What If (8)
“Is there a tool that can change eye color?”
In a quiet corner of the city of Hudelen, the girl Akata—now fairly fluent in the local tongue—asked her senior while turning over the contents of the letter that had arrived the day before. Bracelets woven from fine threads hung in a jangling cluster from her arm.
“It’s not like they don’t exist.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
But why are you asking? her senior added. Akata merely shrugged. All three pairs of her arms rose and fell together.
“Not long ago I overheard a customer saying they were sick of people calling their eye color ominous and that they had to do something about it.”
“Eye color?”
“Blue eyes, but with brown flecks like stains.”
“Ahh. People like that show up now and then. Extremely rare—I’m surprised you actually met one.”
In truth she had seen such eyes while still living with her tribe, where they had not been quite so uncommon. Akata simply left that part out and smiled.
“So… can people like that change their eye color too?”
“Well, it’s not impossible.”
“The way you’re hedging makes me think it’s expensive.”
“Pretty much.”
“More expensive than changing hair color?”
“Yeah. Changing eye color can only be done with magic.”
“Why?”
“Well… you can’t exactly pour dye into someone’s eyes, can you?”
“Ah…”
Akata understood at once. Even for hair, the dyes of this age already risked hair loss and scalp rashes. Dump something that harsh into an eye and the only future waiting for you was blindness.
“Hmm. That person didn’t look like they had a lot of money…”
“Then it’ll be tough.”
“Is it really that expensive?”
“Mmm. Well. The principle of the product is casting an illusion spell on a localized area—the eyes—so it isn’t insanely expensive as far as magical tools go… but even so, it would still run over a million gal. Times being what they are.”
“Whoa…”
A million gal. A sum so far beyond the girl’s present reach that Akata’s eight eyes went wide. She had expected a magical item to carry a certain price tag, but never imagined the difference would be an entire digit.
“What? Did you want one too?”
“Why would I buy something to change my eye color? If I were going to spend that kind of money… I’d buy an item that makes it look like I don’t have the eyes on my forehead.”
“Uh…”
Even as open hostility toward demons steadily reduced discrimination between races, that only held true for familiar appearances. The girl, whose looks were rarer still than the scaled Shagi, had tasted every form of prejudice Hudelen had to offer. She had also long since realized that simply covering the six eyes on her forehead cut that discrimination dramatically.
“Now that I’ve said it out loud, I want one even more. If you can cast an illusion on the eyes, you can do the same for a forehead, right? Then I wouldn’t need to wrap cloth around my head, and my field of vision would open up again.”
And precisely because of that, the more she spoke the clearer it became how valuable such an item would be. Being able to change eye color with an illusion meant it could also hide scars. Perhaps it could even reshape an entire face.
“…But making that possible would cost even more, wouldn’t it? The area you’d have to cover with the illusion would be larger.”
“Probably… yeah.”
How much would she have to pour out to buy something like that? Before that, what would she have to sell and what jobs would she have to take just to gather that kind of sum?
The girl stretched both hands forward. The things that had once set Hudelen’s trends—and that discrimination had stolen from her—stood out in sharp relief.
“Still! I don’t think you need to buy something like that at all!”
While she sat quietly, her senior—who had been fidgeting—suddenly blurted the words out. In that brief pause he had clearly scrambled for something comforting to say; his face was slick with sweat.
“If you hide your eyes… people might accept you right now, but later on beings with eight eyes could end up being denied altogether. Eight eyes are something people have to accept—not something you have to hide.”
“…Chelsea.”
“Of course, if the things you’re going through right now are so hard that you decide you absolutely have to hide them, I won’t stop you then…”
“I wasn’t that desperate to buy one, but… that was kind of moving.”
She had been speaking without much thought; she never expected such a serious answer. When Akata said so, Chelsea’s face turned bright red.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack, kid…”
“I think this sometimes, but Chelsea… you’re too sensitive.”
“What are you talking about… It’s not that I’m sensitive—you’re the strong one.”
“…Is that so?”
“Yeah. Most adults can’t handle this kind of discrimination very well.”
That opinion was new to her as well. She had suffered so much before this that mere frustration never quite reached her, and the little bundle of treasures that had given her strength whenever things grew hard always left her thinking, ‘I can manage, as usual.’ But maybe that wasn’t ordinary. Maybe she was the unusual one.
“Then I’m glad.”
Akata idly fingered the thread bracelet inside her treasure pouch. Hearing that she was doing well somehow put her in a good mood. It made her feel she could look that person in the eye again.
“Still. When I sell the bracelets, I’ll hide my identity. Discrimination or not, I can’t miss this trend.”
“That’s up to you…”
Separately, she could not afford to let a chance to make money slip by. She held up a bracelet she had just finished. It resembled the ones currently in fashion, yet the patterns were more elaborate and refined; it swayed from the girl’s hand.
“Uhu hu hu. Behold the arrival of the original.”
“Honestly. Even when you laugh like that you don’t look evil, kid…”
“Buuut. Isn’t it pretty funny watching the same people who said they’d never buy from someone with so many eyes go wild just because the seller’s identity is hidden?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
“If I work hard for a few weeks I’ll even be able to hold my head high in front of the Great Chieftain.”
“Ah, right. You said a letter came from the Great Forest.”
Knowing the relationship between Akata and her homeland was far from warm, her senior scratched the bridge of his nose.
“Can I ask what it said?”
“Sure. Nothing major. Are you well, things here are the same as always. There’s something I’d like to ask of you—would you mind doing me a favor? That was pretty much the whole of it.”
“…And you agreed?”
