulling on it. Our eyes meet randomly, and she just holds her thumb up victoriously.

“What are you doing?”
“Fishing octopus.”

I go down outside and ask her, and she replies like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. I know angling for octopus is one of the ways to catch it, but Ingralowe is a landlocked country. The sea is really far away, and there’s no lakes or ponds in the Academy’s premises, so just where did that come from?

“This is a monster called Octo-Spider. Usually they live inside clouds, but when the weather gets like today, they can descend quite close to the surface.”
“So is it a spider or an octopus then?”
“It’s not a spider, that name comes from clouds¹.”
“That’s annoying.”
“Apparently they’re known as Hexopus in this country though.”
“It just keeps getting more complicated.”

Looking at it more closely, I notice that it indeed has only six arms.

“You just need a kite like this, tie some lure to it, and you can fish for them.”

I can see a lure shaped like a lobster or shrimp of some kind dangling from her kite. This just keeps getting weirder, she’s fishing for octopuses called spiders with a kite?

“So what do they taste like?”
“They don’t taste worse than sea octopus, but the texture can vary a bit. When they grow in harsher environments their flesh gets tougher.”

She says that as she unsheathes her dagger and plunges it between the monster’s eyes, before cutting deeper and quickly turning its mantle inside out. I can tell she’s used to doing this.

“Do you need help? Or actually, please let me help.”

I haven’t eaten any octopus in this world yet, so I’m really curious about it. Hopefully I can get some from her this way.

“Alright, then the next time one bites can you help me reel it in?”
“Roger that.”

And so we fished for octopus for a while.

While Ruri and I are cooking the octopus, hungry students start to gather in the dining hall. Once they saw what we’re cooking, their reactions were split in polar opposites. Some were ecstatic, others repulsed.

Obviously enough, the former had eaten octopus in the past, while the latter had never tried it.

I can’t blame them for reacting that way to something they had never eaten in the past. I’d probably do the same if someone tried to serve me bugs. Though I also want to give them the opportunity to try something new, I won’t force it on them.

“I’m done washing off the slime.”
“I’m also done preparing all the different sauces.”

Many of the students are eating this for the first time, so we’re preparing the octopus the way it’s eaten in Seperion and not Reibana, so it’s not exceedingly foreign to them.

Basically that means preparing it into salads, carpaccio, soup, or frying it.

First we steam the octopus, then slice it down to size. As the dishes near completion, the aversion some students showed at first also starts to soften. Soon enough the entire menu is complete and dinner can begin.

“Octopus is always so good.”
“Hmm, the taste is alright, but the texture is a bit…”
“I really thought it would be more like Hop Worms, but I might be able to stomach this.”
“Huh? You can eat those things?”
“You’ve never tried them?”

There are various reactions. Those who had already tried octopus before were delighted by it, some who tried it for the first time appreciated it too, but a few others still didn’t like it. I guess it’s just too different from the food they usually eat. We also prepared some food without any octopus though, so they can eat that instead.

And as far as our table is concerned…

“This is so good! Natalia’s cooking is always the best!”
Olivia won’t stop praising me.

“This is my first time eating this, but I actually like the chewiness.”
Amy seems to like it too.

“I’ve eaten quite a bit of octopus in Reibana before, but it’s interesting to see how it’s prepared in a different country.”
Ryuka is looking at it from the view of a foreign visitor.

They all have different reactions, but they look satisfied at least.

“Ah, dammit.”
“Is something wrong?”

Ruri suddenly mutters that in a concerned voice.

Maybe we prepared something wrong, or she forgot to make a dish she was thinking about. I cooked together with her so maybe part of the blame falls on me too, but maybe it’s something I had no involvement with.

“I had so many octopuses but I forgot to make a dish to associate with tentacles.”
It was the latter.

“Please give me back the time I spent seriously worrying about you.”
“No but seriously, octopuses and tentacle kinks go hand-in-hand, right?”
“Don’t even go there.”

There might be a lot of history behind that topic, but that doesn’t mean it’s something to bring up casually during dinner time.

“Ruri, what’s tentacle kink?”
“Ah, you see-”

Olivia sounds curious about that new term, and Ruri tries to explain what it is. I won’t let her do that though.

“How about you try cooling off instead?”
“I’m sorry, I’ll shut up so please don’t headshot me from close range.”

Ruri meekly starts eating again, so I put Black Hawk away from her temple and place it in my magic storage.

Seriously, I already have enough problems with Olivia, I don’t need Ruri putting even more weird ideas in her head, not to mention that she’s in an easily impressionable stage of her life. I can’t have her developing some strange fetishes now. It’ll be even worse if I end up having to be the one to satisfy her interests.

“Sigh…”

I sigh and then look at the master of that rabbit with raging hormones.

Ryuka just has a delicate smile, completely unmoved by the scuffle happening in front of her. Olivia might have decently developed social mannerisms, but she clearly still has a long way to go compared to Ryuka.

Her demeanor is so elegant that just the simple act of eating looks like she came straight out of a painting.

She has a gentle aura around her, but without making her a pushover, her presence clearly demarcated from her surroundings. Or at least that’s the impression I have of her.

Though a few days later I would get to learn a new side of her².

1. Nomad: I hate that cloud and spider are homonyms in Japanese, and I can’t think of a good enough approximation in English rn
   Robinxen: The entire Nasu fandom collectively groans in shared suffering at this with Spider from Mercury and Cloud of Comets being the same thing
2. Robinxen: This chapter was strange… but Japan loves their cooking stories.