Chapter 60: Suika's Must-Eat List.
....
Lala, who had always worn an enthusiastically bright smile regardless of the time, looked like an entirely different person. She sat before a pile of mechanical parts like an emotionless iceberg, her emerald pupils hazy with a chill cold enough to freeze the very air.
Peke, the costume robot, flew frantically over to Kihara's side. "Lord Kihara, this is terrible! For some reason, Lady Lala has suddenly experienced a complete personality shift! She won't talk, and she doesn't like to smile anymore!"
"Lala, are you doing alright?" he asked tentatively from the doorway.
She offered zero response, treating him and Peke as pure air as she kept her head down, continuing to tinker with the mysterious machine in her hands.
"Uh... at least she's safe inside her room. Let's head to the living room to talk."
"Understood!"
"Peke, what did Lala do right before she turned into this state?"
"Let me think... First, she was drawing blueprints in her room. Then she heard Lady Momo and Lady Nana discussing Lady Suika's brewing, got super curious, and shuffled over to chat with them for a bit..."
"Not long after, Lady Lala said she was going to visit Lady Suika's room to observe the brewing process. By the time she came back to her room, she had turned into this unfamiliar state!"
"Alright, looks like the root cause of Lala's change has been found." Kihara raised an eyebrow with a helpless sigh, before instructing, "Peke, keep an eye on Lala for me. If she makes any move to leave the house, immediately notify me, Momo, and the others."
"By your command, Lord Kihara!"
...
Stepping down from the attic, Kihara quickly arrived at the door of the guest room occupied by Ibuki Suika.
Even though the wooden door remained closed, the air escaping through the crack under the door was already loaded with a pungent stench—resembling a sweltering day squeezed inside an overcrowded train, where the person beside you raised their arm to grab the strap, wafting an underarm body odor mixed with an unknown sour stench so nauseating it made one want to throw up.
"Does brewing liquor really generate a smell this terrible?"
Frowning tightly, Kihara pinched his nose and knocked on the door. "Suika, are you in there??"
"Kihara-bro, come on in! The door isn't locked."
Before stepping inside, he ran back to his bedroom, dug out a gas mask, and put it on. Only then did he summon the courage to step into the room that had been wrecked beyond recognition by this boozy loli.
Inside the modest bedroom hallway, wooden barrels of various sizes were lined up everywhere, connected to one another using bamboo stalks as pipes. Right near the doorway stood a bamboo chimney emitting a continuous stream of smoke against the wall corner.
It appeared that the stomach-churning stench was being vented out by this exact setup.
"Suika, are you brewing liquor or refining poison?"
Suika wrinkled her small nose in dissatisfaction. "Now that's just plain rude of you! Even if Yukari Yakumo came by, she'd have to offer praise for my brewing craft. How come it turns into suspecting me of making poison on your end?"
"Then tell me what's up with that nauseating stench at the doorway?"
"Oh, that." A look of realization washed over her face. "No wonder you're questioning my craft. Those are just the filtered impurities being vented out."
"Impurities?"
"That's right! The water in this world can't even compare to the river water in Gensokyo; it's mixed with all sorts of miscellaneous stuff. If you want to brew high-quality liquor, you have to process those impurities out first."
"Don't worry, after processing, those impurities just smell a bit foul—they won't cause any harm to normal humans."
Kihara had no idea how a few bamboo pipes and wooden barrels managed to perform water purification, nor did he have the mind to dig into the details, treating it as some special Oni brewing technique.
His primary task right now was figuring out what Lala had experienced in this room to transform from an innocent, cheerful girl into an iceberg beauty.
"What did Lala do when she came to your room earlier?"
"Lala?"
Suika had assumed Kihara was coming over out of interest in her brewed liquor, never expecting he was here on behalf of his little alien girlfriend. A surge of an emotion called "jealousy" welled up from deep within her heart.
Placing the bamboo cap back onto one of the wooden barrels, she let out a hmpf, turning her head as she hopped onto the only unoccupied spot in the room—the bed.
Her petite body bounced twice on the mattress. Suika grabbed the pillow, burying her entire face into it. Her smooth, milky-white legs kicked the mattress in a wild, tempestuous tantrum, muttering in a muffled voice: "I'm unhappy! If you don't comfort me, I'm not telling you what Lala did here!"
Honestly, her blatant demand for comfort was quite endearing, and most importantly, it required zero guessing on Kihara's part.
[A girl like this is normally placed straight onto my must-eat list.]
[What dost thou mean by dropping such words out of nowhere to me, my master?]
[Shinobu, learn a thing or two from Suika's direct, speak-your-mind way of doing things!]
[I shall not! I am a golden-haired vampire full of charm, blending tsundere and straightforwardness seamlessly. How could I casually abandon my own character archetype?]
[Is that your excuse for coming out at night to start trouble the moment you're in a bad mood?]
[What, art thou displeased?]
[Just clean up properly next time, so I don't have to get up to change my pants.]
[Fine then, wash up tonight and wait for me.]
After successfully negotiating with Shinobu inside the shadow space, Kihara edged along the wall to Suika's side, extending his left hand. His palm hovered in the air in hesitation, unsure where to place it.
Fortunately, she gave her small head a gentle shake as a hint, successfully landing his palm right between her two horns, gently stroking back and forth through her hair.
After letting out a few contented hums, Suika turned her body over, wanting him to rub her tummy, only to spot him still wearing that ugly gas mask. A flash of sly mischief gleamed in her eyes.
Suddenly raising her feet, her delicate toes nimbly clamped around the strap behind his ears, taking the momentum to yank the gas mask straight off his face.
"Are you trying to murder your own husband?!"
Kihara made a move to snatch the gas mask back, only to realize the air inside the room was starkly different from the hallway outside.
If the outside was a combination of underarm odor and sweat on a train, the room was a blend of fruit aroma and liquor fragrance.
The fragrance of liquor was so dense that even normal breathing felt like inhaling atomized alcohol into his mouth, leaving his brain hazy with a touch of drunkenness.
"Ah... I almost forgot the proof of the air inside the room is super high too..."
"Listen to what you're saying... what do you mean the proof of the air is high... Suika... you..."
Kihara couldn't utter the rest of his words. Face flushed, he collapsed onto Suika's stomach. Her teeth lightly bit her lower lip, revealing a joyful smile of a predator watching prey walk right up to her door.
"Kihara-bro, shall we play a fun game together?"
"..."
"You're not talking, so I'll take that as a yes."
Before long, another layer of delightful aroma joined the liquor-filled bedroom.
In the end, Suika's cheeks were so thoroughly nourished they practically reflected light. She delivered Kihara—who had been dressed again but remained fast asleep—back to the anxiously waiting Peke: "Kihara-bro will probably wake up in two or three hours. If he still wants to find me, tell him I'm waiting for him at the nearby park."
....
Thank you for reading.