Chapter 341: Kyaru: Full Belly at Night

While Jhin was busy disciplining Megumin, Kokkoro — with no one left to shield her — found Kyaru at her door, small hands pinching her cheeks and stretching them out to both sides.

"Don't you ever do something that terrifying again!"

"Ow… I-I understand. I'm sorry."

Megumin clutched her reddened backside and twisted around to demand, "Hey, you're seriously not going to rescue Kokkoro?"

"…" Jhin stayed quiet for a moment, then kept his right hand swinging. "Call it a small punishment for drinking me under the table."

"Sss— then go smack her butt! Why are you still hitting mine?"

"Because yours feels nice."

"You bastard." Megumin's teeth ground together audibly. "How can you have so little regard for your own girlfriend's butt?"

"Want me to rub it better for you?"

"And whose fault is it that it hurts, exactly? Any idea?"

"None."

If she'd had even half his strength, she would have stood up and bitten him to death on the spot.

By the time Kyaru finished punishing Kokkoro, Megumin had managed to escape the demon's claws. Standing there rubbing her sore, tingling backside, she listened to the whole explanation of the Shared Source Ritual, then looked at Jhin, whose eyes had already faded back to sky blue. "Can you do the eye color change thing one more time?"

"It's not a 'color change.' The proper term is manifestation of the dragon's might!"

"Oh, that does sound cool. Add it to your Explosion magic chant next time."

"Whatever makes you happy." Jhin sighed in resignation, and his eyes shifted into golden slitted pupils.

The sight drew clicks of amazement from Megumin, and her voice turned envious. "I wish my eyes could change color too. Ideally shifting gradually while I'm casting Explosion magic."

Jhin shot back, "Your eyes glow, don't they? If we're counting special effects, you've definitely got more of them."

"But I still think changing color is cooler…" Megumin muttered under her breath, clearly coveting his ability to switch pupil colors.

He reached out and ruffled her hair into a mess, which earned him a huffy glare. Then he glanced at the sky, still deep night. "Have you all eaten dinner? I'm a little hungry."

"Pecorine set aside a meal for you two specially."

"Thanks, Pecorine."

"No need to thank me for something that small!"

Maybe it was because of the Dragon Trait Awakening Kokkoro had mentioned, but Jhin's appetite had ballooned to the point where it nearly rivaled Pecorine's. Fortunately his storage space held plenty of food, and he was a cook himself, so he filled his stomach by eating while he cooked.

He drained the iced cola in his glass in one satisfying go, sprawled out on the sofa, and fell asleep just like that.

"Eats and drops straight to sleep. When did he turn into a pig?" Megumin poked lightly at Jhin's cheek. Kokkoro stopped her almost at once.

"In the Shared Source Ritual, Master gave me the larger share of his origin essence, so his mind is somewhat worn out. It's better to let him sleep properly."

"So we just leave him here?"

"Mm… moving him around would certainly wake him. There's nothing else for it."

"Then I'm going to bathe and turn in. It's late."

"Mm."

…

The rhythmic sound of the waves pulled Jhin out of his dreams. The room was very quiet, the girls' steady breathing echoing softly, and when he listened closely he counted only three sets of breaths.

Strange. Did someone go out?

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a cat-eared silhouette slipped out of the bathroom.

Kyaru's emerald eyes were as bright as a pair of gems in the moonlight. She lowered her voice. "Why are you awake? Did I wake you just now?"

Jhin answered just as softly. "I woke up on my own."

"Do you… want to go out for a walk?" She came over and wound her cat tail nimbly around the part of him that was already wide awake, issuing an invitation that belonged to the night.

His answer was immediate. "Absolutely."

So the two of them snuck out of the room.

Outside, Kyaru padded across the sand in her beach slippers and led Jhin into a grove of coconut palms. Her fine black hair hung like a garment woven out of the night itself, hiding her snow-white skin.

Those fluffy cat ears were his favorite thing to knead — the texture was like cotton candy, and a gentle puff of breath into one would make Kyaru's whole body shiver and her eyes turn up at him, sulky and coy.

Her tail was the instrument that broadcast her state. Wrapped tight around his arm meant he needed to work harder. If the tip swayed like a foxtail drifting in the breeze, he would slow down. And when the tail brushed lazily back and forth across his nose, that meant it was time to resume the battle.

"Mnn… I feel so full."

"…You're not a succubus. Why say things like that?"

"But I really am full."

The two of them came out of the grove, Kyaru holding her overly full stomach with the vague sense of indigestion. Seeing it, Jhin hoisted her onto his back. "If you're uncomfortable, I'll carry you home. You didn't catch a chill from the sea breeze, did you?"

"I don't know," she murmured.

They hadn't gone far before they ran into the pompadoured man who had been chased and cornered by those strange cultists the day they arrived.

At the moment he was standing at the water's edge, unloading a torrent of abuse at the ocean, his language as foul as language could get, both hands held in front of him while his shoulders jerked in a steady rhythm.

From Jhin's angle, he looked an awful lot like a man imitating Homelander performing a Getsuga Tenshou. In other words, he appeared to be jerking off.

Since he was standing on the only path back, going around him was out of the question. Jhin told Kyaru to shut her eyes, then shouted at the pompadour, "Hey, you over there. What exactly are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"

"Huh?" The man turned around in confusion, an armful of soap bars cradled in his hands, tears and snot smeared across his face. Assuming a security patrolman had come, he launched straight into an explanation. "Th-this stuff was forced on me by those lunatic Axis Cultists. I can't possibly use it all by myself, so I came out here to throw it into the sea."

"Axis Cultists?"

Sobbing and sniffling, the man poured out his grievances. "You don't know about them? They're the most infamous madmen on the continent. There's nothing they won't do to drag someone into their faith."

"I only got here a couple of days ago. A girl came running out of an alley and slammed into me on purpose, then smashed a whole basket of apples on the ground and started screaming that I had to pay for them."

"I figured, how expensive can one basket of apples be? I was about to hand over the money when some old man popped up out of nowhere and said those apples were an extremely rare ingredient, that they could never be compensated with anything as vulgar and money-stinking as coin. Then he shoved a sheet of paper into my hand and called it a compensation itemization."

"I'd barely read the first line before the paper crumbled into ash. And he insisted, flat out, that I'd destroyed a precious treasure of their clan, and demanded I sign their conversion contract. If I didn't sign, I'd owe them even more money."

"I spent a full two hundred thousand Eris! And all they gave me was this — worthless soap that does nothing but make bubbles!"

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