Chapter 744: A Dangerous Scent (7)

“Hiiik!”

Sua recoiled so fast that even after her back hit the wall, her legs kept moving.

As if she were trying to get as far away from Jayo as possible.

Scrrrk. Scrrk.

The scraping friction of her soles against the floor filled the quiet room.

It was the sound fear made when the will to retreat collided with the reality of having nowhere left to go.

But Sua soon realized she could retreat no farther, and in that state, her whole body began to tremble.

Reason had already left the premises.

Fear had seized control of her entire body.

Her eyes shook without focus, her lips trembled, and her fingertips quivered.

And she was looking at my adorable daughter—my daughter so precious I could put her in my eye and it wouldn’t hurt—with a gaze full of fear and disgust.

To look at our precious daughter like that.

It annoyed me, but I had no intention of blaming Sua.

That looked like a phobia, and a phobia isn’t something you can control with sheer will.

Even if you understand it with your head, your body reacts first. That is the essence of a phobia.

Birds are, personally speaking, creatures people tend to have very strong likes and dislikes about.

A lot of people like them, but plenty hate them too. And among the people who hate birds, some suffer from a bird phobia.

Ornithophobia.

A word formed from ornithos, the Greek word for bird, and phobos, meaning fear.

It’s a disorder involving an irrational and intense fear of birds.

People who have it feel fear toward things like flapping wings, feathers, eyes, droppings, or the sight of birds gathered in flocks, and it’s said to arise from negative experiences or trauma in childhood.

Being directly attacked by a bird.

Witnessing one suddenly lunge at them.

Or, much earlier than that, suffering some shock in early childhood, before reason has fully formed, and having that settle into fear.

The brain classifies that experience as danger and stores it away, then sounds the alarm every time similar stimuli appear later.

Sua looked exactly like someone suffering from [N O V E L I G H T] ornithophobia.

The most common symptoms of ornithophobia are heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, and avoidance behavior, and Sua’s condition matched them perfectly.

I could feel her heart pounding violently through my perception, and her breathing had sped up too.

And the way she was trying to get away from Jayo was clearly avoidance behavior.

Judging by heart rate alone, Sua’s condition right now was worse than right before a fight.

“Huff. Huff.”

“Sua? Are you alright?”

“Sua?”

As my wives approached to check on her condition, I became aware of the sensation in my hand.

I was still holding the pouch Sua had given me.

I looked back and forth between the pouch and Sua’s condition.

Earlier, when Sua had handed me the pouch and shown me what was inside.

That uneasy expression she had worn.

That was what had come back to me.

Even after becoming clearly favorable toward us, there had still been that slight furrow in her brow.

It was right as I was thinking of that expression, this pouch, and its relation to Jayo.

“Piyo?”

Jayo tilted her head and let out a cry.

It was a cute little chirp that seemed to say, Why is that lady acting like that?

From Jayo’s perspective, there was no way she could possibly understand.

It wasn’t as though she had done anything wrong. She had just tilted her head and chirped like usual, and that lady had suddenly started making a huge fuss.

The only thing in my little daughter’s eyes was pure confusion.

And those eyes were so round and clear too.

Cute, but the timing was terrible.

As expected, Sua’s horrified voice rang out at the same time.

“Hiiiiiik!”

Sua clutched her head and looked even more terrified.

There were tears welling in her eyes now.

Not tears because she wanted to cry.

When the body is pushed into extreme tension, tears leak out before the will even gets a say.

“I do not know why you are reacting this way, but Jayo is the daughter of my master and Lady Zihwa, and the eldest child of the Wei family. Conduct like this is problematic.”

When Gun Hye-rin said that in a calming tone, I decided to examine this a little more closely.

‘This doesn’t feel like a simple bird phobia, does it? This is definitely worth checking in more detail.’

I went over and looked Sua over.

The scales on her arms had risen roughly.

