Jonah woke up feeling constrained, even before he opened his eyes. His first thought was that he was alive and that it was the dead hound-like creature’s body restraining him.
“What the fuck?”
But it wasn’t. It was a pair of ropes tying his body, arms, and legs to a simple wooden chair in the middle of what seemed like a shed of some kind. It wasn’t as cluttered as the sheds he had been in, but there were a couple of tools here and there that looked like they could be used for farming. There were also a bunch of old wooden shelves and drawers.
However, the floor and the room directly around him were clean. It even looked like it had recently been swept with a broom.
Jonah looked around while trying to force his way free from the ropes. But they were too tight and sturdy for him to force his way through using brute muscle, not that he had much, to begin with. So, he was going to use his magic.
If his triangles were enough to cut open the neck of a rock-covered dog, they should be enough to cut through some rope.
“Oh, good. You’re up! For a while there, it looked like you wouldn’t be waking up, like, ever.”
But before Jonah could do anything, the door to the shed opened, and a young woman stepped inside while carrying a bowl.
Jonah stopped using his magic and looked at the brown-haired woman suspiciously.
“Oh, don’t give me that look. I saved you. Well, I saved you from the weather and Rock Roarer’s body turning you into a pancake. You’re lucky you encountered a young one. They don’t weigh nearly as much as the old buggers–”
While he was indeed suspicious about her, considering his situation, what with the ropes and all, he was also suspicious of the fact that his captor apparent was a beautiful woman with tied-up hair, sparklingly green eyes, and an easy-going smile.
“If you saved me, why am I, you know, bound to a chair?”
Jonah stopped the woman before she could continue blabbering while dragging out another chair from behind a nearby shelf.
“Well, I couldn’t just let a suspicious man roam free in my home. A woman has to protect herself, after all.”
“...isn’t the one kidnapping random men and tying them up the suspicious one here?”
“...”
The woman looked like she was going to refute Jonah’s accusation but came up short as she lowered her hand and looked at the floor in deep thought.
“Huh. I guess that’s one way to look at it. Maybe I am the suspicious one… No! Look at your clothes! You are clearly the odd one out here. I have never seen anyone use such formal-looking attire when they’re in the middle of the forest during a rainstorm, hunting Rock Roarers. You should just be thankful I saved your life and leave it at that.”
The young woman recovered and countered with an argument she felt was bulletproof. She nodded decisively.
“Uh, not to be rude or anything. But I haven’t seen anyone with that kind of clothing before. So, to me, you’re the weirdo here.”
Jonah gave a pointed look toward the relatively simple clothes the woman wore that seemed to have been made from a combination of leather and cotton. Jonah wasn’t very good at fabric, and he couldn’t pinpoint the design, but the clothes did look slightly medieval or rustic with their simplicity and sturdiness. The design itself, on the other hand, was anything but medieval.
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And it wasn’t something he was familiar with from Earth. He spoke the truth as it was indeed the first time he had seen someone wear anything like it. However, it could be common clothing wherever he was, which, based on the language he had discovered on some of the boxes and items on the shelves, didn’t seem to be on Earth.
It at least wasn’t a place or language on Earth he could recognize. And, considering how many cultures were mixed in around Gyza Academy and Belmerre, there shouldn’t be many like that. It didn’t look even slightly similar to anything he had seen. Combined with the impossibly dense mana, Jonah could only come to one conclusion. It was a conclusion he didn’t like or want to believe, despite his instincts telling him he was far from home.
Jonah didn’t want to make any guesses, and he definitely didn’t want to get distracted while talking to his captor, so he focused on the young woman holding a bowl of soup in front of him.
He had expected her to be confused and surprised at his remark that he had never seen such clothes before since they should be common around wherever he was. Instead, she looked slightly embarrassed and almost hurt by his words.
‘Literally what?’
“Um, I know I made these myself, but they’re not that bad, are they?”
Jonah quickly got the answer to his question.
“I never said they were bad. I just said I hadn’t seen anything like it.”
The woman glared angrily at Jonah, though it was more of a childish pout than real anger.
“Isn’t that just a polite way of saying it's horrible?”
“No. But to me, it seems like you’re hearing what you want or expect to hear– It feels like we got sidetracked, but if you want my honest fashion advice….”
“Go ahead.”
“Skip the stripes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Stripes are for zebras and tigers.”
“I knew it. I thought about whether to keep the stripes or not since I wasn’t sure. But… Yeah, you’re right. Fuck stripes!”
Jonah hoped he would get a reaction to the two animals he dropped since it would tell him about what kind of place he had ended up in. The Rock Roarer looked like a dog or hound of some kind but clearly wasn’t one since it grew stones from its body.
Learning about the animals where he was would be one way for him to figure out what kind of place it was. And if the woman in front of him didn’t react to his mention of zebras and tigers, animals that were famous but not very populous on Earth, it was because she knew about them. And if she knew about them, the ecology in this new place shouldn’t be very different from the one on Earth, just a little more magical. It was a far-fetched attempt, and he couldn’t tell much about its success.
‘What am I even supposed to do with that kind of information? That Rock Roarer? Is already indication enough of the place I am.’
Jonah sighed inwardly as he realized he should just focus on what was in front of him, not try and be smart unnecessarily.
But, considering how the young woman was busy looking at her clothes and imagining what they would be like if they weren’t brown-and-white striped, it might just be that she just didn’t listen too intently to what he had said. There was still hope he could find out more about his surroundings.
“Ahem.”
Jonah cleared his throat to get the woman to stop daydreaming about her homemade clothes.
“How about untying these ropes now?”
The woman looked at Jonah with clear eyes without a speck of malice or dishonesty.
“No way. You’re still suspicious. So, just sit tight. You’re bound to be hungry after what you’ve gone through. I made some soup. I’ll feed you as long as you don’t make it weird.”
“Hold up.”
Jonah stopped the woman from feeding him for the moment.
“I just want to get this figured out before I let you feed me something that might very well be some kind of drug. Why do you insist on me being suspicious when I literally haven’t done a single thing to you or anyone you know?”
The woman tilted her head as she looked at Jonah while putting the bowl in her lap.
“You mean you don’t know?”
“What?”
“You, a young man with arms like the legs of the chair you’re sitting on, appeared in the middle of the forest, in the middle of a rainstorm, and managed to kill a Rock Roarer on your own without any weapons or obvious signs of offensive magic being used. You are also wearing weird clothes, and you’re speaking another language. For your information, it’s a language that doesn’t sound even slightly similar to any of the languages on this continent.”
‘Shit.’