EP.39 Cleanliness is Life
If the Bottomless Pit has an advantage over the surface, it would probably be the air quality.
It is hard to understand. The wind comes from the sky, and it is common knowledge that the air on the ground, which contains all sorts of filth, is dirtier. So why is the air of the Bottomless Pit, the farthest from the sky, clear?
That is exactly due to the characteristics of the Bottomless Pit.
This place is cursed by the Earth Mother Goddess, so soil and dust, which are her fabrics, avoid this place as if it were a law of nature. That is why the wasteland is not eroded despite the presence of such a massive Bottomless Pit. Because soil and dust do not fall, this place is surprisingly not dirty.
In addition, the Bottomless Pit has no bottom. To borrow an expression favored by mathematicians, no matter how far below I am, there is always a place further down. Therefore, things heavier than air sink further down.
The air that would normally stagnate all drains downward. If you occasionally feel a rare breeze in Tantalus, it is a fragment of wind that has lost its way and is falling down the Bottomless Pit. The shipwrecked wind embraces things that melt into the wind like dust and smells, and flows down through the holes scattered throughout the Bottomless Pit. As a result, the air inside the Bottomless Pit is exceedingly clear and clean.
When measuring the quality of life, whether there is a space below me is a much more important indicator than where I am. This is because all sorts of dirty things fall further down and accumulate there.
From this, we can indirectly understand that happiness is a relative value.
Still, the fact that wind is rare and the air is heavy remains unchanged, but at least it guarantees healthy breathing, so how could I not be grateful?
...Perhaps, making the curse of the Earth Mother Goddess meaningless, the Bottomless Pit might be quite a pleasant space except for the lack of light.
"Woof! Woof woof!"
Another refreshing morning starting with the dog alarm. I stretched both arms and took a deep breath of the crisp air through my nose.
"Aaaachoo!"
"W-woof!"
A sneeze like a bomb went off. An unexpected guest that visited from the morning squeezed my lungs. Startled, Aji gathered both arms to her chest and stared at me.
Tch, a violent sneeze in the morning means my condition will be bad for the rest of the day. My muscles get startled, you know.
More than that, why the sudden sneeze?
"Has a lot of daily dust built up after living here for a few days...?"
As I wiped my nose, I faintly saw something flying in the air. I frowned and glared at the thing flying around the room. It was hard to see clearly due to the lack of light. That golden, long, flexible, and curving slender thing....
"Fur?"
"Woof!"
Aji barks looking at me. Just then, the fur on Aji's head and limbs catches my eye. A mix of brown and gold—no, originally gold, but looking dirty from grime.
That fur was the exact same color as the thing floating in the air now. Looking dirty, and covered in dust.
Hmm.
"Aji."
"Woof?"
"Wanna go eat tonkatsu?"
"Woof! I do, I do!"
Aji doesn't even know what tonkatsu is, but agrees to go eat anyway. I smiled softly at such an Aji.
Water flows downward. It acts as a messenger delivering letters between the Heavenly God and the Earth Mother Goddess, traveling between the sky and the earth. Therefore, the liquid that is not entirely the Earth Mother Goddess's instinctively digs into lower places. Regardless of whether that place is the Bottomless Pit.
However, the Bottomless Pit is an infinite abyss. Even a cute airborne division jumping all at once from the clouds to the ground riding a convex parachute would fade away while heading toward the eternally unreachable ground in the Bottomless Pit. The water that has melted into the air now floats around as another kind of air.
The Empire's special water tank collects this vaporized water. When water condenses on the massive collector enchanted with Aquus Magic, it flows through a filtered pipe into the water tank. There, it quietly waits until someone below turns on the faucet.
Due to the prison break incident, the water tank, which had seen a significant drop in usage, was brimming with water. With humans gone, abundance arrived.
After checking the amount of water, I nodded with satisfaction.
"Alright. This should be enough to wash that mutt."
I temporarily closed the water tank and instead connected a hose to the pipe. When I opened the hose as a test, water flowed out sluggishly as if something was clogged. Perhaps because there wasn't much difference in height, the water pressure was weak. It'd be better to collect some water in advance before washing.
I took the hose and a makeshift bathtub, found a spot near the drain, and called Aji.
"Here, Aji..."
However, when I turned my head, Aji had already run far away. Aji hid behind a square box, barking as if the hose I was holding was a gun.
"Woof."
"Aji. Come here. You need to wash."
"Woof."
"What do you mean you don't want to? Look at your hands and feet."
Aji raised her hands and feet as I said. Between the lush tufts of fur that looked like she was wearing fluffy fur gloves, all sorts of dust and grime were hiding.
