What Do You Mean, Go Home?
"Other than a very faint trace of mana, there doesn't seem to be anything else."
"I know. She looks a lot like Hana, but she barely has any abilities to speak of. I even put a strand of her hair in to test it, just in case, and it didn't do a thing."
I was wandering the lobby when I caught the researchers talking. A child who looked like me? There was no way that failed to spark my curiosity. I tore over to them at a full sprint—caked in dirt, of course.
Haru was already down for the count from how hard I'd worked her. We'd been doing the same job, and yet she looked terribly out of shape. She hadn't even done that much, and she'd still collapsed. I was going to have to make her exercise more. Bora and Maru could farm right alongside me without breaking much of a sweat.
"Hana, hi!"
"Hi!"
I struck up a conversation with the researchers. When they'd first arrived, they'd been a little wary of me, but after months of living together they'd grown as familiar as the neighbors next door. One thing I'd come to notice was just how kind the staff were. Back in the early days, when I could barely speak, they hadn't been particularly warm—but I'd shared the fruit I grew, and living side by side had bred real affection. These days they felt like family.
Well, of course they did. My charm was exceptional. And the people working in this building were, for all practical purposes, living off me. Without me they'd be bankrupt within a day. I'd heard there were already plenty of ventures underway; if I disappeared, every project the Starlight Research Institute was running would have its money cut off and collapse on the spot.
They did seem to trust me a little too much. Not that I had any intention of betraying them, but still—there was always a what-if. And yet, judging by the way the Institute and its food division were moving, they were laying plans as if I were going to live for a thousand years.
Not that I minded being free to do as I pleased. The greater my influence, the more I could get done. Living at the Starlight Research Institute, I sometimes felt as if I were founding a kingdom of my own. I was the king, and the rest of the staff were my subjects! I had no idea what they thought of me in return.
Chatting with them like that, I got the researchers to spill everything they knew about the otherworldly being they'd just found—nothing classified, apparently. I picked the details up as they talked. These researchers looked as if they'd eaten plenty of the fruit I'd grown, too. The energy rolling off them felt deeply familiar.
"An elf, you said?"
"Yeah. Well, there isn't much point sorting the life-forms that come out of the gates into separate categories, but..."
The races that emerged from the gates weren't all the same. Even ones that looked identical turned out, once you studied them, to live in completely different ways. You might as well call them elves from countless parallel worlds. They could look like the same kind of elf and still speak entirely different languages.
"Hmm..."
Listening to the researchers, an interesting idea occurred to me. It seemed worth going to take a look sometime. I even heard they'd moved her somewhere with a low security rating, since she wasn't particularly dangerous. Slipping over in the middle of the night for a quick peek sounded entirely doable.
Or I could just ask a staff member and say I wanted to see her. They'd show me gladly. A high-risk area might be hard to enter even for me, but they'd said the security rating was low, so getting in would be easy enough.
I said my goodbyes to the researchers with an impish little smile. I was planning to drop by tonight. The researcher on duty happened to be someone I knew, so getting inside ought to be simple.
It was well past quitting time for anyone who wasn't pulling overtime or standing a night shift. Once nine o'clock came around, I slipped quietly out of my room. I meant to follow through on the idea I'd had that afternoon. I was dying to know what this newly arrived elf looked like. People said curiosity killed the cat, but something you wanted to know was still something you wanted to know.
I took the elevator and made my way along at an easy pace. The lab sat right next door, so I had to step outside. I'd timed it for the changing of the guards. And even if I got caught, it wouldn't matter much—I could just say I'd gone out for some air. The grounds were walled in anyway. Their whole attitude seemed to be that guarding the building entrance was enough.
Slipping outside like that, I walked for a good while before I reached the lab. I badged through with the access card I'd quietly lifted from Bora's desk after she'd gone home and stepped inside. At this hour the research building was deserted. Not a sign of anyone.
I charged off in whatever direction my instincts pulled me, following the smell of grass. If I tracked that scent, I was certain I'd find the place the researcher had said the elf was being kept.
I arrived at a room thick with the smell of greenery and opened the door. No one was inside. Whoever had been watching the place seemed to have stepped away for a moment. This wasn't a dangerous classification, so there was apparently only one person assigned to guard it. For a major corporation, the security was sloppy.
It hadn't felt this loose back when I'd first been brought in, but the longer I stayed, the laxer the watch seemed to get. There wasn't even anyone here now.
I turned my head this way and that, searching for the source of the grassy smell. I was sure this was the right place, but the space was so enormous that finding anything was difficult. The lab was nearly the size of an athletic field. Of course, my body was small, so it might only have looked that big by comparison.
And then, at last, I found the elf the researcher had mentioned. She was a little bigger than me—about the build of a girl in her mid-teens, somewhere between the last year of middle school and the first of high school—and she was breathtakingly beautiful.
My ears were round. Hers were pointed. And her hair was the same color as mine. Standing side by side, we looked similar enough to pass for sisters.
She was sitting on the bed, and our eyes met. In that instant I felt as if our minds had connected. I had never felt anything like it.
"Huh?"
The unfamiliar sensation left me blank, and the sound slipped out before I could stop it. This was a first. It was as if a sixth sense had just opened up. The mana around us was churning. From the moment my eyes met that elven woman's, the mana in the air had begun to seethe—surely as much as when an S-rank gate formed.
She sat on the bed staring at me, eyes wide as if she'd seen a ghost. A moment later she rose and started walking toward me, and I couldn't help shrinking back. It was absolutely not because the elf coming my way looked like the sort of glamorous girl-delinquent who used to rule the school back in my student days.
She came toward me slowly, only to be stopped by a wall of glass. She paid it no mind. Facing me, she dropped to her knees. I couldn't help being startled. If someone abruptly knelt and started shedding tears in thick drops, anyone would be thrown into a panic!
World Tree...
A voice hummed and resonated inside my head. Was the woman in front of me the one speaking? I had no idea how to make a voice ring in someone else's mind, so I had no choice but to answer out loud.
"Did you just say... the World Tree?"
She looked older than me, so I couldn't help speaking politely. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything I'd been through in my school days. But the woman kneeling before me didn't seem to be listening to a word I said. She reacted the way a priest who had spent a lifetime in prayer might react upon seeing their god with their own eyes.
She seemed to think I was some kind of deity. And here I was, just an ordinary person.
I've finally met you!
The elven woman rose from her knees and immediately began to mutter something under her breath. The glass that had stood between us vanished without a trace. No—the glass was still there. She had come through it. Was she casting some kind of magic? It made no sense that a person could pass through glass.
I tried to run, but she was faster. She scooped me up into her arms. I thrashed, trying to wriggle free of her hold, but it was impossible.
Come home with me, World Tree!
Home, out of nowhere—what was she talking about? This was my home. But I understood what she meant soon enough.
The elf swept a hand through the air, and a gate began to form. Then she looked at me and spoke with a smile.
With the World Tree beside me, I'm invincible!
She plunged through the gate, where energy surged and rippled, and took me with her. I couldn't begin to adjust to a landscape that had changed so suddenly.
What greeted my eyes was a colossal tree, rising into the sky without end.