Calypse quietly opened the door to Aisha’s bedroom the moment Knox finished speaking.
“I judged that nothing serious would happen. The truth is, for the past two weeks, the young lady has been secretly keeping a cat.”
He remembered Knox confessing that with his gaze rolling sideways, avoiding eye contact.
“She told me first, actually, and since I knew and chose to pretend I didn’t—it isn’t the young lady’s fault at all. If you wish to be angry, be angry with me. The young lady doesn’t even know what that cat truly is.”
Keeping secrets with my daughter behind my back.
It wasn’t so much anger he felt as something smaller and more petty—a flicker of jealousy—but he decided to save Knox’s reckoning for later.
For now, the most important thing was confirming that Aisha was safe.
When he opened the door, the light from the corridor spilled into the bedroom, washing over the sleeping child.
Peaceful, as if his worry had been for nothing.
She slept with a soft little snore, and looking at her, he found himself thinking that if angels ever descended, surely they would look something like Aisha.
But beside her.
“……”
A pair of ominous violet eyes glinted in the moonlight beside the sleeping girl.
The cat, which had been sitting with its eyes wide open, rose slowly to its feet.
“Mya—”
So that’s the Creature.
He had imagined, based on the description alone, something fearsome and wild-looking.
“It’s just a kitten.”
No wonder Aisha kept it close. At her age, everything adorable was worth clinging to.
Best to separate them for now.
He exhaled quietly and moved to sit on the edge of the bed—
“Hssss!”
Without warning, the little ball of fluff puffed itself up and launched itself at Calypse.
Of course, it ended up dangling helplessly from his hand, which had snatched it by the scruff of its neck—but still.
“What’s this?”
“Hssss! Hsssss!”
Even caught by the scruff and hanging in midair, it kept its claws bared and limbs flailing. Clearly, this was no ordinary cat.
With an expression as blank as stone, Calypse kept his grip on the scruff and quietly carried the cat out of Aisha’s bedroom.
And then—
“Lock it in the dungeon. It’s young, so it might get cold—throw a blanket over it. And what’s the word—boil some chicken and toss it some water too.”
After handing the cat off to one of his knights, Calypse returned to bed with a considerably lighter heart and finally fell asleep.
But the next morning—
“My baby’s gone. Where did my baby go!”
“Dandelion, what’s wrong?”
“My baby… last time she disappeared I nearly had a heart attack, and now my baby is…”
“Baby? What baby?”
“My baby… that is to say…”
Aisha, who had been hiding the fact that she was keeping a cat, couldn’t bring herself to answer and stumbled over her words.
Then she ran to Knox.
“M-my baby… my baby is gone… what do I do? She’s so small, if she went outside…”
In full-blown panic, Aisha was completely unlike her usual self—stammering, clutching at her hair.
Knox took one look at her and bolted straight to Calypse.
“My lord. What did you do with the cat?”
When a flustered Knox threw open the study door and asked—
“The dungeon.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I gave it a blanket. Water. Boiled chicken.”
Ahem.
Calypse cleared his throat and subtly let it be known that he had, in fact, exercised a degree of conscience.
But it was no use. Aisha had no way of knowing that he’d made any effort at all.
“…In any case.”
“Yes.”
The two of them exchanged a look and clustered together, easing the study door open just a crack.
In the corridor, Aisha was still beside herself—and Lucas, alarmed by her state, could be seen scrambling to bring her a handkerchief.
Knox closed the door and sighed.
“That cat means everything to the young lady. How could you separate them without a word?”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous it may be, but that cat has not so much as hissed at the young lady once in two weeks. It was perfectly well-behaved.”
“It was on guard around me.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. That’s beside the point.”
Aisha cares for it? That cat?
Calypse pressed his lips together, thrown off balance.
“Knox.”
“Yes.”
“…If I were to bring another cat—”
“Don’t say something beneath you, my lord. Is an animal a thing that can be swapped out like an object?”
The chairman of MSLA—the Magical and Sentient Life Admirers’ society—as expected.
Knox adjusted his monocle with a sharp click.
