Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The next day.

After starting her morning, as usual, with stretching exercises and a fried egg, Big Sissy gave Lulu a few words of warning.

“Lulu. Big Sissy is going to the market today, so don’t cause any trouble and stay quiet, okay?”

“Mm-hmm!”

‘Nope. Lulu’s going to cause trouble today.’

Lulu uttered two completely contradictory answers, one aloud and the other in her heart, while wearing a mischievous smile.

“Now, you can play on the third floor, but you’re absolutely not allowed to go into the basement. Got it?”

“Not allowed!”

‘Nope, Lulu’s going down there today.’

“That’s my good girl. Mwah, mwah.”

Even as Big Sissy showered her with kisses, completely unaware that Lulu had fooled her, the mischievous smile never left Lulu’s lips.

After saying goodbye to Big Sissy,

Lulu pulled up her drooping socks and hurried toward the stairs.

At the bottom of the staircase leading underground lay a storeroom shrouded in darkness.

Big Sissy had strictly forbidden her from entering, but…

‘If she reads me that same storybook again tonight, Lulu might get so bored that she’ll never fall asleep for the rest of her life.’

Just thinking about the storybook made Lulu recall Big Sissy’s voice beginning with “Once upon a time…”, and she shuddered involuntarily.

Although Big Sissy had kept the basement securely locked, opening the door was actually quite simple.

She had installed an artifact on either side of the door, but perhaps because she thought Lulu wouldn’t be able to open it, they were both basic defensive artifacts with fairly simple enchantments.

‘I’ve already drawn the spell to解除 the defenses!’

Lulu took out a sheet of paper bearing a spell she’d clumsily copied after watching Big Sissy, who was a talented magician.

Then, she placed the paper over each defensive artifact and pressed down—

Click.

The sound of the storeroom’s door unlocking, released from the artifact’s magic, rang out.

“Yoo-hoo! That’s more like it!”

Unconsciously imitating Big Sissy’s way of speaking, Lulu rose onto her tiptoes and barely managed to turn the doorknob before opening the door.

Thump, thump.

The door to the storeroom Big Sissy had strictly forbidden her from opening.

A twinge of guilt crept into Lulu’s heart, but here was the result of doing something entirely of her own accord for the very first time.

“…Oh!”

Lulu’s mouth fell open as she peered inside.

Before her eyes lay a library lined with hundreds of books, all waiting for her—after three years of reading nothing but the same storybook.

As though entranced, Lulu walked toward the bookshelves and lifted her head to read the titles.

“These are storybooks!”

And every single one of them…

“They’re all different from , the storybook Lulu wanted to read!”

Her excited voice trembled.

Lulu hopped around, eagerly looking at the books, before pulling out one titled , which sounded similar to .

“Hehe! I have to read it before Big Sissy comes back!”

If she secretly read other storybooks like this, perhaps she could put up with Big Sissy’s unbearably repetitive bedtime stories!

Brimming with anticipation, Lulu opened the book.

“Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess. But one day, a dragon kidnapped the princess?”

The little finger that had been happily tracing the lines of text came to an abrupt halt.

A dragon had kidnapped a princess?

But the storybook Big Sissy read to her clearly said that the princess had taken the dragon in and lived with it!

Something felt strange, but Lulu decided to keep reading for now.

“The ki…ng promised the knight that if he rescued the princess, he could marry her. The knight took up his sword and stormed the tower to save the princess, where he fought the dragon… Hic!”

But the sentence that followed made Lulu so startled that her little fingers curled inward.

“He defeated the dragon and rescued the princess…?”

The dragon was a wicked villain? But the baby dragon in Big Sissy’s storybook had been really, really nice! It had even been praised!

“…What a strange storybook. I’ll read another one.”

What a horrifying tale, portraying someone like her as a wicked villain!

Lulu got up and picked out another storybook.

But…

“…The dragon kidnapped a baby…?”

In every single storybook, dragons appeared without fail as the villains.

“…T-The dragon burned down a village…?”

The sentence about a dragon burning down a village was so shocking that Lulu covered her mouth with her palm.

Come to think of it, fire sometimes came out whenever she burped.

These storybooks… They knew Lulu so frighteningly well!

“Then, are dragons… really bad villains? But Lulu is a dragon.”

Hic.

“Then does that mean Lulu is… a bad villain?”

Ding—

It felt as though a gigantic bell had rung inside her head.

It was the moment a baby dragon who had lived only inside a tower finally discovered her true identity, the very thing the princess had kept so carefully hidden from her.

—

“…Then what is Lulu supposed to do? If I’m a bad villain, won’t the knights come and capture me?”

Four years into her life.

For the first time, Lulu experienced an identity crisis. She ruffled her hair in confusion before looking around.

First, she supposed she should put all the books she’d scattered back where they belonged.

If she didn’t even tidy up the books, she’d truly be a terrible villain!

“…But the villains I knew weren’t like this… I’m still just a baby dragon…”

Lulu’s mood sank as she diligently squeezed the books back into place with her little maple-leaf-shaped fingers.

“Lulu. If you go outside, it’ll be crawling with villains who want to hurt you. So you’re not allowed to go out until you grow up.”

