“Thanks to that woman, you’ve become an amusing little toy that can never be discarded—no matter what you do.”
That particular phrase—curiously laden, thick with implications I couldn’t quite reach—
I was still turning it over in my mind when my body suddenly went airborne.
Dolly had caught me by the scruff of my neck, as if picking up a kitten, and was walking toward the bookshop door.
“And to think I’ve finally caught you. House Foss sent spy after spy and every last one came back dead—and here you’ve walked right into my hands of your own accord. Lord Foss is going to be very pleased.”
“What?”
“You’re going to House Foss. Orders from Lord Foss himself.”
What? Why now, all of a sudden?
“Let—go—!”
I grabbed at the enormous hand clutching my scruff, but it made no difference. All I could manage to grip was one of the man’s large index fingers.
Back to Duke Foss, like this?
“Children should play like children.”
Calypse’s voice drifted through my mind.
You’re a child, so play like a child, he’d said. He’d warned me clearly.
“Let me go!”
“…Loud little thing.”
I kicked and flailed as hard as I could, but just as Calypse had said—faced with a grown man, I was nothing more than a helpless child.
But I can’t go back like this.
If I do, everything Father worked for to restore the North will unravel all over again.
I won’t allow it.
“…I won’t.”
Please—let someone hear me.
Please—if there’s anyone in this street, rescue this helpless little child. Come, anyone, please—
I screamed with everything I had—
“No!”
Jingle—
The bell above the door and the door swinging open happened at the exact same moment, and something small and fast flung itself directly at Dolly’s face.
“—mmf, what—what is—”
Startled, stumbling backward, Dolly reached up to claw the thing off his face—and in the scramble, he dropped me.
I hit the floor and immediately yanked a poison needle from my rabbit backpack—
“……?”
But what had thrown itself at Dolly’s face was a very small, very white kitten.
The baby.
“…B-baby?”
No. Not quite.
I blinked—and where there had been a tiny cat, there was now something taking the shape of a person.
The boy who had buried his face into Dolly’s neck wrenched himself free and raised his head. A fall of fine white hair scattered in the motion.
And beneath it—the otherworldly violet eyes fixed themselves on Dolly.
No light in those eyes.
None of the curiosity he’d always turned on me.
For all the killing he had done—he looked utterly unmoved. As though he had simply done what needed to be done, without reason, without feeling. Like a creature operating on pure instinct—nothing but a clear and singular will.
“……”
With his task complete, Kail planted one foot on Dolly’s chest and pushed off in a small, light leap.
Dolly exhaled a sound like something cracking and crumbling in an old man’s chest—and then fell with a heavy thud.
The breath went out of him. He didn’t move again.
The fact that this mountain of a man could be brought down so simply.
The fact that the baby I had been watching over with such careful tenderness was Kail all along.
And then—the boy who had landed on the floor stood and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand—
“……”
—and instead of clean, only smeared the blood across his face in the way of a beast finished with its meal, carelessly, without thought.
It was too unsettling for words.
I could not move. Not even a little.
And then—
The two hands that had been scrubbing diligently at his mouth slowed to a stop. The violet eyes rose slowly from the floor until they found me.
Blank eyes and trembling eyes—tangled in a single moment.
“Aisha.”
The expressionless violet eyes widened—slowly, unmistakably. As though he were the one in terror, not me.
He opened his mouth with the look of someone who cannot believe what he is seeing.
“…Why are you looking at me like that? I was only—I was only trying to save you—”
Flinch.
And then the rest of the words wouldn’t come. He stared at his own blood-covered hand.
He bit down on his lower lip so hard it could have left a bruise—and then all at once he shoved the door open and ran.
“…Kail?”
I came back to myself. It was the sound of the jingle bell as Kail slammed through the door—that was what finally pulled me back.
“Kail. Why are you—”
Running?
My legs were still bruised and aching where I’d fallen, but I pushed myself up.
“…Why are you looking at me like that? I was only trying to save you—”
A question, sharp as something embedded in the skin.
“……!”
It hit me then like a wave breaking.
All of Kail’s behaviour that had made no sense until now—
What if it was all because the kitten I had rescued from Ahili Circus had been Kail?
“Why did you save me? And why are you looking at me with those eyes?”
What if the creature who hadn’t known how to apologise, hadn’t known how to communicate, had simply been a cat who had spent his entire life inside a cage?
“You’re being irresponsible, you know. I had expectations. You were the first one to ever look at me like that.”
What if the first time I had ever looked at him the way I had—I was now looking at him the same way as everyone else?
“Kail!”
I ran out of the bookshop without feeling the pain in my knee.
