At the same time. In a corridor of the main estate.
“No.”
“Do it.”
“No.”
“I’m telling you to do it! You sniff it and track down the one they call Bibi!”
Crackle.
Two pairs of sharp, pointed eyes—Lucas’s and Kyle’s—were throwing sparks at each other.
“I won’t! The smell is too awful. It’s worse than that poison the woman forced down my throat that time!”
The moment Guide had pulled out the sock, Kyle understood that something had gone very wrong.
An overwhelming smell.
Before he could even attempt to trace the scent of the white, long, fluffy creature, something dark and damp had already lunged at him.
This sock was a weapon.
Any Creature, however fearsome, would flee at the mere sight of it.
“I’m not doing it! It smells!”
With a firm huff, Kyle turned away from the sock entirely.
He was already sensitive enough with his nose—bringing that thing within range of his face could genuinely kill him.
That was when—
“…Excuse me. L—Lucas?”
A small, timid voice broke in from the middle of the standoff.
It was Guide.
“What?”
At Lucas’s response, Guide glanced at Kyle’s turned back and leaned in to whisper.
“Is… is Kyle… some kind of cat-human or something…?”
“Sort of. Half Creature, half human. That’s roughly it.”
“Oh. So that’s why his nose is so sharp.”
“Why?”
Lucas asked again, but Guide had already slipped into deep thought, turning something over in his head.
Then, as though he had made a decision, his trembling fists clenched—and he snapped his head up with sudden purpose.
“Kyle!”
“What.”
“Being able to smell something from this far away while the sock is all the way over here—you must be extraordinary!”
And then: a shaky thumbs-up, thrust forward.
Lucas watched with wide eyes. Was this the Creature trainer at work—attempting to tame Kyle?
It was a remarkably gutsy move for a crybaby. It would have been even more impressive if the outstretched thumb weren’t trembling like a leaf in the wind.
But Kyle leveled a narrow, critical look at the wobbling thumb.
“Can’t Lucas-hyung see you covering your nose too? It’s not that I’m extraordinary—your sock is just that extraordinary.”
Uh oh. Kyle was unexpectedly perceptive.
Lucas, caught out, was puzzling furiously—
“Um—Lucas.”
Another whisper.
“I—I’m sorry to ask, but could you take your finger off your nose? I don’t think Kyle believes my compliment.”
“…What?”
The strange request jolted Lucas, who was still holding his finger firmly over his nose.
He turned to find a certain determined young boy watching him steadily, sock in hand, eyebrows in an earnest diagonal.
Honestly, I’d rather not…
But the boy had a point.
If he kept blocking his nose, Kyle would never agree to sniff anything either.
Couldn’t be helped. If that little crybaby was willing to push through it, then the heir of House Krost ought to do what was required of him.
“…Fine. Okay.”
Lucas finally removed the hand blocking his nose.
“It doesn’t smell at all, does it?”
Guide dangled the sock toward him, and Lucas immediately crumpled to the floor.
But he was the sole heir of House Krost.
He could collapse—but the mission still had to be completed.
“Right. Not. A smell. In the world.”
At those words, Guide’s face lit up.
“See, see?! Only Kyle can smell this—Kyle’s nose is the only one incredible enough to pick this up!”
Whether by prayer or sheer willpower, their effort seemed to have worked.
Kyle, who had been glaring at both of them with those sharp, narrow eyes, finally turned his head back toward them.
“…Is that true?”
“Of course it is! And Kyle—if you find Bibi for us, Aisha will be so happy!”
“Hm? She will?”
And then—the name ‘Aisha’ landed, and Kyle’s ears perked up like a rabbit’s.
Lucas, lying prone on the corridor floor while desperately clinging to the last thread of consciousness, had a sudden thought.
I should have brought Aisha into this from the start…
Where anything involving Aisha was concerned, Kyle would throw himself into it without hesitation.
If only they had said this from the beginning, he could have avoided the full sensory assault on his own nose…
No matter—Guide was already pressing his case.
“Of course! Aisha is the Young Lady of House Krost. If you solve a problem happening inside the estate, she’ll definitely call you a hero!”
“What?! A hero?!”
At the word ‘hero,’ Kyle shot forward.
Kyle had learned in one of his lessons that ‘hero’ was a tremendously admirable title.
“Aisha would really call me a hero?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll do it! Give me the sock!”
