Something That Cannot Be Severed
There were people who insisted loneliness and solitude were different things.
Peculiar sorts who claimed loneliness was bad and solitude was good. They would hold forth with fluent eloquence about how a healthy life required time spent alone.
They had no idea what true isolation felt like.
They did not know the fear that if you vanished one day, no one would come looking for you, nor the despair that tomorrow would arrive no different from today.
They did not understand the heart of a wooden plank, drifting day after day with neither expectation toward tomorrow nor hope that anything might change, waiting only to be eroded by the water and sink.
So I hated being alone.
So being alone was…
Something I hated.
A day had passed since I had gotten angry at Dogeon.
I had been deliberately avoiding him so I would not seem like an easy person, but honestly, my resolve felt ready to snap.
Food tasted so bad I only half-ate it, and the air felt far fouler than usual.
No — maybe what was foul was not the air, but me.
For a few hours after making my decision, I did not even look at him. But soon enough I had no choice but to admit it.
I never wanted to go back to being alone.
It was only a what-if, but while I was not watching him, he might have gone off to charm some other girl.
Once was enough to prove he could do it a second time. The thought made me so anxious I could not stand it.
I pricked up my ears from a distance to catch whether he was speaking to someone, and I kept my eyes wide open, monitoring where he went and whom he met.
I found my own behavior so pathetic that not even an hour after resolving to give him no attention at all, I was already desperately trying to track Dogeon down.
Fortunately he was not talking to any girls — but I did not particularly want to watch him talking to guys either.
Even knowing this was pathological, I just wanted him not to pay attention to anyone else.
I knew it was an ugly thought, but it was hard to restrain. He was the one and only person I could call a friend.
Even if, to Dogeon, I was merely one friend among many.
I wanted him to look only at me.
…When I came to my senses, my diary was already packed full of entries about Dogeon. At this rate, it could hardly be called a diary.
No. Thinking about it, all I had done all day was surveil Dogeon. So it still counted as a diary.
I just did not want to show something like that to Mother. As much as possible, I wanted to write only that I was living firmly and well.
Something along the lines of: This continent may have strange air and a ruined leyline, but I am doing just fine.
Mother was probably in the thick of state affairs right now, so I had plenty of time to rewrite it from beginning to end.
On the first day I had written in ink as always, but pencils were simply too good.
So what should I write? If I cut out everything about Dogeon, there was truly nothing left.
Extremely summarized, it boiled down to a single line: I attended class and ate. I could not write something like that, so I even wondered whether I ought to write a novel instead.
But I did not want to write lies either. The heat period thing I could get away with — strictly speaking, that had not been a lie.
I had merely hidden the truth.
This time, though, I would have to invent a completely fictional story. The slightly worn triangle in my heart said that was not allowed.
Yeah. Let's not write it.
That was the conclusion I reached. I had not written during the journey to the Academy either, and Mother had not seemed particularly disappointed, so one day should be fine.
If she heard her daughter had spent the whole day trailing after some boy, Father would be in a foul mood as well.
I brushed off the eraser crumbs, closed the diary, and emptiness washed over me. It was a vicious sense of boredom I had not felt in a very long time.
Academy life was not particularly fun. That was the thought that came to me.
I had brought it on myself, but to be this bored just because one person was not beside me…
It would only be two days once tomorrow passed, but I had no confidence I could hold out.
It was not a promise I had made to anyone else. I could just break a promise with myself, right?
Yeah. That's right.
A day of punishment was enough. If anything, me sticking to his side would be more of a burden on him — was that not the real punishment?
I had never had someone get angry at me before, so I did not know, but if the person I had yelled at stuck right by my side, I figured I would start watching my behavior carefully.
And tomorrow happened to be the first weekend at the Academy, so I would stick close and interfere with every little thing he did.
Surely he would not turn his eyes toward other girls after being burned that badly by me.
It seemed like a good idea. Being the one giving the punishment was far better than being the one receiving it.
I did not need to tremble with loneliness and ask God if He might keep me company.
As a result of spending all of yesterday gathering information, I had learned that this world also had a plant that made cats go wild.
And that a pet supply shop near the Academy carried it. The fact that noble ladies especially favored that shop was not particularly important.
