EP.19 House of the Spider -7
EP.19 House of the Spider -7
To get straight to the point, I failed to convince Miho.
She was fine with an employer-employee relationship, but adamantly refused anything more than that, and I couldn't keep pushing in the face of her intransigence.
Not that I didn't understand.
Miho had been a fox with jealousy so intense it fogged her mind since childhood, after all.
Having directly experienced Miho's emotions before, I was honestly grateful she'd tolerated things this far.
Getting another Companion Animal in front of an inherently jealous fox was something I shouldn't even have imagined in the first place, let alone sleeping with them.
The only reason Miho had permitted it was solely because of her guilt over not being able to stay by my side for twenty years.
The atonement of a fox who had erased my memories and lived merely watching me from the sidelines.
If not for that, the fox would never have accepted anyone else as my Companion Animal.
Even the draining she frequently threatened me with, or the intimidation she was using now—when you got down to it, there was no deep meaning behind her intentions.
She was just constantly anxious that other alluring Divine Beasts might steal me away.
In other words, it was best seen as a kind of childish tantrum from a fox.
It couldn't be helped.
Bringing the rabbit in as a Companion Animal right this instant was just premature, I supposed.
"Alright. I give up on forming a Companion Contract with Alice."
"Do you really mean that?"
"Yeah. If you're this against it, I can't exactly force it through, can I?"
"I'm truly sorry. But still...!"
"You don't need to say it. I know exactly what you're feeling when you object. In exchange, you have to give it your all in the spider cleanup operation. That much is fine, right?"
"Yes! I'll do my best!!"
The tail of the fox who had been trembling with anxiety shot straight up, and Miho's cold expression brightened like the sun.
It was the exact reaction you'd see when parents throw in the towel against a child's tantrum.
Did she really hate the idea of the household growing that much?
"Are you really sure it's okay to give up, dear husband?"
"Yeah. I can't always just act on my feelings alone, and besides, we can't afford to waste any more time here."
We'd already used up about five minutes just convincing Miho.
That precious hour Kor had bought us. We couldn't squander it meaninglessly any longer.
So I was right to concede ground here and step back.
"Yes. If that's what you think, dear husband, then it must be right. So I won't say anything more about the choice."
"Mm."
"However, you should at least leave a word or two for that disappointed-looking rabbit over there."
"Ah... I should, shouldn't I."
In contrast to Miho, who was rejoicing with glee, Alice was wearing a glum expression.
She must have been inwardly hoping for a companion relationship. I'd done something unfortunate to her.
When I approached the slightly disheartened Alice, the rabbit startled with a jolt, patted down her own face, and returned to her usual emotionless expression.
Seeing the rabbit try so desperately to act made me burst out with a stifled laugh.
"Alice, I'm sorry. The resistance from my house's fox is severe, so I don't think I can form a Companion Contract with you."
"It's fine, Boss. The relationship we have now is satisfactory to me..."
An obvious lie.
A faint tremor in her voice had reached my ears as clear as day—how could she possibly be fine?
But I had no intention of pointing it out and wounding Alice's pride for no reason.
"Is that so? I find it a bit regretful, personally. It seems Alice doesn't feel the same way."
"Ugh...!! I also th-think... it's a little regretful."
"I'm glad we're on the same page. But still, I've already promised Miho. So I can't accept you as a Companion Animal."
"Yeah, that's right..."
Once again, Alice's expression wilted.
It felt like I was toying with someone's heart by lifting it up and dashing it back down, and a sense of guilt crept over me.
But by giving her one last hope, I intended to shake off all the regret.
"You know. Arachne still hasn't been defeated."
"I heard that just earlier, so I know."
"Then do you also know that the contest we started earlier isn't over yet?"
"Ah...!"
The contest that had initially been about who could kill more spiders but had shifted into who would catch Arachne first.
The rewards for that contest were honor and a Wish Ticket. Honor aside, the Wish Ticket was an exceptional reward for the two Divine Beasts.
Just when Miho seemed about to claim that prize, it turned out Arachne was still alive and well using a hidden ability.
That meant the destination of the Wish Ticket had yet to be decided.
And that, in turn, meant hope remained for the rabbit...
"Shouldn't you at least try to claim it? A Wish Ticket that requires me to grant absolutely any wish of yours, no questions asked?"
"That's right, there was still hope...!"
"You'd have to work hard to get your hands on that new game, wouldn't you?"
"Yes...! This time, I'll catch it before that useless fox even finds it!"
