Meruru, Vanished

Converting the senses so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I could see smells with my own eyes — if that was possible, it would actually be more useful for finding Meruru than simply amplifying my sense of smell.

"Is something like that even possible?"

"In theory, I believe it is. We'd have to calibrate the intensity, though. If it were too sensitive, you'd see every color of scent there is — it would be like going blind, and ordinary life would become impossible. I think it's safer than simply amplifying the sense of smell."

Rian explained it to me, and as he described the potion's effects, his eyes lit up and sparkled. You could see it on his face: he genuinely loved making potions. There was no need to look anywhere else.

"Then I'll take that, please."

"It's a custom order, so it will cost a bit more."

"How much?"

How expensive could it possibly be? It's just a potion.

"Thirty gold. It's not an off-the-shelf product — I'll have to formulate it specifically for you."

That's expensive!

It was more than I'd expected. Thirty gold meant pouring the entire standing reward posted for Meruru into a single bottle. If this had been for an ordinary request, I never would have bought it. And there was no guarantee the potion would actually let me find her.

But...

Narration hit me with a line that dug straight into my guts.

No. I had never once thought Meruru was worth less than thirty gold. I'd just been surprised it cost more than I'd expected. What Narration had just said was blatantly false.

Why did it stay objective when explaining everything else, then load up on malice only when talking about me? If it had time to attack me, it could at least tell me where Meruru was and whether she was safe before it started the lecture.

Anyway, thirty gold was steep, but it wasn't an amount I couldn't pay. If I found Meruru safely with this, I could reclaim the thirty gold from the standing request at the guild... no. Money wasn't the point. I had set out because I was genuinely worried about her.

In the end, I formally commissioned Rian to make the potion.

"As fast as you can, please."

A few hours later, the potion I'd ordered from Rian was finished.

"This is the finished product. The formula turned out more complex than I expected, so mass production would be impossible. Please use it carefully, and only when you truly need it."

Rian handed me a small bottle filled with green liquid.

Why green, of all colors? It's not poison.

I paid Rian the thirty gold and headed straight for Meruru's room. I'd paid a steep price for this. I hoped it would actually work.

While I'd been waiting, I'd turned Meruru's whereabouts over in my mind from every angle. What still bothered me most were the two beastkin sighting reports that Narration had confirmed as true.

From everything I'd experienced so far, the information Narration provided always seemed to come out of nowhere — but looking back, it had always given me something I ultimately needed. The fact that it had verified those two beastkin sightings strongly suggested they were connected to Meruru's disappearance in some way.

The 3rd Trade Route and Halberi Forest...

But even if I went to the sources of those rumors, I had no means of tracking Meruru. I wanted to find her quickly, but blindly searching the area without a single lead would only waste time. It was also impossible that she had heard those rumors and left overnight to find her sister without telling a soul.

That left one option: follow Meruru's scent with this potion, and look for a connection to the two places Narration had named.

"No matter how you look at it, just seeing this room, it feels like Meruru could walk back in any second."

I said it as I stepped back into her room and found the scene unchanged. It had already been a day since she vanished. Whether she had gotten lost or been taken, time was rarely on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a missing person's side.

"Sunbae, is that potion really going to be all right?"

Silphy asked, watching me hold the bottle with a slightly worried face. The vivid, glowing green must have looked ominous to her too.

"Hahh..."

I pulled the stopper from the potion Rian had prepared and held the mouth of the bottle to my nose for a cautious sniff.

"How is it, sunbae?"

"Surprisingly, it doesn't smell unpleasant."

There was a faint scent of mugwort, and a subtle trace of mana underneath. The aversion I'd felt because of the color vanished the moment I smelled it. Recalling the earnest, careful way Rian had explained the effects, I tipped the bottle back and drank it down in two long swallows.

Then I waited for it to work.

"Sunbae, can you see anything?"

"Huh? Well, not really yet..."

That was when I saw it: something like a pale green haze, the color of young leaves, rising from Silphy's body. And in the air around us, smoke-like shapes of every color began to appear. They looked like vapor, like heat shimmer, like auras of light. Every one of them was a different color — some so faint they were nearly invisible, others vivid and intense.

So this is what it means to see a smell?

"Sunbae, do you see something?"

"I can see a light-green haze rising from your body. Ah — and from your head, too."

"What?!"

Silphy flinched, wrapping her arms around her head and body as if to hide them, and shrank back. The movement sent the pale green rising off her spreading slightly into the air around her.

Hmm. So what I'm looking at right now is Silphy's scent.

Come to think of it, she had always carried a fragrance that reminded me of a forest or a meadow. Apparently the potion displayed scents in colors close to the images I associated with them.

"S-sunbae... please don't stare at me so much."

"Huh? Oh — sorry. The potion's working so well I got carried away."

Silphy turned her head slightly, her face bright red. I hadn't even done anything wrong, but I felt apologetic anyway.

This wasn't the time. The potion's effects were supposed to last about half a day. I turned my gaze at once to the pile of blankets thick with Meruru's shed fur.

"Oh..."

I could see it. Meruru's blanket pile was vividly stained the color of well-baked bread, and a bread-colored haze was rising from it as well. There were plenty of other colored scents in the room, but the color pouring off that pile was overwhelmingly intense.

Good. So that's Meruru's scent.