“It was the Great Chieftain’s request, after all. I’m not close with the people back home, but the Great Chieftain was always kind to me. And the favor itself was so… pitiful.”
“What was it?”
“He wanted me to find him a wig to cover his hair loss…”
“Ah…”
“I don’t know if it’s a racial trait, but baldness is extremely rare among them. For someone to actually go bald… isn’t that just sad?”
“Yeah… it is sad… that’s worth helping with…”
While her senior absently rubbed his own broad forehead, Akata grinned.
That was the official story; the truly important part came later—but what good would it do to mention that? Akata simply veiled the truth with falsehood and kept grinning.
Does the dye only take when I have the Disguise skill active?
I set down the gauntlet I had polished to a mirror sheen and turned my face this way and that, examining my reflection. It lacked a true mirror’s clarity, yet even in that hazy, smeared visage I could at least tell whether my eyebrows were dark or light.
“…No eyebrows.”
If I looked closely it wasn’t really a matter of dark versus light. If I could see eyebrows they were their natural color; if I couldn’t, the dye had taken hold. That was closer to the truth.
In practice, whenever the reflection in the gauntlet showed no eyebrows, water would still reveal brown ones—so the method was almost foolproof. If anyone asked why they vanished in the gauntlet, the only answer I could give was that the color was so pale it simply blended into the skin once the image grew muddy.
“Hah.”
Still, once the eyebrows faded this much, wouldn’t my whole impression change? The eyepatch and the scar at the corner of my mouth remained problems, of course, but a person’s eyebrows quietly steer their entire face more than most realize.
Well, if I had to name the most frustrating part of all, it would be that the moment I turned the Disguise skill off the dye simply refused to stay put.
“Is it the magic resistance…?”
After mulling over why that might be, I at least found an answer that held water. The only real difference between the skill being inactive and active was the pile of debuffs that came with it, and of those only one candidate made sense.
The fact that dye lasted longer in the mid stages of Disguise than at the start offered further proof. By the skill’s nature, the longer it stayed active the steeper the drop in magic resistance—and the dye’s staying power rose in exact proportion. So the culprit really was that one thing.
“I never even noticed it during combat…”
Yet for everything else it never helped at all—why did it have to work only when it was inconvenient? I grumbled while checking the time.
If the color of my eyebrows washed out while I was walking around the city or talking to people, it would cause serious trouble. I had no choice; I needed to know the exact duration just in case.
Rustle.
Just then the undergrowth beyond the farming plot Sangun had made for me stirred. I straightened from where I had been crouching to pick mushrooms and drew my sword.
Sssrrr.
The hair of the wig I had kept wearing in order to get used to it spilled down softly. I had tied it loosely because of its awkward length, and the cord had slipped free again.
Whump!
In that same breath the shaking bushes finally split in two, and a leopard burst through. For a resident of this forest its size was modest—perhaps a juvenile.
The hand that had raised the sword high twitched, then flipped it around. What my gauntlet now gripped was not the hilt of the longsword but the blade itself.
Thwack!
I sidestepped the leopard’s charge and smacked its hide with the flat of the pommel. The beast, however, was moving in a curve; the tips of the guard raked across its coat. Shhk! A clear gash opened among the fur and the surrounding air began to turn red.
“Oh…”
I looked at the bloodied guard and made a complicated face. In the game I had seen a motion where the character drove the tip of the guard into an enemy’s nape like a pickaxe and finished them, but I had never needed it and had forgotten all about it… Looking at it now, I was really feeling what a half-baked swordsman I was. Without the combat system’s corrections I probably would have died long ago.
Kyaaak!
…But if the system really was either a Demon Knight or an actual demon, wasn’t this exactly the sort of situation where it would step in? So were those corrections coming from them too?
I gathered only the strangest impressions about a truth I had never wanted to know, then lightly kicked the beast’s belly as it lunged again. Animal cruelty or not, I couldn’t very well cut it down with the sword—if people had been nearby I would have killed it for their safety, but right now there was no need. This was my compromise.
I just hoped the creature would hurry up and admit it had chosen prey it could never beat and go home…
Grrrr…
Perhaps my earnest wish got through. The leopard finally came to its senses. My flesh still seemed appetizing; it circled me, but at least it stopped trying to attack.
Even so, if I left it like this there was a chance it would quietly watch for an opening and strike again. For a clearer warning I drew up mana.
Drip. Blood immediately ran from my nostrils and my fingertips curled.
Slash! Four claw marks scored the earth from right in front of me all the way to the leopard’s feet. The startled beast scrambled away in a panic. That much was fortunate, but my nose was now in real trouble.
“Sniff, ah damn it.”
Wow, seriously. Mana backlash is ridiculous. One use and my nose starts gushing—does that make any sense?
I grumbled with full sincerity and plopped down on the ground. The tree whose trunk was already thick with mushrooms now had to support my rear as well.
For the record, the spot I sat on was one I had already cleared of mushrooms, so no pitiful specimens got crushed underneath me.
[Waaah! Waaah!]
But after my nose, trouble now visited my eardrums.
“…You’re here again.”
[Aw heck, why’d ya go and get a nosebleed again? I brought some grub for ye—want some o’ this?]
Loud as ever, that snake. The corner of my lip twitched upward.
[Huh? Huhhh? Where’d the lunchbox get to?]
And when Sangun proceeded to make an even bigger fool of himself, the lip that had risen finally cracked open. Pff. At that single sound like escaping air, Sangun’s head whipped around.
[Y-you laughed?]
My lips sealed again and the eyes that had curved straightened into a flat line as if nothing had happened.
[No, you just laughed just now.]
“I did not.”
[Aww, come on…]
“I said I didn’t.”
Just another ordinary day.