Dream Life - Episode 21

It is a story from the perspective of how the MC spends the day.

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September 25th.

　As usual, I wake up before dawn.

　It is a child’s body, and I often wake up from sleep feeling very sleepy, but thanks to my daily routine, I manage to wake up.

　I fight sleep and change into the clothes that Molly, my maid, has prepared for me in the dark room. Thanks to my enhanced eyesight, I can see things in the near pitch black darkness, which is quite convenient.

　After getting dressed, the first thing to do is to do some light exercises in the room.

　I slowly unraveled my body in the manner of stretching. The body of a four year old is indeed soft, and I can put my chest on the floor while spreading my legs 180 degrees.

　I want to maintain this flexibility, so I don’t miss my daily flexibility exercises. Perhaps because of this, the range of motion of the joints is quite large, although I wouldn’t call myself acrobatic.

　As I finished unraveling my body, the night slowly began to dawn.

　As usual, I took a small wooden sword for me and headed for the garden.

　Outside, the distinctive jagged ridges of the Aquila Mountains in the east become clearer and clearer in the rising sunlight. The colors of the four hills to the south slowly become more vivid as the morning fog clears.

　By this time, my grandfather had finished unwinding outside, and I stood beside him, greeting him.

“Good morning, grandfather. It looks like the weather will be fine today.”

“Good morning, Zach. Yes, it’s going to be another hot day.”

　While the two of us are enjoying our morning conversation, my brother Rod shows up.

“Good morning, Grandfather. Good morning, Zach. You’re always early.“

　My grandfather and I returned the greeting, and the three of us readied our swords.

　As my grandfather began to swing his sword, my brother and I also began to swing in silence.

　I hadn’t learned many patterns yet, so I waved the few I could remember in unison.

　My brother seems to choose the pattern he likes depending on his mood that day, and today he was swinging a pattern that focuses on thrusting.

　My grandfather spat out a sharp spirit, as if there was an enemy right in front of him, yet it was a beautiful movement, like a sword dance.

　When the sky was completely bright, Mel and her brother, Sim, and siblings, Dan and Sharon, came up the hill.

　Then, after greeting my grandfather, they started swinging in the same way.

　Sharon was the only one watching us, doing the exercises I had taught her beside us.

　We kept swinging our swords until my grandfather finished his swing.

　It takes about thirty minutes, but even in the cool of the morning, by the time I’m done I’m gasping for air and sweating.

　Then, one by one, each of us practiced in front of my grandfather, and our odd points were corrected.

　After the morning drill, Mel and the others went back to their house, and we headed for the well in the back.

　By this time, Walt was pumping water from the well, and the tub was filled with cold water. I wash my face with the water and my head starts to feel clearer.

　As I soaked my hand towel in the cold water and wiped my body, I could feel my heated body cooling down. This feeling is irresistible for me.

　In my former world, I exercised when I was a student, but after I joined the company, I did very little exercise. I only went to the gym when I got a free ticket, but I hadn’t done any exercise for over twenty years.

　I move my body and sweat. That’s all there is to it, but it feels so good.

　After I finished wiping myself down, I headed straight for the dining room. By this time, the fragrant aroma of baking breakfast bread was wafting around the well, inviting my appetite.

　In the dining room, Molly and her daughter, Tricia, were preparing breakfast, while my father and mother were already sitting at the table.

　When we showed up, my father, mother, and Liddy greeted us with smiles. We greeted them in the same way and went straight to the table.

　The breakfast menu was almost the same, but at my request, boiled milk, butter, and cheese –since it is a hard cheese, it is lightly cooked in the residual heat of the oven– were added.

　I suggested that my growing brother and I would need some calcium.

　Until then, it was just a butter and cheese dish at dinner, but I figured I should get some more calcium.

　To be frank, I don’t know anything about nutrition. But for some reason, I just thought it was “milk” for kids.

　It was still the same hard bread and soup with no ingredients, but the addition of dairy products made it more like breakfast. I’d like to try making ham and bacon in a little while.

　In this village, there was no smoking of meat or fish, and the only meat available was fresh – often wild animals other than livestock – or salted.

　After breakfast, I washed my face and relaxed a bit.

　My father had to go to work for the village administration, and my grandfather had to go to do paperwork for the Vigilante, so I could take it easy for an hour or so. I tend to take advantage of this time to read or chat with Liddy.

