Now that I think about it—he’s in rags, and yet he doesn’t look the slightest bit cold.
The wind was howling around them, and still those violet eyes looked at her with the same unhurried, indifferent calm.
“Are you very cold?”
And then, without ceremony—
“If you get cold, you’ll get sick again.”
He shrugged off a filthy robe that looked like he’d have refused to wear it even if it were offered to him, and draped it over her shoulders.
“If you get sick, you might forget that we met today. You can’t get cold.”
He wasn’t joking. He raised his eyebrow slightly and even tied the cord at the front.
The robe had looked like little more than a tattered rag, but once it settled around her, it blocked the wind, and she was instantly, significantly warmer.
He doesn’t seem like a bad person when I look at it this way.
Or did he?
Then again, he bit my finger over an unanswered question. He does have a temper.
Then something from earlier resurfaced in her mind.
She had been too busy reeling at the time to properly register it, but what he’d said so casually—I killed that man—was not something to simply let pass.
She hesitated, then asked carefully:
“By the way—why did you kill that man?”
“He kidnapped you and hit you.”
…Oh?
His answer caught her completely off guard.
“Me?”
“Yes. If you had died, I wouldn’t have gotten my answer.”
The man had kidnapped her and struck her—so he had to be one of Duke Foss’s spies, the one who had sent that message.
“You killed him for an answer?”
“Yes.”
This boy is genuinely strange.
Grateful as she was—and she was—this was also deeply alarming. Separate things.
Aisha crossed her arms and studied the boy.
Beautiful on the outside—almost doll-like. But if he kept going like this, growing up with no structure around him—
He might actually become a menace to society.
“……”
I can’t let that happen. I need to give him at least a little guidance.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
Arms still crossed, shivering, she gave her advice:
“You can’t just go around killing people like that.”
“Why?”
The boy tilted his head.
Oh my goodness.
Seed of societal chaos.
She said it again, more firmly:
“Killing people is wrong.”
“Why is it wrong?”
“If you do wrong things…”
Hmm.
How do I explain this to him? Should I say you’ll end up in prison? Would that even mean anything to him?
She shook her head internally—and then her eyes went wide.
Got it. The way to convince him.
“If you do bad things…”
She leaned in and whispered to him with a very grave expression:
“…I might get such a shock that I lose my memory.”
“!”
It landed.
His expressionless violet eyes began to slowly, steadily expand.
“No…”
He even staggered back a step or two, as if physically struck by the possibility.
Then, just like a child who had lost a favorite toy, he murmured in vacant bewilderment:
“…No. If you lose any more memories, you’ll become completely useless. Then you won’t be able to answer me at all.”
Yes. The useless one is you.
Aisha pressed on gently, in her best teaching voice:
“So—can you do bad things or not?”
“I can’t. I absolutely cannot do bad things. Never, ever.”
Effect: outstanding.
“Good. So then, first things first—”
She needed to find the people guarding this portal and ask them to take her back to the Krost Ducal Estate.
Whoooosh—
…Wait. They’d been talking this whole time and no one had come.
No gate-keeping knights, no portal attendant. Just the portal, standing alone.
“Right! They said the ice wall collapsed!”
She turned to scan her surroundings and the full weight of the situation crashed down on her.
Far off through the conifers, the towers of Krost Ducal Estate rose above the treeline. And in the opposite direction, beyond the far edge of the forest—smoke was rising, black and heavy, as though something had caught fire.
That was the End of the World. Where the ice wall stood.
“I have to help somehow. Even if I can only take down one Creature, I have to try—and I have to tell someone that all of this was engineered by the King and Duke Foss!”
Pitter-patter-patter—
She shook the snow that had quietly accumulated on top of her head off in one vigorous motion, gripped her poison dart with both hands, and broke into a run.
Aisha was strange. Every angle you looked at her from.
“Why are you going that way? Your house is right there.”
He pointed toward the castle where he had always watched her sleep.
But she shook her head, resolute, and kept running.
“My family is in danger! I can’t just stand here and do nothing!”
The boy tilted his head at that.
If something was dangerous, wasn’t the right move to hide from it? If everyone rushed in and died together, what would that accomplish?
I will never understand pack animals.
“Fine. Do what you want.”
He rolled his eyes with a sulky expression and trotted after Aisha.
Just then.
