Ascension Ritual
Daeun looked around.
“It’s spacious….”
The guest room Yustina had provided for her was surprisingly large.
The wooden headboard on the bed gleamed with a polished sheen.
When Daeun touched it, she could feel the smooth grain of the wood beneath her fingers.
So this is what they call wear and tear?
She traced the headboard with her hand, lost in thought.
Anything used long enough would end up like this, of course, but furniture made of wood seemed to acquire that lived-in patina especially well.
The glossy, timeworn bed she was touching was proof that many hands had passed over it and many years had gone by.
For someone who prized cleanliness or had a taste for the new, it might have been enough to make them recoil and run for the hills.
But Daeun was not that sort of person.
If she had to choose, she actually found herself more drawn to furniture like this.
“It’s romantic, isn’t it? Has a sort of quiet charm too.”
Sitting in a country house with a little yard, on a worn rocking chair, gazing out at the world beyond.
The short grass swaying in the wind, the occasional chirp of birds drifting over like a string of raindrops, gently soothing a desolate heart.
That kind of peaceful life was what Daeun longed for.
If you stopped someone on the street in Korea and asked, “What kind of house would you want to live in?” maybe half of them would give an answer similar to Daeun’s.
For people used to apartments, the country homes they had seen in movies, dramas, and comics since childhood were more than enough to become their ideal.
According to people who had actually lived in them, though, maintaining the yard and everything else was a pain, and if you were afraid of bugs, you’d never survive there.
Even so, country houses remained an ideal for many.
And while the room Daeun was in now was not exactly that kind of house, the traces of age scattered through the furniture and corners suited her tastes perfectly.
There was no flashy beauty here, but it was a room made with care for the guest who would stay in it.
“Look at this.”
Daeun ran a finger over the furniture.
The finger she lifted for show was spotless, still as white as ever, with not a speck of dust on it.
“If they knew no one was coming, they could’ve just left it alone. But seeing how clean it is, they must’ve kept taking care of it.”
Maybe they still believed that one day, life would return to normal.
It was while Daeun was touring the room and chatting with her viewers that—
Knock, knock.
“Yes! Just a moment!”
Creaaak!
At the knock, Daeun opened the door and was greeted by a man with a blunt, unsmiling face.
“...I was told you wished for a guide to the village.”
“Ah, yes! Are you...?”
“...”
The man gave a silent nod.
He’s a quiet one.
They had only exchanged a few words, but Daeun already had a decent sense of his personality.
But being quiet did not mean being rude.
Even if it was awkward—perhaps because he was meeting a human after a long time, or maybe for the first time in his life—the man showed no sign of discomfort or suspicion.
He simply did his job with steady silence, as if saying that was all there was to it.
“Are we leaving now?”
“...Whenever it is convenient for you.”
“Thaaat’s... understood. ...Then I’ll go now.”
Still, this was a little awkward….
Daeun was more comfortable with talkative people than quiet ones, so she kept sneaking careful glances at the man.
Why hadn’t she been like this with Kana?
Getting close to a child and getting close to an adult are different, you know.
No matter how grown-up Kana tried to act, it was obvious she was still a child.
And since they were different genders and had no real connection to begin with, Daeun couldn’t help being more cautious with him.
Following the man out of the room, Daeun went around knocking on the doors of her companions’ rooms.
“Celine! We’re going to look around the village—would you like to come?”
“Kana, would you like to go see the village with us?”
After she knocked, it did not take long before a blonde woman opened the door and appeared.
“You’re going to tour the village?”
“Yes. Even villages within the same country have different ways of life depending on their location, right? We crossed the sea, so isn’t it likely very different from the villages we saw on the Ardina Continent? I find that kind of thing fun to look at.”
“I think I understand what you mean. Hearing it like that, I’m interested too.”
Celine nodded and joined the group.
That left only one person.
The party’s de facto leader, its fighter, its mascot, its source of stress relief, and...
Huh. Did Kana really have that many roles?
Thinking of Kana made Daeun tilt her head with a dubious expression.
On top of that, most of the travel expenses were coming out of Kana’s wallet, so she had even lost the role of benefactor.
If this were a group project, her name would’ve been left off the paper by now, wouldn’t it?
And yet, even as she thought, No, surely I’m not that bad..., Daeun couldn’t bring herself to say it with confidence, not with that strange unease gnawing at her.
But why wasn’t she coming out?
Knock, knock.
“Kana~?”
Daeun called again in a singsong voice, but the pink-haired girl still did not appear, and there was no movement from beyond the door.
“Why isn’t she saying anything?”
“Maybe she’s sleeping?” Celine suggested, sounding puzzled.
“...Already?”
It hadn’t even been twenty minutes since she went in… had it?
“Young children sleep a lot.”
“If Kana heard that, she’d hate it.”
“Fufufu.”
Ignoring Celine’s amused laugh, Daeun knocked again.
After a couple more knocks, the door finally opened a crack, and a tuft of pink hair peeped out through the gap.
“...What.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“No.”
For someone who said that, her hair sure looked flattened.
Hmm... should I say something or not?
Seeing the pink hair, squashed down like that of a tiny, cute animal, Daeun decided not to mention it in the end.
Because it was cuter this way.
“Really? Well, we were thinking of going to look around the village. Want to come with us, Kana?”
