Chapter 48

Tap.

A dull sound followed as the rope came loose.

“There. The rope’s off, so now answer—”

“Hyaat!”

This was my chance.

The moment the rope came loose, I pulled the poison needle from my pocket. I took a breath and was about to fire it when—

“Ah—”

The boy opened his mouth on the other side of the needle.

If I shot it into his mouth, he would die instantly.

“Eek!”

I had never intended to kill him. With a shriek, I immediately jerked the needle away.

Then, out of nowhere, he lightly bit my finger.

“Wh-What was that?!”

It didn’t even hurt, but it startled me so badly that I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Are you some kind of knight or spy or something? Why aren’t you scared at all?”

The strong recognize the strong.

No—the strong recognize lunatics.

The moment I saw this guy open his mouth after seeing a poison needle, I understood.

Reason didn’t work on him.

Which meant I couldn’t win.

What’s he planning to do with me now?

Is he really going to eat me? But how?

Roast me?

I shouldn’t have let my guard down just because the baby listened to me. Cats are creatures that can go anywhere without warning. I completely forgot and let it slip away.

If I could, I wanted to go back to the moment I’d been holding the baby in the garden.

Mai was probably getting scolded for losing me by now.

Knox must be worried sick too.

Maybe it was the fear of facing death.

All kinds of thoughts collided in my head as my body trembled.

Then—

“Pteh.”

“There. It doesn’t even taste good.”

Along with the blunt remark, my finger dropped from his mouth.

Thunk.

Slowly, I opened my tightly shut eyes.

The boy was staring directly at me.

Then he shrugged, as if he had lost interest.

“If you’re not going to answer, I’m leaving. This is boring.”

And he actually started walking away as though he were heading home—

“Not answering?”

Fwoosh.

He stopped and asked again.

Ah.

An answer.

After taking a moment to process the situation, I waved my hand and smiled.

“Have a nice trip.”

“......”

His eyebrows slanted sharply upward.

His lips slowly puffed out into a duck-like pout.

He looked thoroughly offended.

Even so, he didn’t move.

His dissatisfaction kept growing, deepening the walnut-shaped crease beneath his lower lip.

Yet for some reason, he still lingered nearby.

Instead of leaving, he kicked an innocent pebble.

Tap.

“Why did you save me?”

The same question again.

“Did you really save me for no reason?”

It was strange.

The words were exactly the same as before.

Yet this time, I could hear a trace of sadness in them.

“...That’s irresponsible. I was expecting something. You were the first person who ever looked at me like that.”

At those words, I looked up in surprise.

The boy was staring down at the pebble he had kicked.

And then, at that exact moment—

The sun shining through the forest shifted.

A deep shadow fell between us.

He had been sparkling before.

He had looked full of curiosity.

But now, covered in darkness, he seemed more natural than ever.

As though loneliness had been the very first emotion he had learned after being born.

And suddenly I understood.

The emptiness I had felt while hiding alone in the Kreutz estate, struggling to stay alive in those deserted passages.

That hollow feeling.

For a moment, that lonely version of myself overlapped with the boy standing before me.

So before I could stop myself—

“I actually lost my memory.”

I lied.

“...What?”

The violet eyes hidden in the shadows met mine.

Then—

The boy, who had parted his lips in surprise, suddenly stepped out of the darkness.

“That look.”

“...What?”

“When you saved me, that’s exactly how you looked at me.”

“...Huh?”

***

He had been born in a snowy field.

But before he ever saw the light of the world, humans had captured him.

So when he opened his eyes for the first time after being born, what greeted him was not family, nor a mother cat.

It was iron bars.

‘What’s with those eyes? Why are they that color? Creepy.’

He remembered the gaze of the first living creature that had ever looked at him.

Hostile.

Harsh.

It took time before he understood that the word creepy referred to him.

And that the emotion attached to it was a bad one.

‘Creepy.’

Trapped behind iron bars, he muttered the word.

It was the first emotion he had ever learned.

About a month later, a man happened to notice him and shouted.

‘Is that thing an animal or a monster?’