Alice was burning with motivation to the point you'd wonder if she was even the same disheartened rabbit from moments ago.
It must have meant she'd perfectly seen through the intention mixed into my words.
I'd cheered her on to win for the sake of a new game, but it was clear Alice would demand a different wish, not a game.
What exactly that wish was—I, the rabbit, and even the crow laughing behind me all surely knew.
If the situation flowed smoothly from here, a satisfying conclusion would arrive that everyone would be forced to accept.
'I wish it would be that easy...'
But perhaps Miho, too, had realized my intent when I'd encouraged Alice.
The smile brimming with happiness on her face grew vaguely fainter, and she began glaring fiercely at the rabbit.
In response, Alice was also staring daggers back at Miho...
It seemed the rabbit held a considerable grudge against the fox for blocking the companion contract that was about to proceed naturally.
The relationship between the two Divine Beasts, already not great to begin with, had grown even worse over this incident.
The one silver lining was that they weren't fighting directly, merely locked in a battle of glares.
"Dear husband. Pitting those two against each other is all well and good, but it's over the moment Arachne escapes due to the delay, got it?"
"Ah, now that you mention it, right."
"Let's get moving. Those two are probably itching to get their hands on Arachne anyway."
"Got it! Then this time for sure, let's all take down Arachne...!!"
The fox and the rabbit had already vanished before I could even finish my sentence.
Well, figured...
***
"Let's go and casually look around for spiders ourselves."
"Hmm? Casually? Is that really okay?"
"They say the more haste, the less speed, you know...!"
"Kor's right. Even if we ran around like mad, we couldn't search faster than those two. So we'd be better off thoroughly checking places they might have missed."
"Mm, you might have a point there..."
The rabbit, searching at breakneck speed via Time Leaps, and the fox, who'd be roaming at no less a pace.
Unfortunately, Yata, Kor, and I didn't have the same mobility as those two.
Maybe if I'd contracted Alice and gained a portion of her ability.
But as things stood, we had no choice but to check each room on every floor one by one.
"Now that I think about it, what ended up happening with the hostage rescue?"
"Don't worry about that. We got everyone out without revealing our existence."
"I see. So where are the director and the others now?"
"By now, they should be safely outside the building, just as Lady Yata instructed...!"
"Huh? Yata instructed them? How?"
"Oh right! I borrowed it for a bit!"
Yata flicked something toward me.
I wondered what it was and caught it with both hands. In my palm lay my phone, which I hadn't even realized was missing.
"When on earth did you swipe it?!"
"Slipped it out just before we split up. I needed your phone, dear husband, to give orders to the director without giving my identity away!"
"You've got sticky fingers. If you'd just normally asked to borrow it, I'd have handed it right over. Why did you have to..."
When I unlocked the phone and read the message history, I realized why the crow had swiped it without a word.
[Gathered up hostages I happened across in the 8th-floor conference room. Come get them immediately if you don't want them turned into chow for the spiders roaming by.]
[Don't even go near the 4th-floor multipurpose hall if you don't want to die.]
[If you've rescued all the hostages, get out fast. Honestly, having the Director inside the building is a fucking nuisance.]
"Haha! If I'd been polite, you'd definitely have brought up counter-opinions, so I had to be a little heavy-handed even if it got annoying."
"This isn't heavy-handed..."
This was more like outright intimidation, wasn't it?
To the director of the agency, my superior, no less. She'd given orders with messages utterly devoid of a single shred of courtesy...
And on top of that, she'd also exploited the director's name before entering the agency.
I was terrified I'd get hauled in for insubordination once all of this was over.
"Anyway, the point is, it's just us inside the building now. So we can search at our leisure!"
"...Right."
My own peace of mind, however, had been thoroughly disrupted.
Still, since there was nothing better for ease of movement than having no other humans around, it was hard to really complain.
Can't be helped. I'd just have to go find the director later and apologize or make excuses.
Something like: Director, our house's baby dragon sent that text message.
"Speaking of which, dear husband, who do you predict will catch Arachne?"
"Why are you suddenly asking that?"
"Because I'm curious. Who you're rooting for."
"There isn't some ulterior motive behind this?"
"None, purely curiosity."
"...I think Alice will win."
"The reason?"
"Because her ability is Time Leap, isn't it. She has the ability to reach the future all by herself while the present flows slowly?"
A task that takes others around ten minutes, the rabbit could solve in a mere few dozen seconds.
In other words, she could finish searching an entire floor in less than a minute.
