Chapter 198 – Bear-san Holds a ‘Play with Bear-sans’ Event
Today was the day we would hold the “Play with Bear-sans” event. It was named by Noa, of course, after she decided a name was absolutely necessary if we were to hold an event, and we just went with it since it didn’t sound too strange.
We would do it at the center of the town plaza. I had been a bit worried about hosting it at a public space, but thanks to Gran-san’s permission, we were allowed to use the central area.
I summoned the Bears at Gran-san’s mansion, and we headed out, Fina and I riding on Swaying Bear while Noa and Misa rode on Hugging Bear.
As for their costumes, the girls were wearing my shop’s bear-themed uniforms.
「Yuna-san, don’t you have any Bear-san uniforms?」
Noa asked me out of the blue the day prior.
「A uniform? Why do you ask?」
「If you do, let’s all dress up as Bear-sans.」
「Big Sis Noire, what’s a bear uniform?」
Misa didn’t know about my shop’s uniforms, so Noa, of course, proceeded to explain her everything about my shop in full details.
「Such a shop exists?! I want to go there too!」
Misa listened to Noa enviously.
Still, a bear uniform, huh. Sadly, I didn’t have any uniforms that would fit the girls.
「Fina, do you have yours with you?」
Fina occasionally helped out at the shop, so she had a uniform of her own.
「Yes, I do. I even brought three sets, just in case.」
Fina then proceeded to take the three sets of shop’s bear uniform out of her item bag.
She actually brought it with her? Not to mention, three sets... I had just asked her on the off chance of her having it, but why would she have three sets?!
「This is the Bear-san uniform?」
Misa held the bear uniform with her hands. Even though we called it a bear uniform, it was actually made from wolf pelts.
「Still, why do you have three sets with you?!」
「Normally, I would only have two sets, with one as a spare, but sometimes Shuri helps out, so I carry hers along as well. The sizes should be fine since we’re all roughly the same height, and Shuri’s was too big for her anyway.」
Yeah, the size should be fine. All three girls were of similar sizes with Misa being slightly shorter than the other two.
Thanks to Fina, all three of them were able to wear my shop’s bear uniform on the day of the event, and thus, with all four of us dressed as Bears, we made our way towards the town plaza on top of my Bears.
As we walked through town, people began to gather around Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear, making us stand out even more, which just attracted additional people to join the parade.
Just in case, Gran-san had sent out a public notice about the event happening, so maybe that was the reason for all this excitement.
「Everyone’s looking at us.」
Well, of course people would stare if two Bears walked through town. Not to mention, there were people wearing bear outfits riding on top of the said Bears.
I thought I was used to standing out by now, but apparently, being stared at still somehow bothered me. Yeah, being the center of attention was still a bit embarrassing.
On the other hand, Noa and Misa were gracefully waving at the crowd. As expected of nobles, they knew how to act in public, unlike a common girl like myself. Fina, who was sitting in front of me, was also slightly embarrassed by all the attention.
Now that was what I would call a normal reaction.
When we arrived at the center of the town plaza, we dismounted the Bears, and all the people who were following us began forming a circle around us to get ready to watch our performance.
Gran-san had sent some guards to control the crowd, and as it grew larger, they quickly put up some rope so the audience would leave us enough room.
The townspeople stood behind the rope, so I took some time to look around and noticed that there were several adventurers, including Marina’s party, monitoring the area as well.
「This looks like it’ll be interesting.」
Marina-san said to me before returning to her duty.
Looking around some more, I noticed that the crowd had mixed expressions, ranging all the way from worry and fear to anticipation and excitement.
Once we were ready, Gran-san stood in front of the crowd to address them.
「These bears caused a big scene in the town a few days ago. They came here because I had invited them to my granddaughter’s birthday party. The commotion that happened was all due to me sending them out on an urgent request. As you can see, they are tame and pose no danger to people. We will show you just how docile they really are with the help of these young ladies.」
Gran-san bowed then stepped away, making room for us.
We had decided to start off with something simple, so it was just Fina and Swaying Bear taking the spotlight first.
「Hand.」
Fina held out her hand and Swaying Bear immediately placed its paw on top.
The crowd clamored just with that.
「Spin around.」
Swaying Bear did as she said.
The ruckus grew louder, and some people even began clapping.
If they were already this impressed, our show should work, right?
Yeah, the crowd’s reaction was heading in a good direction.