“Tour the village? No.”
“Why not? You were curious just a little while ago.”
“A little while ago was a little while ago, and now is now.”
Kana said, primly, that she had changed her mind.
They said a woman’s heart was like reeds in the wind.
But in Daeun’s opinion, a child’s heart was a whole reed bed.
A reed bed in the teeth of a howling gale, at that.
So it wasn’t really strange for her mind to change whenever it wanted.
“Hmm...?”
Looking at Kana’s oddly sulky face, Daeun realized this wasn’t just simple caprice.
“Could it be... are you still upset?”
“...”
The half-exposed face slipped a little farther back into the room.
Now only one eye was peeking out as Kana looked at her.
She didn’t answer, but the gesture was answer enough.
Celine spoke up in a troubled voice.
“I told you, I was only joking... .”
The incident had started with a single remark from Daeun.
“But, Kana. Now that you seem used to that ability, wouldn’t it be okay to speak in Arkish?”
Until then, because they couldn’t understand each other, Daeun had been forced to act as a translator.
But now Kana had learned a new ability, and she could speak directly with Celine one-on-one, so Daeun had thought there was no need to keep translating.
If Kana spoke in Granic, her words would reach Celine, but Daeun’s words would not.
They could still understand each other through translation, but a delay was only natural.
At Daeun’s words, Kana’s cheeks puffed up.
“...So now I’m just a nuisance?”
Even her always-flat tone had acquired a sharp little thorn.
Feeling that, Daeun hurried to correct her mistake.
“N-no, that’s not what I meant...! It just seemed like Celine was being left out...!”
“...”
Kana’s cheeks were still puffed up, and Daeun desperately tried to soothe her, insisting that wasn’t what she had meant.
She had begged and pleaded all the way until the moment Kana stepped into the room Yustina had given them, and she had thought the girl was finally calming down.
So she wasn’t completely over it after all. Still, at least I know why she was upset...
The last time, in the Holy Kingdom, it had been agonizing because she couldn’t even guess what had made Kana angry….
Like earth hardened after rain, that incident had become a turning point that brought them closer, but even now Daeun still felt a chill whenever she remembered it.
But this time, both the sulking and the reason for it were clear, so far from being annoying, it just looked adorable.
“Uhn-sha!”
Daeun flung the door open and scooped Kana up in a tight hug.
“There’s no way I’d ever let my eyes wander when I’ve got such a lovable Kana right here. You’re always my number one, okay? And like I said before, leaving someone out isn’t good, so that’s why. Kana, you’re a good girl, so you know exclusion is bad, right?”
“I told you to stop treating me like a child.”
“Hmm~? If Kana keeps being sulky, I’ll have no choice but to treat you like a child.”
“I’m not sulking, so put me down already.”
If she had really hated it, she could’ve used her strength to get away.
She didn’t stop Daeun from opening the door or lifting her up, and yet she was still acting like she disliked it.
But if Daeun said that out loud, Kana would obviously shut the door and retreat inside, so she swallowed the words and set the painfully honest girl back down.
“...Fine, whatever. I was thinking about it too, anyway.”
“Then why were you— no, forget it.”
She almost made the same mistake again.
Daeun wiped the cold sweat from her brow.
Fortunately, Kana hadn’t caught what she was about to say.
“Yeah, good girl. Thanks for understanding.”
“...”
Having had her catchphrase stolen, Kana narrowed her eyes.
But Daeun brushed off the sharp look without concern and stroked the girl’s hair.
“All right. Shall we head out now? At this rate, the sun will set before we know it.”
It was already dark, but that was still better than the sun setting completely, wasn’t it?
Saying that, Daeun smiled brightly.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Look at that! It’s a cow!”
Daeun bounced on her feet.
Then, suddenly, she stopped and tilted her head.
“...But why does it have eight legs?”
“You only noticed that now?”
I applauded her incredibly fast reaction.
It wasn’t meant as praise, so she didn’t need to look embarrassed, either.
With a sigh, I took a step closer to Daeun.
“It’s a monster.”
It looked vaguely like a cow you might see often in Ardina, but its true nature was not bovine. It was a monster.
“Raising monsters as livestock. That’s the sort of thing only demons would think of.”
If an Ardinian tried something like this, they’d be dragged straight to the execution grounds and have their head lopped off.
For letting a dangerous threat run free, and on top of that for causing magi poisoning and chaos, too.
Not that it would even be possible, since the monsters certainly wouldn’t obediently follow humans like that.
I wondered how they’d managed to tame it.
“Are you raising them for meat?”
“...Yes.”
“...Ah. Yes.”
Daeun, who had eagerly asked the demon a question, deflated at once and looked disappointed.
So that’s how they’re feeding everyone. I wondered how they managed food supplies.
Of course, merely raising livestock wouldn’t produce enough food to feed so many demons.
That must have been why farmland for crops was visible all around the village as well.
I’d expected something different because this was the Demon Continent, but when it came down to it, living off farming and livestock wasn’t all that different.
Still, I supposed that made sense; after all, these people had originally been humans, the race known as the Purifier Clan.
“Kana! Look at this! It’s a chicken with six legs!”
“...That’s not a chicken, it’s a monster.”
Even as I answered curtly, my body was already moving toward Daeun.
Six chicken legs—how was I supposed to resist that?