The lines he’d scratched into the stone himself lay layered over one another, each one a subtle hair apart from the last. Looking at them, a laugh slipped out of him before he knew it.
Like an idiot. He hadn’t improved at all. I raised the line on purpose, and he thought the training had actually paid off and got all happy about it.
The sound of those jumps, bouncing away in excitement, seemed to ring in his ears. Dojin was smiling, though he had no idea he was.
He reached out and ran his hand over the scratch marks, then went outside like a man who’d decided something. The two bowls still sat at the entrance. He hesitated, then shook his head and turned back around.
And what am I supposed to do, stand there looking at them? That isn’t what I need right now anyway.
He stared into the endless dark of the cave. He even held his breath to listen, but there was nothing to hear. He moved his feet back into the nest.
“Hgh.”
A large hand clutched at his chest. Even holding perfectly still, he had the strange sense that he was flat out gasping for breath.
Crrk.
Dojin breathed in deep and put the creature in his hand into his mouth. With an unwelcome crunch, a bitter taste spread through his whole mouth.
He’d checked and made sure it wasn’t toxic, and yet the taste was so atrocious that halfway through eating it he started to wonder whether the thing had a poison attribute after all.
I need water.
Unable to stand the bitterness, he got moving to rinse his mouth out. But he went down before he could even reach the pool.
“Haa, ha...”
Somewhere along the way the ground had come up close in front of his eyes.
This happened once before, didn’t it. Going down alone, like this. Back then he’d already been as good as a dead man. The reason he hadn’t died then was...
The afterimage of a blue sphere surfaced in his mind.
“...”
Moving nothing but his eyes, Dojin traced the traces of the slime left all through the cave.
The big stone table where they’d eaten together. The edge of the pool where the slime, bandana and apron on, would check his own reflection now and then. The way he’d swum around at his leisure on top of the item bag. The bedding where they’d lain side by side and talked. Only now did he see every one of those places again.
...Where are you right now.
Swallowing down the words that couldn’t quite make it out as a question, Dojin shut his eyes.
Blink, blink.
His eyelids trembled and dragged themselves open.
A faint light, and the familiar cave ceiling. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The scene that had been smeared over came into sharper focus than before.
Did I pass out.
The realization arrived together with another one. That he was lying not on hard dirt but on bedding made of leaves, and that he had even been covered with a hopelessly small blanket.
And in that moment a rustling noise, strange and familiar all at once, came from close by. Dojin’s eyes turned toward it on their own.
Splish, splish.
The round creature whose afterimage he’d been chasing right before he collapsed. No, before that, too.
Not a hallucination. The real slime.
The slime didn’t seem to know Dojin was awake, bustling about busily all by himself.
Dojin made no sound and quietly watched what the slime was doing.
The slime bounded over to the water bowl on the floor, dunked the bandana wrapped around his head into the water, and hauled it straight back out. Then he turned around, and his eyes met Dojin’s, who had been watching him the whole time.
「...!」
The little circle’s movement stopped, as if he’d been caught off guard. Dojin looked back at him without a word.
A few seconds passed, and then, as though he’d made up his mind, the slime started moving again. He seemed to be feeling out the mood, but when no particular reaction came from Dojin, he bounced over all the more boldly. And laid the soaking wet cloth on Dojin’s cheek.
Splat!
Only when the cool cloth smacked against his skin did he realize it. That his body was running far too hot.
“Haa...”
A sigh that sounded almost like a groan leaked out of Dojin’s mouth. The slime flinched, then hurried right back to work. This time he soaked the apron and laid it over Dojin’s parted lips.
Gulp, gulp.
His sharp Adam’s apple rose and fell slowly. Taking in nothing but stray drops was maddening, and when he finally caught the end of the cloth in his teeth and sucked hard, the slime’s body lost its balance and tipped. Dojin quickly reached out and caught the round little body in his hand.
Moong...!
The slime gave a hard hop and made a sound. He looked thoroughly startled, and still Dojin didn’t take his hand away.
The second the squishy sphere touched his palm, his irritation and his anger felt like they died down all at once. His body, hazy with fever, and his nerves, honed to a razor edge, both went slack, and relief came welling up in their place.
“...Where did you go.”
At the sound of Dojin’s low voice, the slime’s body froze solid. He looked as tense as if he’d come face to face with some enormous predator. If anything, it was Dojin who got anxious at the sight.
I have to say something. Anything.
