Large Package [The Frail Maiden]

I gently place the large package on the old leather sofa that sits in the first-floor hall, which suits this dilapidated building perfectly.
It doesn't look like anything fragile, but I don't know what she would say if something were to happen to it.
Still, how did she manage to carry such a large package all the way here? I didn't even hear a car pull up.

She slumps down onto the single-seater sofa opposite me, letting her whole body go limp.
"Ugh, I'm exhausted. I feel like I've finished a whole day's work; I can't move anymore. M-kun, could you carry me to my bed? Princess-carry style."
I won't be fooled by that beautiful girl smile.
Besides, it's only just past two in the afternoon.

When I first received a letter from her last year at high school and met her in the library, I don't think she was like this...
No, I suppose it hasn't changed that she moves around based on her own convenience and schedule.
But looking back now, I feel like she was hiding her true colors quite a bit back in high school.

In the first place, I think the reason she finds it such a chore to return to her room is because she decided to make her room on the top floor of this dilapidated building.
My uncle told me I could use any room except for the ones on the first and second floors, and after exploring the rooms from the third floor up with her (literally exploring a den of monsters), we encountered all sorts of impossible things—but I'll write about that another time—and it's tough to climb the stairs of this building, which has no elevator, one step at a time every single day.
Since the kitchen and bathroom are both on the first floor, I wonder if she didn't realize how difficult all that climbing up and down would be.

I remembered! She declared it like this:
"When writing a novel, the imagery is important. If I look at the outside scenery every day from a place even a little higher—the fourth floor rather than the third, the fifth rather than the fourth—I think I'll be able to come up with wonderful landscapes while writing my novel."

It's true that for being within the 23 wards of Tokyo, there is a lot of nature around here, and I can understand what she's saying, but was it a mistake for me to say, 'Then why not just pitch a tent on the roof?' at that time?

"M-kun, I am a frail maiden. Do you intend to leave a maiden out in the rain?" she glared at me.
Heaven forbid. I am healed by that beautiful girl smile every day.

But how did a 'frail maiden' manage to bring home such a large load?

After a while of the large package sitting on the sofa and her remaining motionless in her slumped position, I heard footsteps coming down from the second floor as my uncle descended the stairs.
"Did you manage to bring it back? Good work."
It seems she had been running an errand for my uncle.
My uncle reaches for the large package sitting on the sofa.
"It's bigger than I thought. It must have been hard to bring back, right?"

She answers while still slumped on the sofa.
"Hard? When I handed the claim ticket you gave me at the shop counter, two clerks brought this large package out from the back of the store. They carried it out to the front of the shop for me, but as soon as they handed it over, they retreated back inside, closed the door, and that was that. My hands were full, and I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there in front of the shop, stunned for a while."

"I gave you taxi money, didn't I? It should have been more than enough to get from Kotto-dori to here."

"Uncle, I'm just a student who hasn't even made her literary debut yet. Do you really expect me to take a taxi all the way from Aoyama to this remote part of the 23 wards?"
What she says seems to have some persuasive power.
But she did receive the taxi money from my uncle, didn't she? Did she pocket the money she was given?

As I was blankly watching her sitting there as if she were lying on the sofa, I noticed her earlobes sparkling.
My uncle seems to have noticed it too.
He goes over to where she is sitting slumped on the sofa and lightly tugs on her right ear.

"Oh, did you get your ears pierced? That stone is beautiful."
Just as my uncle says, a piercing with a stone shining in a sky-blue color I've never seen before is sparkling on her earlobe.
You ask how I know about her piercings?
It's one of the things that has kept me being pushed around by her ever since I received that letter last autumn.

(To be continued)