They say you can show skill even in knitting, but it seemed like a distant prospect for me. It seemed my best bet would be to knit it to a length that looked like a scarf by the scheduled day. Of course, it might just look like a long rag…
A sigh escaped me at the sense of helplessness. As I unraveled all the yarn I’d knitted, heavy disappointment seeped into Belly’s eyes.
Belly tried not to leave my side as I struggled, but since he too belonged to the gift production team, he had assigned tasks. Unlike me, Belly, who had good manual dexterity, created several paper flowers.
“I’m done.”
Belly shoved the quickly-made flowers to Carl. It seemed he’d made more than the originally planned amount, wanting to finish quickly and stick by my side. Carl counted them, then smiled broadly and pronounced his sentence to Belly.
“Wow, you’re already done? Then you should join the chorus side now.”
“What?”
At Carl’s unexpected words, bewilderment filled Belly’s voice.
“You’re not thinking of just skipping out, are you? If all the kids don’t gather, how heartbroken would the guild leader be? So you should at least join and stand in the back.”
The other children didn’t seem to find anything strange about Carl’s words. It seemed they’d agreed to do it this way from the beginning. For them, missing an event where they could show their faces to Rose seemed unthinkable. But hearing this for the first time, we couldn’t help but be flustered.
Belly raised his eyebrows as if angry and glared at Carl. He wouldn’t care whether Rose was heartbroken or not. What mattered to him was me.
“If you had ordinary looks like Jack, maybe. But if a kid as noticeable as you is missing, she’ll notice right away, won’t she?”
Carl subtly put down my appearance. What he said wasn’t wrong. My appearance was really as ordinary as a roadside pebble.
Nevertheless, Rose would definitely notice immediately if I wasn’t among all those children. So even hearing Carl’s slander didn’t make me feel bad. But for Belly, who defended me more than anyone, it seemed an intolerable provocation.
“What did you say?!”
As Belly spoke with a growl, the atmosphere was about to turn hostile. I put down what I was knitting and intervened between them.
“Belly! It’s okay!”
“But… if something happens…”
Von heard Belly’s words and answered with a displeased voice.
“What could happen?! What could happen when you’re by Carl-nim’s side?”
Whatever Carl had done for Von, he showed loyalty close to a fanatic. Watching that was so draining it was sickening.
“Isn’t it natural since it’s that guy?”
At the clear hostility, Von kicked his seat. Belly’s anger and distrust were justified, but since he knew nothing, Von’s face was filled with fierce anger like fire. It was the appearance of someone who had received the worst insult in the world. Anyone watching would think he’d been insulted himself.
“What! What are you saying to Carl-nim right now!”
“Calm down, Von.”
Like a skilled trainer, Carl patted Von’s shoulder. Von, who had been about to charge like an excited bull, still seemed to have his anger unabated, but fortunately only glared.
However, this situation annoyed me too. Hadn’t we become the bad guys now? When it was Carl who didn’t properly announce the process in the first place.
Announcements that could only be heard by befriending others weren’t fair. But Carl didn’t offer a single word of apology. In fact, even this production team itself was filled with children especially close to Carl, excluding me and Belly.
They subtly excluded me and Belly. It was such transparent behavior. The only one who spoke to us without reserve was Fortuna.
I smiled brightly and patted Belly’s shoulder demonstratively as I said,
“Belly, calm down. You went too far with your words.”
“But…”
At my words, Von sent a triumphant look to Belly. It seemed he felt I was reprimanding Belly. But you have to listen to what people say until the end to know.
“Carl wouldn’t do anything, right? With so many eyes watching.”
“What!”
“Right?”
At my aggressive words, Carl’s face instantly stiffened. He probably didn’t expect me to come out this aggressively.
For nearly 3 years, I hadn’t properly confronted Carl. Partly because Carl had been ambiguously kind, and because I thought there was no need to create trouble unnecessarily.
But I’d never accepted that kindness. I’d never properly conversed with him either. Just laughing it off casually was my way of responding.
