Chapter 10

After putting on the earrings and leaving the private room, a man who appeared to be an attendant guided me toward the back door of the shop. A carriage was waiting there.

I stepped inside through the door the attendant opened for me and sat down, and soon the carriage began to move.

After a while, the attendant mentioned that the carriage was heading not to the Northern Castle, but to the capital.

“The capital?”

“Yes. The Count has been staying at the residence in the capital for the past three years.”

Since the capital was more favorable to me than the cold North, I nodded to show I understood.

Several days later, when I arrived at the capital, the spring breeze was blowing just as I had expected from the letter. I took the attendant’s arm to get off the carriage and looked up at the mansion. Although this was only my second visit, I didn’t feel particularly like a stranger. It was probably because of the master’s energy lingering there.

“Welcome back, Countess.”

The servants of the mansion bowed politely.

“The Count is waiting for you.”

I nodded silently and followed the guide who led the way. When the Count, who had been sitting in his office, saw me appear, he jumped up from his seat and approached me, expressing his joy.

“Meriel!”

“It has been a long time, Count.”

I greeted him with simple courtesy and straightened my posture, but ignoring the eyes of those around us, the Count stepped forward and embraced me. He patted my back and said in a trembling voice, as if overwhelmed by emotion,

“You’ve suffered. You have truly suffered so much all this time.”

“It was nothing.”

Some time later, he sat me down and said a lot of things, but I didn’t really listen to most of it. I only tucked necessary information like schedules into my head and let the rest flow right past me. It was meaningless.

“Meriel.”

The Count reached out and covered my hand, which was resting on my leg. I looked at it, but my mind was blank. This, too, was meaningless.

Soon after, he sent all the servants out and said,

“I know you must have been very disappointed in me.”

I raised my gaze without answering and looked at his face. The expression, the breathing, the tone of voice. Everything looked convincing.

When I stared blankly at him without opening my mouth, he soon gave a bitter laugh, tapped the back of my hand lightly as if to say he understood, and then withdrew his hand.

“You must be tired today. Get some good rest, and let’s talk properly tomorrow.”

I quietly stood up and turned away. It was a room with only the two of us anyway. Since there were no other humans in front of us, I didn’t feel the need to treat “it” like a human and pay my respects, so I tried to leave as is.

“Why don’t you offer some conversation? Aren’t I pitiable?”

“…!”

I turned my body around immediately, knelt on the floor, and lowered my head. The master, taking the form of the Count, rested his chin on his hand and said in a teasing tone.

“Perhaps this might be your last word.”

“If you wish, I will do so from now on.”

“How boring. Never mind, never mind. Do as you please.”

The master waved his hand as if he’d lost interest and said,

“Anyway, there isn’t much time left for this one. What does it matter? I think about twenty percent of my power will transfer over within this month. I should be able to move this body fully by then.”

“Are you going to be active in that body?”

“Isn’t it fine? The Count has a fairly high status, so I think I can live comfortably among the humans.”

“I was just asking to confirm.”

“Hmm…? Ah. Ah! I see. Hahaha!”

The master, who had been peering at me through squinted eyes, suddenly started to slap his own leg and burst into loud laughter.

I wasn’t particularly surprised. It had been a long time since I decided not to try to understand the master’s sense of humor.

I hadn’t wanted to understand it because if I did, I would just end up a strange person myself, but the master went ahead and revealed the reason for the laughter.

“I get it! You’re worried I might covet a human in this body? Impossible! Do you perform bestiality just because a pet is pretty?”

To be cornered into having such a possible taste just because I asked one question. All I had done was feel a sense of dread at the thought of going to a couple’s gathering with something like that in the future.

The stubbornness of a god who wasn’t all-knowing and couldn’t even read a human’s heart was truly like garbage.

Hahahaha! Even the way he laughed until he gasped for air was vulgar.

No matter that he came from another world, to think something like that was a god. I grumbled to myself that the world he came from must be in a pretty sorry state.

F.

The neighborhood where I lived when I was young was like a giant landfill where all the human trash discarded by the world was collected. Among them, I was a kid classified as a vagrant, and my job was to rummage through piles of trash to find food whenever I had the chance.

I was already abandoned when I was born, and I had to scavenge for trash to eat if I wanted to live; I lived relying on my instincts like that, and then, suddenly, I thought—what am I?—and arrived at the conclusion: Oh, I’m a beggar. I think that was the first self-reflection of my life.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t know my age.

I was a kid who had lived as a beggar from the start, learning nothing and rolling around in the back alleys. So how could I have known how to count days or numbers? Well, even if I had, I was too busy living to have forgotten it quickly.

I didn’t know what hope was, nor did I know the meaning of promising a future. The world I perceived was closer to what one sees through the eyes of a beast rather than a human; it was only instinctual and fierce.

After being treated harshly a few times when I was physically weak, I hid desperately. As I did, before I knew it, there were almost no people who could detect my presence, and I took advantage of that to attack, and furthermore, kill someone.

That’s right. I was a rotten kid who had already killed a person in my early childhood.

It was simply out of curiosity that I left the zone I was staying in and headed toward the city. Thinking about it now, there wasn’t much difference between there and here, but to my eyes at the time, the city side looked very prosperous.

Well, since it was a zone where money circulated, it was actually quite prosperous. That’s assuming all that money was dirty and even that was monopolized by a small number of people. As you might know by now, the city area of that neighborhood was ultimately a hotbed of all kinds of illegality.

Anyway, even after going all the way there, I couldn’t break my old habits and started by rummaging through the alley trash cans.

And that’s where I met a girl.

I had truly never seen such a pretty girl in my entire life. Without any awareness of falling in love at first sight or anything, she was just the most glittering thing in the world. The girl, who wore very clean clothes and had her hair combed neatly—unlike the kids in that neighborhood—watched me quietly, then pointed to the trash I had just pulled out and said,

“If you eat something like that, your stomach will hurt.”

“It will never hurt?”

To my shame, I put on a pathetic front back then. “I eat this all the time!” I acted like a beggar, showing off my “beggar-like” nature, but I didn’t realize it at the time and was very proud.

She frowned slightly. Only then did I hesitate a bit.

The girl told me to wait for a moment. When she went somewhere and came back, she was holding a basket in her hands.

And that day, I ate proper food for the first time.

After that, I met the girl often. To be exact, I would hang around the place where I first met her, and if I was lucky enough to see her, I would run up and act like I knew her.

The girl would bring me food without any sign of annoyance, and sometimes she would teach me simple things like letters. The first word I learned from her was “milk.” Until then, I thought I would be able to spend time with her like that forever.

I still remember it. The day it rained incredibly hard. It wasn’t a good day for activity, so I holed up in my shelter all day. And when the rain stopped, a rumor spread through the neighborhood.

“They say she hanged herself.”

“They say her daughter found her.”

The head of a fairly powerful organization on the city side. The rumor was that his wife had hanged herself and the daughter had found her. I heard that and didn’t think anything of it. I just thought, “Oh, I see,” and moved on.

Even after that rumor spread and the girl suddenly disappeared, I just thought we missed each other because of bad luck.

I met the girl again about fifteen days later. Having discovered the girl standing still in the middle of the street wearing black clothes, I, who hadn’t noticed anything, was just happy and bounced around.

“You haven’t been around lately! Where did you go? I came here every day! Wow! But you look so pretty today! You look just like a noble young lady!”

I was a stupid kid who didn’t even know what a noble looked like, yet I said stuff like that trying to attract her attention. If the current me could go back to that time, I would have blocked my own mouth even if it meant knocking out all my teeth.