Misanthropy (2)
"Hey, wench. We'd rather not get rough about this either. From the looks of it, she's not even your blood. Just hand her over quietly, won't you?"
"......"
There was no other way.
I ran my hand gently over Tia's trembling head and let out a soft sigh. I honestly felt like I'd done everything a person could do.
I'd been dropped alone into a land I knew nothing about, handed a completely new body, and before I'd even had time to adjust, I'd been forced to give birth to Tia. From the very start, I had no obligation to raise some hybrid like this. It was questionable whether I could even call her my daughter in any real sense. So maybe the right answer was to give up here, at this point.
The Church folk looked like this, but maybe they were kinder and warmer than they appeared. Surely they wouldn't seize a child who knew nothing and kill her, would they?
Catching myself entertaining such cowardly thoughts, I bit down hard on my lip.
"Mommy? Mommy......?"
Tia clung to my leg and began to sob. Somehow, she seemed to be reading every single one of my thoughts. Was that some kind of trick she could do, inheriting a dragon's blood?
By then her face was already a mess of tears, and I wiped her cheeks clean. People would be too busy staring at her horns and her hair color to notice, but if you looked quietly into those luminous eyes, you could see it plainly — they were a perfect copy of mine. It truly, truly pained me to admit it, but Tia was my flesh and blood, the child I had carried and borne.
"Hey. You lot."
"Hey?"
Having made up my mind, I opened my mouth. The Inquisitors were beginning to lose their patience, their expressions twisting.
I lifted Tia into my arms. She had long since lost the battle with her burst faucet of tears; she buried her face in my chest and wept without end.
"Did you just say hey?"
"Do you have any idea who you're talking to right now?"
"Excuse me? Wh—no. What did you say?"
"Do you know who I am, you mangy curs?"
Now it was truly time for my last resort. However intimidating they sounded, Inquisitors were nothing but the subcontractors of the subcontractors of the subcontractors — church-sanctioned goons operating under a permit from the Holy See, with God strapped to their backs. Comparing them to a Saintess recognized by God Himself was almost embarrassing.
"I am the Saintess, you dolts. If you don't like it, go ahead and put me on trial for heresy."
"......?"
The Inquisitors' eyes went round. What — if I resisted, they'd drag me off and interrogate me as a heretic too?
Go ahead. If you can.
Of course, in the end, the truth that I'd borne a dragon's child would come to light, I'd be stripped of my title, and I'd suffer some unspeakable fate — but there was no helping that. If this way, even just Tia could live......
"Has this woman finally lost her mind? Saintess, my foot."
"As if she could be the Saintess, working in a dive like this! Hahaha!"
"That's right! Come along quietly! We'll determine whether you're the Saintess or not once we get there!"
Just as expected, mockery erupted from all sides. And then they grabbed my shoulders, shoving and hauling, trying to drag me away by force. By then the men seemed to have no eyes for Tia at all.
Seizing that opening, I set Tia down, and with resignation weighing on me, I let myself be shoved and dragged along. That would do it. It was over now. The very moment I resigned myself to this —
"Inquisitors. Stop right there."
"And you are......?"
The front door swung open, and a long shadow spilled across the floor. An enormous man stood in the doorway — a face and bearing I knew well. That was definitely......
"You filthy pig?"
It was the pig bastard whose skull I'd cracked with an ashtray before. I'm bad with pig faces, but seeing the bandage still wound tight around his head, there was no doubt it was him. What was he doing here?
But what bewildered me most was the Inquisitors' reaction. Men who hadn't so much as blinked at my claim of being the Saintess froze stiff the instant they laid eyes on the pig bastard.
"What is the meaning of this unruliness?"
"Sir Councilman, we've discovered a demonkin and intend to execute a heresy interrogation—"
"Have you any basis to declare them heretical?"
"We intend to find that out now."
"Then what, precisely, is your motive for executing this interrogation? Has that child blasphemed against God in some way?"
"Th—that's...... no, she hasn't......"
The pig bastard waded in, his formidable belly swaying, and planted himself in front of the Inquisitors. Councilman? I didn't know exactly what it meant, but he seemed to be a man with considerable pull in this village. I'd noticed him ordering drinks by the boatload and figured he had money, but......
"So you've all come swarming like this to haul off a single child on flimsy grounds like those? Frankly, I question whether you are truly here to conduct a legitimate interrogation at all. Might I suggest you are simply looking to vent your grudge against demonkin on this innocent child?"
"No, sir. We merely received a report—"
"A report of what, exactly?"
"A report that a demonkin child was hiding here. If she had nothing to be ashamed of, why would she hide, we thought—"
"With you lot behaving this way, how could demonkin ever show their faces in public with their heads held high? Now clear out."
