Chapter 4
The book I’d bought, seduced by its title, was helpful, but reality was quite different. Especially the section on growth and development—it didn’t match the baby at all.
It had grown bottom front teeth but couldn’t open its eyes. While I worried something might be wrong, it looked healthy enough when I watched it vigorously sucking my finger to eat soup.
Maybe it was because this wasn’t an ordinary baby after all. The horns and scales on its arm irregularly appeared and disappeared. There would clearly be horns one moment, then they’d suddenly vanish, only to reappear the next morning.
I lifted my gaze from the book and looked around. It hadn’t even been two weeks since I’d found the baby, but the house was already filling up with infant supplies.
Handkerchiefs, emergency medicine, baby clothes—and recently I’d even bought shoes I’d spotted while passing through the village. Though I knew it would be ages before the baby could wear them, I couldn’t just walk past. Already, it seemed there were more things I’d bought for the baby than my own belongings in this house.
I was slouched in the chair, turning pages, when I paused at the sound of whimpering. I closed the book and sighed. I genuinely felt like crying.
The baby, unable to tolerate even the time it took me to sigh, began wailing louder.
“Yes, yes, I’m coming, coming.”
I got up and went to the cradle. With practiced hands now, I scooped the baby up in one arm and gently patted its chest with the other. The soft, fluffy texture of the baby clothes and that warm body heat felt good against my skin.
As I slowly rocked and continued patting, the baby calmed again. I didn’t know what noble bloodline it came from, but it certainly knew how to put someone to work.
“When you’re not crying, you’re such an angel.”
Its cheeks had filled out since I’d first found it, grown so adorably plump that I poked one with my finger, making the baby wrinkle its nose. Even that was so cute it made me smile.
As it settled down, the horns that had been jutting from its head shrank and then disappeared entirely. Even while smiling, watching this happen left me unsure how to feel.
“What should I do with you.”
Given its condition, it was difficult to actively search for adoptive parents. Would an orphanage even accept a child like this? Should I just keep raising it myself? As my thoughts reached that point, something stirred strangely in my chest.
It felt heavy with burden but also somehow… ticklish. It was similar to how I’d felt the day of my engineering exam, or the night before entering the imperial palace.
When I slipped my finger into the baby’s small fist, curled into a tight ball, its hand clenched around me. The baby’s hand, radiating warmth, was soft and tender. When I wiggled my finger, the grip holding me tightened even more. The book called this the grasp reflex.
It explained that newborns do this to cling to their caregivers for survival, but I found it hard to believe the baby in my arms was making such calculated moves. To me, it only looked like a harmless being that couldn’t possibly hurt me.
“Baby smell.”
When I brought my nose close to the space between the baby’s cheek and neck and inhaled, there was a cozy fragrance. Like freshly washed bedding, or the smell of chicks playing in spring sunshine. After breathing it in for a moment, I pulled back—and met the gaze of purple eyes looking at me.
I didn’t know when they’d opened, but the baby’s eyes were now fixed on me. I tensed, terrified I might drop it.
Where there should have been closed lids and black lashes, purple eyes now stared back at me. Long lashes fluttered slowly.
“Ah…”
The baby had opened its eyes. The more I processed this fact, the more speechless I became. I couldn’t move a muscle. The baby’s warmth against my chest, that soft palm gripping my finger so tightly—it was all too much.
Though the baby’s eyes were open, it didn’t seem to actually be looking at me. Rather than focusing on something, it seemed more like its eyes were simply… open. The baby blinked those wide eyes, then smacked its tiny lips and yawned. And then closed them again.
As I stared at those closed lids, my heart began racing belatedly. I didn’t know why I felt so overwhelmed, but excitement made me wiggle my fingers and toes.
Only now did it feel real—that what I was holding was truly a living being. A being that could see, hear, and one day speak.
Though it was my first time seeing purple eyes, I wasn’t particularly surprised. It had horns on its head and reptilian scales on its arm—purple eyes could be considered just another unique trait.
I carefully stroked the baby’s eyelids with my finger. I could feel the round eyeball through the thin skin.
“You choose now to open your eyes?”
After not opening them even once until now. It was almost funny—as if it had sensed me wondering whether to keep raising it, opening its eyes at just the right moment. I laughed softly and adjusted my hold for better support.
I could take more time to think about it. Raising a child that cried every night and needed constant care was exhausting, but it felt nice having another living, breathing being in this house besides myself. It was warm.
People get better at things the more they do them. I was learning this timeless truth firsthand lately. Now I was handling the baby with real skill. To what extent? Well, I’d wake at the slightest sound, and I’d be on my feet the moment the baby cried. It was amazing how sensitive I’d become to noise.
