My job is to run a mint cream croquette stand with everyone, and most of the customers are hexarrapids. When one complains that there aren’t any space eels dipped in soy sauce, I snap and have a dance battle with an eel, that then wraps itself around my body.
I suddenly wake up from my comfortable nap. I know now that I’m awake, but why did I mistake something so absurd for reality and did it so seriously…
Then I see Saratha’s tail is wrapped all around me… Eel? I try my best not to wake her up as I grab my smartphone, and feel something is off.
An unfamiliar ceiling… No, it’s the living room. It’s the ceiling of the living room. That’s right, after enjoying some light drinking with her last night, we both fell asleep here.
I remember most of it, and I check the news with my right arm, the one that’s free.
I see a few big headlines, and stop when I see a word I remember. The headline says ‘Pentoul II attacked by biological weapons’.
The contents are of little importance, it just criticizes Pentoul Prime for failing to know that the space pirate destroyer crashed there.
It’s news from a prime far from where we are, To Akul Prime, so that’s as good as it gets.
It’s been three days since the end of the operation to eradicate biological weapons. We docked in To Akul yesterday, and we’ve been lazily resting ever since.
This last job was done within a gravitational field, and I’ve learned a few things. I don’t want to fight under gravity, the shield can handle a few shots from a big laser cannon, and there are refugees from the Earth sphere that became space pirates and are currently causing problems.
The reward wasn’t high, and we couldn’t get inside the domed city in Pentoul II. And since we would have to buy a hundred thousand puni worth of seafood at minimum, the crew didn’t accept buying that much.
I talked to other mercenaries, who said they didn’t buy any either. Some said they weren’t paid enough for that, others said they didn’t have the means to store fresh food in the first place.
But it’s too bad. Are luxuries like these impossible without a big transport ship with large refrigerated container or combat motherships?
But I feel like a combat mothership would necessitate a larger crew to operate it. That means spending more money too… I feel like mercenary work is both profitable and doesn’t pay enough. Are there big enough jobs where I can use that and still make a profit?
I check the Mercenary Guild’s home page, and suddenly my smartphone is taken from above.
“You’re lookin’ at the Mercenary Guild?”
“I was checking for nice work.”
Saratha lightly taps my head, and hands the smartphone to Iris, who approached us without me noticing. And she wraps herself around me better.
Saratha, the snake person with red hair and a red tail, has a torso that’s over ten meters long, and while we sometimes sleep together in the living room on her futon, she never wraps herself around me like this.
I’ve slept with her wrapped around me like this in my room, but never openly like today.
“We should be resting during a break…”
“You say that, but we should also accept a new job after the break…”
“Can’t we just hunt space eels? It’s profitable enough, right?”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t make use of the shield and main cannon at all…”
This ship’s equipment is pretty over the top. That’s why we can respond to an emergency situation calmly, but the shield output is usually at a third of its capacity, and the main cannon is idle.
“Have you forgotten that hunting space eels and turtles gets you fifty thousand puni in a day? That’s more than I used to make in a year.”
“But shouldn’t I get greedier, rank up, and look for work that gets me a hundred thousand in a day?”
“Greed kills. I get how you feel, but still…”
I guess… Could we push through hunting eels for a year? In theory, a hundred days would be five million puni. If I don’t make impulsive organic food purchases, we can hold back our expenses a lot. Hn… Then the automatic door opens.
“Ooh. Good morning… Uwah.”
“Good morning. Don’t look so weirded out, Suzuri.”
“Good morning. Isn’t that uwah a bit rude?”
“Good morning.”
Says Suzuri as she walks up to the counter, and punches something into the drink and food printers.
Iris then walks over to us, and covers us with a towel blanket. I guess we are half naked.
Suzuri, a mouse beast person, sits down on a stool, waving her gray tail with her brown mouse years pointing up, playing with her shoulder length brown hair as she waits for it to finish.
She’s less than a hundred forty centimeters tall, and looks like a high or middle school student, so it looks kind of bad when she’s with me. But I guess it’s not that rare in an age where people can have surgery to extend their lives to five hundred years.
“I think it’s time to get up.”
“Hn… I wanna enjoy the warmth some more…”
Saratha is acting clingy today. We’ve been together for less than half a year, but this is pretty rare for her. She rubs me with her tail and pulls me closer.
“It is eight o’clock, time to get up. Do you want warm bean tea, hot coffee, or hot cola?”
“I’ll have warm bean tea.”
I say to Suzuri.
“Me too.”
I guess it is time to get up. Iris brings me something that looks like what you’d wear in a ryokan, and I finally put some clothes on my upper body. Iris the mechanical intelligence looks like a butler, but acts like a maid…
“Should I change into a maid outfit soon?”
“Don’t read my mind.”
“That starts to happen when you have a bunch of women around, uh…”
“Pervert…”
“I didn’t say anything. But if you start being like that, we’ll start having cosplay days and I’ll get maid outfits.”
Suzuri shows her teeth in a threatening way, and Saratha taps my head. The automatic door opens again, and a very fizzy Kori enters the living room.
“I heard darling wants to cosplay~!!!”
She’s a cola float slime girl, called a laflotty. Her head and torso are made of cola, and she’s always carbonated and somewhat chilled. Her hair is like white soft ice cream, and tastes like it when I lick it. And it’s pretty cold.
Her main body is what’s called a slime core, a jiggly thing the size of a softball. All her internal organs are there. She can take any form she wants, and lately it’s been one that’s always plump in the chest area.
She wears clothes, but she’s wearing the red gown she wears to sleep.
“I don’t!”
“If you were to force me to, someone in my weak position would have no choice… A fashion show would start, and many pictures would be taken… And you would take many lewd pictures of me in lewd underwear…”
“Suzuri seems pretty on board. That’s funny.”
Suzuri then says it would be funny to try on strange clothes, and that she is a beautiful girl after all, as Iris brings food and drinks from the printers.
“Clothes… I’ve never seen a clothing store in a colony… Oh no…”
The moment I say that, the girls look at me like predators.
“Okay, let’s talk about the budget first, but let’s go shopping today.”
“““Yay!”””
I’m gonna need to make some good money when this break is over…
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Saratha brings me something that looks like what you’d wear in a ryokan
You mean iris?