A Feather Far Too Big
"Where is it that Aidan's been working?"
"You really mean to help?"
"Yes. Honestly, just sitting around feels a bit awkward."
Bayul had come to see Aidan, only to find himself chatting with the boy's older brother and grandfather first. It was a perfectly natural turn of events, but the thought of doing so for another hour or two was a burden to someone as shy as Bayul.
"It's not the sort of work you'd manage."
Ace said it plainly, as though delivering a verdict—no need to push himself.
"I'm fine, truly. Please, tell me where to go."
They'd said there was cargo to move, so it would surely be laborious work. But with himself and the Death siblings lending a hand, it would be finished in no time.
"Well, if you insist. Honor."
"Yes, my lord."
"Show him the way."
"This way, please."
The head butler who had first greeted Bayul gestured toward the exit with both hands before Ace had even finished speaking.
"Then, Count Leonett, I'll take my leave for now."
As Bayul rose, the three Death siblings rose with him.
"You'll stay for supper before you go. We'll have our long talk then."
"Yes. I'll see you later."
Bayul gave Ace a respectful nod and hurried after the butler, Honor.
It was a long walk before Bayul finally arrived at the place where Aidan was working. It resembled a freight yard, swarming with a countless horde of laborers bustling about in a frantic hurry, hauling goods back and forth.
"Aidan!"
Still, finding the boy was hardly a challenge. A small boy toiling away with groans and grimaces amid a sea of towering, muscular men stood out in an instant.
"Huh? Bayul! What are you doing out here? You were supposed to wait inside!"
Aidan, drenched in sweat mid-shift, spotted his friend and came sprinting over at full tilt.
"I'm so glad to see you! Thanks for coming. Your letter yesterday? It completely made my day!"
Unlike Aidan, joy was the farthest thing from Bayul's mind at that moment. The instant he saw his friend soaked through with sweat, pity welled up first.
"Isn't it hard?"
"Huh?"
"Working in this heat. Your face is burned completely black."
"Ah, that'd be from working under the sun."
This was the boy who had written a letter begging piteously to be rescued—and now he flashed a bright, sunny smile.
Maybe he's doing better than I thought?
"But how did you know I was working here? Who told you? Was it Demon Number One or Number Two?"
"Demon Number One and Two... what on earth are you talking about?"
"You met my grandpa and my brother, right? A servant came by a little while ago and told me."
"So Count Leonett and your brother Ace are respectively Demon... Number One and Number Two...?"
Bayul's voice trailed off without his meaning it to. The tirades about demons Aidan was so fond of delivering finally came back to him. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the targets were Count Leonett and Ace.
"Think of it as my own code names. Bayul, you've never actually seen a demon, right?"
"...A demon?"
"Yeah! The demonkin!"
Bayul's eyes darted reflexively toward the Death siblings.
There are three of them, standing right in front of you.
He very nearly said it aloud.
"Nasty demonkin who sneak into the human realm and secretly torment people! If such creatures exist, they'd look exactly like my brother and my grandpa. Guaranteed!"
"...But you said not all demons are bad. You said that yourself, Aidan."
Death, and Bar and Amon as well, showed not so much as a flicker of change in their expressions. And yet, for some reason, that bothered Bayul even more.
"I did. It's true some demons are kinder than the heavenly race."
"Right! Even demons come in all sorts!"
"But the bad ones vastly outnumber the good! And that, too, is an immutable truth!"
Here he was, cursing demonkin right in front of demons. Death had already gone a full round(?) with Count Leonett, and provoking him now could lead nowhere good. Whether Aidan was right or wrong, the wisest course was to shut that mouth first.
"Ahaha, Aidan. Let's drop the demon talk. Don't you have work to do? All of that still has to get moved, right?"
"Oh, where's my head. Totally forgot!"
Delighted at seeing an old friend, Aidan had briefly banished his current predicament from his mind. Not a single step out of this place until every last cursed bundle was moved—that was the deal.
"Sorry, Bayul, but go inside and wait for me. I'll finish up as fast as I can."
"I came to help."
"What?"
"Many hands make quick work. Isn't that right, Death, Bar, Amon?"
If those three pitched in, the job would be done in the blink of an eye. Then there would be that much more time to spend together.
"What needs moving?"
Bayul asked boldly, unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt.
"And why would we do that?"
It was then that Death spat out the words, scowling all of a sudden.
"You seem to be under some delusion. I was hired by you, not by this fellow here."
"I know, Death. But given the circumstances—"
"No, Bayul. He's right. This is my job to do. You just wait."
Cutting across Bayul's words, Aidan refused him flatly. How could he possibly refuse help? Finishing quickly and escaping this place was, at this very moment, his most desperate wish.
And yet he hadn't wanted to burden total strangers with work for no reason.
Did talking badly about demons offend them?
Bayul had assumed that such vigorous demons would handle a chore like this with ease, and inwardly he felt a pang of disappointment. As their employer, he could simply have ordered it done—but if their feelings were hurt, pushing hard didn't sit right either.
"Then I'll help at least."
It couldn't be helped. Bayul resolved to pitch in alone if he must.
"Even if I say it's fine, Bayul, I can handle this myself."