Since she was only at the Primordial Infant Stage and had not reached full transformation, Sua’s body still retained parts of her half-human, half-beast form, and the scales left here and there across her body were standing on end like goosebumps.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid, and all color had drained from her face.

It was an interesting reaction.

Just as human goosebumps rise reflexively from fear and tension, it seemed Sua’s scales reacted to the same stimulus in the same way.

The form was different, but the body’s way of remembering fear was the same.

Sua’s breathing came raggedly.

“Huff. Huff.”

At this rate, it looked like she was just going to collapse.

A classic state right on the verge of a panic attack. Removing the source of the stimulus came first.

First, I asked Gun Hye-rin to take Jayo outside for a while.

“Hye-rin, could you take Jayo outside for a moment? Sua seems to be afraid of Jayo.”

“Afraid of Jayo? When she’s this cute?”

Gun Hye-rin tilted her head as she held Jayo in her arms.

Her face was openly puzzled.

She looked like she couldn’t even imagine Jayo causing that kind of reaction in anyone.

Jayo also looked up at Gun Hye-rin from her arms and tilted her head.

Her expression plainly said, What do you mean by that?

She was so cute.

As she lightly tickled Jayo’s forehead, she said,

“There are, on occasion, people who are afraid of birds.”

“Hmmm. Fine, then. Let’s step outside for a bit, Jayo.”

“Piyo!”

“Hiiiiiik!”

At a single short chirp from Jayo, Sua screamed again.

Gun Hye-rin’s brow furrowed when she heard it.

She looked like she had more to say, but after one glance from me, she closed her mouth.

Step. Step.

As Gun Hye-rin walked toward the door with Jayo in her arms, every step blatantly radiated dissatisfaction.

And the moment Gun Hye-rin disappeared outside with that disgruntled look still on her face, Sua’s breathing began, very slowly, to calm down.

It was still fast, but compared to the extreme state she had been in moments ago, it had clearly improved.

It seemed her body had recognized that the stimulus was gone.

As I watched over Sua, I turned to senior sister, who was standing nearby, and asked,

“Senior sister, is there by any chance a bird spirit-creature cultivator in White Night City?”

“A bird spirit-creature cultivator?”

“Yes. Not a new spirit-creature cultivator. A flying bird cultivator.”

Senior sister searched her memory at my question.

A moment later, her expression changed as if she had remembered something.

“Hmm... Ah! There is one recently arrived Golden Core Stage cultivator. It asked to be taken in, so I assigned it to the Guard-Blood Squad.”

The Guard-Blood Squad was the force that guarded Blood Market Tower’s outskirts.

Basically an outer perimeter guard, and I immediately asked her to bring it here.

“Could you bring it here quickly?”

“Got it! I’ll be right back, junior brother.”

As senior sister dashed out, Hwa-eun and Ji-ryeon tilted their heads and asked,

“So-ryong, what is it?”

“My husband?”

“I ask that you wait a moment. I’m still confirming it myself.”

I wanted to answer them right away, but for now it was still only a hypothesis.

I decided to answer once I was more certain, and after a short wait, senior sister came hurrying back through the open door.

“Junior brother, I brought it!”

What came in behind senior sister was a single golden pheasant.

A kind of pheasant—one handsome bird with golden feathers on its head.

Its golden plumage caught the light in the room and shimmered softly.

It was about a handspan larger than an ordinary pheasant, and there was a strangely cautious tension in the way it walked.

The fact that it had been summoned by the city lord seemed to have left it thoroughly cowed.

This was really more Sister Seol’s area of expertise, so I couldn’t tell the exact species name or anything, but it prostrated itself before me and said,

“Kkee. It is my first time meeting you. City Lord, did you summon me?”

“Yeah. Right. Your name?”

“Kkiie. I am called Geum Gyumun.”

A voice mixed with Dao Techniques pierced clearly into my ears.

It took the form of a cry, but what I heard was unmistakably speech.

It was still only at the Golden Core Stage.