“…Haha, there seems to be some misunderstanding.”
Unable to admit he’d done something, Carl laughed it off. The past incident hadn’t become known externally. To others, he was a flawlessly smooth existence.
However, for him, that incident was one Rose had directly intervened in.
I didn’t know how Rose had resolved that matter. What was certain was that Carl thought very highly of Rose. So Carl wouldn’t want to bring up that incident. The very fact of it being mentioned by someone and surfacing would be something that absolutely shouldn’t happen to him.
So his best choice was to turn the conversation entirely and not give any opening for it to become a topic. Even with that, he shifted responsibility by choosing the word “misunderstanding,” saying I had something wrong. I snorted at such a Carl.
Thus the atmosphere became strained and an awkward air circulated.
“Belly, it’s okay, so go. I’ll be waiting.”
Though we argued like this, Belly couldn’t not go to the chorus group like this. If he skipped the chorus this way, it would be like admitting he received Rose’s favoritism.
While other children were struggling desperately to catch Rose’s attention, being absent alone would look like a display of confidence. If that happened, who knew what kind of bullying might occur.
As I held both of Belly’s hands and spoke soothingly, he eventually nodded while grimacing as if swallowing bitter medicine. Belly looked back at me several times all the way out, but I just kept waving my hand.
An awkward air flowed in the room. Von kept glaring at me, and Carl didn’t even think to stop him, just silently proceeded with his own work. However, blue veins stood out on those white hands.
The person who broke that atmosphere was Fortuna. She poked me and asked with somehow flushed cheeks,
“You know, what’s… the relationship between you two?”
What relationship? Looking at Fortuna’s face asking the question, it was flushed red. Seeing that, I could tell. That the answer she wanted was of a sweet and lovely kind. But… weren’t we both too young? What was she hoping for?
I didn’t answer and just looked at her with a strangely furrowed face, but Fortuna pressed on with an even more flushed face. Her face was as red as an apple, whatever she was thinking.
“Come on, tell me. There are already a lot of kids curious about your relationship. You two are always stuck together all the time.”
“No… Belly is only 10 years old…”
Could I even pursue the kind of relationship Fortuna was expecting with a character in a novel? Impossible. Characters could only have relationships with other characters.
Unless I liked self-insert stories, to me characters were just characters. The position that suited me was just stepping back one step and watching from outside their world.
Thinking that way, this current situation felt distant. A world full of paper dolls with no living people. Was there an existence I could truly interact with?
* * *
I wanted to leave this place immediately. This space where humans gathered in one place practicing singing was terrible to me. In the first place, I didn’t even like humans.
The only reason I remained in this guild was solely Jack, that one person. That person who held my soul in his grasp. Life was unpredictable. I ended up staying by the side of that human who had picked me up, where I’d only intended to temporarily take refuge.
At first, it was just force majeure. When I ran out of the village with just a twisted thought for a moment, my mana ran wild from sudden growing pains. To survive in that state, I had no choice but to be by the side of my master who had picked me up.
However, his touch, which I expected would harm me, was kind… and warm. It was the first warmth I’d tasted.
My position in the tribe was the next chieftain. An existence that protected the tribe with outstanding abilities, one who must someday kill humans.
‘Next chieftain. You didn’t accomplish everything you had to do today.’
‘The next chieftain must not be weak. From today, we’ll increase the intensity of training.’
The tribe members always wanted high achievement from me. The story would have been different if I were just an ordinary beastman, but I was an existence born from their wishes. If I couldn’t satisfy what they wanted, I was nothing more than an experimental subject for the next generation.
‘The next chieftain must devote themselves to the tribe. That’s the natural order.’
Also, their common sense that they obsessively instilled in me made it so I couldn’t rebel. Because I thought such a life was natural. In fact, running out of the village was also quite impulsive and impossible behavior.
As I had no mind to participate in the chorus, my consciousness regressed to the past.
