The Unhappy Birdie

Back on Earth, there was a certain theory.

The "cats are liquid" theory.

It was inspired by the way cats will squeeze themselves into a space of any shape whatsoever. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Watching one pour its entire body into a fishbowl smaller than itself, you had to conclude: cats are, in fact, liquid.

Well, apparently the real explanation is that their spines and muscles are unusually flexible, blah blah blah and so on.

Extremely boring and pedantic.

Even the claim that cats are liquid gets dull after three sentences. The scientific counterarguments aren't worth listening to in the first place.

Anyway.

Why did all this come to mind while watching an elf who had developed PTSD thanks to the saint? Because of this.

"This is weird… Ugh, aagh…"

The elf had wedged herself into the narrow gap between the bed and the wall.

The moment she slid into a space that fit her body exactly, her anxiety symptoms eased considerably.

And so.

Cats feel comfort when they enter a space that fits them perfectly.

Commonality number one: finds comfort in cramped spaces.

"Kkuuaah, ugh, uuaah…"

She nearly failed to fit because of the protruding swell of her chest, but by wriggling and squirming she managed to cram herself in anyway.

And this was the second commonality.

Shoves a body as pliant as liquid into a narrow space.

The elf is a cat. That's the conclusion.

I wanted nothing more than to broadcast this groundbreaking research finding to the world at once, but…

There was a saint standing at our front door.

"Lady Lucia. I am in need of your help."

And not just any saint — a distinctly strange one.

"…."

"This is not something known outside the church, but… heretics have infiltrated our ranks as we speak."

The saint spoke with grave earnestness. Lucia gave no response whatsoever.

"There must be a reason you were chosen in times like these. Perhaps… have you already received a revelation?"

"…."

"You have not. I see. Well… I have heard that in this affair, there exists another being who opposes the Goddess. No doubt the situation has yet to settle itself."

I quietly eavesdropped on the saint's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠monologue.

This is… something. It's definitely something.

Words the elf had been repeating for ages floated back to me. That entity, incarnations, whatever-it-was.

Is this connected to that?

At first I'd dismissed it as mere background lore. But the saint — a character with enormous influence over the story — was in this state, and had come knocking on our door personally?

This was hard to write off as developers just messing with their settings.

"…."

"Hmm. Seeing as you remain silent, might it be that revealing your identity is a burden to you?"

"Something like that."

Lucia finally spoke, then tilted her head slightly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to the side. Her eyes seemed to ask: how should we play this?

Was she looking at me through the wall?

That's where the elf is currently wedged, you know.

Apparently not blessed with my clairvoyance magic, she'd sent her glance toward the elf, who was bawling her eyes out in there.

Anyway. I get your drift.

After brief deliberation, I sent Lucia a telepathic message.

[Don't answer her at all.]

My choice: silence.

Honestly, if we meant to send the saint packing, we should have answered quickly with a brisk I'm not that kind of person.

But she already spilled the world's secrets on us.

I never expected her to just blow the whole secret our way while we sat there doing nothing.

What on earth had made the saint so certain? That part remained unknowable from the body of a mere sparrow.

"—In any case, Lady Lucia's identity will not be leaked."

The saint carried on explaining to no one in particular, and a little past the ten-minute mark, she finally took her leave.

…Not a likable person.

That long, long conversation. Summarizing the saint's pedantic lecture, it amounted to this:

—Nobody knows who you are, so relax. I came under a different pretext this time.

—There are heretics in the church right now. They seem to serve a different god.

—By the way, you hide your aura impressively well? You control your power so smoothly I'm impressed. No one but me would ever recognize you.

That was all it took, and she stretched it out for ten whole minutes.

The elf wedged into the corner had every right to be furious if she'd heard it.

[Right, Elf?]

"Uuuh… wh-what did you say?"

[Nothing. Just talking to myself. Let's eat.]

"…."

[Why no answer? Are you hurt?]

"N-no. I should… eat."

And so the saint's troublemaking commotion was, for the time being, laid to rest…

Monday is long.

Plenty of people hate hearing that, but reality is reality. What can you do?

Even after the saint had departed, we still had a day to live through.

[Elf. Are you almost done writing?]

The dinner table, the meal nearly finished.

"—Almost, all done. You said write ten, right?"

The elf scribbled characters onto the paper in her hand in a frantic rush.

[Mm. I see.]

"Y-yeah! So, could you give me just a little more time…? I'm, I'm only on number nine now. Okay?"

As if her very life depended on it, she kept writing without pause even as her hand shook violently.

Watching her, I felt a strange pang of familiarity — like a student frantically double-checking her answers seconds before the exam ended.

Come to think of it, wasn't that exactly what happened to the seat in front of Lucia?

It was one of Lucia's anecdotes from today's theory exam. A female cadet with purple hair, supposedly.

Her body had trembled continuously throughout the exam period, making it hard for Lucia to concentrate.

I wonder who that is.

I was pondering what to do about the culprit who'd hindered my disciple when—

"D-done! All done!"

The elf thrust the paper at me, her hand still trembling.

She didn't even need to hand it over.

Whoooom.

I caught it with telekinesis and floated it in front of me. A paper three times the size of my body.

Hm. She wrote them all out properly.

No matter how many times I asked the elf if she had any requests, she'd gone mute, so I'd simply told her to write down ten things she wanted on a sheet of paper.

I read through the clauses one by one.

But.

…Huh?

What is this?

The page was covered top to bottom in nothing but absurd, nonsensical clauses of this variety.

Had I ever dunked the elf in water on purpose to torment her? Ever kept her from breathing? Sure, I once put up a wall in front of the portal… but setting that aside, I had never committed a single one of the other clauses.

There's a problem here.

