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I was lying in bed when I came to be. Since the ceiling looks familiar, I’m probably in our room.
Just when did I get here?
I remember Ruti hugging me at the café then…… Come to think of it, where’s Ruti? With that in mind, I turned my head and felt relieved to see Ruti peacefully sleeping next to me. Yup, she sure looks cute sleeping.

「…… Yawn~」

And as I felt at peace from looking at Ruti sleeping, I started to feel sleepy again.
Well, I’m still exhausted from the trip and I am free from doing Order things for a while, so let me just go back to sleep……

「Mn~mm…..」

This time I wake up from the feeling of someone touching me. Geez, I’m still really tired, who’s doing this?
I open my eyes while feeling a bit annoyed and there I see Ruti poking my cheek.

「…… Ruti, what are you even doing?」
「Mmm.」
「Mmm?」
「…… I was just thinking, Natsuki’s back home now, you know?」

Geez, now that you say something like that, I can’t get annoyed from being woken up like this anymore.
I reflexively embraced Ruti and buried my face into her nape.

「Smells so good.」

Smelling Ruti’s scent after so long is really relaxing. I ended up instantly kissing her nape.

「Ah! Wait! I haven’t taken a bath since yesterday so stop it!」
「Huh? Really?」

I fell unconscious yesterday so I obviously couldn’t have taken a bath, but Ruti too?

「What do you mean by really, didn’t you carry me back here? I seem to have fallen asleep after I hugged you yesterday and found myself here when I came to be.」
「Nuh-uh, I also fainted at that time. I thought that you carried me back here too. So then, who carried us here?」
「You were the only one that came to mind after all…… Hmmm, in that case, maybe it was Firu and the others?」

Now that I look at it closely, I still have my Order of Mages uniform on and Ruti still has her café uniform on as well.
Since we were probably brought back here directly after we collapsed at the café, there’s a high possibility that Firu was the one that moved us here. After all, Chris isn’t really strong enough to do so and Ryzna-san probably can’t just leave the shop.

「We really need to thank Firu sometime.」
「That’s for certain. Especially since I even dropped out in the middle of the job. Chris and Ryzna-san probably got pretty busy after that, so I’ll need to thank them as well.」

Ahhh, on top of Ruti dropping out, Firu even left for a while to bring us here, so they probably had a really tough time, yeah…… I guess I’ll buy the three of them snacks or something.

「For now, let’s take a bath. I want to get out of this uniform after all.」
「Then let’s go.」

Bringing our bath kit, we happily arrived at the bathroom.
After washing each other as usual, we soaked in the bathtub.

「「Fwa~」」

Even though I took a bath every day except on days we were camping out, today’s bath feels really special.

「Say, Ruti. Yesterday, why did you fall asleep after hugging me?」
「About that, I’d like to return the exact same question to you, Natsuki.」
「I….. Umm…… I couldn’t sleep well because you weren’t beside me, so……」

As I was saying so, I gradually got embarrassed, so I soaked myself down up to my nose.

「……….. It was the same for me too. I couldn’t calm down without you near me…….」

Ruti also turned red as she soaked down up to her nose and made bubbling noises.
We stayed that way for a while but when our eyes suddenly met, it somehow felt funny and we began to laugh.

「Pfft, fufu. Geez, you’re really hopeless, Ruti.」
「Fufu, aren’t you the hopeless one here, Natsuki?」

As we chuckled to ourselves, I once again looked Ruti in the eyes.

「Really, I’m hopeless without you now, Ruti.」
「I’m completely hopeless without you too, Natsuki.」

Ruti met my gaze and replied to me as so.

「「…… I’m never ever going to be apart from you anymore.」」

We gently nudged our foreheads together, vowing to each other so.

After leaving the bathroom and going back to our room, I noticed that there’s a note placed on top of our table.
We locked the door before taking a bath, so it might have been here even before we left the room.

It seems like this note was something Firu left. It says that she’s sorry for not changing our clothes after she carried us here and that she told Ryzna-san that we’ll be having a break for a while.

「I haven’t been feeling good lately, so I already asked for a considerable reduction of work, but to think that Firu even had us take a break…… I really can’t thank her enough.」
「I know I said that we should thank her some time, but why don’t we go to her room and thank her when she gets home later. In addition to that, let’s thank Chris and Ryzna-san as well before we open shop tomorrow.」
「That sounds good and since being empty-handed feels a bit off, I’ll go buy some snacks or something.」

Just as she finished saying so, Ruti disappeared. Teleport…… right?
I’ll try asking her about it once she comes back, so I should start preparing the tea.

As I was about to pour the tea after boiling the leaves in hot water, she came back.

「Welcome home. That was fast.」
「I teleported right in front of the shop after all. Remember, that neat little shop?」

Does she mean that nice-looking place we went to before when we were shopping for teatime snacks? Their snacks were pretty yummy, so we buy some from them every now and then.

「I also bought some snacks for us.」
「Nice one.」

And so we enjoyed some tea and snacks while talking about the stuff that happened during the time we were apart from each other.

「—so since he got super close, I really thought that we were done for.」
「That was close.」
「By the way, earlier…… and yesterday too, I guess, you used teleport, right? When did you learn that?」
「Ahh, about that—」

So it looks like Ruti really wanted to see me but she couldn’t get flight permission and the leader also told her that we’ll miss each other if she travels on foot. And then, since she thought that she should be able to reach the town quickly by teleporting, she got the leader to teach it to her.
But in the end, because you can only teleport to places you’ve been to, she couldn’t come.

「From the start, I should’ve realized this after hearing how teleporting works, but I was so focused on going that I absolutely missed that part.
When I did get the hang of it, on top of already feeling ill, I realized that I have never been to that town before and the shock from this made me feel worse. The leader noticed and made me take a break from Order business.」

And because of that, she can now teleport around, huh.

「It definitely is convenient, so I’m absolutely glad that the leader taught me about it.」

With that said, she shows off the snacks while smiling brightly.

And as we were talking about this and that, time passed on. Firu should reach the inn any time now, I think.