　When my grandfather finished his paperwork, the morning drill began.

　The vigilantes were also coming up the hill, and when they saw us, they bowed their heads and greeted us.

　About ten vigilante men line up in the plaza west of the mansion. Walt checks each man’s equipment, and when he finds something wrong with it, he puts his face close to it and shouts at them like a demon sergeant in the U.S. Army.

　I was very surprised at first to see another side of Walt, who was usually quiet and kind to us.

　When he and my grandfather started training together, they looked like the instructor and assistant drill sergeant from the movies. No disrespect to the two of them, but I remember laughing a little.

　The younger group, consisting of Mel, Dan, and I, stood at the far end of the plaza and swung our swords incessantly.

　A few days ago, Mel’s swordsmanship skill had been raised to level two, and Dan’s spirit seemed to have grown even stronger.

　Next to us, my brother and Sim are also wielding swords and occasionally taking curses from my grandfather.

　We would take a break after 30 minutes, but my brothers would go straight into a mock battle.

　The partner are mostly my grandfather or Walt, and sometimes Hector, Mel’s father, or Guy, Sharon’s father.

　Both my brother and Sim were moving pretty well for eight-year-olds, I thought, but my grandfather and Walt hadn’t taken any offense to them, even though they were singlehandedly dealing with them while looking at the vigilantes.

　After the break, we started swinging again.

　The pattern was just a repetition of my grandfather’s instructions, and to be honest, it was very boring. It would have been more interesting if the training had been more practical, but I couldn’t go against my grandfather’s teaching policy.

　Besides, my brother has already been training for three years under this policy, so it would be wrong for me to be the only one to complain.

　Our training was over in about an hour, but our brothers and the vigilante men still had more training to do.

　We rested under the shade of the trees, wiping off our sweat, and began to play when we were no longer tired.

　Play is more like training, with rope climbing, tree climbing, and the wooden cloud ladder hoop and aerial platform that Walt made for me.

　I think climbing trees is a dangerous game for a little kid like me. In fact, I have been injured many times and had to be taken to the healer.

　When the healer first cast a spell on me, I had this thought.

　If it’s just a broken bone, it can be fixed quickly. As long as you don’t hit your head or hurt your internal organs, you can do something quite violent.

　Yes, for minor injuries, magic is more immediate and superior to modern medical science. So I’ve come to believe that it’s okay to train a little harder.

　In addition to playing with these tools, now that they can do forward and backward rolls, they practice side rolls and backflips, play catch with a ball made of rolled up cloth, and other games that I can think of that might be useful for training. These games were well received by the other three, and it was sometimes hard for me to keep up with them.

　Aside from the active Mel, I thought that the quiet Sharon would be bored, but despite her quiet appearance, her athleticism is quite good. I think she could do pretty well with some sword fighting practice, but I guess her personality is not suited for it.

　I have to go to Bertram’s workshop the dwarf today, so Nicholas will take me there by horse and I will return at lunch time.

　At Beltram’s place, I will check on the progress of the distiller and return to the mansion as soon as I have cleared up any questions from him.

　The distance is about one kilometer, so it won’t take much time if you go by horse.

　I don’t know about other houses, but at least the Lockhart’s eat a proper lunch.

　The menu is not much different from that of the morning, but it sometimes includes freshly boiled vegetables, river fish and meat provided by the vigilantes.

　Then comes nap time.

　What I felt when I became a child’s body was that my body would insist on eating and sleeping.

　I was eating quite a lot of food, but my body still wanted to snack. I told my mother and Molly about it, and they prepared baked goods like cookies, crunchy rusks made from the leftover bread from lunch with honey, and other calorie-rich foods.

　Both my mother and Molly were against snacking at first, but I was able to easily argue them out of it when I told them that kids who exercise need calories. I guess my past life knowledge made them think it was good for the kids’ bodies.

　To be honest, I don’t know if snacking on high-calorie foods is a good idea. But since my body is asking for it, I feel that it is necessary.

　Of course, this assumes that you are exercising intensely, so I don’t think you have to worry about obesity …….

　As for sleep, I go to bed early – about two hours after sunset in this season, and adults are usually asleep by 8 p.m. – but I also wake up early, so I sleep for about nine hours a night.