‘No idea. I don’t even know what it’ll become when it grows up.’

‘Should we dump it somewhere?’

‘And what if it gets out and attacks people? Just leave it. If we stop giving it food and water, it’ll starve to death eventually.’

‘...Fine.’

The man spat into the cage.

Pteh.

Then he walked away.

After that, they stopped feeding him.

At least before, they had occasionally tossed him scraps.

‘I want something to eat. My stomach feels like it’s shrinking.’

If he couldn’t eat anything—

‘I wish time would hurry up and end so the pain would go away.’

After another month passed, his mind began to grow hazy.

Sometimes he would sit and play by catching specks of dust floating in the air.

Now, even that was too much effort.

Lying down was easier.

Breathing was difficult.

His vision blurred beneath the crust gathering around his eyes.

And around then, a second emotion entered his world.

Boredom.

Resignation.

The nameless cat slowly died, day after day.

Just as he was about to close his eyes, wishing it would all end sooner—

‘A cat.’

A pair of blue eyes appeared out of nowhere.

‘......?’

‘The cat is dying. What do I do?’

Blue eyes stared at him as tiny hands struggled desperately to free him.

It wasn’t a creepy gaze.

It wasn’t the indifferent gaze he had grown accustomed to after the scraps stopped coming.

This was—

...This was—

“What?”

Tilt—

The boy cocked his head as the memory resurfaced.

“I have no idea.”

Aisha stood there with her arms crossed, glaring at him irritably.

Then she let out a long sigh.

As though trying to organize the conversation, she raised a finger.

“So let me get this straight. I looked at you with a strange expression?”

“Yeah.”

“And then I saved you?”

“Yeah.”

Sparkle, sparkle—

For the first time, it felt like the conversation was actually moving forward.

Maybe he was finally going to get the answer he had been waiting for.

He clenched his fists and fired glitter beams from his eyes.

“Ummm...”

Unfortunately—

“Ah, well, like I said earlier...?”

Cold sweat erupted from the top of Aisha’s blond head like a fountain.

“I-I actually had an accident a long time ago and suffered a shock. After that, I lost some of my memories!”

Clap!

Aisha slapped her hands together, apparently delighted to have found an answer.

The boy only looked confused.

“You lost your memory? Did your memory die?”

“No. It disappeared, but it didn’t die.”

Wasn’t that the same thing?

In truth, he didn’t fully understand what it meant to lose something.

After all, there had never been anything for him to lose.

So he confidently crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“If it disappeared, then it died.”

The moment Aisha crossed her arms too—

“No it didn’t.”

“Yes it did.”

“No it didn’t!”

“Yes it did!”

The endless argument continued until the boy finally huffed and turned his head away.

“The animals around me never came back after they disappeared.”

“Huh?”

“So if something disappears, it dies. They all died.”

The logic was surprisingly sound.

Aisha let out a startled squeak and stared at him with wide blue eyes.

“......”

She had no response.

See? Aisha’s memories weren’t lost. They died.

“...If you didn’t know before, now you do.”

Winning was good.

Being the one who caught something was better than being the one who got eaten.

“......”

Even though he stood proudly with his arms crossed, for some reason he felt even more miserable than before.

Then—

“Look.”

A tiny fist appeared in front of him.

“What’s this?”

“My hair tie. I’m giving it to you.”

At some point, one side of Aisha’s hair had come loose.

She lifted her eyebrows and made a brave little triangle-shaped pout.

“It belongs to you now. It’s your possession.”

“This is mine? My possession?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.”

A hair tie?

What was that?

He had questions about everything, but for now he accepted it.

The moment he did, Aisha broke into a grin.

Carefully gathering the white hair that hung over his forehead, she tied it back with the hair tie.

“Like this. See? Now you can see properly, right?”

“Huh. Wow.”

His face looked like it had sprouted an apple stem.

Aisha pressed her lips together, obviously trying not to laugh.

But he was too fascinated by how clearly he could see now to care.

“This is an apology.”

“An apology?”

“Yeah. I made you sad, and I made you angry, so I fixed it.”