“I’m sorry.”
Aisha stepped toward him and patted his shoulder lightly, once, twice.
“Are you not gloomy anymore?”
Gloomy. It seemed to be an emotion close to sadness.
Come to think of it—after Aisha had tied his hair back with the hair tie, he hadn’t thought the word gloomy once.
The boy shrugged.
“No. Not gloomy anymore. You’re actually pretty good at apologizing.”
“Hmph. Obviously.”
The corner of Aisha’s mouth curved with quiet confidence.
He had already stopped paying attention—he was completely absorbed by the hair tie.
“I’ll give you a real apology someday too. Anyway—a hair tie. So this is what a hair tie is.”
“Yes.”
Tie hair with a hair tie, and you can see clearly.
Good. When his hair fell over his eyes, his vision would go dark. With a hair tie, it wouldn’t.
“…Very useful.”
“Do you even know that word?”
“Yes. I learned it by listening to humans talk. I can speak the human language too.”
His reply came with a certain fastidious pride, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
“Humans? Why do you call people that?”
He thought he heard her murmur something like that, but he didn’t particularly feel like explaining.
Either way, the hair tie was useful.
He touched the little knot above his forehead with the careful reverence of someone who had just discovered fire.
Then—
Snap.
“What?!”
Without warning, Aisha yanked the hair tie off and flung it somewhere to the side.
“What are you doing!”
The boy’s composure shattered instantly. If he’d had ears and a tail in that moment, the fur would have been standing straight up with indignation.
“What are you going to do?”
But Aisha lifted her chin with complete composure, crossed her arms, and jutted out her belly.
“Your hair tie is dead now, isn’t it?”
“The hair tie is not dead!”
“By your logic, it disappeared, so isn’t it dead?”
The boy had no response.
But the hair tie wasn’t dead. It had just gone somewhere—it was his, which meant he could find it.
It’s mine, so I can find it.
His eyes lit up with focus as he whipped his head around, scanning the ground. Thankfully, the hair tie had landed nearby.
“I found it!”
He dashed over and snatched it up—
Clap, clap, clap.
Aisha applauded and gave him a solemn thumbs-up.
“That’s what it means to lose something.”
“What?”
“You lost it, and then you found it again. That means it’s not dead.”
“…Wow.”
Lost, and then found again. Found again means not dead.
He turned the hair tie over and over in his closed hand, sinking into thought.
In that case—
“Then your memory can be found again too.”
“Exactly. So when I find my memories, I’ll tell you then—why I saved you and why I was looking at you that way.”
“Oh.”
That’s… that’s wonderful.
The boy looked at Aisha with wide, shining eyes.
She paid him no attention—she was brushing dust from her knees and taking stock of their surroundings.
“Hmm. We should probably head back soon.”
Go back? Did that mean back to the warm place inside the blankets where she always slept?
“Where’s your home, anyway?”
Aisha asked as she began to walk, and he hurried after her, falling into step beside her.
“Home? Inside a blanket.”
“Huh? Whose blanket?”
“Your blanket.”
“?”
“Your blanket. It’s warm.”
Slurp—
He blinked his pure, unguarded eyes and took a long sip from the water bottle he’d found after dealing with that man.
At his words, Aisha stood frozen for a moment, mouth hanging open—and then burst into irritation.
“Stop being ridiculous! Tell me where you were born!”
Oh. Where he was born. She should have just asked that from the start.
He shrugged and gave a different answer.
“The North.”
“The North?”
“Yes. A frozen snowfield.”
He didn’t remember it clearly—but the ground had been white, and the sky had been blue.
“Oh! I live in the North too. Wait for me and we can go together.”
“If you want.”
In truth, the boy had nowhere to go.
He hadn’t particularly wanted to keep living—it was Aisha who had brought him into the warmth of her blankets to begin with.
Just then.
“H—here! A dead body—there’s blood everywhere! It looks like the killer passed through this area!”
From somewhere in the distance, an adult man’s voice rang out, reverberating through the trees.
“Huh? Is that a knight?”
Aisha turned toward the sound, her expression brightening with recognition as she raised her hand to wave—
“That boy—his mouth and hands are covered in blood—I think that boy killed the man!”