What mattered was that I could give it to her as a gift.
There was just one thing that bothered me.
Whether it was all right to give her something bought from a pet shop.
Gifting pet supplies to a princess sounded pretty deranged. But if I simply did not tell her where I got it, maybe it would be fine.
If she pressed, I could say I had picked it from the mountain out back or something.
While folding my bedding and thinking about how to soothe her, the weekend plans I had first made suddenly came to mind.
Go to the bakery with Exipri. Find Anastasiya sparring at the gymnasium. Visit the church at the Academy and make Gloria's acquaintance.
Well — I could not do even one of them.
Right now I had to pour the entire weekend into Hoyeon. Of course she was worth it, but it was still a shame.
This had been the window in which I could have made Gloria's acquaintance, someone currently unrelated to me.
But that was less important than the safety of this continent. There was no problem doing it later, so I decided to devote this weekend entirely to lifting her spirits.
The moment I stepped outside to get what I planned to give her, I ran into Hoyeon. Wait — this was not supposed to happen.
Yesterday she had avoided me all day, so my plans had been built on the assumption she would do the same today — and they had fallen apart from the start.
"…"
Her tail was wagging, but her mouth said nothing at all.
Hoping my suspicions were wrong, I walked past her without a word as well — but Hoyeon naturally fell into step beside me.
…Was going to the pet shop really the right call? But I could not think of any other way to improve her mood.
Even if I asked what she liked, she did not seem likely to answer.
In the end, despite the bad feeling, I had no choice but to push through.
She said nothing the entire way past the Academy's main gate to the pet shop I had only heard about. But at odds with that silence, her tail swished gently back and forth, which left me confused.
That kind of movement appeared when she was in a good mood, when she had been called a friend — which made it all the more confusing.
I wondered if her anger had already faded, but her expression was still rigid, so I had no idea how she actually felt.
Carrying that unease in my chest, I arrived at the destination to find a building far larger than expected. I had thought it would be a small shop tucked into a corner of some building.
I never imagined it would occupy an entire building unto itself.
Hoyeon seemed to find it strange too, tilting her head.
"Casey's Pet… Supplies… Shop? A pet supply shop? Why have we come to a place like this?"
Even Hoyeon, who had maintained silence until now, could not contain her curiosity and asked me. I could not tell her the truth, so I made up a plausible reason.
"I was thinking of buying some food for the stray cats."
I had no idea what about that statement rubbed her the wrong way, but she frowned slightly and said to me:
"I never imagined you had such preferences… That is not good. The wild is most beautiful when left as the wild."
"Ah… I see. Then what if I raised one?"
"Taking responsibility is admirable, but are animals even allowed in the dormitory?"
"Yes. As long as you clean up after them on time, the regulations say it's fine."
She was a girl and a feline beastkin, so I had assumed she would like cats — but she disliked them.
That did not mean I was not going. I had no real intention of raising a cat, so this actually worked out well.
Because while buying the things needed to raise a cat, I could also buy Catnip along with them.
The thing I planned to gift her was Catnip.
I had seen videos on social media of tigers burying their noses in catnip, so I figured it would work on Hoyeon too.
If it did not work…
I would have to make a real slave declaration, but…
That would not happen. In the original work, there were mentions of feline beastkin losing their minds over certain plants, so I was even more confident.
"Then do as you will. If you are taking one in, I will not object — but do not cast it out again."
As if I was ever going to raise one.
"Don't worry. That won't happen."
Together with her, who was smiling with satisfaction, I entered the pet shop.
As the rumors said, people who looked like noble ladies were showing off their pets to each other. I did hear things I probably should not have — about drakes and young dragons — but that was neither here nor there.
I picked up sand, a litter box, deodorizer, and feed, then loitered near the Catnip display, waiting for her to look away.
As I kept circling the area, whether from boredom or sleepiness, she let her guard down — and I secretly grabbed a bag of Catnip.
"…Yes, I've bought everything I needed."
"…Hwat? Ah… You've already finished shopping. Then let us go."
Her delayed reaction, as if waking from sleep, suggested she had not noticed.
Maybe she was sleepy from following me around first thing on a weekend morning. Well — it did not matter either way.