“Carl.”
In the end, unable to bear that gaze, I called out to him and looked up. His face, smooth and beautiful like white porcelain, was smiling as if to say, “When did I ever glare at you?”
“Why?”
“Stop glaring at me.”
“When did I?”
I put down my knitting on the desk and stared directly at Carl as I spoke.
“Anyway, it’s just you and me in this room. Belly isn’t here either. You don’t need to act like such a nice person.”
“……”
Carl looked at me in silence. We stared at each other for a long while without saying anything. Even after several minutes passed, he showed no signs of opening his mouth, and in this situation, I felt the need to break the ice. At this rate, it felt like my face would be worn away by his gaze.
Moreover, if Carl’s emotions remained as they were, I felt like they would eventually come back to harm Belly and me greatly.
“Let’s talk honestly. Why exactly don’t you like me?”
“……”
“It’s not like I did anything to you, right?”
I’ve never bullied Carl, nor do I have a history of beating him in competition. Only recently did I accumulate some achievements by doing decent missions thanks to Belly’s existence, but even so, I couldn’t compare to Carl who had been accumulating achievements before me.
Honestly, what he pulled with Belly—I really felt like I’d been blindsided, hit on the back of the head while walking down the street. That’s how out of the blue what Carl did to me was.
Even now, I still haven’t heard a reason for why he’s doing this. Thanks to Rose’s restraint, he hasn’t tried to harm me again, but receiving these piercing looks made me anxious again.
“It’s not that you did anything.”
Carl retorted coldly. His cold gaze shot out sharply, but as much as I’d been waiting, I was glad for his change. Now maybe I can find out what the problem is. Anticipation quietly raised its head.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that you didn’t do anything.”
Question marks filled my head. The problem is that I didn’t do anything? So does that mean I should have accomplished something?
But not everyone in the world stands out from childhood like Carl. It might be a modern person’s perspective, but I think it’s already impressive to start economic activities from the young age of about 10 years old.
Was it because I couldn’t understand Carl’s words? At my naturally bewildered expression showing on the surface, he frowned. Only then did Carl look his age.
“Why do you hate me so much just because I didn’t do anything?”
“Because you didn’t do anything.”
I correct myself. I said he seemed the same age as me, but now he was like a broken record. To Carl, who was scowling, I also asked with a twisted face. I didn’t have the mental capacity to manage my expression.
“You did that to Belly because I didn’t do anything?”
Carl stared at me for a moment, then smirked. Undisguisable contempt dangled shimmeringly at the corners of his eyes.
“Do you really care about that beast?”
“……”
“Looking at you now, it doesn’t seem like you’re angry that I stole your property. Do you really like that beast?”
I was dumbfounded for a moment, but his words weren’t strange either. In this world, demi-humans have no human rights. They’re just like rare beasts. But to go as far as treating them as objects—it was an ideology so extreme that even those who treat them as beasts would be better.
“Watch your words. He’s as good as my younger brother.”
“Younger brother? Hahaha, how can a beast’s pup be a person’s younger brother? Besides, that thing calls you master.”
Carl laughed loudly as if he’d heard something truly ridiculous. Seeing that made me feel awful.
But how am I any different from Carl? I don’t even think of Belly as a living person at all. Even though he’s a kind existence who soothes my depression, my fundamental perception hasn’t changed. In the end, I was an even more vicious human than Carl.
Thinking that way, my anger subsided calmly. At the same time, a sense of powerlessness came over me and the energy to get heated disappeared.
Right. Let me just finish knitting. If I never run into Carl at all, this kind of thing won’t happen. But Carl seemed angrier at my reaction instead, and stood up abruptly from his seat to approach me. His two green eyes were bubbling and boiling with anger.
“Don’t ignore me!”
“I’m not ignoring you. I’m trying to finish this quickly.”
Carl raised only one corner of his mouth to sneer at me, then picked up the knitwear I’d been working hard to knit. Focused on finishing quickly, it had even bigger holes and the width was all over the place compared to earlier.
“Do you think the guild master will be happy receiving something like this?”
“That’s why Fortuna said she’d do it for me earlier.”
“You’re going to pass off work you should do to someone else?”
