The Gold-Eye Tribe and the Human Race (1)
The Gold-Eye Tribe and the Human Race (1)
Magic beasts were broadly divided into two types.
Human-type demons, and magic beasts that were not human-type.
The girl was a case of the former. She looked uncannily, chillingly identical to a human, but she was not one. Mercury ran through her veins alongside blood.
Right now, what mattered most to the girl was personal information. If anyone in the House Saliere household figured out that she was a magic beast, it would be a disaster.
"What's with your hair color?"
"I, I dyed it."
And so she threw out that reckless claim in response to the Count's question. But she immediately realized there was a fatal problem with what she'd said, and her lips rounded into a small O.
She was screwed.
The girl was currently in a body that made it physically impossible to impersonate her older sister.
Hadn't she introduced herself to the girl in front of her—to Rote Saliere—as Aether's twin little sister?
And now she'd blurted out an egregious lie right in front of the very person she'd had that conversation with. To Rote, her words would be nothing more than a flimsy excuse.
But the problem didn't end there.
"You went all the way to a salon to dye it?"
"In this weather?"
Count Saliere, Cromwell Saliere, and his son Lorwell posed the same question simultaneously. It was a reasonable point.
"And why did you break the window?"
At the father and son's follow-up, the girl's body froze solid. Her already cold heart grew even colder, and her pupils began to quiver faintly. She hadn't been this flustered since the day her older sister ran away from home.
She steadied her breathing and shifted her gaze toward the window. She needed to face the situation head-on and find a way to talk herself out of it.
Gale-force winds reaching fifty meters per second howled through the shattered windowpane and barreled into the study. The wind was ferocious—so strong that the desk and chairs were being shoved backward.
At this rate, the study would be reduced to utter chaos. She had to deal with this problem first.
"I-I'll do something about it!"
The first to move was Rote. Rote, who had been blinking blankly at the girl's sudden appearance, fetched a reinforcing plate and a new pane of glass. She replaced the tempered glass with practiced ease, then returned to her spot with a sigh of relief.
Thanks to Rote's efforts, the study didn't turn into a war zone. But that only solved House Saliere's problem, not the girl's.
Having taken stock of the situation, the Saliere father and son resumed their affable offensive.
"Aether, I'm not trying to scold you, but... how exactly did you break the window? We had wind-proofing magic applied to it. It ought to withstand a fair amount of impact."
It was a reasonable question.
Glass windows treated with disaster scrolls became impossibly tough. They wouldn't shatter unless a steel signboard came flying at them and smashed straight into the pane.
Yet that glass window had broken. And on top of that, the girl had been showered with the fragments.
That was how severe the impact had been. And yet, the white-haired girl's body was perfectly fine, without a single scratch.
"Let me get a good look. You don't seem to be injured anywhere, either?"
Lorwell's follow-up blow. Faced with questions that offered no room for excuse, the girl couldn't even answer. She merely swallowed empty breaths. By now, the poker face characteristic of the Gold-Eye Tribe was very nearly crumbling.
There was a mountain of things she had to explain.
Why she'd gone to dye her hair in the middle of a natural disaster.
Whether any salon was even open at a time like this.
Why she hadn't come back through the front door but had instead smashed through a window to get inside.
How she had destroyed tempered glass reinforced with a disaster-prevention scroll using nothing but her bare body, and how she'd come out of it without a single mark on her.
There was only one explanation that could lend any coherence to all these questions.
—Because she was a magic beast.
Damn it. There was absolutely no way she could reveal that.
She had to produce a more convincing excuse on the spot, so that no one here would ever arrive at that conclusion.
"I, well."
The girl's lips twitched.
She had to say something. She had to wring the words out, but nothing serviceable rose from her throat. Her lips absolutely refused to part.
The girl was ill-equipped for this kind of fast talking. She could project intimidation and issue threats or warnings, but she didn't have the rhetorical skill to toy with human psychology.
The one who was good at managing crises like this was the 4th Seat.
She thought. How would Rosemary have handled this situation?
The answer wasn't hard to arrive at.
"Ah."
She wouldn't have created this kind of situation in the first place.
The girl bit down hard on her lower lip.
Fury surged up within her. She held the high rank of 2nd Seat among the Great Machines of the Nine Heavens, yet she had botched things through a single moment of carelessness. At this rate, she'd never get to see the Demon King's face again.
Grinding her molars, the girl organized her thoughts.
Now that things had come to this, the only option left was a frontal breakthrough.
Yes—if she caught even the slightest hint that someone had noticed her true identity, then she would simply kill everyone here.
Of course, if she assassinated Count Saliere, who possessed high Magic Arts sensitivity, there was a risk that the spirits would detect it. That would throw a massive wrench into the Demon King Resurrection Plan.
Fortunately, they were near the Demon Continent, where the spirit tribe's influence was weak. Even if she annihilated the entire Saliere family here, the probability of escaping the spirits' notice was higher than the probability of being detected.
She decided not to worry about the future for now. If her nature as a magic beast was exposed, she could discuss it with her comrades later.
The girl prepared to pull a Mana Cigarette from her bosom.
And then.
"Th-the window broke on its own!"
A trembling voice rang out.