She looks dirty, but that's actually relatively okay. If it were the surface instead of the Bottomless Pit, that autonomous four-legged dust-mop dog would have swept up all the dust and paraded around Tantalus.
"See? Dirty, right?"
"No, it's clean!"
"What are you talking about? You call that clean?"
"Woof! I lick my fur sometimes! It's clean!"
Then Aji stuck her tongue out to her hand. She was about to put her tongue to that hotbed of disease.
Haha. Is she crazy.
"Stop!"
"Woof!"
Aji froze just as she was about to touch her tongue to her hand and rolled her eyes. Sighing, I put down the hose and approached Aji.
"Are you a cat? You don't normally lick yourself, but now that I'm paying attention, you try to lick? Stop it. It's dirty."
"Woof! I'm not dirty!"
"It's dirty. There's so much dust. It smells, and you're shedding a lot of fur too."
"Woof! You shed a lot of fur too!"
"Don't compare your fur to my hair! Even if they share the same letter for 'hair', they're different genres!"
Fuming, I approached Aji, put my hands under her armpits from behind, and dragged her along. Aji twisted her body as if she didn't like it, but she didn't shake me off and run away.
But as we got closer to the hose, Aji's feet stood stiff, and her claws dug into the ground. Aji's body was nailed down—no, just embedded in the concrete, not moving an inch.
"Hah, geez. I can't just drag you like this..."
The opponent is the king of beasts. I couldn't do anything with my strength.
This is when you need the fable of the North Wind and the Sun. If I can't do anything about her body, I have to change her mind. I leaned my face over Aji's head and said.
"Aji. Come here. Let's just wash."
"Woof."
"If you wash, I'll make you something delicious."
"Woof..."
The word "delicious" seemed to make Aji hesitate for a moment. Why does she only want to move when offered a treat? Even when I manipulated the Empire's bureaucrats, it wasn't this bad. How can a dog be worse than a prime minister?
But what can I do? The weak one has to endure. This dog is stronger than any prime minister.
I whispered sweet words into Aji's ear.
"Remember the Hamburg steak last time? You grill the meat, heat the pan with that oil, and when the pork fat temperature rises enough, you grill the patty made by grinding it with beans."
"Wooah..."
"But actually, that Hamburg steak was incomplete. It lacked stickiness, so the texture crumbled. It was no different from a meat paste grilled on a pan. But this time is different. There were eggs in the rations, and butter too. Even though they cheaply didn't even give us a full portion... Anyway. This time, I can make a perfect Hamburg steak that sticks together as one, cooking in plenty of oil."
"Woof..."
Stimulating the opponent's senses. The strength drains from Aji's entire body. When I pulled again, her claws popped right out. I smiled a smile of triumph and dragged Aji near the drain.
"Good girl, good girl..."
Now. First, strip her clothes. Then throw her in the tub and splash water on her. After scrubbing her whole body vigorously, I'll wash the stripped clothes while Aji dries her body. It would be nice to have clothes to change into, but all the clothes left here are clothing packets. Aji doesn't have a bio-terminal on her body, so she can't wear them. Hmm. I'll just have to tell her to wait while they dry.
The plan was set. I let go of Aji for a moment and opened the hose to collect some water. The trickling water fell into the small box prepared as a makeshift bathtub. The sound of water drops drumming on the box echoed.
"Woof."
Swoosh.
And this mutt ran far away, making my effort to drag her here meaningless. Barking shortly as if she felt a bit pricked.
"Woof."
I pressed my face and let out a deep sigh. It's not like she's a king or something. I'm offering to wash her while attending to her, and she refuses even that?
No, she is a king. But she's not my king. At best, she's the king of dogs.
I'm getting angry. I've been humoring her so far with the feeling of raising a cute dog, but if she's going to be this self-willed, there's no reason to put up with it anymore.
"Woof...?"
Aji barked at me cautiously. As if noticing my anger, she kept glancing at me.
Even so, my mood didn't improve. No, rather, the fact that she knew how I felt but still didn't come right here was highly displeasing.
Furious, I immediately sat down on the spot.
"Hey. Puppy."
Calling her name made Aji flinch. I sat cross-legged, hugging myself, and spoke with emotion.
"Are you really going to be like this? Even after seeing me sneeze earlier?"
Bang bang. I banged the floor hard with the prepared bowl. Then Aji startled and made a guilty expression.
Trembling voice, contorted expression, rough breath.
Clear signs of anger.
Dogs are humanity's old friends, and they can read human emotions to some extent. No, perhaps they can perceive them much better than humans can. Humans learn to hide their feelings from others under the name of 'politeness', but we don't show politeness to dogs. That's why we love dogs.