He seemed unable to distinguish between public and private matters, desperate to put me down. Irrational criticism was nothing but condemnation. If I’d been assigned design or editing work instead, I could have done much better than this.
But Carl forced me to do knitting I couldn’t even do, and discouraged me from switching midway. In the end, the responsibility lay with Carl. However, I was in such an abruptly fatigued state that I didn’t even have the strength to add anything more.
“No, hah……”
“You can’t even do something this simple. Really, how could someone like you……”
How had he been hiding such intense emotions until now? Compared to me, who can’t even properly manage my depression, Carl was an amazing person.
“It doesn’t matter. Rose won’t care.”
“Ro…… se?”
Carl whispered Rose’s name stupidly for a moment. Then immediately after saying it, his face turned deathly pale and he covered his mouth with his hand. But that was only for a moment. He scrunched up his face fiercely and opened his mouth again.
“The guild master won’t care?”
I can say with certainty that I was just stating a fact, with no intention of provoking him. As if to prove it, my voice was drooping without any strength.
“Rose will be happy to hear it’s handmade.”
There’s no one who would dislike something made by the children they took in in the first place. Even if another child made it, Rose would be happy. If I said I made it…… she’d probably tease me and laugh uproariously.
But however he took my words, Carl snatched away what I’d been making with an almost goblin-like face, threw it on the floor, and stomped on it.
“Hey! What are you doing?!”
Without answering, Carl violently stamped his foot down. He seemed to have lost his reason. After seeming to calm down for a moment, breathing heavily, he muttered quietly.
“Why?”
The green eyes glaring at me were bloodshot red. But rather than being scared of that sight, I was dumbfounded. Because I couldn’t understand his anger.
“I think that’s what I should be saying.”
At my question, he rushed over like a shot and grabbed me by the collar. Being much bigger than me, lifting me up was easy for Carl. He was so enraged that the veins on his neck were standing out blue.
“Why are you the only one who gets favoritism like that?!”
Only then did I realize that his grass-like green eyes were rippling not just with anger but with inferiority.
He was a green-eyed monster. Learning that the reason he bullied me was jealousy brought both futility and understanding of his actions. Originally, the cause of all things is often trivial, and jealousy was the most common factor among them.
However, separate from understanding his actions, when it came back to his question, the answer was that I didn’t know either.
Clearly Rose favors me a little more. The evidence was giving me pocket money and allowing me to visit her house. But if you asked me to explain the reason, I truly didn’t know. That question should have been directed at Rose, not me.
But I couldn’t just say I didn’t know straight out, so I just remained silent.
Huffing and heaving like an angry bull, he let me go and headed for the door as if to leave the room. Though I felt wronged, I had nothing to say, so as I rubbed my strangled neck, I heard Carl’s muttering.
“I’ll never lose.”
“Uh……”
Carl left just like that, in a huff.
After that, the gathering proceeded normally as if that day’s collision had never happened. Carl smiled as usual, and since I also didn’t bother to bring it up, it was natural. However, Carl’s actions were recorded in detail in my head.
Unfortunately, my knitting skills didn’t improve until the day of the event. In the end, the scarf wrapped around Rose’s neck was a terrible sight. But as I’d guessed, Rose looked at the children with a happy smile. Carl’s piercing gaze remained the same, but the 100th anniversary celebration ended successfully like that.
—
## Chapter 4: About J (2)
Time passed faster than I thought. Nine years since falling into this world. Six years since meeting Belly.
Belly stayed by my side for six years. During that time, I hoped Belly would show the behavior of a main character, but all that time he just consistently stayed by my side.
“Master.”
“Mm……”
“Master, it’s time to wake up.”
Belly began to shake me awake with a gentle voice and touch. But his actions were so soft that my consciousness was trapped in peaceful slumber and couldn’t escape. As I squirmed and tried to fall back asleep, Belly laughed in a low voice and whispered.
“You need to get up.”
“I’m sleepy……”
My lazy appearance should have been annoying, but Belly didn’t seem to be. Day by day, as I acted more spoiled due to his kindness, Belly treated me with terrifying gentleness.
Every time I was handled preciously in his hands, I felt like a treasure held in the palm. That was certainly happy, but at the same time depressing. Why does he cherish an extra like me……