But the knight had been faster. He burst through the undergrowth, took one look at the boy, and shouted.
Caught off guard by the knight’s vehement reaction, Aisha called over to the boy.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“That knight is saying you killed a man. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
You were being kidnapped and hit, so I killed him.
And while I was at it, I drank a little blood to try out the human transformation.
Slurp—
The water bottle swallowed the rest of what he’d meant to say. He tipped the empty bottle upside down and dropped it on the ground.
The expression on that knight who just called me a suspect… It’s a little similar to the Ahili Circus workers.
The feeling in his gut was not good.
It seemed they needed to run.
✶ ☪ ✶ D ✶ a ✶ m ✶
Meanwhile.
Two hours into the search for Aisha—
“We’ve found the young lady!”
“…Good heavens.”
Knox felt his legs nearly buckle beneath him at the knight’s words from across the way.
Thank goodness.
He had not anticipated that she would actually leave the palace grounds—but then again, it wasn’t as though this was the first or second time Aisha had caused a scene.
Knox removed his monocle and crossed toward the knight.
“Where is the young lady?”
But then—
“That’s the thing—she ran off so quickly we’re still in pursuit…”
She ran? Why would Aisha run?
Knox’s eyebrow lifted slightly at the knight’s words.
“Why is she running?”
“Well—a man believed to be in service to House Foss was found dead, and she’s currently fleeing alongside the boy who appears to have killed him.”
“…Pardon me?”
Knox stood perfectly still, the expression on his face like he’d taken a blunt blow to the back of the head.
Of course, Lady Aisha. Of course you were out there causing mayhem.
Just then.
“She’s over there!”
A commotion erupted from around the corner of the castle wall.
Knox rushed toward the source of the noise, and as he pushed through the gathering knights, he saw what lay before them: a large, vivid-blue portal, around which the knights were clustered in consternation.
“My Lady! Stay right where you are!”
“Please come down immediately!”
No.
Knox shoved through the knights toward the portal entrance.
A portal within the palace grounds was dangerous. The very nature of these portals—which required no additional mechanism to activate once inside the royal grounds—meant that simply stepping onto one would trigger transport.
Please. Please.
It didn’t matter, he realized, that Aisha had worried him all this time. He would forgive every last thing.
He just needed the portal to not have activated. He just needed her to be safe in his hands.
Please—
He pressed through the last few knights and reached the portal entrance—
“My Lady!”
“…K—Knox?”
The voice he had been longing to hear—small and young and unmistakably hers.
But.
—Portal activation confirmed.
In the instant he arrived at the entrance, the cool, mechanical announcement of the portal cut through the air, and the forms of two children were wrapped in blue light and vanished.
This was a disaster.
A real, genuine disaster.
“……”
Knox stared into the now-empty portal with a hollow, stunned expression, and then slowly raised a hand to cover his face.
Then.
“…Where does this portal lead?”
“N—the North… near the End of the World.”
“Damn. Of all the dangerous places.”
He cursed under his breath, and then dove through the portal without another moment’s hesitation.
Let her be clear: this was not her fault.
She hadn’t even known she’d stepped onto a portal!
She had been escaping with the boy who had shyly confessed to murder, stumbling through an aimless sprint—and the only place the knights couldn’t reach just so happened to be a patch of vivid blue flooring. And nobody had told her that the palace portals activated on contact with no additional mechanism required.
“Aaaah!”
A wave of dizziness. Everything turned black. And then something cold pressed against the tip of her nose.
Oh.
That was snow.
“…Where are we…?”
She opened her eyes. Pale sky above. Snowflakes drifting down through the air.
Conifer forests stretching far in the distance. Muddy snow-dampened earth along a narrow path.
This place could only be—
“Don’t tell me the portal led to—mmph.”
She opened her mouth to speak.
Whoooosh— The sharp, knife-edged wind of the North crashed over her like a wave.
“Whoa.”
The short-sleeved dress Mai had put her in billowed out like a curtain caught in a gale.
The cold cut through her skin and sank into her bones—
“Ugh. I’m going to catch a cold.”
She shuddered violently and tried to wrap both arms around herself as tightly as she could.
“Are you cold?”
Just then.
The familiar voice of the boy—who had apparently made it through the portal with her—came from beside her.