Her hair—wild from the kidnapping ordeal—swept to the side as she scanned their surroundings with sharp, efficient eyes.
“…This situation should have drawn out Creatures by now… It’s oddly quiet.”
Creatures.
The boy’s ears went up at the word.
He glanced to the side.
“……”
There had, in fact, been one watching them from behind a tree for some time now.
Grrrr…
Don’t come any closer.
He had been keeping it back with quiet warnings, telling it to stay away before Aisha spotted it.
“Is it normal for Creatures to show themselves?”
He asked, just in case, and Aisha nodded.
“Normally yes, they should be visible. Something is off.”
Oh. So she should be seeing them.
That changed things. He looked back at the Creature lurking behind the tree.
Sorry. Come out.
“Urrrn…?”
The creature peering at him with soft, tentative rabbit eyes began to extend a paw—thick claws visible at its tips—when:
“Then again, it’s better if they don’t appear.”
Aisha suddenly reversed her opinion, and the boy scrambled to reverse his instruction.
If you come out, you die.
“Kiiing.”
Come out or stay—which was it?
The Creature, deeply conflicted and increasingly desperate about a pressing personal matter, whimpered behind its tree and then disappeared back into the shadows.
Phew.
He let out a silent breath of relief, then shot an aggrieved sidelong glance at the back of Aisha’s head.
Aisha and her glass skull.
Everything was a shock, everything was a risk. It was exhausting to worry about.
But his transformation was beginning to wear thin.
I should disappear before she gets any more shocks.
He had realized something, in the time he had spent with Aisha in human form.
She did not know that he was the kitten she called baby.
In cat form, she clutched him and cuddled him endlessly—but now that he was human, all she did was lecture him. She hadn’t held him once.
It’s better to stay a cat.
He pressed his lips into a subtle, private pout and said farewell.
“I have to go now.”
“Huh? Suddenly?”
Aisha turned to him with startled eyes.
Blue eyes.
The same ones that had found him, dying in a corner.
He thought, briefly and without quite meaning to, that her eyes looked like jewels—and then continued:
“Yes. My home is in the other direction, actually.”
“What! You should have said so sooner! Where do you live?”
He thought for a moment, then pointed vaguely toward the Ducal Estate.
“There.”
“Ah, so you live in the village past the Krost Estate.”
He’d pointed at the estate itself—but he didn’t bother correcting her. It was almost time to change back.
“Yes. I’ll go.”
He gave a casual farewell and turned to head in the opposite direction—
“But what’s your name?”
Something small and quick caught the tip of his little finger from behind.
He turned.
There was Aisha, holding out her hand with a bright smile.
“You have to at least tell me your name. Mine is Aisha.”
I know.
But mine is…
If I say ‘baby,’ she’ll scold me again.
He thought back to their earlier exchange.
Huh? Whose blanket?
Your blanket.
When Aisha had asked where he lived, he had simply answered honestly—the place he’d been staying recently was inside her blanket, so he said so.
But Aisha had flushed red and gotten angry.
You’re the one who told me to sleep there.
By that logic, shouldn’t she allow him the same comfortable refuge even in human form? That seemed only fair.
He felt aggrieved—but he couldn’t stir Aisha up right now.
If she got another shock, she’d lose more memories.
Aisha and her glass skull.
He repeated it to himself like a private spell, and thought hard for a long moment before accepting the truth: he had no talent whatsoever for making up names on the spot.
So.
“Give me one the next time we meet.”
“What?”
He simply asked her to name him instead.
“My name. We seem about the same age, so—nothing weird like ‘baby.’ Something that isn’t that.”
Anything other than baby was fine.
Baby was what weak creatures got called. And while it was true that in animal form he was still a small kitten, when he transformed into a human he came up to roughly Aisha’s height.
That counted for something.
“That’s it, then. I’ll go.”
Aisha looked stunned at the unexpected answer—but his transformation was on the verge of breaking, and he quickly turned and walked away.
Find out why she saved me.
That had been the only goal in the dark, hollow space of his small life.
But now, as he hummed a tuneless little song to himself, something else had taken root alongside it.
I need to hurry and change back into a cat and get into Aisha’s blanket.
It was a simple, modest desire—almost embarrassingly so.
But for the first time, he felt something he hadn’t known before.
He wanted to keep living.
