Free Missing Children by JIN

was lying on reached to the very back of my nostrils.
    The shade from the trees also helped attribute to the charm that I felt.
    “The smell of grass is terrible……”
    “I don’t want to hear that from someone who stinks of puke. In the first place, it’s because you drank way too much soda to ‘prevent heat stroke’ that it’s turned out like this.”
    The fresh wound in my heart throbbed painfully at Kido’s sharp comeback.
    Despite being told this, for someone that loved soda, it was a necessity in my life. It was obvious that I relied on it being my main water supply.
    Although, I had thrown all of it up in some random bush earlier.
    “D-don’t say that! Be a little more sensitive!”
    “Hmph, my bad. Anyway, I’ve been off guard since I’d come here before, but it seems like we’ve used up a lot of time.”
    It had taken us about an hour to get here by a train from the hideout’s nearest station.
    After that, we’d waked for two and a half hours. It’d been a tremendously harsh journey, enough to kill a NEET.
    So of course I would throw up one or two times.
    There was nothing wrong with me or my soda. It was summer’s fault.
    Well, even if it was summer’s fault……
    “Hey, Kido. I know that these are borrowed, but weren’t there any hiking clothes that were a little more attractive than this?”
    I said while pointing to the hiking clothes that I was wearing.
    “You’re the one that said you didn’t want to get your jersey dirty. I don’t know any clothes that would be more appropriate for hiking than those.”
    Kido replied, and sat down next to my outstretched right hand.
    But even so, how could you wear something this thick in the middle of summer?
    At the very least, some thinner clothing would’ve been……
    As I thought of this however, I remembered that these clothes were the choice of someone that was still wearing a long-sleeved parka as usual, so it’d be useless no matter I said.
    “…… Anyway, Mary sure lived in a crazy place. There’s practically nothing here. What did she do about food?”
    “I thought the same thing, and tried asking her about it, but…… No, it can’t be.”
    Kido said this, and held her head in her hand. I could easily guess that she had received some unbelievable answer in response.
    “Then, do you mean that……”
    “Yeah, it seems like she didn’t eat. She did drink, though. But when we first brought her back to the hideout, I remember her being surprised at the most common foods……”
    Mary had at last become a complete mystery. She hadn’t eaten anything in a place like this, and had lived for over a hundred years. She was just full of mysteries.
    “I can’t but think that maybe Mary’s an immortal witch or something. Living in the mountains and all.”
    “Yeah, I thought that too, just now. Well, I guess it can’t be helped with this heat.”
    We were in the middle of an overgrown forest.
    Well, Mary’s house was at the end of a path so complex and winding that I really had no idea if it was really the middle or not, but Kido and I chattered in front of it while shielding our heads from the sun.
    “So, what’re we going to do? We can’t do anything until we get inside.”
    “Mary told us to wait while she cleaned up the place, so it can’t be helped, right?”
    In this very unusual circumstance, how could I so simply feel like I’d been invited to hang out at a girl’s house?
    Normally, it might even be nice that my heart would start beating faster, but frankly speaking, I didn’t have the mood for it at all right now.
     
    Just when I thought I’d take a nap while waiting, Konoha’s face came into view as he peered down at me.
    “What is it?”
    “Ah, um……”
    When we’d left the hideout, we had made Konoha carry a huge rucksack in case we found something we’d want to take back, but since Mary had packed various drinks and other things along the way, he had completely fallen into the role of a carrying