Whenever Lulu gazed out the window, curious about the world beyond, Big Sissy would raise her index finger with a frightening expression.

That’s right.

Villains weren’t small, petite, and weak like Lulu.

A proper villain was supposed to be enormous, violent, and powerful, and always made a loud explosive entrance whenever they appeared…

KABOOM—!

“That’s right. Big Sissy said villains make sounds like that when they appear.”

Lulu nodded with her eyes closed, only to jump in fright a moment later.

“Wait! Our house is being smashed to pieces!”

Along with the ground shaking as though an earthquake had struck, the sound of something crashing violently could be heard beyond the closed storeroom door.

And it wasn’t just once. There came a series of heavy thuds.

Thud, thud, thud.

Perhaps because she was underground, whenever the ceiling shook, the vibrations were strong enough to make Lulu’s little body tremble.

Someone had definitely come.

‘But Big Sissy said she’d installed powerful barrier artifacts, so no one should be able to get in.’

Her large ruby-red eyes trembled as though caught in an earthquake.

After swallowing nervously, Lulu placed a pot from the storeroom on top of her head, picked up a broom, and cautiously opened the door.

‘Big Sissy says I’m still little, but I have to protect our home.’

If it was a burglar, all she had to do was shoot fireballs at them.

Her fierce triangular eyes were ready, too!

Lulu slowly crept up the stairs, her mouth already open as though she were about to unleash a blast of fire at any moment.

“Who’s there?”

Just as she reached the first floor, a deep, low voice rumbled beside her.

Oh, so he’d already—already made it inside!

Lulu wasn’t scared at all!

“Who are you, you villain…!”

Lulu had been about to shout, but the moment she saw the intruder standing inside the house, her mouth fell open.

He was clad in armor just like the knights she’d only ever seen in storybooks, and he was incredibly tall.

His deep, crimson eyes, framed by black hair that fell over his straight forehead, were so intense that they made anyone facing him shrink back.

‘…H-Huuuuh.’

To look up at the face of a man who stood a full 190 centimeters tall, Lulu’s head tilted back of its own accord.

Her chin lifted so high that she thought her neck might snap.

His entrance had been just like that of a villain, but the moment she faced him, she instinctively knew he wasn’t a bad person.

There was an air of quiet dignity about him.

And the moment he looked at Lulu, his eyes softened slightly. This wasn’t a villain, but…

“…A knight?”

The words slipped out before she could stop herself, and Lulu’s eyes widened.

The man furrowed his brows in slight confusion and brushed his hair back.

“…A knight, you say? Well, I suppose you could call me one. I’ve come to rescue the princess, after all.”

“Huh?!”

“So, little one. Where is the villain who kidnapped you and the princess?”

The knight glanced sharply around before kneeling down to meet Lulu’s eyes.

“You know, the dragon from the storybooks, or whatever those creatures are called.”

…H-Huuuuh!

An alarm bell began ringing inside Lulu’s head.

***

Meanwhile.

“You bought so many things Lulu likes. Angela, you should get yourself something, too!”

“Lulu’s a picky eater anyway, so I can just eat whatever’s left over. It’s killing two birds with one stone.”

“Oh, honestly! Take some more. This village hardly gets any outsiders as it is, what with all the monsters around.”

“…Thank you, ma’am.”

“There’s no need to thank me. Just try them with Lulu and tell me what you think.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to think about how enthusiastically I should praise them.”

The corners of the mouth visible beneath her hood curled upward, prompting the surrounding merchants to burst into laughter.

This was the village of Shadeum, situated right beside the Shadow Forest.

A young woman named Angela had suddenly appeared in this village, where outsiders were rarely seen.

Thanks to her naturally friendly and easygoing personality, she’d quickly grown close to the villagers. However, none of them knew where the young woman had come from or what she had done before arriving.

There were only two things they could say for certain.

The first was that she lived alone with her little sister right beside the Shadow Forest, a place even the villagers were too frightened to enter.

And the second was that her name was Angela.

Of course, even that was a lie.

“Oh, that’s right. Angela.”

Just then, Aunt Mary, the owner of the bakery, spoke up.

“Yes?”

“You seem like you can take care of yourself just fine, but make sure you lock the doors and windows before going to bed tonight.”

“Has something happened?”

Angela’s round eyes widened.

‘Is she going to tell me that monsters have appeared from the Shadow Forest again?’

To the villagers, monsters were objects of terror, but to her, they were no different from passing squirrels.

After all, she’d surrounded the tower with layer upon layer of barrier artifacts.

Unless a high-ranking mage openly launched an assault, neither ordinary people nor monsters would ever be able to find the tower.

Besides, even the knights were reluctant to venture into the forest.

“Well, a certain knight went into the forest looking for someone.”

…They were supposed to be just as reluctant.

“I tried to stop him, telling him it was dangerous, but he wouldn’t listen. He insisted that the missing princess might have been kidnapped by a dragon.”

“……”

And just then.

Bzzzz—

A vibration rang out, as though it had been waiting for that very moment.

Angela glanced into her worn leather bag, where a warning artifact was trembling and glowing red.

It meant that someone had broken through the barrier and entered the tower.