Anyway. I was angry, and I had no intention of hiding it. As I intended, Aji clearly recognized my mood.
"I cook for you, play fetch with you, and even go on walks with you! Every time I eat, I call you, and I pet that dirty fur of yours every single day! I do all this for you! Why won't you even try to wash?!"
"Whimper..."
Terrified, Aji tucked her tail. But that's not enough. I was planning to ease up on the scolding only if she came to me on her own.
What if she doesn't come?
That's the end. The long relationship with that mutt ends here. I intend to abandon her in my heart.
"If you only lived in the yard, it'd be fine. But you come inside the building! Sometimes you even climb onto my bed! Then my nest gets all dirty! Do you think I wash every day for no reason? Unlike you, I need cleanliness!"
"Yelp, whimper."
"If you can't even endure this much, you're not the puppy I know. From now on, I'll kick you first thing when I see you. Got it?"
"Yelp..."
It seems the bond we've built wasn't in vain. Honestly, if it had continued like that, I would have felt a deep disillusionment toward the beast. Aji must not have wanted to cut ties with me either, as she carefully approached me step by step.
Phew, alright. It's something that she came. I sat Aji on my lap and wrapped my arms around her. Then, with my right hand, I turned the hose and let water flow into the box.
The falling water droplets and the rhythm they created as they successively hit the water surface. It was a refreshing sound of washing away dirt, but to Aji, it seemed to sound like a dirge of evil spirits. Aji closed her eyes tightly as if getting goosebumps, clamped her mouth shut, and turned her head to the opposite side of the sound.
Even in the midst of that, she didn't unwrap my arms and run away. She endured it admirably.
Good attitude. I turned off the hose and patted Aji's head.
"Good, well done."
"Woof..."
A weak whimper. I don't like it either, but it can't be helped. I'll be living with Aji for a few more months, and we can't cultivate diseases by exchanging each other's dust and germs every time we make contact, can we?
Seriously, if this weren't the Bottomless Pit, I would have already caught a disease and then some.
"Now. Let's take off your clothes first. Raise your arms."
Aji, still keeping her eyes tightly shut, raised her arms about halfway. I tried to take off Aji's clothes, but feeling something catch and snag, I looked at Aji's clothes again.
I don't know who did it, but the shirt was tied tightly below the chest. It was tied so tightly that it wouldn't come undone easily. It seemed like it was done to keep the clothes from slipping off or to prevent someone from trying to take them off.
"Good grief. They do all sorts of things."
The Clothing Packet provides clothes that perfectly fit the wearer's body size. That goes for the standard-issue shirt on the innermost layer as well. The sleeves and neckline are so snug that it's impossible to put on or take off using the method when not using a packet. There's no excess fabric like this.
But Aji, who doesn't have a bio-terminal, can't use the clothing packet. So she must have been made to wear a shirt a few sizes larger. Thus, the clothes would slip down or come off easily, and to prevent that, it was necessary to tie up the slipping parts...
"Who's going to undress a dog..."
...I say that, but being conscious of it makes it weird. Whatever Aji's true nature is, what I see is still a female body, so it strangely bothers me. Are humans ultimately creatures constrained by outward appearances?
Well, whatever. Useless thoughts. I am a normal human. Let's just finish undressing her.
The tightly tied hem hindered my work. But who am I? I am the magician of the back alleys. I can tie and untie my own hands, and I'm a master of handiwork who can tie a knot with a single finger. Something like this is nothing.
If I insert my finger into that gap and twist it gently, it should loosen. Alright. Let's untie it quickly and throw her into the tub....
It was then. The Returnee appeared from the rooftop door. As if she had just finished training, her hair and parts of her clothes were soaked in sweat.
"The water isn't coming out here, did someone lock the water tank? Without even saying..."
The Returnee, who was peeling off the hair stuck to her forehead, found me and froze. Instantly, the Returnee's eyes narrowed, and a sharp gaze swept over me and Aji.
'Sitting Aji on my lap, trying to undress her while restraining her from behind. Aji is trembling with both eyes tightly closed.'
The Returnee's thought process was truly short. In a purely literal sense. The Returnee thought only up to that point and drew Cheoneum.
'Alright. Let's kill him.'
Wait. Isn't there a leap in logic? More than that, how can 'Alright' and 'Let's kill him' come out together? Killing is not alright at all?
Hostility swells. I urgently hid behind Aji and shouted.
"Wait a minute! This is not what you think it is, Trainee!"
"Cheongeomgi. Thunder Bird..."
"I said stop it!!"