“And even if the young lady accepted another cat—do you truly think she would be happy? That sharp, perceptive young lady of yours?”
“……”
I only did it because I was afraid she might be in danger.
But Knox’s words were right, and there was nothing to be said. Calypse silently pulled the study door shut.
“I’ll speak to Aisha in a little while.”
“About what?”
“I’ll tell her honestly. That I thought the cat’s true nature made it dangerous—and so I moved it somewhere safe in the middle of the night without telling her.”
Ha.
If Aisha hadn’t been involved, he would have killed it without leaving so much as a trace. Young or not, that cat was a potentially volatile creature that could determine the very fate of the Kingdom of Frozen.
But there was nothing he could do.
When he stood there listening to the child’s stricken voice drifting through the closed door—
“S-she was at Ahili Circus, and she was d-dying, she was so t-tiny, and I nursed her back all by myself, and she’s still a b-baby, so if she wandered outside, a W-Winter Wolf might have g-gobbled her up.”
“Oh—when you said ‘baby,’ you meant the cat? I’ll help you look. There now, stop crying.”
—his heart became a storm he had no name for.
Calypse did his best to pretend he hadn’t heard any of it and sat back down at his desk to focus on his work.
Once all this is settled. Once the child calms down a little—I’ll talk to her then.
Parenting was impossibly difficult.
Especially when he loved his daughter so fiercely that the sound of her in pain made it nearly impossible to concentrate on anything at all.
________________________________________
Meanwhile, at that very hour.
In the kingdom that Aisha had swept through like a force of nature, a sweeping investigation was underway.
It concerned the identity of a man who had been killed by an unknown boy.
“He didn’t damage the face—targeted the back of the neck precisely. At first we assumed the boy killed him, but the body showed animal bite marks on the back of the neck.”
“…Were there animals on the palace grounds?”
“Not within the palace itself—but this forest is where hunting tournaments are held, and His Majesty occasionally hunts here as well. There are rabbits and deer… and the occasional weasel, I suppose…”
“……”
“Could it be… a weasel bite?”
Even the knight reporting it could tell it was a ridiculous suggestion. His voice shrank to the size of an ant.
But the bite marks on the back of the man’s neck truly did look like those left by a mustelid carnivore—something small and sharp.
If not a weasel, perhaps a kitten.
But this strapping grown man—felled by a weasel? By a kitten?
“For now, record it as an accidental death caused by an animal attack, and confirm the identity of the—”
Just as a flustered Knight Commander exhaled in exasperation—
“The sun of the world shines upon the Kingdom of Frozen!”
At the sound of knights snapping to salute, the Knight Commander turned reflexively and did the same.
“The sun of the world shines upon the Kingdom of Frozen. Your Majesty, I hope you are well.”
“Yes. The investigation—how is it proceeding?”
The king strolled over at an unhurried pace and glanced sideways at the Knight Commander’s notebook.
The Knight Commander showed it to him without suspicion.
“Based on our findings, it appears the victim was killed by an animal rather than a person. However, given that he appears to have infiltrated the palace grounds without permission, we planned to examine the body to establish his iden—”
“Put that on hold.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Put it on hold. Do I need to say it twice?”
His tone carried a flicker of irritation, and the Knight Commander flinched before hastily replying.
“Forgive me! Then until further orders from Your Majesty, all investigation will be suspended entirely.”
“Good. With that settled, everyone get back to your duties. You’ve worked hard.”
Only then did the king allow a faint smile to pass over his face, and he walked away at a pace slightly quicker than before.
…Did he really come all the way here just to say that?
Under normal circumstances, orders were relayed through an aide, and on matters of importance, the king would press deeper into the details himself, asking questions one by one.
Why suspend the investigation?
It left a vaguely unsettled feeling in his gut—but to a palace knight, the king’s orders were absolute law.
“Set the investigation aside for now. Keep the body preserved and untouched until further notice.”
“Yes, sir!”
The Knight Commander revised his orders and returned to his post, unable to shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
The following day.
“T-the body has disappeared, sir.”
“…What did you say?”
Less than a day after the king had issued the suspension order, the body had vanished without a trace.
________________________________________