No matter how unprecedentedly motivated Miho might be, when it came to searching, she'd have to concede to the rabbit.
"As long as she possesses an ability like that, I can't imagine Alice losing."
"You seem to place a great deal of trust in that rabbit..."
"That's because I've experienced that ability's true value firsthand. Once against my own body, once against Arachne."
"And no personal bias hoping the rabbit wins?"
"It'd be a lie if I said there wasn't any. Part of me is rooting for Alice because I felt bad seeing her glum face, but honestly? I'm terrified of handling Miho if she gets her hands on that Wish Ticket."
"The latter is more sincere, huh."
"I'd like to live through this first."
Yata and Kor snickered at my candid feelings.
The other two Divine Beasts were probably searching frantically by now, but I wasn't sure if it was alright for just us to be chatting in such a friendly, cheerful atmosphere.
"Dear husband, shall we have a little quiz time for the first time in a while?"
"Today's Yata really only asks or suggests things out of nowhere."
"It makes things more thrilling and fun that way."
"Right, right. So? What's the quiz this time?"
"Which baby spider's body do you suppose Arachne actually entered?"
"If I knew that, wouldn't we have avoided all this trouble?"
"Don't be so prickly~! Take a guess! The correct answer has a whopping one-in-three chance, you know? Small, medium, large. There are only three types!"
"Then it'd be the small size."
"Why's that? Wouldn't the large spider be better if Arachne wants to restore her Prolific Reproduction ability?"
Arachne had to return to her original size before she could activate her Prolific Reproduction ability.
In that sense, picking a large-sized body could certainly be a shortcut to speeding up the restoration of her reproduction ability...
"Even so, in this current situation, the small spider is the correct choice. She's already realized she can't beat us even in a giant spider's body, so she swaps into a large one? That's just begging us to kill her."
"Haha! You don't fall for it~"
"Anyone who does fall for it is the weird one. In a situation where she should be saving her own hide first, why would she go into a large spider's body? She'll hole up in a small spider that's hard to spot, then escape later or wage a guerrilla campaign."
Yata nodded, remarking that it was a perfectly sound argument.
She immediately presented a second question, but the prompt for this one was rather out of left field.
"A spider's natural enemy?"
"Yeah, what is a spider's natural enemy?"
A problem I'd never once thought deeply about.
Nor were there any choices provided, so unlike last time, it was difficult to answer straight away.
"I really don't know."
"Then next question!"
"Huh?"
"Who will be the one to finally catch Arachne? The answer to this quiz is the same as the question you couldn't solve."
A spider's natural enemy and the one who catches Arachne are the same?
A little bit of confusion crept into my head.
Leaving the answer itself aside, what was Yata's intention in asking questions like these?
I had absolutely no clue.
"Could it be Alice?"
"Wrong. There's no way a rabbit is the natural enemy of spiders."
"Then is it Miho?"
"Wrong. I've also never once heard that a fox is a spider's natural enemy."
"Then what in the world is the answer?"
"You really don't know?"
"I seriously don't know!"
"Haha!! The correct answer is...!"
Yata had been padding softly toward a multi-function printer in one corner of the office.
Suddenly, she thrust her hand deep inside the printer and pulled out a small, black object.
The object turned out to be one of Arachne's ultra-small baby spiders, something I'd seen so often I was sick of it.
However, unlike the other small spiders, this one had a red hourglass marking engraved on its abdomen... it was Arachne herself.
"The answer is me! A crow, a bird—the natural enemy of spiders!"
"W-wait!! Didn't you say earlier that you couldn't help me?!"
"Yes. I said that, didn't I?"
"But this is..."
"Aha~! You seem to be under one misconception, dear husband."
Yata tossed the squirming Arachne high up into the air.
Then—smack!—she clapped her hands at the exact moment it fell back down, crushing Arachne flat between both palms.
"I said I couldn't unilaterally help you, because I too was a participant in this contest."
-Squelch!
Yata dropped the flattened spider to the floor and stomped down on it once more with her foot.
The spider's bodily fluids and innards oozed out from under her shoe.
Even when she lifted her foot, the red marking remained intact on the spider's corpse.
Arachne really was dead. In an utterly anticlimactic manner...
"You wanted to make the rabbit your Companion Animal, didn't you, dear husband?"
"Huh? Uh-huh..."
"Sorry, but life's not a rehearsal, you know?"
"You thug...!!"
Galloping vixen, rabbit racing through the future above, and soaring crow above it all.