Chapter 92: Elf Noona 4
Chapter 92: Elf Noona 4
Several days had already slipped by since I'd started making excuses to visit the Unfading Giant Tree's domain.
The same scenes kept repeating — dozing with my head resting on her shoulder, our hands clasped together like panels from a romance comic.
Whenever I appeared beneath the World Tree's branches in the garden, the Unfading Giant Tree would be there to greet me, right on schedule with her plant-tending routine.
Just the sight of that pale, slender girl among the garden's myriad plants was enough to lift my mood.
"Welcome back."
But today was different.
She wasn't tending her plants — she stood gazing up at the World Tree's branches, and when she turned to greet me, her chest was puffed out, brimming with confidence.
It was undeniably cute, but I couldn't quite figure out why she was acting like this.
As I returned her greeting, a surge of intense emotion washed over me even from this distance.
'Where's this competitive streak coming from all of a sudden?'
The emotion pouring off her was unmistakable: pure competitiveness.
Or maybe more like the flutter of a wager, the anticipatory thrill of someone who's just played a little prank and is waiting for the reaction?
Yesterday she'd been all heart-flutters over this slender boy's body, and now she was radiating this — I genuinely couldn't parse the shift.
Only after tasting the emotions rolling off her in waves did I actually notice what she was wearing.
No longer just a plain white cloth with a single leaf brooch —
her clothes were now embroidered with patterns, adorned with extra jewelry and several additional belts.
She'd transformed in an instant from an innocent, unknowing maiden into a dressed-up, precious young lady,
but that supremely confident expression and the competitive fire I could taste coming off her made the whole picture hard to process.
I had no solid guess, but if I had to pin it down,
'Maybe it's the reversed gender-roles world...? No, a guy doesn't feel competitive about a woman who's actively seducing him. Did she seriously take my flirting as some kind of game or bet?'
My half-joking seduction game — she'd apparently taken it dead seriously.
And the fact that she was drawing out competitive impulses instead of coyness or anticipation —
that was textbook adolescent-boy behavior.
An elf with those looks pulling this stuff made me freshly appreciate the word "devastating."
She approached without a trace of self-consciousness — how exactly was I supposed to react?
If she's the one who links her arm through mine first, then what?
If I suddenly groped her chest or ass right now, I'd just be a lunatic.
"Hm, this? It's a piece I've treasured for a long time..."
She'd been beautiful even with nothing but an unadorned white cloth wrapped around her body.
If she'd piled on mismatched jewels, I probably would've laughed at the naive attempt.
But with a gold necklace draped over her pure-white tunic and pure-white skin, a vine-shaped belt coiled around her waist —
decked out and preening like this, all I could do was marvel all over again.
"So? Does it suit me?"
"Yeah, ridiculously well."
"Thank you!"
She flashed a mischievous grin, strode right up to my side, and seized my arm.
Before I'd even gathered my wits we were strolling through the garden with our arms linked, and I could feel my heart pounding.
She'd grabbed me before I could finish a single thought.
It was my heart — not hers — that was hammering.
Maybe she heard it, because she glanced sideways at me, arm still hooked through mine, and flashed that grin again like she'd scored a direct hit.
Did she think we were playing some kind of embarrass-each-other contest or something?
Even thinking that, this tiny elf boy's body heated up in an instant regardless.
"Your face is red. You okay?"
"Uh, y-yeah. Fine."
When I was the bronze-skinned 180-centimeter slab of muscle, I'd never noticed this sort of thing,
but now that I was a 150-centimeter pale elf, apparently my face and ears and the back of my neck all flared bright red.
If I looked in a mirror right now, I'd probably see her fingertips tracing from my forehead down to my nape, the skin glowing crimson under her touch.
"So. What brings you today?"
In the brief time it took us to walk to the low table in the sitting room,
my face had heated up so much it felt like I'd downed a shot of hard liquor.
Maybe it was because I was inhabiting this timid, unhurried elven body, but even physical contact I'd thought was no big deal sent my face up in flames right away.
Anyway. I had a concrete question today, and that's why I'd come.
"Have you ever met other Constellations?"
"No. Tending the World Tree keeps me here — I've never once left."
I pulled a letter from my pocket.
The stationery, edged in gold leaf, was sealed with crimson wax and had arrived with a sterling-silver letter opener —
a dedicated wax-breaking knife — alongside it.
The antique air of the thing was obvious at a glance, as if penned by some noble lord,
and it carried a single drop of perfume — a sweet, fruity fragrance.