　I am always absurdly sleepy after lunch. The sleepiness is worse than the boring meetings after lunch when I was an office worker. I usually sleep for about two hours and wake up around 2:30 pm.

　Then it’s Liddy’s magic class.

　The sword training is fun, but the most enjoyable time right now is this magic class and the magic training time at night.

　Sharon and I studied magic, while Dan and Mel read the relatively easy story books I had brought with me.

　Dan and Mel are also learning how to read well for five-year-olds, and they can read an easy-to-read book without any help from me or Liddy. I don’t know about English-speaking children, but I think they might be geniuses in a way.

　And then there is Sharon, who is much more advanced in her studies for a child of this world compared to other four-year-old.

　I taught her letters, arithmetic, multiplication tables, and now she is probably at the level of a middle grade Japanese elementary school student. When I taught her that day, she remembered it perfectly by the next day, so I got carried away with teaching her, but since she didn’t mind even once, I just got on with it.

　Sharon and I listened intently to Liddy’s explanation, and Liddy taught us what we didn’t understand as clearly as she could. I really think she should become a teacher.

　After thirty minutes of classroom lectures, it was time for practical training.

　My manipulation of magic is no problem at all, so Sharon will be learning from Liddy one-on-one.

　I went over to Dan and Mel in the meantime to start reading a book with them.

　The two of them read stories, and I read a book on magic that I borrowed from Liddy, but sometimes Mel interrupted me. As I read, I gave her some attention.

　She looked like a child who comes to interrupt her father while he is reading the newspaper.

　I’ve been reading a magic book while giving her some attention, but lately she’s been getting on my back and pulling my leg. It has become a routine for me lately to put down my books and play with her a little, thinking that she wants attention.

　When Sharon’s training was over, it was usually around four in the afternoon.

　The vigilante training was about to end, and they were returning to the village at the same time we arrived. They were almost dragging their feet and looked like a picture of exhaustion.

　Mel’s father, Hector, told me that on the two training days a month, they look forward to having the closing party with their training buddies.

　Hector had also heard at the vigilante banquet that the proper way for a man in this village was to go to the Black Pond Pavilion, the only tavern in the village, and drink as much as he could and endure my grandfather’s strict training. Hector, who is the caretaker of the vigilante group, also laughed when he was troubled by everyone’s explanation.

　Well, the villagers who are saying this also seem to be grateful to Grandfather. They said that the village has become so peaceful since my grandfather came here, and now there are hardly any monsters entering the village, and the bandits – there are a lot of them around here – are not targeting the village.

　Around four o’clock in the afternoon, the swinging begins again.

　Unlike the cool morning air, the muggy heat lingered, and as I began to swing, sweat immediately began to pour out of me.

　My brother and Sim are wobbling while swinging their swords. At this time of day, my father and his helper, Walt’s son Enos, also participate in the training.

　My father’s is still better, but Enos is wielding his spear while Walt keeps cursing at him. He is a spearman like his father, Walt, but he is not very good at it, probably due to his short training time.

　I can’t say anything about the reason why he had to cut back on his training time – mainly because Nicholas, the key figure in internal affairs, became my assistant, but I always thought he should be a little more physically active.

　My father is always getting beaten up in mock battles with my grandfather, so maybe the two childhood friends are complaining to each other after dinner.

　Before 5:00 p.m., all training for the day is completed.

　Mel and the others went home, and we headed back to the well.

　There is no bath in this house. Not even a shower. This is inevitable because the water for drinking and cooking is drawn from a well, while the water for livestock drinking and daily use such as washing and cleaning is provided by rainwater, which is stored in a large tank. As an ex-Japanese, this was the most distressing thing for me.

　I soak myself in the hot water and exhale. I can’t enjoy that feeling of being warmed from the core of my body.

　I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but I’m planning to build a bath in this house someday. That’s for sure in the near future.

　I have written the time so far, but there is no clock in this village. Therefore, the time I have written is a rough estimate based on the position of the sun.

　Having lived by the minute and sometimes by the second with a wristwatch and a cell phone watch, life without a watch was often a bit of a challenge for me. However, I now think that this kind of life is good.

　By the way, I heard that there is a special magic tool for clocks, and if you are in a town or a village along the road, you can find it around the town hall or the village chief’s house.

