Adventurer's Guild Café: I Was Wrongfully Exiled by the Saint, So I Will Enjoy My Second Life with My Fluffy Friends - V 2.2 Chapter 4.10

I was completely scrubbed down by Leah. She was thorough, to say the least.

“You’ve got such a scrawny body! Are you even eating properly?”

“…”

H-how did it end up like this? We were soaking in the bath now. Thanks to the Mofuricious shampoo, my ears and tail were giving off an incredible fragrance.

“…I am eating. It was just… um, before, things were a bit…”

“You don’t need to use polite speech with me. And what do you mean by ‘things were a bit’? Are you saying you used to live a life where you had to wear things that squeezed your waist or messed up the shape of your legs?”

“!”

She really had noticed. Well… now that I was naked, there was no way she wouldn’t.

“…Sorry if I’m being rude. But for some reason, I just can’t help but be concerned about you. Ever since we first met. I wonder why that is.”

Leah soaked a towel in cold water and placed it on her head.

“…It’s something you could tell at a glance anyway, so it’s fine.”

For some reason, from the very first time I met her, I hadn’t gotten a bad impression of Leah or Ingrid either.

“Were you raised in a human noble household—the kind that doesn’t understand beastkin at all?”

Leah shot me a sidelong glance.

“People don’t really do it anymore, but I heard that back in the old days, humans thought a narrow waist was attractive or something, and even though it caused health problems, they’d cinch their waists tight with corsets.”

Unfortunately, women in the Kingdom of Aluda still did that even now.

“But beastkin have their internal organs in different positions compared to humans. If you squeeze your body like that, it affects your health. …You end up like you, all skin and bones, with such a delicate frame.”

“…For the White Wolf Tribe, is being slender a bad thing?”

“No. Body shape doesn’t matter at all. As long as you’re healthy.”

Leah said that and gestured toward herself.

“I’m not that big either, you know. But I’m healthy, so it’s fine.”

That was true.

“Believe it or not, I’m actually one of the quickest in my whole family line.”

Leah laughed with a dry chuckle as she said it.

“But you know, there are some beastkin who are despised as sub-humans, and even their health is taken from them. I can’t stand that. I used to be sickly myself, so I know how it feels. To not be able to choose what to do with your own body, your own life—it’s unbearable. Even when they’re perfectly healthy, to have that stolen from them and be forced to live a life they don’t want… I just can’t forgive that.”

Those words pierced straight into my heart.

“My family, you know… we’ve always made it our mission to find beastkin like that and help them.”

As she said this, Leah turned her honey-colored eyes toward me.

…There must be more beastkin out there who grew up like I did—probably more than I wanted to believe.

“If you ever find yourself in trouble, with anything at all, you come talk to us, got it?”

“…Thank you.”

I smiled a little and got out of the bath.

“I’m starting to feel lightheaded, so I’ll head out first.”

“Once you dry off with the dryer, it’s going to be amazing!”

Leah winked as she said it. Still half in doubt, I toweled off and used the provided magic tool to dry my hair and tail. As I stared absently into the mirror, I started thinking.

──The environment I grew up in really was abnormal.

I might have even been stripped of something as basic as the natural right to “grow up healthy.” The Leiria household was even worse than I’d thought.

And maybe there were other things they’d taken from me too, things I hadn’t even realized yet.

An indifferent father. A spiteful stepmother and stepsister.

What else had they taken away from me…?

“Hm?”

While I was spacing out, my tail had completely dried. Curious how it turned out, I glanced back to check.

“Wha—!?”

Wh-what is this…!?

My tail was now fluffy and silky smooth. It had been so droopy before, but now it was full and voluminous. I couldn’t help but fluff it myself, completely moved by the change. Even my ears had become soft and fluffy.

Could changing shampoo really make this much of a difference…?

“Mofurlicious…!”

After indulging in as much fluffing as I wanted in front of the mirror, I naturally found myself whispering those words.