The Snake Wine Incident

After watching Natalie take down a mutant goblin, McLane had been forced to reevaluate her.

Reevaluate was perhaps the wrong word, since she had already made a point of advertising that she was on the verge of reaching the seventh circle. It would be more accurate to say he had finally withdrawn his refusal to believe her.

It was the same when he watched her spend the entire afternoon devotedly tending to the wounded after the goblin purge. Maybe it was all right to trust her a little, he thought. He shouldn't keep showing his suspicion so openly and acting so sour about it.

He should keep an eye on the others — the ones who acted like their screws were coming loose the moment that competent woman so much as looked at them — rather than on her.

He had even planned to tell her she'd had a long day, and that he looked forward to her continued good work.

Right up until he watched the woman seize the village chief's bottle of liquor and gulp it down, cup and all.

A snake wine aged ten years. It was unmistakably a hard liquor — what was she thinking, taking it without a shred of caution?

He'd barely managed to snatch away the third cup as she reached for it, her eyes already half unfocused.

Consideration for others wasn't exactly in his nature — he was the self-styled Black Knight, after all — but today, clearly, was an exception.

What he hadn't dreamed of, however, was that his exceptional kindness would come back to bite him like this.

"You rotten brat. First you wreck my ending, now you won't even let me have my Status Window. My romance, my Status Window, my snake wine…."

In the short span of that moment, her intoxication seemed to climb another notch, and the woman began pouring out her grievances to him.

"All this over a few cups of snake wine? The Status Window of all things?"

She was a stranger woman than he'd thought. When the ending she'd planned fell apart thanks to his uncooperative attitude, perhaps she was now casting about for a different way out.

He had suspected she was trying to join the expedition he led in a calculated bid to engineer some scheme or other, but maybe she was actually attempting to change the game's ending to something like his own.

Of course, that didn't mean he intended to trust her completely.

Unlike her, who was contemplating a genre change, he had a definite goal — grinding his way to max level as the Hero — and that alone was, without question, the only solution for escaping this place and returning to his original world.

Lost in these thoughts, McLane jolted when he felt something small and soft press against his cheek.

He had flinched when she leaned her head on his shoulder mere moments ago; now she was pinching both his cheeks and tugging at them like they deserved nothing less than to die for annoying her.

"H-hey, Miss Pereira…."

There was no doubt the woman was drunk. The slurred, mushy voice that was barely intelligible, the unfocused eyes, even the expression laid bare with emotion in a way so unlike her usual self — everything announced that she was completely plastered.

"You are being so, so unfair to me, you knooow—"

The problem was that McLane himself, having knocked back five cups of snake wine in a row, was feeling the alcohol creep up on him too.

When she thrust her face in so close their noses nearly touched, he was too stunned to even think of pulling away, his wits scattering for a moment. His gaze was caught in her tawny eyes, and he couldn't turn his head.

His eyes slid down slowly, lingering briefly on her flushed cheeks before tracing the line of her straight nose. Where they finally came to rest was on her lips, which kept worrying at each other, slightly swollen from the attention. Red, full — her lips.

"Insane."

He had just managed to shake his head and tear his gaze free when it happened.

The woman, having vented her grievances and now failing utterly to contain her drunkenness, crashed into him as though burying her face in his chest. Reflexively, he caught her and held her — and then, like a man struck by lightning, he didn't move a muscle.

This was not good. It wasn't the time to be grumbling about what the other expedition members might think.

Perhaps the person who most needed to keep a clear head right now was, in fact, himself.

Fortunately, the hangover claimed most of Natalie's memories.

The drunken scene she'd made, demanding the man hand over his Status Window. The cheek-pinching — grabbing his face and twisting and yanking it on top of everything else. Falling asleep with her face buried in his chest. All of it, gone.

All that remained was the expression on the man's face as he sneered and swiped her last cup of snake wine for himself, and his icy voice mocking her — as if a Status Window would appear just because you drank like that.

Her mind hadn't been perfectly formatted, it seemed; a strange, diffuse shame lingered. But since she couldn't recall any specific incident that called for a specific apology, Natalie decided to gloss the whole thing over.

Of course, even having resolved to play dumb, it was hard to shake the nagging unease entirely. The very fact that the recording cut out in front of that man was a black mark on her history all by itself.

But it seemed the man found facing her no less awkward.

At the meal the whole village had thrown themselves into preparing — impossible to tell whether it was a celebratory feast or a breakfast spread — McLane made his entrance dead last.

The first to spot the man as he opened the door and stepped in was Natalie.

"When I was a boy, I truly had no sense at all, you know."

"Ahahaha, what do you mean, Orlando? You were quite the little troublemaker — more than you let on."

"And yet today I'm a more mature man than anyone, haha."

She had been laughing over an anecdote from Orlando's childhood just then, and the instant her eyes met the man's, Natalie found herself suddenly at a loss for what expression to wear.

Should she carry on smiling as if nothing happened? Turn away and pretend she hadn't seen him? Or greet him with impeccable courtesy?

But when the man, who had been staring blankly at her, momentarily knitted his brows, Natalie's gaze darted away of its own accord. Her nerves had gotten the better of her about the hours her memory had lost.

What could possibly be bugging him first thing in the morning that he's making that face again? Don't tell me I committed some huge blunder yesterday?

Before her possession, she had been the type to fall into a clean, silent sleep when drunk. But she hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since crossing into this world, so she couldn't swear her conduct had been innocent and free of black marks.

She was chewing her lip, trying to piece together the fragmented memories, when Munash — who had been lying in wait for his moment to jump into the conversation from across the table — picked up the broken thread.

"Troublemaker? What's that? I like frogs too."

"Munash, not frogs, troublemaker. Honestly, you're closer to a menace than a troublemaker."

"My, it seems Mukhi studies the Imperial tongue very diligently."

While pretending to listen to Mukhi, Natalie kept stealing glances at McLane. The man's expression had soured even more violently than before, and her unease deepened accordingly.

"I've always had a knack for learning foreign languages, after all."

"Melee's my specialty instead."

And through it all, everyone kept chiming in, one after another. Keeping up the act of composure was no easy feat. Even Jorel, normally so taciturn, stepped forward to press a bellflower dish on her.

"Miss Pereira, do try this bellflower root as well. The aroma is quite lovely."

"Oh, you're right. The mountains around here are so treacherous that the herbs and mushrooms have an especially rich scent, I think. Come to think of it, the chief told me before we set out that she'd give me some feverfew and medicinal herbs — she asked me to stop by the village storehouse."

"Is that so? Then allow me to come along and load them onto the wagon for you."

"It's just a small supply run, so I can pop over and back on my own."

"Even so, it would be better if I carried them for you rather than going alone."

"I can carry them too. Out of all of us, I'm the strongest."

"Then I'll come as well—"

But the commotion didn't last long.

Because McLane slammed his dishes down and issued a warning in a voice like frost.

"Enough idle chatter. Eat quickly and get up."

"Ah — yes, Captain."

The warm, convivial atmosphere of moments before chilled to the bone in an instant, thanks to the man now seated among them with a scowl on his face.

"Er, th-that is, Captain. Might you have a hangover, by any chance?"

"I don't have a hangover."

"Then is something the matter…?"

Orlando, who had been quietly reading the room, ventured the question on behalf of everyone puzzling over him — only to receive a reply so curt it bordered on a scolding.

"The problem is that any more delay will make it difficult to reach the Erosion Zone on schedule, won't it?"

"Ah, the departure preparations are all complete, sir. We can leave as soon as the meal is finished."

"Good. Camaraderie matters, but it seems to me you've all grown a little too relaxed."

"We will correct that at once."