"A salon invitation?"
"Yeah. It's from a Constellation called the Martial Epic that Sings of Romance."
Once I translated the fountain-pen scrawl sprawling across the page, more than half of it turned out to be unnecessary flowery embellishments and effusive praise of my appearance and my tender heart.
As I read that part aloud, the Unfading Giant Tree grinned and poked me in the side.
As an elf whose expressions were forthright and unadorned, she apparently found this cloying, glittering rhetoric marvelously bizarre.
"So — why show me this?"
"It says I can bring a partner. Want to come with me?"
Once I stripped away all the extraneous chatter, the entire wad of letter boiled down to a single sentence.
Would you care to attend a social gathering among Constellations?
Took real literary skill to cram that one sentence across two full sheets of stationery like that.
While I was letting my thoughts drift along those irrelevant lines, the Unfading Giant Tree fell into a longer silence than I'd expected.
She and I — we were both lonely, both bored. If either of us claimed we weren't curious about other Constellations, that would be a lie.
"...I'll go."
※
Could a whole world shift this drastically because of a single person?
'Is he coming again today?'
Watering the plants. Harvesting bowed flower petals.
Collecting the Honey Trees' overflowing sap. Dusting the leaves of the indoor plants.
Plucking young leaves and drying them — that was my routine. A schedule filled entirely with tending the garden and the greenery, suddenly invaded at whim by one boy.
'He doesn't like things too sweet... but he dislikes bitter things too. Picky in a subtle way.'
Preparing the tea and refreshments — steeping the fruit and tea leaves — had become something I looked forward to.
What used to be repetitive labor now carried care and attention, and my head filled with tiny questions: Will he enjoy eating this?
Before I knew it, my daily rhythm had been thoroughly derailed by that one person.
I'd pushed back the petal-harvesting to show him the flowers in full bloom. I'd tapped the Honey Trees before they were fully ready. I'd put off wiping down the leaves — all for him.
When I caught the sweet scent of his dream-demon magic, my heart would pound for reasons I couldn't name.
In the late afternoon, just past noon — the hour when he always came — I'd find myself aimlessly pacing in front of the World Tree in the garden.
An elf's sense of time insisted it had only been a single day since I'd last seen him, but my racing heart screamed that it had already been a day — far too long.
After a stretch of time that felt endless yet fleeting, a small boy emerged beneath the World Tree's branches, wreathed in violet mist.
In a body completely unlike the one I'd first met.
The fact that he'd altered his form just for me — that sight alone sent a pointless flutter through my chest.
"Welcome back."
"Hey. You've been well?"
A light greeting paired with smiling eyes.
That alone was enough to make my discontented heart settle, just for a moment.
Then — barely a moment later — the soft sensation of his skin against my hands and arms set my heart rioting all over again.
The gentle physical closeness, inching nearer and nearer while he studied my reactions with evident amusement.
'Does he like me?'
A boy who doesn't even know he's supposed to be bashful, approaching without a shred of self-consciousness, nuzzling up against me so readily — my heart just screams.
Maybe it's weeping, bewildered by what's been happening to it lately, when it had always been so calm and steady.
By the time I finally wrestled my pounding, near-bursting heart back under control, my face was always ripened to the shade of fruit just about to drop from the branch.
'Do I like him?'
Even when I aimed the question at my own finally-calmed chest, no clear answer came.
Besides — what does it even mean, to like someone?
I like my mother who tends the World Tree, and my gentle father.
I liked the companions I used to till the fields alongside, and the children who withered away before me.
I like the plants I cultivate in this garden, and I like the World Tree I've been reunited with in this world.
With no one to ask and no way to resolve the question, I'd be stewing in my own confusion — and then he'd be sitting at the low table, nibbling a tiny sweet he couldn't even finish in one bite, smiling that soft smile at me.
Utterly oblivious that he was the cause of all this turmoil.
'Why am I the only one like this?'
'It's a little unfair.'
Watching him sip his tea so slowly, as if he hadn't a care in the world, made frustration surge up inside me.
If he were still in that huge body from when we first met, I might at least have given him a light smack on the head.
But this boy had shrunk smaller than me now — I couldn't even bring myself to give him a gentle knock, for fear of leaving a mark on that pale white forehead.
Which meant I had no choice but to play the same game.
Today, watching the boy make his slow approach beneath the World Tree's branches, the elf girl who knew nothing of love made up her mind exactly that way.