"Silphy, let's get going. We need to pick up a trail while the effects last."

I quickly rolled up a few of Meruru's blankets and packed them. Now that I knew the color of the scent I had to follow, I needed to start tracking before the potion wore off.

Being able to tell scents apart by sight did not make tracking one easy. The biggest problem was that the smell flowing out of Meruru's room did not continue in a clear line all the way to wherever she was. That scent that had been so vivid vanished the moment we stepped out onto the street.

Thinking about it, it was obvious. No matter how strong Meruru's body ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠odor was, a scent couldn't linger in the air that long. I'd been mistaken in thinking I could simply follow the smell from her room all the way to a lead.

While I was still reeling from Meruru's scent cutting off at the very start, Narration spoke up in my head.

Useful for finding traces or objects... so even if I couldn't follow an airborne scent in a continuous trail the way I'd imagined, if there were traces somewhere that might hold her body odor, the potion would be useful for finding those.

Wandering around central Kubel looking for Meruru's traces, though, didn't seem likely to yield much. If I could at least find out the places she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had gone...

Narration gave me completely new information.

So that was it. Whenever a beastkin-related rumor came in, she would go out alone at night to investigate the location. And this wasn't even the first time. Even while working as a receptionist, she had been diligently searching for her sister.

Now I understood why it had looked as if Meruru had left without a word to find her. She had intended to finish her investigation and come back as usual — and for some reason, she hadn't been able to return. That reason, I was sure, had nothing to do with her own will. Leaving her room had been her choice. Not coming back had not.

That also explained the state of her room, and why she hadn't told anyone, including Tina, before she left.

So the places to search...

The 3rd Trade Route and Halberi Forest, after all. The 3rd Trade Route was too large an area, and you would have to travel west past Bainar and follow the road for quite a while. Halberi Forest, on the other hand, was a distance you could thoroughly search and return from in about a day if you hurried by carriage. That made it far more likely Meruru had headed for Halberi Forest. She would have needed to show up for work at the guild the next day, after all.

I boarded a carriage from Kubel that passed through Halberi Forest at once. If I was wrong, there was nothing I could do about it. Right now, the priority was covering as many places as possible where Meruru's traces might be, while the potion's effects still lasted.

"How much of the effect is left..."

I'd already burned through a fair amount of time traveling by carriage. If I didn't find a new lead here, today would be another wash.

Unlike the woods near Kubel, this forest sat farther from any village, and the undergrowth was denser for it. All around, the green scent of grass and the brown scent of trees lay smeared across the air.

"Let's search the area as thoroughly as we can first. If you find anything strange, let me know. And if you find fur this color, tell me too."

I called out Shari, who was clinging to my head, and had her search the surroundings together with Silphy. She couldn't see scents with her eyes the way I could, but as a ghost, Shari had the mobility to cover a wide area quickly. Silphy would be more help searching than not having her at all.

I roughly assigned them directions, then moved deeper into the forest myself, watching carefully for any place stained with a scent the same color as Meruru's.

How long we kept at it, I wasn't sure.

"Huh? That's..."

Beside a patch of grass that looked as if people had trampled through it, a well-baked-bread-colored scent was rising, faint but unmistakable. I ran over and found a worn-out robe, crumpled and discarded in the undergrowth.

"Shari! Silphy! Over here!"

I called the two who had been searching nearby, picked up the robe that smelled of Meruru, and shook it out a few times with both hands to unfold it. It was a hooded robe so tattered it might as well have been a rag.

"What's that? ...A rag?"

Silphy asked, looking at the thing in my hands.

"It's not a rag. It's the robe Meruru used to wear."

To think she still hadn't thrown this away. She should have had more than enough money to buy new clothes. This was the robe I had bought her when I first met her on the ship, haggling with a merchant after shaking out every last coin I had. I'd told her that wearing it would hide her ears and tail, so she could protect herself from people like slave traders.

Looking at it now, it was so tattered compared to when I'd first bought it that it probably couldn't serve its purpose anymore. Wearing this, her ears and tail would be exposed, and she would look like a beggar — the perfect prey for someone to target.

"You idiot..."

The fact that this robe had been discarded here meant Meruru had definitely gone missing in this area. I immediately narrowed the search radius around where the robe had been found, and carefully checked whether any of her scent remained nearby.

Before long, I found it on a nearby forest path — very faint, but there. Footprints were scattered chaotically across the dirt, and long hairs matching Meruru's fur color had fallen here and there. Most of the fur seemed to have blown away, but some remained tangled with grass in the soil. Without the scent-seeing potion, I would have walked right past these traces without ever noticing them. There were also elongated marks nearby where wheels had passed.

The discarded robe. The chaotic footprints and the wheel tracks. Meruru's fur, shed so heavily it looked as if she were molting, stuck here and there in the dirt.

And then—

"Ah. It's gone."

Half a day had already passed, and the potion's effects had worn off. Still, it seemed I had found the place where Meruru had vanished. If I followed the remaining traces, I might discover something.

"Silphy, you go back to the guild first and tell them Meruru seems to have disappeared from here. It'd be good if we can get help with the search."

"Understood. What about you, sunbae?"

"I'll follow these traces on my own for now. Go on — hurry!"

I sent Silphy to request help from the guild just in case, and started following the wheel tracks and footprints alone.