Thunk.
At last, the rope came loose with a dull, blunt sound.
“There, the rope’s off. Now, the answer—”
“Hiyah!”
Now. This was her moment.
The instant the rope fell away, Aisha’s hand dove into her pocket and pulled out a poison dart. She drew a deep breath, lips pressed to the blow tube, ready to fire—
“Ah—”
The boy opened his mouth directly over the dart.
One shot into the back of his throat and it would be instant death.
“Eek!”
She hadn’t meant to actually kill him. Aisha yanked the dart aside and yelped—and at that same moment, he lightly bit down on her finger.
“Wh—what?!”
It didn’t even hurt, but the shock was so complete that she squeezed her eyes shut against her will.
“You—you aren’t a knight or a spy or something, are you? Why do you have absolutely no sense of self-preservation?!”
Strong recognizes strong. Or rather, strong recognizes unhinged.
The moment she’d seen him open his mouth in the face of a poison dart, she understood.
Normal logic didn’t work on this boy.
Which meant she couldn’t win.
What’s he going to do with me now?
Was he really going to eat her? And how, exactly?
Roasted?
I shouldn’t have let my guard down just because the baby was cooperative. Cats are unpredictable creatures—I forgot that completely.
If she could wish herself back to any moment right now, it would be that one in the garden, holding the baby in her arms.
By now, Mai must be getting scolded for losing her.
And Knox would be so worried.
Was it the anxiety of staring down her own end? A hundred different thoughts collided at once, and her body wouldn’t stop shaking—when:
Ptuh—
“Fine. You don’t taste good anyway.”
The voice was flat and disinterested, and Aisha’s bitten finger was released and dropped back to the ground.
She opened her tightly shut eyes, slowly.
The boy was staring at her face.
Then, as though he had simply lost interest, he shrugged one shoulder.
“If you’re not going to answer, I have no reason to be here. I’ll just go. Boring.”
And he actually began walking away—like he was heading home—before stopping in his tracks.
“You’re not going to answer?”
He turned his head and asked again.
Oh, right. An answer.
Aisha processed the situation for a moment, then waved her hand with a light smile.
“Bye.”
“……”
At that, his eyebrow climbed at a sharp diagonal. His lips began slowly pressing outward—like a small, indignant duck’s bill—and it was clear he had taken considerable offense.
Even so, the boy didn’t move.
His dissatisfaction deepened by the second, the dimple-like indent beneath his lip growing more pronounced with every moment he stood there—
And yet, for some reason, he didn’t leave.
He just stood, and stood, and then kicked a pebble to the side for something to do.
“Why did you save me?”
The same question again.
“Was there really no reason? You just saved me for nothing?”
Something was strange.
It was unmistakably the same words as before—but this time, she could hear something beneath them. Something faintly sad.
“…Irresponsible. I had expectations. You were the first one who ever looked at me that way.”
The words that followed made Aisha look up in spite of herself.
The boy was staring down at the pebble he’d kicked. And just then, the sun that had been slanting through the trees shifted, casting a thick shadow over the space between them.
He had seemed to glimmer, just a moment ago.
He had seemed so full of curiosity.
But the boy swallowed by darkness now looked as though he had finally returned to his natural color.
As though the first emotion his life had ever taught him was loneliness.
Something shifted in her, without warning.
The hollowness she’d felt walking alone through the empty corridors of the Ducal estate—surviving each day with no one to see her—that hollow, formless thing she’d known then.
And this boy, standing in the shadow.
They overlapped.
So, without quite meaning to—
“I actually… lost my memory.”
She told a lie.
“…What?”
The violet eyes in the darkness found hers.
And then.
The boy, lips parting slowly in surprise, took a single step out of the shadow.
“That look in your eyes.”
“…What?”
“When you saved me, you were looking at me with exactly that expression.”
“…Huh?”
He had been born in a snowfield. But before he ever saw the light of the world, he was taken by humans.
And so the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes for the very first time was not his family, not his mother—it was iron bars.
What’s wrong with its eyes? That color is ominous, isn’t it?
He remembered the gaze of the first living creature to ever look at him.
It was threatening. Rough.
That the word ominous referred to him, and that the feeling behind it was something bad—this was something he could only piece together slowly, as time passed.