Kyle immediately snatched the sock from Guide’s hands and pressed it to his nose.
The claim that there was no smell at all had been a lie. But still, without complaint, Kyle sifted through the nauseating wall of odor and found Bibi’s trace.
Then he sniffed at the air—
“There!”
—and pointed in one direction. Guide immediately broke into a scrambling run.
“Bibi! I’m coming!”
“I’m going too!”
Kyle made to follow—then stopped and looked down.
Lucas, who had already lost consciousness entirely, lay motionless in the middle of the corridor.
Lucas-hyung is heavy. Should I just leave him here?
If Lucas was left in the corridor, a passing knight would eventually carry him to his room.
But—
‘You—you’re extraordinary! You can smell that all the way from here? Incredible!’
Kyle remembered Guide’s words.
“…I’m a hero.”
He murmured it with great solemnity.
In class, he had learned that heroes never abandoned people.
That was right. However heavy Lucas might be, a hero protected everyone to the very end.
“Heave-ho!”
In the end, Kyle hoisted the unconscious Lucas over his shoulder and, dragging that considerably longer pair of legs behind him, followed after Guide.
What they did not know was that the scent trail was leading them straight to the ice cavern where Aisha was.
“…Who are you?”
In the ice cavern, where there should have been no one else but me—
The being I had been convinced was a ghost turned out to be something else entirely, and it had just thrust its face directly into mine.
“It’s me, Bibi, you little fool. Weren’t you just calling my name over and over?”
The fear dissolved instantly into pure bewilderment.
“Yes. I was, but…”
I lost the ability to form a sentence and fell silent.
The creature was introducing herself as Bibi, right to my face—
A tiny, ferret-like Creature speaking in the sharp, scolding tones of an elderly woman. Was this normal?
And how old must she be, to have a voice like that when she was barely the size of a wrist?
I stood there making sounds but no words, and Bibi’s eyebrow arched up into a steep diagonal.
She folded her tiny arms—not quite long enough to cross properly—into a feeble attempt at arms akimbo.
“Goodness, goodness… this soft-headed thing. With a face like that, can you really survive even one day in an ice cavern?”
And now she was even scolding me.
I studied Bibi with a look of pure wonder.
“…But. Grandmother—”
“It’s Bibi!”
“Right. Bibi. When did you learn to speak the human language?”
At my question, Bibi’s bean-like black eyes went perfectly round.
“The human language? What are you talking about! You kept ignoring this old woman, and I kept shouting—and you finally came to your senses, that’s all!”
So it’s not that something has gone wrong with my mind?
Blink. Blink.
My eyes moved slowly. I reached up and stretched out my round cheek with one finger.
“Ow.”
It hurt. So it wasn’t a dream.
…Then am I actually understanding Creature language right now?
How on earth?
Naturally, this was not something I had ever encountered in the original novel.
But—
‘Save Aisha! Don’t hurt any people—just go after Aisha!’
The memory of Kyle’s voice, heard inside my own head, suddenly surfaced. The time I had been under Foss Cray’s sway through the dark magic.
A situation where Father and I could have been in real danger.
And then Kyle’s voice came through my head, and the dark magic broke.
Come to think of it, the fact that I had heard Kyle’s voice at all was strange enough—but his command had not been directed at me. It had been directed at the Creatures.
It had been a strange thing at the time, but I had been far too overwhelmed to give it any real thought.
Could this be connected to that?
I was stroking my chin and mulling this over—
Thud. Something dropped into my lap.
I looked down. It was drool.
“Child, start handing over that bread. This old woman is hungry and freezing.”
Bibi was drooling steadily onto my lap, holding out her thin pink palm.
Oh dear.
“Have some. Bibi grandmother.”
It looked like she would pounce on my face again if I delayed, so I reached into my jacket and produced the bread and placed it into her hands.
Bibi snatched it up and began eating with great urgency.
Watching her, I slipped in a quiet question.
“So—Bibi grandmother.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you come here?”
Flinch.
Bibi, who had been gnawing away at the bread with aggressive efficiency, went stiff.
She looked as though she was trying to decide whether she should say anything at all. Then she cast a sidelong glance up at me.
And at last—
“…I ran away.”
“Pardon?”
“Guide—that child got himself locked in a room because of me. I thought it would be better for him if this old woman wasn’t around anymore. So I ran.”
She murmured it like it was nothing, and went back to eating.