"I'm afraid we can't simply walk away, Councilman. You appear to be a regular of this establishment...... Would you be able to bear it if a word of this found its way to the press?"
"Go ahead and leak it. I've no image left worth ruining anyway. But bear this in mind — if you do, I will report to the Holy See that there are Inquisitors here conducting witch hunts, and I will have your interrogation office shut down. When your only talent is memorizing a few passages of scripture and the church stipend dries up, do you imagine you'll scrape through the winter?"
"......"
The Inquisitors' mouths snapped shut. Apparently the threat had landed. To have the power to contact the Holy See directly and shut down an entire branch of the Inquisition — this was no ordinary bigshot, it turned out.
"I came here to enjoy a pleasant drink, and what is all this racket? Be gone in ten seconds. Do that, and you'll hear no complaint lodged with the priest who oversees you."
"......"
One by one, the hands began to fall from my shoulders. The Inquisitors each shot the pig bastard a sidelong glance, then dissolved their encirclement and shuffled toward the door in a clump.
It was over. It was done. I wouldn't have to worry about Tia being dragged off to the Church anymore.
The moment I thought that, the tension drained from my body all at once, and the strength seeped out of my legs.
"Whew. Hoo. I beat back every last one of your tormentors. Are you all right, Yulia?"
"Thank you so much......"
The pig bastard's breath washed over me, but it wasn't particularly unpleasant. Thanks to him, Tia's life had been saved. The man whose head I'd smashed just days ago had saved me. Life was full of things you simply couldn't predict.
"Tia was a demonkin all along......"
"I never would have guessed."
"No wonder she always wore that hat around."
Even as I bowed my head in gratitude, I could feel it in my bones — the end was coming. I didn't need to lift my head to sense it: the wary gazes turning toward me.
The fact that Inquisitors could seize and kill demonkin without a shred of evidence meant only one thing — that hatred of demonkin was thoroughly woven into the fabric of society. And the patrons of this tavern would be no exception.
So would revealing that she was a dragon's child improve matters? Hard to say. The product of a human and a dragon coupling? People might find it even more repulsive, but their gazes certainly wouldn't soften.
I have to leave, don't I.
And so I resolved to leave this place, today. Nobody would welcome a woman raising a demonkin child. Just my working here would harm the tavern's business. They wouldn't complain over having their wages advanced by a single day or so. A little shameless, perhaps, but I would take Irina's money and leave this place with Tia.
Having settled my resolve, I stood and headed for the second floor. I planned to grab my things and slip out the back door, quick and quiet.
"Yulia! Heading up to change? Then can't you leave Tia with us for a bit?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I want to touch those horns of hers too! Always wondered what demonkin horns feel like!"
"Me too, me too!"
"Taking it easy tonight? Or I'd love to have you at my table!"
"Heh heh. Tia, why don't you come play with uncle while Mommy works?"
"......"
I had it wrong.
The people had merely been startled for a moment. Nothing more, nothing less. The horns had been revealed, yes. A demonkin — an object of terror and loathing to humankind — had been thrust right before their eyes, and yet the patrons' attitude seemed barely changed from before.
"T-Tia's a demonkin, though?"
"So what? It's not like that makes her some other Tia than the one we've always known."
"......"
I was struck speechless. Maybe the people here had already fallen for Tia long ago. They'd only just learned she was a demonkin — but so what? They'd already come to love her. The patrons had been loving Tia simply as Tia, all along.
It occurred to me that perhaps I was the only one here who couldn't love Tia wholly, purely for who she was.
"All right, everyone, back up! Smokers, raise your hands!"
"Huh? What's this all of a sudden?"
"Tia hates the smell of cigarettes, that's what! And anyone planning to get blackout drunk, hands up! Everyone with their hand raised is banned — you don't get to hold Tia!"
"Since when do you get to decide that......"
Watching Irina leap in to direct traffic like a crossing guard, I couldn't hold back — a snort of laughter escaped me. And then, all at once, my chest seized up and I nearly burst into tears.
They say if you laugh so hard you cry, a horn grows out of your backside. After everything, my own little case of "hatred of humans" suddenly felt small and petty. There really were so many good people left in the world. Just as that realization warmed something in my chest —
"Hoo. Hoo hoo. Yulia. If you're truly grateful, it's not as though there's no way to repay me, you know? So why don't we have a drink or two down here, leave Tia in everyone's care, and head upstairs for a nice, long, serious talk? Ah—aha! Not that I'm planning anything strange! Just, you know, to check in on each other's feelings. So — what do you say? Hm? You'll say yes?"
"......"
The moment that hot breath brushed against my ear, I remembered why I had become so skeptical, so cynical in the first place.
I recharged the hatred of humanity I had very nearly wiped away without thinking.