The eye-color alteration potion wore off already.
The creature’s eyes, gazing up at Aisha, rippled with unmistakable violet—the color that marked a Creature, and which people called ill-omened.
The leader of the Creatures, wasn’t that what Queen Grace said? It seems she was telling the truth.
At a distance, it had seemed as though the Creatures were reacting to Aisha—but Knox understood what had actually happened.
What they had been watching was not Aisha.
It was the cat that had been walking quietly at her side.
“I would suggest we bring Lady Aisha back to the estate first, and then take stock of the situation.”
“…Let’s do that.”
“Your Grace—it isn’t finished yet.”
He kept his voice low this time.
“The Creatures appear to have withdrawn for the time being, but I would suggest having the Knight Commander handle cleanup here. There is something I need to speak with you about.”
“…?”
Calypse’s brow furrowed faintly. Knox held his gaze with steady composure.
“…Alright.”
A few seconds of silence—and Calypse seemed to understand. There was a matter here more urgent than the immediate situation.
Without releasing Aisha, he turned and called out to the remaining knights:
“The situation is contained. As soon as you are able, begin wall repairs. Move the injured out first. Cleanup crew—process the Creature remains.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Understood, Your Grace.”
The moment his eyes left Aisha, Calypse became once again the cold, precise commander his knights had always known.
As the tension-drawn knights saluted and dispersed—
“Come on, let’s get you home. Look at the state of you. Your hair’s an absolute mess.”
His expression softened back immediately, and he tapped Aisha’s nose gently with one finger.
“But I arrived safely, didn’t I?”
“That’s beside the point. If you had never set off a scene in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this state. You should never have—”
“Hmph.”
Aisha let herself tip sideways into his arms in protest, and Calypse, finally satisfied, gathered her close.
His expression met Knox’s over the top of her head and turned cold again at once.
A short while later.
“My Lady—!”
The moment they came through the estate’s front gates, Brad—who had apparently been pacing the entry hall for the last however-long—came running toward them with barely-contained tears.
“Where in the world have you been?! Do you have any idea how terribly Knox was worried?!”
“That’s right. I happened to be in the corridor when he passed—Knox’s face was absolutely drenched in cold sweat.”
The household staff gathered one by one, and each had something to say to Aisha, still cradled in her father’s arms.
“I’m sorry…”
This is rather awkward, she thought, abashed.
She knew perfectly well that charging toward the End of the World armed with a single poison dart had been a little unhinged. But she hadn’t anticipated quite this scale of fallout.
Embarrassed, she tried to make herself smaller by pulling Calypse’s neck closer.
But—
“Give her the full scolding. She deserves it.”
So father is strict when he wants to be.
“Father?”
“What, you?”
He let out a brief, wry smile and tapped the tip of her nose.
Then he set her down in the middle of the assembled staff and walked away.
“…Father? Father!”
Tap, tap, tap—
He did not look back.
“My Lady?”
“…My Lady?”
With their orders received, the staff turned on her with gleaming eyes, closing in from all sides.
She flinched and stumbled backward, taking stock of her situation with a wary, darting glance.
Calypse. The man who obliterated the cliché that every father is putty in his daughter’s hands.
I’ll remember this.
“Oh, my lady—where on earth is your hair tie? I’ll need to hold you for just a moment—”
“Ah!”
“My lady, what have you been rolling in? We are absolutely going to have to scrub you down today—”
“And why is she wearing this old rag—”
“Lin! Put that robe back on her! It’s snowing and she’s only got her little pajama dress on underneath!”
A dozen pairs of hands lifted her bodily and carried her toward the interior of the estate.
“Eek! Gyah—”
What followed was a bath so thorough she was fairly certain a layer of skin had been removed. Then she was swathed in a set of warm flannel pajamas.
When she finally came back to herself—
“……”
She was lying spread-eagle on her bed.
I’m clearly cleaner than I was before. So why do I feel like a wrung-out rag?
Just then.
“Nyaang—”
“Baby?”
She recognized the cry in an instant and bolted upright.
“Mrow.”
Right on cue, as though waiting for exactly this moment, the kitten leapt up onto the bed and stretched out its front paws, settling into her arms with practiced ease.