When Fina and Swaying Bear were done, I used earth magic and created some small obstacles, letting Noa and Hugging Bear take the stage. Hugging Bear dashed through the obstacles with Noa on top of it. Sadly, we weren’t able to prepare a net, so the classic net-crawling course had to be left out.
Yeah, this was a circus act, for sure.
Once Hugging Bear passed all the obstacles, ending with a huge leap over a lot of them, the audience gave another round of applause; this one even louder than the one Fina and Swaying Bear had received. I also noticed that the one who clapped the loudest and longest was Eleanora-san. Was she actually a doting mother? On her side, I saw that Cliff was also enjoying the performance. Noa’s parents were acting just like the parents who came to see their child’s school play.
Next, Misa did some tricks with Swaying Bear, and it was my turn after that. I didn’t have anything fancy planned though, so I would just play catch with the Bears.
I used earth magic to create a ball that was roughly the size of a soccer ball and tossed it to Swaying Bear, which caught it with its forelegs and passed it to Hugging Bear, which returned the ball to me.
Even something as simple as this was impressing the crowd. Still, this wasn’t all I had planned. After some time of slowly passing the ball, I signaled the Bears, and they started to lob the ball higher and higher up the air to stir the crowd even further.
The fear had completely disappeared from the crowd at this point and was replaced by pure excitement.
The children sitting at the front were all smiling and clapping in joy.
Instead of preparing the circus rings of fire for the next act, I decided to create rings of water, using my water magic, of course. Fina and Noa climbed onto Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear respectively, and hopped through the rings one after the other.
I had placed the rings all over and even lifted some up quite high, but Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear continued to jump through them effortlessly. I looked to the side for just a second and noticed Misa was watching them enviously.
At first, Fina had planned on letting the other two do this act, but Noa refused, saying it wouldn’t be fair to her, so they had agreed to decide it by lottery.
Normally, noble girls would just have ordered the commoner Fina to give up her position; the fact that they hadn’t done that meant that they must truly think of Fina as their friend.
Fina and Noa held onto Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear tightly while the Bears leapt through the rings and showed off their dexterity by keeping their riders from getting wet even though I told them it was okay if they did.
The Bears ended the act by jumping through the highest ring and made a beautiful landing, inciting the loudest applause yet.
Misa and Swaying Bear returned to the stage to have a wrestling match. It ended with Swaying Bear letting Misa win.
We then performed a few more acts before finishing the official part of the show.
All the performances should have been more than enough to prove that Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear were safe to be around humans, but, just to make sure, I had decided to end the event on a high note.
「Is there anybody who would like to try riding the Bears?」
I asked the audience, glancing towards the children in the front. Two young boys immediately raised their hands.
「Would you two like to try?」
The boys glanced at each other before nodding at me.
The crowd grew a bit wary, but the boys approached the Bears without any fear. I let them pet the Bears a bit before helping them on.
Once Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear were sure that the boys were securely on their backs, they started completing the obstacles course and jumping through the rings of water again.
The fear disappeared from the audience once more, and they started to applaud them.
Actually, the two boys were the ones we had rescued from the toad man’s home the other day. We had asked them beforehand to volunteer. In other words, this was all staged, but thanks to it, the other children also started volunteering and approaching the Bears.
We then switched over to a simple playing event, so the bears wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by having to take care of so many children at once.
After giving the children enough time to play with the Bears, we finally announced the end of the event. Both the children playing with the Bears and the audience were disappointed while I was kind of happy that this was over with.
That reminded me, Noa had warned me about something yesterday...
「If we do that kind of event, there will be children who won’t want to leave the Bear-sans. I’m sure of it!」
Her warning turned out to be on point as there were some children who didn’t want to leave.
As a countermeasure, I quickly distributed some pudding to those children. If even one child accepted it, I was sure that the other children would notice them enjoying it and would immediately want to have the pudding instead of continuing to play with Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear.
My plan worked flawlessly, and while some children ate the pudding by themselves, others even took it to eat it with their parents. Good food makes people happy no matter which world I was in.
Looking at the expressions the townspeople had now, this should be enough to forget about my recent rampage through the town, right?
I would still most likely hold off from bringing Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear around town for a walk for a while, though. I didn’t want to cause an uproar everytime I went on a walk.
Anyway, the ‘Play with Bear-san’ event ended with a resounding success.
Author’s note:
The birthday party arc is finally over.
Next chapter, we will return to Crimonia, and I will most likely continue the story a bit more leisurely now.
I haven’t thought much about what to do, however, so we will just have to see what happens, I guess.