I also knew how to soothe it now. Rather than saying I’d figured it out myself, it was more accurate to say the baby had taught me. One time when it was crying loudly and flailing its arms, I’d grabbed its hand, and the baby started sucking on my finger. Then, as if by magic, it stopped crying.
After seeing how it calmed down as if it had never been upset once it had a finger in its mouth, I started offering my finger whenever it whimpered.
After this happened repeatedly, even when it wasn’t crying, the baby would try pulling my hand to its mouth whenever it grabbed hold. It was a chore secretly extracting my finger from the sleeping baby’s mouth, but it beat holding and comforting a screaming infant.
Shall we start?
After putting the baby to sleep inside, I went out. These days, whenever the baby napped, I’d come outside and make something bit by bit.
The first thing I’d made was the cradle, and today I was making a mobile. I wrestled for ages with the small pieces of wood I’d cut.
Though I’d lived as an engineer, this was my first time carving. Both involved using my hands, but they were problems of entirely different dimensions. Until now, I’d never cared about appearance when making something. There was no need to. But I couldn’t just hang random rocks on a mobile.
If the baby grew up remembering my mobile as ugly, dark stones… that would be terrible. It might give nightmares, leave trauma, potentially cause insomnia even in adulthood.
I shook my head vigorously to clear these useless thoughts. Anyway, I just needed to avoid leaving the baby with bad memories.
“I’m trying to make a duck, but…”
The duck I’d carved looked more like a snowman than anything else. Why were the curves like this? And why was the bill so tiny? Despite grumbling, I set it aside. Next to me were many carvings of small, cute creatures—rabbits, butterflies—but not many were actually usable.
“Maybe it would look better painted.”
I slipped into the house as quietly as possible and brought out paint. I painted the duck’s body yellow, its bill orange, and carefully painted a white rabbit and a yellow butterfly, but the results were disastrous.
“It’s hideous.”
No matter how I held these unidentifiable creatures up to the sunlight, they remained ugly. Especially the rabbit with red eyes—it was downright scary. It looked like it would traumatize the baby.
After mulling it over, I gave up on the carvings and searched for pinecones instead. I dug through snow, collecting crushed and soggy pinecones. I selected only those with relatively intact shapes and chose the least frightening carvings, stringing them all together.
“It looks even weirder with them all together.”
The pinecones were also broken here and there and didn’t look good, but I was annoyed that they still seemed the most presentable part of the mobile. I’d tried so hard, yet they were worse than pinecones picked up off the ground. I’d completed it, but I wasn’t sure if I should actually hang this over the baby’s bed.
Just then, I heard a small cry from inside.
“Oh, I’ll be right there!”
I rushed into the house. I roughly set the mobile on a shelf and headed to the cradle. I rubbed my cold hands together to warm them. Despite my hands being plenty warm now, I didn’t immediately pick up the baby. I’d developed a bad habit recently.
When the whimpering baby wasn’t picked up right away, it would open its eyes and look for me. The baby would turn its head diligently, scanning around, until it finally found me.
When our eyes met, the baby stretched its small hands toward me. Babbling softly, it stretched those short fingers, trying to reach me. Only then did I lift it into my arms.
After holding it and letting it suck on my finger, the baby’s crying gradually died down. It gripped my finger with its tiny hand and sucked earnestly. Though it was still whimpering slightly, I could feel the scales on its right arm receding through the fabric. The horns that had been poking my chin had also vanished at some point.
Such a fragile child—just being held by me made it feel safe. I felt guilty about that. But the sequence of events—the baby opening its eyes to search for me, those purple eyes looking at me so intently, reaching out its hands to me—gave me an inexplicable sense of fulfillment.
If the baby knew this, it might stop reaching for me. It was a problem that I couldn’t break this bad habit, even knowing it was wrong.
I felt rather pathetic behaving this way. I’d never thought I was lonely until now. Had I really been that lonely? Enough to be happy about the attention I received from this tiny baby?
“Why are you crying? You just had baby food a little while ago.”
Setting my guilt aside, I lightly patted the baby’s back and slowly walked around the house. The baby, face resting on my shoulder, smelled of that cozy, slightly milky scent. It was a smell I’d grown accustomed to by now.
While breathing in that warm scent, the baby babbled and reached its hand toward my back.
“Hm? What is it?”
Wondering what it wanted, I turned around and saw the ugly mobile I’d left on the shelf. Somehow knowing it was meant for him, the baby kept reaching out.
“That?”
As I started toward the shelf, the mobile twitched. I stopped. The mobile had moved on its own. It wasn’t just swaying in a breeze. It floated upward as if lifted by an invisible hand, then collapsed limply again.
“Just now…”
What was that?