“Baby, where did you go? When did you get back in here?”
Had Knox brought it back from the palace? Or had it been with Calypse at the ice wall—she had seen it there—and found its own way to her room after?
It seemed to have made itself scarce while there were people about, avoiding their eyes—and had snuck back here on its own.
“Good baby—”
“Urrm.”
At her soft voice, the kitten blinked its violet eyes and burrowed deeper into her arms.
It’s so adorable…
Her mouth went soft and helpless. How could she sleep without it like this?
“Let’s sleep inside the blanket again tonight—”
She gathered the kitten close as she pulled the covers over them, and then:
“Baby, are you asleep?”
She peeked under the blanket, just curious—
“Purrr…”
A little round bundle of fluff, curled into a perfect circle, was already dozing with its eyes closed in a contented straight line.
Poor thing. The baby had a hard day too.
She lay looking up at the dark ceiling, turning the day over in her mind.
So much had happened—but what stayed with her most, inevitably, was the boy.
“…I wonder if he made it home all right.”
She stared up into the dark above her.
And suddenly, unbidden, the face of the boy who had stood in the shadows of the forest came back to her.
White as an angel. Violet eyes like a Creature’s.
“Hmm…”
She lifted the edge of the blanket and looked down at the kitten.
“You kind of look a little like—”
Oh. How rude of her.
She clapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head firmly.
No matter how lovely that boy had been, she had no business comparing him to the kitten.
The kitten was lovely and sweet. That was a different category entirely.
“He was a little… eccentric, is the word.”
Still. She didn’t think he was a bad person.
Hmfna.
The warm, downy heat radiating from the little bundle in her arms made her eyelids grow heavy all on their own.
And so, while everyone slept, deep in the quiet of the small hours—
Rustle—
The blankets stirred, shifted—and then a white, fluffy head poked out.
Aisha was fast asleep. So thoroughly asleep that she was snoring, arms thrown out in a triumphant banzai position.
This is my home. Your arms are exactly right.
The kitten watched her and licked its front paw.
It was still, honestly, a bit aggrieved about the scolding. Even now, after all the fuss she’d made about him being in her arms in human form, the moment he came back as a cat she was tucking him into bed again.
Aisha, you impossible girl.
He made a private, solemn vow never to transform again.
The blood tasted terrible besides—and now he had learned that killing a person meant having to run away afterward. Hardly worth it.
“……”
And so the kitten did what he always did. He settled into his loaf position beside Aisha’s sleeping form and watched over her until the first grey light crept under the curtains.
He was nocturnal, after all.
There had always been a reason the kitten spent its days in such devoted, boneless slumber.
And while the kitten held its quiet vigil—
In Calypse’s study, a conversation was underway.
“You’re saying the reason the Creatures stopped was the kitten that had been following Aisha around.”
“Yes.”
He stared at Knox for a moment, disbelieving—but his aide looked more serious than he ever had.
Calypse let out a short, quiet laugh.
But the laugh faded quickly, and he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
Should I actually believe this.
Communicating with Creatures?
From the start, the very premise didn’t sit right with Calypse.
Creatures were incapable of communication.
They had no rational capacity, no reasoning—they operated on pure instinct like animals, and if they were hungry, they would strike at human and beast alike without distinction. In fact, a Creature would lunge at anything that moved, drooling with the effort.
And we’re supposed to believe they can communicate?
This was not something House Krost could handle on its own.
He would need to contact Queen Grace.
“Good work. For now, I’ll send a message to Queen Grace regarding this and—”
“Your Grace. There is one more thing.”
Calypse looked up.
“Go on.”
“As I mentioned—it is apparently a being capable of communicating with humans as well, which is why it has come to be called a Main.”
“Right.”
“There is something that concerns me about the human transformation aspect.”
“Say it.”
“Before it reaches full maturity, it apparently requires human blood to transform.”
A brief silence fell.
Calypse tapped the edge of the table once with one finger, said nothing, then looked back at Knox.
“Where is that cat right now?”
“…It’s in Lady Aisha’s room…”
“What?”
The red eyes fixed on his aide went very still, and very cold, in the space of a single second.
