Chapter 88

“Mister, let’s go over there too.”

The escort knight, who had been watching cautiously in case the situation was dangerous, hesitated at my command before nodding.

I stayed close behind him as we headed toward the butcher shop.

“Sir Knight, this little brat has been hiding a monster in there!”

The man shouted again as soon as he came face-to-face with the knight.

But—

“Then why is that child crying?”

Peek.

Before the knight could answer, I poked my face out from behind him and asked bluntly.

The butcher’s eyes widened.

“L-Lady Aisha? Are you truly the young lady of the Kreutz family?”

He recognized me immediately.

Now that the news had spread, people must have become familiar enough with my face to identify me on sight.

“Yes, I am—”

“H-he’s trying to chase away my friend...”

As I shrugged and began to answer, a thin, mosquito-like voice cut me off.

“...What was that?”

Wondering whether I had misheard, I tilted my head and scratched at my ear.

“M-my friend isn’t a monster...”

The mosquito-like sound came again from somewhere.

“Are there mosquitoes in winter?”

When I asked, the escort knight leaned down and whispered with an awkward expression.

“I believe that was the boy clinging to the butcher’s ankle, not a mosquito.”

“Oh?”

Gasp. So that was it.

Only then did I look at the boy.

Our eyes met directly as he stared up at me with round, watery eyes.

His gentle-looking face slowly crumpled, and then he burst into tears again.

Goodness. What could have hurt him so badly?

He sniffled so hard that he could not even open his eyes.

I raised my eyebrows in righteous indignation and glared at the butcher.

“First, explain what’s happening. You said there was a monster, but that child keeps calling it his friend.”

“It is a monster! A ferry, no less!”

A ferry? What kind of monster is that?

My question was answered by the escort knight’s sigh.

“...Of all things, it had to be a ferry. Haa. Feries are troublesome.”

“What’s a ferry?”

“They are animal-type monsters and relatively small compared to most monsters. Their distinguishing trait is that they move with extraordinary speed despite their small size and leap at people. If they were larger, they would be easy enough to deal with, but because they dart around everywhere, they are actually much harder to catch.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“They are. Their claws are sharp enough to tear the skin from someone’s face if things go badly.”

“Gasp!”

Hmm... In that case.

After a brief moment of alarm at the gruesome warning, I rummaged through the inner pocket of my jacket.

Then I pulled out my poison needle.

“Open the door first. We can decide whether it’s truly a dangerous monster or that boy’s friend after seeing it ourselves.”

“Lady Aisha, no!”

“She’s right, it’s dangerous! It would be better if I handled something like this—”

Mai and the escort knight both reacted in horror.

As the knight stepped forward—

“Ah. Of course, I didn’t mean me. You’re the one who should look, sir.”

“What?”

I gave him a bright smile.

“If I cause another incident, Father will scold me.”

Sliiide—

Before anyone knew it, the distance between the knight and me had widened considerably.

After drawing an invisible line between us, I clenched one tiny cotton-soft fist and gave him an encouraging gesture.

“......”

The knight fell silent, seemingly forgetting for a moment that I was the young lady of the Kreutz family.

“...G-good luck...”

A beat late, he obeyed my command, drew his sword, and assumed a grimly determined expression.

Good luck!

I clenched my tiny fist once more.

The knight shot me a sidelong look that clearly asked, Then why did you take out the poison needle?

“Ahem!”

He regained his composure, gripped his sword, and kicked the door open.

Then came a heavy silence.

“......”

Something was lurking within the darkness beyond the open storage-room door.

Purple eyes, proof that it was a monster, glared at the knight holding his raised sword.

The air around us froze in an instant.

“Ugh...!”

At that moment, the boy tried to rush into the storage room.

But the butcher grabbed him by the back of his collar and stopped him, then shouted at the knight.

“Q-quickly! Hurry and get rid of it!”

It was a plea for the knight to do something about the monster inside the storage room.

Yet the knight seemed tense at the unexpected situation and merely stood there with his sword clenched tightly, continuing the standoff.

If he can’t deal with it...

Then I might have to use the poison needle I had brought in preparation for an emergency.

“......”

Maintaining a safe distance, I stood behind the knight and tightened my grip on the poison needle.

Just as I began to raise it toward my mouth—

Tap-tap-tap!

Something small but swift came racing toward us, and a white blur shot between the knight’s legs before leaping high into the air.

Fast.

There was no time to prepare anything.

If a living creature could move at the speed of light, it might have been that fast.

A moment later, the tiny shadow sprang straight toward the top of my head.

“Lady Aisha!”

The knight belatedly spun around and raised his sword to slice through the white object suspended in midair—

“No!”

At nearly the same moment, the boy screamed.

Then something completely unexpected happened.

The boy finally broke free from the butcher and tackled the knight before he could stab the monster.

“Ugh...!”

The knight staggered under the boy’s weight, and the white creature narrowly avoided the sword before landing directly on my face.

“Eek.”

My vision went black.

It’s dangerous. Its claws could tear the skin from your face.

The warning from earlier echoed through my head.

“G-get off my face!”

I might actually die.

In a full-blown emergency that made every hair on my head stand upright, I hurriedly reached up to yank the monster away.

“D-don’t move! You’ll be fine if you stay still! It’s only saying hello!”

The boy’s desperate shout stopped my hand just before I grabbed the monster by the scruff.

...Saying hello?

When I remained still, I felt the monster’s warm, soft belly pressed against my face.

Then—

“Sniff, sniff...”

A tiny sound, as though it were smelling me, reached my ears.

A moment later, the body blocking my vision moved away.

“......?”

The first thing I saw was everyone staring at me in shock.

The second was a pair of short pink legs flapping at the edge of my vision.

The small creature wriggled until it climbed fully onto the top of my head.

“Squeak?”

Then it suddenly bent its head down and looked me directly in the eyes.

That face...

It looked remarkably similar to the animal I had known as a white ferret in my former life.

An extremely adorable one.

***

A short while later—

“So... you called something this adorable a monster that tears people’s faces off?”

“...There was precedent. When a ferry first appeared, that one suddenly leaped at a knight’s face. When he tried to attack it with a dagger, it scratched him with its claws...”

As the escort knight explained his side of the story with an aggrieved expression, the mosquito-like voice crept out once more from beside us.

“I-if a giant ten times bigger than you tried to s-stab you...”

The voice struggled upward until it turned into a weak wail.

“W-wouldn’t you attack because you were frightened toooo...?”

“Quiet, you brat.”

The butcher, who had been glaring at the boy with axe-sharp eyes, flicked him hard on the forehead.

“Sniff... Hic... A-anyway... Bibi didn’t do anything wrong... Bibi was j-just frightened...”

Even with a tiny bump swelling on his forehead, he stubbornly forced out everything he wanted to say.

So this child was both a talented crier and someone who always said his piece.

Hmm.

I glanced at the boy and rubbed my chin.

This has become complicated.

To summarize the situation—

The monster had a long white body with adorably tiny pink limbs.

The boy called it Bibi, and it was an animal-type monster resembling a white ferret from my former life.

Apparently, feries greeted one another by sniffing the tops of each other’s heads. When they tried to do the same to humans, they ended up leaping at their faces.

But people mistook that for an attack, and many feries had been killed as a result.

It didn’t try to tear the skin from my face either. It only sniffed me and acted affectionately.

Nevertheless, because it had supposedly attacked the young lady of the Kreutz family, the ferry was now locked inside a transport cage.

I quietly looked down at it.