Since it had not yet reached the half-human, half-beast realm and still had the form of a bird, whenever it opened its beak, only a bird’s cry came out.

I looked toward Sua.

Sua had been watching Geum Gyumun from the moment it stepped into the room.

I did not miss that gaze.

Compared to when Jayo had been present, the nature of her reaction was different.

Her body did not stiffen, nor did she retreat toward the wall.

Her eyes shook, yes, but that was wariness toward an unfamiliar being, not fear.

That alone was enough.

Smiling, I said to Geum Gyumun,

“I heard our White Night City had gained a new member, so I called you in to see your face. I have high expectations, so work hard from here on.”

“Kkiiee? F-for me? Th-thank you. City Lord!”

The little thing was deeply moved just because I’d said I had expectations for it.

Thinking I should assign it under Sister Seol directly later, I said to senior sister,

“Senior sister, grant this one a bottle of spirit brew.”

“Got it, junior brother. Follow me.”

“Kkiee kkiee. Th-thank you! City Lord! Thank you!”

As the little thing left in obvious excitement, I turned to look at Sua.

Unlike with Zihwa earlier, she had shown no reaction whatsoever.

With Hwa-eun and Ji-ryeon supporting her, she was pulling herself upright against the wall.

‘So it definitely isn’t anything like ornithophobia.’

People who are afraid of birds are afraid when they see birds.

They do not separate them into categories like some birds are scary and some are fine.

But Sua had shown absolutely no reaction to Geum Gyumun and reacted only to Jayo and to traces of Zihwa.

So this was not a bird phobia.

I looked at Sua, who was rising with Hwa-eun and Ji-ryeon’s support, and asked,

“Sua, how does the scent in this pouch feel to you?”

The moment I asked how Zihwa’s fluff felt to her, Sua’s body trembled.

“U-unpleasant and uncomfortable?”

“Would you try smelling this again?”

I held out to Sua what appeared to be Zihwa’s down feather from inside the pouch.

The moment Sua, now on her feet, reluctantly inhaled its scent—

her face twisted in terror.

“Hiiiii! H-how!? It was definitely just an unpleasant and uncomfortable bizarre feeling before, but now it’s s-scary! I-it frightens me!”

Sua said it had not been this bad before, that it had changed.

At that point, it really did seem like what I was thinking was correct.

Ornithophobia was a kind of learned fear.

But with Sua, this did not seem like a learned fear at all. It felt more like something buried at the very bottom of her psyche had reacted.

Otherwise, she would not be reacting like this.

I may not know much about animals in general, but I do know a bit about ornithophobia.

Back in my life before the last one, I had once looked into it along with reptile phobia while researching material for a broadcast.

Both were phobias involving living creatures, but they were useful to compare because the reasons they arise are clearly different.

Reptile phobia is called herpetophobia in English, and though it is, like ornithophobia, a phobia involving living creatures, the way it is acquired differs from ornithophobia.

Because while ornithophobia is learned, the academic consensus is that reptile phobia has a different evolutionary origin.

Ornithophobia develops from things like bad experiences with birds.

But there are study results showing that even without any particularly bad experience, roughly one in three adults fears snakes.

Even without bad experiences, one in three people has a phobia of reptiles.

Then how is reptile phobia acquired?

Scholars explain that humanity’s ancestors experienced reptiles as threats to survival, and that fear was imprinted into their genes.

Yes, fear of reptiles is fear left behind in the genes.

For millions of years, humanity’s ancestors were bitten by snakes, dragged away by crocodiles, and lived in an age when reptiles were synonymous with death.

That long stretch of time carved an alarm system deep into the bones.

The reason the alarm sounds even without direct experience is because that fear is transmitted not as experience, but as bloodline.

As I looked at Sua, I thought,

‘Don’t tell me dragons like you are natural enemies of Jayo and Zihwa?’

From the fact that they had divided up Zihwa’s feather among themselves to Sua’s reaction when she saw Jayo just now—

everything pointed to that.