1. This Time It Was Deer
This story happened before the September holidays.
We’d recently held the after-party for the cleanup walks, and I’d gone to the chicken farm with Aikawa-san and Katsuragi-san—Matsuyama-san had also been having problems with illegal dumping, and he wanted some advice.
We’d agreed to wait and see how things fared during the holidays. Though we wouldn’t be holding any events, we figured that Matsuyama-san might ask for help building torii gates.
Also, we’d discussed going over to Katsuragi-san’s mountain to look into the matter of hornet nests—she’d spotted a few hornet nest remains around the mountain, and we weren’t sure whether her dragon had eaten them or if this was a sign of a nearby bear. We were still waiting for her reply. Other than that, it was just the usual stuff: the eternal struggle against weeds, Pochi coming back home covered in dirt, Tama pecking me, Yuma comforting me.
I was enjoying a mouthwatering breakfast with Tama’s and Yuma’s freshly laid eggs when I got an SOS call from Katsuragi-san.
“S-S-S-S-Sano-san! P-P-Please help! T-T-T-Tatsuki’s—! Tatsuki—!”
“Wait, wait, wait, just calm down! What happened?”
I told her to take deep breaths and tried to make sense of what she was saying. Apparently, her dragon had hunted s