Worse, the further down the list she went, the more the handwriting devolved into the kind of scrawl that would get a person committed to a psychiatric ward on sight.

[…Elf.]

"Y-yeees?"

[Let's see each other's faces a little more often from now on.]

This sort of thing needs to be treated with plenty of conversation. If I left her alone any longer than this, she would most assuredly turn into a senile old elf.

"…."

The elf dropped the spoon she was holding.

Clatter!

"Ah, s-sorry! I'll pick it up right away—"

[No, I'll get it. Just sit there.]

I lifted the spoon with telekinesis and even cast a purification spell on it for good measure. That much should satisfy her, surely.

"Ah, uhh… thank you."

The elf replied halfheartedly, still shaky. I studied her closely as I finished my meal.

…And just like that, a day passed.

"Chirp—cheep."

I opened my eyes.

For the record, that chirping had not come out of my own beak.

And here I almost thought I'd said it.

Did sparrows sleepwalk too? I wondered — but glancing down past the window, I saw an actual sparrow warbling away.

It had built a nest in the tree and started a family with its baby chicks. My fellow sparrows, in other words.

Their kind had never ascended to Great Magic Bird status — just ordinary birds — but approaching them carelessly would cost you dearly.

After all, in a worldview where the law of one high school girl = three tanks holds true, even sparrows pack considerable combat power.

I'll just have to grow stronger and make the name of sparrow known far and wide.

I was indulging in the usual useless thoughts this morning when—

"…Master, you're up early again today."

Lucia sat up and naturally began stroking my head. Being petted by her beneath the warm morning sunlight — I was thoroughly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠satisfied with this luxurious existence, when…

Squish, squish.

Lucia began kneading my body like some gelatinous slime monster. Her touch was gentle and careful, but…

"Cheep, chirp chirp…!"

It tickled, and laughter burst out of me.

[Lucia, that tickles.]

"…I'm sorry. I only just woke up, so my hands moved on their own."

Lucia went back to stroking my head instead.

Hm.

Truthfully, being kneaded wasn't unpleasant… but the moment I started enjoying it, I feared I'd degenerate into a coddled little pet-bird.

"Coddled-pet" is one of the two criteria that separate me from an ordinary sparrow.

The line between Great Magic Bird and street sparrow is drawn by two things: can it use magic, and is it a spoiled, pampered pet?

I was still a sparrow that had never been coddled, so I had to stay vigilant on that front.

…Anyway.

Lucia hurried through her preparations to go out, and I perched on her shoulder. Just before she opened the front door—

"So we won't be back until Thursday, then."

With that, Lucia turned back toward the room.

[That's right.]

Our room would sit empty until tomorrow and beyond. This was the "survival" exam — practically an unspoken academy tradition.

Memories come flooding back.

It was the single most brutal stretch of the original story's early arc. They construct an entire ecosystem crawling with every monster imaginable, then dump all the first-years into it and tell them to kill each other starting now.

As if the cadets had all conspired together in advance, dozens of them gang up to kill Chloe.

Well. That part's convenient for Lucia, at least.

Still, it tugged at my heart a little.

"…By the way. The elf will be all alone during the exam, won't she."

[She will.]

I'd given the elf fair warning in advance, but honestly, I was a little worried.

[She won't get lonely, right?]

"…I imagine she'll be fine."

Trading light conversation, we made our way toward the exam grounds.

A forest shrouded in fog.

The elf stood firmly before the purple portal.

The Outer Gods' power has grown so much stronger lately.

Setting aside the girl who'd come calling during last night's dinner, she could sense the auras of other Outer Gods as well.

I have no idea what state the Outer Gods are in right now.

Their objectives changed every era. The extermination of humanity, the rebuilding of nations, the ending of endless wars, the birth of a new mankind…

They arrived in cycles of several thousand years, each harboring its own purpose, waging endless factional wars among themselves.

Every time until now, the faction well-disposed toward humanity had emerged victorious.

But this time, I truly can't say.

She had always latched onto the winning side.

Since the dawn of human civilization — that is, for roughly twenty thousand years — she had aligned herself exclusively with the benevolent faction.

The sparrow.

That creature in the shape of a sparrow was the wildcard.

An Outer God never once recorded in all of history, its factional allegiance unknown. Worse still, even the limits of its power remained unclear.

After a seal breaks, it takes decades just to manage an incarnation.

And even after producing that incarnation, the sparrow had still reserved that much power in reserve. Before asking when the seal had broken, the real question was how strong the main body actually was.

…I'll need to look into that separately.

How much power had the other Outer Gods stockpiled? She'd already been forcibly conscripted into the sparrow's retinue, but she still wanted to know just how strong the side she'd attached herself to really was.

Because she took her survival very, very seriously.

Day two, starting today.

While they were away, she would conduct her investigation outside the portal.

Vrooom.

The elf stepped through the portal, and—

"…?"

The passage that should have stretched wide open was sealed solid, packed wall to wall.

Don't tell me that sparrow was attempting to lock her in again?

No, no, no!

Her plan reduced to foam, the terror of collapsing from dehydration yet again — her hand shot forward under the weight of those tangled emotions.

Fwoooosh!

Her hand plunged straight through the wall, and a viscous fluid splattered everywhere.

"…."

Only then did she realize this was no ordinary wall.

Far too late.

Grooooon.

A colossal eye turned its gaze upon her.

Another Outer God, already—

Crack, craaaaaack!

The eye split into thousands, then tens of thousands. The fractured eyes swarmed around the elf on every side.

Space warped. It was crushed like kneaded dough, torn open along its seams. The twisted void swallowed the elf whole.

[….]

Countless tentacles coiled around her body.

I should have just… stayed sealed away…

As the tentacles dragged her off into captivity, she regretted it from the very bottom of her heart.