The boys who crawled out of the pond spat "Remember this!" and fled like drowned rats. Only then did the area go quiet.
"Now I can finish the map in peace."
I sat on a rock by the pond and completed the map on the clipboard.
"The map from home to the pond is done. Link these together and I'll have the whole forest."
I set a fresh flyer on the clipboard and looked around.
"I'll try farther in. If I remember right, this is where I first met Kotone."
I thought she might be there. She was not. In her place was Onesco, Monaka's attendant.
Onesco had a hand shoved into a crack in the rock, face pinched, groaning with effort. I asked what she was doing, and the crease between her brows only got deeper.
One hand still in the crack, she pointed at me with the free one.
"Leopin-kun, you are the worst! Using the fact that you were childhood friends to do this and that to Lady Monaka when she was little!"
"What do you mean, this and that?"
"I-I can't say something that indecent out loud! I had started to think a little better of you, and I was wrong! Prepare yourself!"
"What are you planning to do?"
"Right now, I am going to give you corrective guidance...! ...Nngh!"
Onesco tried to stand. One hand would not come out of the crack. I sighed.
"I don't know how you ended up like that, but it's a good thing I was the first one to find you."
"What is that supposed to mean!? Taking advantage of the fact that I can't move to do the same thing you did to Lady Monaka!?"
"No. I mean it would have been bad if a monster found you. Wait a second."
I looked around. Right beside the rock, as if placed there for me, the fruit I wanted was growing.
I picked one from a cluster of green fruit and peeled it. Inside was a nut almost identical to a walnut.
I took about two and crushed them in my hand. I tipped the crushed bits into a wooden cup from my coat pocket.
Onesco looked uneasy. "What are you doing...?"
"Just watch," I said, the usual line, and kept crafting.
I poured water from the leather canteen in my coat into the wooden cup. A light stir with a finger, and it was done.
I flung the liquid in the cup straight into the crack. Onesco's arm was there, so of course she got soaked.
"Wh-what are you... ah!"
Her arm came free with a pop, and the momentum sat her down hard. She stared at the hand that had just come loose as if it were a miracle.
"Wha...!? It got stuck this morning, and nothing I did until now could get it out! I was about to launch a distress signal! And you did it in a moment, without using any power!?"
Onesco stayed sitting with her legs folded to the side and looked up at me, unable to believe it.
"Wh-what did you do!? That fruit, that liquid, what are they!? Don't tell me it's a drug that shows hallucinations!?"
I answered while looking at the little white liquid left in the cup.
"That fruit is called wash-nut. Crush it fine and mix it with water, and it works like detergent."
Wash-Nut Detergent
Quantity: 1
Quality Level: 6 (Material Level 2 + Dexterity Bonus 4)
Wash-nut dissolved in water. Besides cleaning, it makes things slippery.
Even after the explanation, Onesco was only half convinced.
"N-no way... A fruit that works like magic..."
Then she glanced at me.
"...I'll say thank you, at least. You did help me."
"Don't worry about it."
"I will worry about it. Being saved with detergent by someone whose dress shirt is that dirty..."
The subject rolled somewhere I did not expect, and a dumb sound slipped out of me. "Huh?"
"If you can make detergent, you can at least wash a dress shirt. So why is it that dirty?"
She could not let my shirt go.
"Washing it was a pain. And that doesn't matter, does it?"
For the record, this academy has a special rule that only female students may use the shower room and laundry in the school building. That is why Monaka and Kotone always smell nice and always wear white robes and hakama.
I felt like my laziness was being called out, and it got awkward, so I changed the subject.
"Anyway, why did you have your hand in a rock like that?"
This time Onesco was the one who looked uncomfortable.
"That doesn't matter either. It has nothing to do with you."
I answered with a hum and peered into the crack where her hand had been. Deep in the hole, something like a blue stone was glowing dully.
"Looks like a chip of raw gemstone. Were you trying to get that?"
Onesco kept her face turned from the hole and pouted.
"Yes. Laugh if you want."
"I'm not laughing. Everyone wants gems."
I patted the breast pocket of my coat.
"And I've got a jewel of my own."
On cue, a mouse crawled out of my breast pocket. I held my arm out to the hole like an escort, and she ran along it and went in.
A little later she came back holding the raw stone from the bottom. She dropped it onto my palm with a soft tap.
I scratched the jewel returning to my breast pocket under the chin with a finger. Then I held the other jewel out to Onesco, who was still looking away. "Here. It's yours."
Onesco turned with a questioning look, and her slightly sharp eyes went wide at the raw stone in front of her.
"Wh-what!?"