Dojin started to push his upper body up so he could get a proper look at the slime, and stopped short.
He’s a wreck. The slime.
That usually sleek, round body had been scraped and gouged against something somewhere, and was nothing but wounds. As though he’d taken one brutal fall, or as though something had beaten him viciously, there wasn’t one unharmed spot left on him.
...What?
Dojin couldn’t believe what his own eyes were showing him.
Given a slime’s nature, injuries to the surface were an extremely rare thing. Maybe it was because he was still a growing specimen and his surface hadn’t fully formed. But whatever the reason, the important part was this: the slime had been hurt.
“...Who was it.”
The voice that shot out of him was sunk horribly low. At the ominous look on Dojin’s face, the slime shrank back a step.
“Who made you look like that.”
Before he could even finish, the slime whipped around. And then he was away from Dojin, bounding fast for the nest entrance.
At the slime’s sudden flight Dojin shoved a hand down against the ground, but his vision spun round and round and he toppled onto the bedding.
“Haa, ugh...”
Boing, boing.
He saw a blue back moving away from him. That tiny, tiny round body with its wounds hanging off it shrank to a small dot and disappeared. The silence closed around him again.
I’ll kill them.
He’d hunt down whoever had done that to the slime and kill them cruelly. He’d tear them to shreds, until there was nothing left to recognise, until it was as if they’d never existed here at all.
How dare they. To the slime, of all things.
Dojin held on to that single thought until he lost consciousness. And over and over, he kept picturing the slime’s retreating back.
Rustle.
When he shifted, the small blanket covering his chest slid down onto his thighs.
Did I fall asleep? Me?
He’d slept deeply for the first time in ages. Thanks to the slime’s nursing, his body felt considerably better. This was the best condition he’d been in for a long while, and he could feel it. Dojin looked around.
Gone.
The slime wasn’t anywhere in the nest. He shoved himself up off the ground and went straight outside. Sure enough, there was no blue sphere out there either.
Dojin couldn’t hide the disappointment welling up in him, and his face hardened. Then something at the edge of his vision caught his eye, and his mouth set into a rigid line.
Two wooden bowls.
The traces of the slime he hadn’t even spared a glance for.
Dojin walked slowly over to them.
The first bowl held a red liquid. From the sweet-tart smell of it, it was concentrate made from melted-down fruit. He knew at once why it had been left for him. He’d always perked himself up with fruit tea, so the slime had made sure he had some.
In the other bowl was a green, viscous goo. It was the slime’s homemade salve, the one he’d spread on Dojin’s wound every single time.
Clink.
He gathered the bowls, filthy with dust from going so long untouched, against his chest and carried them back into the nest. He spread the salve on his wound right away, then scooped out some of the apple tea concentrate, mixed it with water, and downed it in one go.
It tasted so good he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been drinking it all this time. Maybe it was just his head, but even the ache in his stomach seemed to ease.
After washing out the empty bowls, Dojin headed for one corner. The slime’s treasure vault. All sorts of things lay scattered across the dirt floor with no order to them at all.
A pebble shaped like a snail shell, a leaf as round as the slime itself, an empty gummy packet, and the spot where the bandana and apron used to sit, bare now.
The slime had treasured the clothes and the blanket Dojin made for him. Dojin knew he’d barely worn them, afraid of getting them dirty, keeping them neatly folded and peeking at them every night before he slept. And that on the rare occasion he did put them on, he would keep checking his reflection in the pool, practically giddy.
Dojin turned his eyes toward the bedding. The cloth lay crumpled, soaked through with water, a complete mess. Self-loathing rose in him.
What the hell did I do?
However irritated he’d been, however hard things were, how could he have spat words like that at such a small creature, how could he have hurt it like that? He couldn’t make sense of himself at all.
Dojin turned on his heel without hesitating. His quick strides became a run somewhere along the way, and by the time he came to his senses he was sprinting down the cave corridor.
I have to find him.
The afterimage of the slime as he’d last seen him hovered in front of his eyes. That fragile little creature, running away while he was hurt.
His chasing footsteps were desperate.
Where the hell are you?
Again and again he shouted, then started running again. Dojin’s eyes raked rapidly over every part of the cave. He went all the way to the far end, but the slime wasn’t anywhere.
Where on earth is he? If something really did happen to him...
The ends of all the monsters he’d dispatched until now rose in his mind. That end where they crumbled to powder and vanished without a trace.
