The Roots Turn Golden
I’m going to kill it? This newborn baby that just crawled out of its mother’s womb? All because its hair color is different? For that one pathetic reason?
“No, nooo! Please, at least spare our baby…!”
“Kill it!! Rip it out of that bitch’s arms and kill it right now!!”
“It’s going to get us all killed! That’s not a baby, it’s a disaster!!”
“Burn the disaster right now!!”
The crowd finally charged at the woman.
One of them grabbed the screaming woman by her hair. Others seized her limbs that were desperately cradling the baby and began stomping and yanking without mercy.
Crazy bastards. They really mean to kill it!!
My body, which had been about to vault over the wall and charge in, was barely held back by reason.
Calm down. Don’t rush in recklessly. What exactly could I even do if I jumped out there right now?
Stand in front of the mob and try to stop them?
Step forward and intervene directly?
Don’t make me laugh.
It was true that my reputation in the slums had risen sharply thanks to the puppet shows I’d been performing every day lately. But if I knelt down and begged with tears in my eyes, would they really stop just because it was me?
Don’t make me laugh. There was no way.
In the eyes of the people gathered there, my pathetic fame would weigh almost nothing. At best, I was just a talented little brat who did interesting and amusing magic tricks instead of begging like other orphans or picking pockets. Nothing more, nothing less.
If I stepped out pretending to be a hero, I’d just get dragged in and torn to pieces by those clubs and pitchforks.
That left only one choice.
Stay silent, turn around, and run without looking back.
I’d simply had the misfortune of witnessing an extremely unpleasant scene tonight. It had nothing to do with me, so I should just close my eyes and return to my cozy home.
I could read a book and erase tonight’s events from my memory forever.
…But there was no way I could do that.
How could I ever sleep soundly again after seeing a baby that had done nothing wrong get torn apart the moment it was born?
Of course, some people could run away. But unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them.
That didn’t mean I had any intention of playing the apostle of justice and throwing my own life away.
In this unknown fantasy world, the most precious thing to me was myself—my own life.
Right? There was no way I could die in place of a baby I didn’t even share blood with! So don’t blame me! I can’t help it!
F-first, I need to cover my face!
“Aaaargh!!!”
Damn it, there’s no time to hesitate!
I hurriedly grabbed the pot and dumped all the precious coins and bread I’d earned through blood and sweat onto the ground without regret. Then I flipped the empty pot over my head.
How was I supposed to see with a pot over my head?
Simple. I imagined pulling up shadows to completely wrap the inside of the pot, then visualized my sight penetrating through the curtain of shadow. The pitch-black wall of the pot turned translucent as if by magic, and the outside scenery came into full view.
By imagining the pot wrapped in shadow and then seeing through its back side, it somehow worked.
“Aaaagh! M-my arm…! My arm!! Aaaargh!!”
Good god. The frenzied crowd had started yanking the woman’s arms and legs from both sides with all their strength. With a grotesque sound I’d never heard before, her limbs stretched out like rubber bands before snapping in directions no human joint should ever bend. Red blood gushed out like a fountain from the torn flesh.
Even so, the woman never loosened the grip of the two arms cradling the baby in her chest. It was a mother’s horrifying tenacity—trying to protect her newborn even as her bones broke and her flesh was ripped apart.
It was so horrific and shocking, yet at the same time strangely mesmerizing. I couldn’t look away.
Wait, this isn’t the time to be lost in thought or admiration!
I quickly shook off my reverie.
Clenching both fists, I began sprinting toward the rioters in the ridiculous and bizarre sight of a pot stuck on my head.
“Hup! Hup! Hup! Uraaaah!!”
“H-hey! S-something weird is running this way?!”
“W-what the hell is that? What is it? Some tiny brat… wait, its face is strange. It’s completely black!”
“Crazy, that’s not a human face…! It has no eyes, nose, or mouth!! It’s a g-ghost!!! No, a demon…! A demon has appeared!!!”
“A ghost?! A real ghost?!”
“Kyaaaaah!! Ishtal has been watching the terrible sin we were about to commit!! She’s angry and has sent a messenger from hell to punish us!!”
“O God! Please forgive us!!”
“No, that’s an evil spirit that tears people apart!! It’s come to devour us!!! E-everyone run!!!”
The same bastards who had been breaking the woman’s limbs and screaming curses just moments ago now threw down their pitchforks and torches, trampling each other in a mad panic as they fled. Some crawled across the ground pissing their pants, others clutched their heads and begged for mercy into thin air. It was absolute pandemonium.
I stopped my full-speed charge and blinked.
…Huh? What? Wait, it really ended that easily and pathetically?
I hadn’t even done anything yet. All I did was put on a scrap-metal pot and run at them, and they scattered on their own?
More importantly, what the hell is Ishtal?
Haah… I feel drained…
My perfect hit-and-run plan—using the chaos caused by my magnificent magic to vanish like smoke with a stylish pop!—had flown away in the most absurd and anticlimactic way possible.