Ominous.
He murmured it to himself, alone in the iron cage. It was the first emotion his life had handed him.
About a month later, a man who happened to pass by and see him had shouted:
Is this thing a beast or a Creature?
No idea. Not sure what it becomes when it grows up.
Should we just throw it out?
If we let it outside and it threatens people, what then? Just leave it. If we don’t give it food or water, it’ll starve to death on its own.
…Fine.
The man had spat through the bars in his direction and moved on.
After that, no food came. Not even the scraps of garbage they had occasionally left before.
I want to eat something. It feels like my stomach is slowly caving in.
If nothing came—
I just want time to end quickly. I want the pain to stop.
A month passed, and he began to feel his mind going soft and hazy at the edges.
He had sometimes sat and batted at floating dust motes as entertainment. Now, simply lying still felt like the only option.
Breathing had grown difficult. When crust built up at the corners of his eyes and his vision began to blur, a second emotion was added to his small world.
Weariness. Resignation.
The nameless kitten died a little more with every passing day.
Just as it was about to close its eyes and hope the end would come quickly—
A cat.
A pair of blue eyes appeared out of nowhere.
……?
A cat is dying in there. What do I do?
Small hands scrabbled at the cage, trying to reach him, and those blue eyes turned toward him—wide and urgent.
It was not a threatening look.
It was not the indifferent gaze he had known since the day the garbage stopped coming.
This was…
This was—
“What?”
The boy tilted his head, surfacing from the memory.
“How would I know?”
Arms crossed, Aisha was staring at him with an unconvinced scowl.
Then she let out a small, decisive breath and held up one finger, as though preparing to summarize the conversation.
“So—you’re saying I looked at you in a strange way?”
“Yes.”
“And saved you?”
“Yes.”
Bright, bright—
It was the first time this whole conversation had felt like it was going somewhere. The first time he’d sensed a real answer might be within reach. He closed his fist, eyes brightening.
“…Hmm.”
But then.
“…I—like I said before…?”
Sweat erupted from the crown of that golden head like a fountain.
“I was actually in an accident when I was younger, and it was a terrible shock. After that, I… lost certain memories!”
Clap.
Aisha snapped her fingers as though she’d finally figured out what to say.
But the boy only felt more confused.
“You lost your memory? Does that mean your memory died?”
“No. It disappeared, but it didn’t die.”
Isn’t that the same thing as dying?
In truth, he didn’t fully understand what it meant to lose something. He had never had anything to lose in the first place.
And so he drew himself up, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.
“If it disappeared, it’s dead.”
Not to be outdone, Aisha crossed her arms as well—
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“It isn’t!”
“It is!”
The argument showed no sign of ending, and the boy let out a small, dismissive hmph and turned his head away.
“The animals near me—when they disappeared, they never came back.”
“What?”
“So disappearing means dying. They all died, every one of them.”
It was, in its own way, a well-reasoned point—and Aisha let out a startled sound, her eyes going round and wide.
“……”
She had no response.
Right. She’s quiet because I’m right.
So Aisha’s memories didn’t get lost. They died.
“…Now you know. Keep it in mind.”
Winning anything was always satisfying. Being the one who catches rather than the one caught was simply better.
“……”
He stood there, arms still crossed, posture self-satisfied—and yet, somehow, he only felt more gloomy than before.
Then.
“Look here.”
A small fist was extended toward him through the air.
“What’s this?”
“It’s my hair tie. I’m giving it to you.”
One side of Aisha’s hair had come undone. She held the hair tie out, eyebrows raised, mouth set in a brave little triangle.
“It’s yours now. Your possession.”
“This is mine? My possession?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
A hair tie—what even was that?
He was full of questions, but he took it for now.
And then Aisha, smiling brightly, reached up and gathered the white hair that fell across his forehead, and tied it back with the hair tie.
“Like this. Can you see better now?”
“Oh. Wow.”
His face now bore the small gathered tuft of a plucked apple stem, and Aisha had to press her lips together to keep from laughing—but he was genuinely amazed at how much more clearly he could see.
“This is an apology.”
“An apology?”
“Yes. I made you feel gloomy, and I upset you—so I fixed it.”