　After a cold dip in the well, it was time for dinner.

　The main ingredients for the dinner menu are either brought by the vigilante or obtained by Hector and Sharon’s father Guy, who are often out on patrol.

　Especially the wild birds and wild boar that Guy fetches in the forest are quite a treat in this mansion.

　At this time of the year, pheasants, partridges, and quail are very plentiful, making roasted wild birds a common sight on the dinner table. As a lover of wild game in my previous life, this place is like heaven for me, but unfortunately, I can’t drink alcohol yet.

　For the wild taste of pheasant, I prefer a dark red wine – Pinot Noir, not Cabernet, personally – and for sautéed fatty wild boar belly, a sweet white wine – Sauternes or other noble rot wine – is fine.

　The moist texture and rich aroma of mountain dove, and the delicate flesh of forest pigeon…… are indeed not the same, but ordinary mountain pigeon is sometimes served on the table! –I would like to have red wine with these as well. I would also like to eat grouse, which have a distinctive bitter taste, but they are not found in this area.

　But sadly, I can’t drink alcohol. And there are not many good quality wines in this village. The wine was a little cloudy by the looks of it, and seemed to have a messy taste.

　From what I saw in the vineyard, there were black grapes, but I don’t know anything about grapes, and I don’t know how to make wine, so there’s no way to improve the quality at my current age when I can’t drink.

　Today’s dinner, unfortunately, was a regular salted meat dish.

　I’m not complaining because this is delicious, but I can’t help but expect more from this season.

　Seared salted pork with potato and bean stew, served with bread.

　Potatoes existed in this world. There are also tomatoes and peppers. I’ve never seen tomatoes in this village, I only know about them from a book.

　On Earth, this food came from the Americas, but in this world, it seems to have been around for a long time.

　There are many places where there is no information on the map, as if there is no expedition team. The most famous place is the east side, beyond the Aquila Mountains, which can be seen to the east of this village.

　The people over here call the land Quaedam Tenebrae = Eternal Darkness, and they seem to be aware that it is a terrible land ruled by demon tribes. For this reason, the eastern side of the Aquila Mountains was depicted as a blank area on the map.

　It just says that there is an ocean on both the west and south sides, but no one has checked what is beyond that.

　I’ve heard that the Kaelum Empire has a flying dragon unit, so I’m thinking that if we combine a sailing ship with a flying dragon unit, we could investigate a pretty large area.

　My grandfather and my father group are drinking and chatting with each other. It was slowly getting dark outside, as Walt and the others lit up the light magical tools.

　I loved watching the sunset from the top of this hill.

　To the west of this village is a large mountain range called the Porta Mountains, and the sun sets between the mountains.

　As I gaze at the mountain, the sun is slowly falling on its peak. Then, as it gradually sinks, it leaves behind a dot of light for a moment, and finally, all the dazzling orange sunshine disappears.

　Immediately after that, a black mountain shadow appears to float in the red sky. Then, when I looked up directly above me, I saw the reddish-red sky gradually turning into dark blue.

　Looking further back, the rugged peaks of the Aquila Mountains slowly melted into the blue sky.

　No matter how many times I see it, I never get tired of it.

　As I stared up at the dark blue sky, the stars began to appear one by one.

　There are no stars that I know of. However, when I see a band of stars like the Milky Way in a sky full of stars, it reminds me of the night sky I saw at my relative’s house deep in the mountains when I was a child.

　On a clear day, I often watch a beautiful sunset.

　And behind me, there is always someone more beautiful than the scenery.

“Were you watching the sunset again?　And the sky?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful no matter how many times I see it, and it’s fun to watch because it changes its expression with the seasons.“

　Liddy giggles, then says to me, “The sky’s expression …… you’re very strange, aren’t you?”

　I said, “I won’t deny it. But it’s beautiful,” I said without looking at her.

　As it is, we start practicing magic in the garden, but it always seems to start in a somewhat embarrassing way.

　This is my day, and I think it’s definitely a hard schedule for a four year old.

　I really want more time. There are so many things I want to do.

　I’ve never had such a fulfilling life in my previous world. At this moment, I can’t deny that I’m just dreaming. It’s such a dreamlike life.

　But there’s still more to do. Tomorrow I’ll start the final process of the distiller, and I want to make a bath.

　And beyond that ……

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