“U-ugh…”
Oh right! This isn’t the time for that!
I quickly restarted my frozen brain and approached the blood-soaked woman.
“Y-you are…”
The moment my eyes, adjusted to the darkness, took in the woman’s condition in full detail, I gasped.
It was too horrific.
It wasn’t just that her limb joints were bent at grotesque angles. Half her scalp had been torn off by someone ripping out her hair, and bright red blood completely covered her face. From her mercilessly trampled lower body, her intestines spilled out in a sight too gruesome to look at directly, staining the dirt.
This was far beyond anything my crude back-alley magic surgery—which had only involved scraping off Prin’s rotten wrist and cauterizing it with fire—could ever hope to fix.
Even if I brought in cutting-edge surgical equipment and all of modern medicine, she was clearly beyond saving. These were fatal wounds.
My heart pounded wildly.
I had seen corpses many times while wandering the back alleys of the slums.
But this was the first time in my life I was watching a living person slowly die right before my eyes in real time.
The woman, coughing up bloody foam, turned her unfocused, cloudy eyes toward me.
“Angel… no, d-demon…. Whoever you are…. P-please… please… take care of… my child……”
The resignation in her voice and the desperate plea that sounded like she was vomiting blood left me speechless.
The most horrifying thing about this situation was that the woman herself already knew, with bone-deep certainty, that her body was beyond hope. She had already crossed the threshold of death.
It would have been less painful if she had simply lost consciousness and passed away peacefully. Instead, she was fully conscious, experiencing every bit of the agony as her guts spilled out and her breath faded.
Completely overwhelmed by the sight, I slowly nodded as if in a trance.
Seeing my answer, a faint smile of relief spread across the woman’s lips.
“Thank… you… thank……”
Red blood gushed from between her lips. At the same time, the strength slowly drained from the two arms that had been holding the baby. The last light of life vanished from her unfocused pupils that had been trembling pitifully toward the sky.
She was dead.
“Ah… she’s dead.”
She was gone.
I stood there in a daze, staring down at the scene. The life that had been clinging on so desperately had simply flickered out before my eyes.
One life had been completely extinguished. Right in front of me.
And yet, it was a truly bizarre and fascinating thing.
My stomach, which had been churning as if I might vomit at any moment, and the tips of my trembling fingers suddenly calmed with an eerie swiftness the instant her breath completely stopped.
“Waaah…! Waaaaah!!”
It was then.
The baby, which had stayed quiet even while the crowd was tearing at its mother’s limbs, suddenly burst into a cry so fierce it seemed it might choke.
As if it had realized its mother was dead. Feeling her body grow colder and colder, the baby thrashed and wailed madly.
The desperate cry of a baby that had lost its mother. But as I looked down at that tragic scene, the first emotion that crossed my mind wasn’t shallow pity or sympathy.
It was loud.
Could I really say everyone had run far away? No.
Could I guarantee that every single member of the scattered mob had fled into the distance? Absolutely not. Someone might be lying flat nearby, hiding, and could crawl back out if they heard this crying.
What if someone heard it, came to their senses, gathered the others, and came back?
I didn’t even want to imagine it. Before getting caught up in more annoying trouble, I had to shut this crying up first and get the hell out of here.
“Shut up. Be quiet.”
Without hesitation, I snatched the baby from its mother’s arms. Then I pressed my palm over its tiny mouth and nose. It could still breathe, but the sound of its cries couldn’t leak out.
And without looking back, I started running like a madman.
“Huff, huff…! Haah… I’ve lost my mind. What the hell did I just do…!!”
After gasping my way back home, slamming the door shut, and collapsing onto the floor, I finally looked down at the squirming green-haired baby in my arms. Only then did the brutally realistic sensation of what I’d done hit me, and I couldn’t hold back my shock.
I was barely making enough to eat day by day! Sure, I’d earned a bit of spare cash from the puppet shows these past few days and had a little more breathing room than the other kids, but still! Just taking care of the Prin siblings was already enough to break my back!
I had no milk to feed it and not nearly enough money, yet I’d gone and picked up someone else’s newborn?!
What a fucking meddlesome idiot I am!!
“Aaaargh! I don’t know, I don’t know! I’ve really gone crazy!!”
Unable to contain the boiling regret and irritation, I let out a silent scream and began furiously yanking at my own hair with both hands.
“Ouch! Ah, shit…! Damn it! I actually pulled out some hair!!”
“Ack! Seriously…! I really pulled out hair!! Augh, everything from one to ten is pissing me off!”
My head was already killing me, and now the pain from my scalp made my irritation spike even higher.
I grumbled irritably and shook off the clump of hair that was stuck to my sweat-soaked palm, lowering my gaze.
But then.
“…Huh?”
I had always thought my hair was a dull black. Yet the roots of the strands I had just pulled out were glowing with a strange color.
As if they had captured light itself, they shone with a brilliant gold that stood out vividly even in the dark room.
The roots of my hair had turned yellow.