The voice came from Rote Saliere. She caught her ragged breath and readied her next words.
"Th-this typhoon must be really strong. Aether was standing right here, and the window just suddenly shattered... ha, haha.... Still, luckily, she didn't get hurt."
The girl doubted her own ears. Was she actually defending me?
No, this wasn't covering for her. Those eyes were the eyes of someone on guard.
The girl had been faintly aware, ever since they'd had that campfire conversation, that Rote's gaze toward the Gold-Eye Tribe had changed after meeting her.
And no wonder. The girl had effortlessly subdued two Calamity-class magic beasts that had been targeting Rote's nape.
Only an Extinction-class magic beast could tame and control a Calamity-class. She didn't know whether Rote's reasoning had reached that far, but it seemed certain that Rote instinctively felt fear toward her.
"A-and she dyed her hair at Auntie Camilla's place. You know how diligent she is. She probably said, 'I won't lose to a typhoon like this!' and fixed up Aether's hair. How does it look? Nice, right?"
"Mm."
"Well, if it's her, I can see her doing that and more."
For a defense, it was painfully rambling. Still, it was a better excuse than anything the girl herself had managed to come up with.
The girl stared blankly at Rote, who was going out of her way to defend her even while remaining on guard.
Rote couldn't properly meet her eyes. Her pupils quavered like waves lapping against the shore, and she wound a strand of crimson hair around her finger over and over, betraying her agitation.
"Something does seem off, though... didn't Aether say last time that she was heading to where the beastfolk live?"
"Th-that! The typhoon made her come back and say she'd go later. Right?"
"Uh, yeah......."
"Anyway, she's not hurt, so let's leave it at that. Don't study too late—get some sleep early, both of you."
"Ah, yes!"
Cromwell and Lorwell shut the door and left. Silence descended the moment the thud sounded.
The girl looked at Rote; Rote looked at the girl.
Naturally, the one who averted her eyes first was Rote.
**
She had survived.
She wasn't entirely sure how, but she had survived. Rote let out a small sigh, quiet enough that the girl wouldn't hear.
When the white-haired girl who looked so much like Aether had come crashing through the window, Rote had felt her heart drop. Part of it was the shock, but every time she came face to face with the white-haired girl, the trauma of that day resurfaced.
That girl had effortlessly subdued the Fenrir that had been about to go for Rote's throat. Ever since then, questions and mistrust about the Gold-Eye Tribe as a whole had begun sprouting in Rote's heart.
What exactly were the Gold-Eye Tribe? Why couldn't they use magic, just because their eyes were yellow?
Even when she tried to focus on her studies, those questions fed the embers in her mind until they blazed.
"I dyed it."
The excuse the girl had offered to Rote's father and older brother when they came running at the sound of the shattering window had been absurd. The girl herself had seemed to realize the contradiction in her own words almost immediately, letting out a soft groan.
After all, hadn't she introduced herself to Rote as Aether's twin little sister?
So that was it. The girl had been the one lying all along. At least Aether had made consistent statements.
But then what was this girl? Was she an entirely separate being from Aether?
While such questions chipped away at her concentration, Rote's father and brother launched their barrage of questions at the girl.
Starting with the broken window, moving on to why she wasn't injured, why she'd gone to do her hair in the middle of a crisis, and more. The questions kept coming without giving her a moment to think of an excuse, and the girl's complexion darkened.
Soon, the girl shot Rote a sidelong glare. Murderous intent seeped from those bright-yellow eyes. The girl slipped a hand behind her back, reaching for something.
This was dangerous.
Rote didn't know why, but she thought she had to stop this girl from being cornered. There was no logical basis for it.
Her instincts simply screamed at her: if she wanted to keep her family alive, she had to give this girl some psychological breathing room.
And so Rote, even as she regarded the girl's presence with suspicion, had stood on her side and fabricated a story. All so the girl wouldn't have any dangerous ideas.
Which was why she was now in this mess.
—Whirrrrrrrr
The girl was drying her wet hair with a magic tool. Her white hair, which had been dripping moments ago, caught the study's lamplight and sparkled like white snow-dust.
The Rain Prevention Scrolls she'd been wearing had shattered from the impact when she'd come through the window, leaving her soaked to that degree. That turned out to be an alibi, however. If this Fake Aether had been indoors, she'd have had no reason to be wrapped in disaster scrolls.
"......."
The awkward atmosphere had been dragging on for a while. The white-haired girl devoted herself wordlessly to drying her clothes and hair, while Rote sat in the rocking chair reading a book. Not a single letter was registering in her eyes.
With a soft clack, the girl set the hairdryer down.
"Um, hey...."
"......."
No answer.
Come to think of it, Rote didn't even know what to call this child. The first time Rote had asked her name, she'd refused, saying Rote didn't need to know.
Rote addressed her once more, this time in formal speech.
"Excuse me...?"
"...Akasha."
"Huh?"
"I'm going to be staying here for a while. Shouldn't we at least know each other's names?"
The girl turned back with a faintly acrid smile. Her golden eyes, looking as though they were scheming something, sent a lurch straight through Rote's gut.
"Let's get along, big sister."
Rote realized it in her gut.
This was, quite clearly, going to be an uncomfortable cohabitation.