"You know I'm healthy again now. I want to help."
"I'll take the thought as enough. How could I ever ask you to do work like this?"
"Why not, between friends? I'm telling you, it's fine."
"It's not fine with me! Keep this up and we'll just lose more time—"
"Thirty skewers. Deal?"
"...Death?"
Just as the back-and-forth between Bayul and Aidan threatened to drag on, Death abruptly held up three fingers.
So he wasn't angry after all?
"Ten each. Thirty total. Then we help."
Ah. It was a negotiation all along...
So this had been his aim from the very start.
"I'll throw in twenty more as a bonus. The cargo's heavier than it looks, you see."
"So fifty altogether?"
"Yes. I do have something of a conscience."
Aidan had been raised in a merchant family. He was straining against his family's wishes to become a knight, but merchant blood ran in his veins all the same.
When Bayul was refusing and insisting on working alone, Death had held his tongue—and the moment an offer appeared, he snapped it up and squeezed out a bonus on top. As a result, Death's eyes were practically sparkling. If donuts had been added to the deal, he'd have been ready to swear lifelong servitude on the spot.
"Bar. Amon."
"Yes, my lord."
"Move. Now."
At Death's command, Bar and Amon began hauling cargo without a flicker of hesitation. Bayul and Aidan didn't even need to step in. The sight of Bar and Amon carrying three or four bundles at once—cargo that a grown man struggled to lift even one of—was frankly intimidating.
"Whoa, incredible!"
And to everyone watching, they were a one-armed man and a blind man. Workers paused their own tasks to gawk at the spectacle, a sight none of them had ever witnessed before.
"Their strength is seriously no joke. Why doesn't our household ever hire servants like that? Bayul, I'm suddenly so jealous of you!"
"You've nothing to be jealous of."
Those two were, so he'd been told, high-ranking demons ranked tenth and eleventh in the Demon Realm. The Death siblings were meant to be the last demons ever to cross into the human realm. Aidan's wish, in other words, was a recipe for disaster.
"Huh? It's already done?"
The spot where Aidan's allotted cargo had been piled was suddenly and utterly bare. The boy looked up at Bar and Amon in awe and gratitude.
"You've been so good to me that I'll treat you to donuts, my treat!"
"Donuts?"
"Yes, I had them before. You remember, right?"
"Of course."
He was failing miserably to hide his delight. Death swallowed hard, already tormented by mere imagination.
"There's a big night market opening soon. Come out with Bayul then. I'll treat all three of you to something splendid!"
"At long last, shall we taste the thing our lord spoke of?"
"I am exceedingly excited!"
Bar and Amon were so swollen with anticipation that their bodies actually trembled. How could the three of them be so identical? In some ways, it was pure enough to be almost touching.
"I'm truly glad we came here today."
Death smiled a wide, deeply satisfied smile.
"Now that you mention it, where's Sir Ian? Is he inside?"
"No, it's just me and the Death siblings today."
"Really? Sir Ian let you come without him? How strange."
Ian, the knight so devoted to his escort duty that he'd trailed Bayul even to the night market, made Aidan tilt his head in puzzlement.
"To be honest, I'm worried about Ingrid. I specially asked to bring Bar along."
Bayul lowered his voice.
"I thought, as a Beast Tamer, he might be able to help."
"Oh, right! Bar's a Tamer! I completely forgot!"
Swamped with work and preoccupied by the Ingrid situation, Aidan hadn't given Bar the Tamer a single thought.
"Thank you, Bayul! Thank you, Bar! I'm honestly scared out of my mind!"
"How is Ingrid? Where is she?"
"I don't know. I have no idea."
Aidan's face had turned on the verge of tears without his noticing.
"I haven't seen her at all for three days now."
"She's gone? You mean she's disappeared?"
"Yeah."
"Have you searched everywhere you could think of?"
"Of course. I mobilized every single animal on the estate to look, and there was no sign of her!"
The conversation was getting graver by the minute. Where on earth had she vanished to so suddenly?
"Did she leave anything behind?"
"...Behind?"
At Bar's utterly unremarkable question, Aidan's eyes wavered with unease.
"Traces of some kind. They'd make her much easier to track."
"Well... there is something, sort of..."
Aidan hesitated, glancing around. Everyone else was absorbed in their own tasks; no one was paying attention to them anymore. Chewing anxiously at his lips, Aidan finally drew something from his pocket.
"...What is that?"
"A feather?"
What Aidan held up was an enormous gray feather, roughly the length of a forearm. Bayul couldn't fathom where he'd gotten such a thing or why he was suddenly showing it around.
"It was lying in one of the spots Ingrid visits all the time."
"It can't be Ingrid's feather, so what is it? Don't tell me this bird attacked her?"
"I don't think so. There were no signs of a fight at all. And..."
Aidan continued in a trembling voice, as though making a confession.
"I think this is Ingrid's feather."
"What are you talking about? How could this be Ingrid's feather? Look at the difference in size!"
"I know, the difference is huge. But... the feel of it, the smell—it's exactly the same. I can tell. I think our Ingrid has..."
Ingrid has what?
"...grown."
"Grown?"
"Yeah. Just like I wrote in the letter—I think she's started molting."