________________________________________
Out in the alley behind the shop, the first thing Kail ran into was fear.
He was afraid of other people—but it was their fear of him that terrified him more.
He stumbled into the open central plaza and immediately collided with a child running past in carefree delight.
“Ow!”
The child landed on her bottom—and the moment she looked up at Kail, she screamed.
“Mam-maaaaa!”
Human fear spread like a web—dense and fast.
“That—that older boy, he’s covered in—”
The fear propagated because people were bound to each other. A small girl who had been rushing over to help the fallen child froze the moment she locked eyes with Kail.
“Leila—! Max—!”
A woman’s scream from somewhere across the plaza.
She went white and scooped up the children called Leila and Max and fled.
The boy with a face covered in blood had thrown the entire plaza into chaos.
“Scream—!”
The people seated at terrace tables shot to their feet and scrambled away. Shop owners who’d been looking out curiously from their doorways caught sight of Kail and immediately slammed their doors shut.
The sound of crying children rang through the air like a persistent ringing in the ears, and somewhere a person who had been running to fetch a knight tripped and fell over a cobblestone.
Inside all of that noise, Kail’s heart pounded like a drum.
But at the same time, his fingers and his toes were going cold—as if all the warmth had quietly left them.
I am not human.
Of all the countless people he had ever seen, not one had treated him as human.
Not the people in this plaza. Not the people of Ahili Circus.
And in the end—even Aisha had looked at him with that same terrified expression.
Tap. Tap.
Kail slipped away from the crowds and ducked into the nearby forest, pressing himself against the back of a tree. The wave of fear that radiated outward from where he stood only frightened him further.
It’s alright.
If he became a cat again, it would be alright.
He crouched down right there, tucking his knees tight to his chest, and pressed both trembling hands against them.
Just then—
“……”
A cat that had been hiding somewhere in the forest peeked its head out.
Did that cat run in here to escape the screaming too?
A strange kinship made Kail hesitate—and then slowly reach a hand out toward it—
“Hissss!”
The cat must have caught the smell of blood.
The moment it did, something inside it snapped—its face crumpled in a snarl, and it fled from Kail as fast as its legs would carry it.
“……”
Kail understood.
I’m not human, and I’m not a cat either.
If he was neither animal nor person, then what was he? A monster?
Once the thought started, it spread like wildfire, devouring everything.
Then where do monsters go?
If Ahili Circus was no longer his home—and Aisha’s arms were no longer his home—
“…Where is my home?”
The hoarse words dissolved into empty air.
If neither humans nor animals would accept him, then only one option remained.
He staggered to his feet.
What Kail found himself looking toward—beyond the rooftops of the city of Thorn—was the ice wall, rising vast and immovable against the sky.
The end of the world.
A white wasteland that stretched on forever.
Without deliberating for even a moment, Kail turned his steps toward the North.
________________________________________
At that same hour, in the central plaza of the city of Thorn.
“Huff—huff—”
I ran. I ran and ran, and the faster I needed to go, the worse the wind resistance became—the hood and hem of my robe billowing behind me like curtains in a storm.
Times like these, I hated being five years old.
I hated that when I clenched my fist it looked like an adorable little pebble. I hated that when I ran, I probably looked like I was waddling to everyone watching.
“Kail—!”
Because of this body, I was terrified of losing Kail.
I entered the plaza and immediately sensed that something was wrong—the atmosphere was nothing like the peaceful hum it had carried before.
Everyone wore the face of someone still shaken. Still pale.
A few nearby were murmuring, “That boy—I’m certain his eyes were violet.”
Violet eyes.
He definitely came through here.
I bolted toward the nearest woman I could reach.
“Excuse me—did you see a boy with violet eyes?”
“What? A boy with violet eyes?”
The woman, who had been trying to soothe a crying child, looked up in startled confusion.
“Yes.”
“Oh—I saw him! Violet eyes, and his face was covered in blood—the moment he appeared, everyone panicked. The knights are searching but they haven’t found him yet.”
Thud—
My heart dropped.
“W-which way did he go?”
Just then—
“A boy with violet eyes has been spotted near the ice wall!”
“What? What’s he doing at the ice wall?”
“We’re pursuing him, but the boy isn’t easy to catch—”
“Knights!”
Not far from where I stood, a group of Krost estate knights were deep in tense conversation.
“Oh—?! Young Lady?!”
The word young lady made the woman I’d been speaking to spring to her feet in startled recognition—but I paid her no mind and ran straight to the knight.
“Take me to the ice wall!”
“What?”
“Right now! Take me to the ice wall, please!”
________________________________________
