Chapter 2: Chirudoren?

Chapter 2: Chirudoren?

You can talk about “otaku stuff,” but that term covers a wide range. Manga. DVDs. Games. Light novels. You could think of “story” as a huge tree that branches out into things like character goods. There’s a lot of diversity.

Then you’ve got figures of specific characters, or maybe image songs, body pillows, and on and on. Or there might be products representing tools and gadgets from the story world. When it comes to super popular series, there might even be tie-in food items and sweets, or stationery—you know, really working that synergy. And then sometimes branches of the main series spawn their own manga or DVDs or light novels or games. Read: spinoffs.

Anyway.

The field of otaku goods is so vast as to defy total categorization, and the mere thought of collecting everything out there is enough to make a person feel faint. Let alone the thought of having to have it all shipped over to you at regular intervals... Imagine the tower of boxes, the fleet of massive trucks it would demand, the dizzying amount of packing material. It would all take up a lot of room.

And now imagine the shipments cover three people.

When I found myself staring down the delivery of cardboard boxes, I honestly got a bit dizzy.

“Seems even more... staggering than usual today,” I mumbled as I took in the wall of boxes standing just outside our front door. About half were filled with brand-new manga, novels, anime, DVDs, and games, while the other half contained “related merchandise.”

All of it supplied and paid for by the Japanese government.

It had made its way to us here in the Eldant Empire through a hyperspace wormhole. Normally it was addressed to the JSDF garrison on the edge of the Eldant capital of Marinos. Trans-hyperspace wormhole delivery wasn’t just used to get anime stuff to needy otaku; supplies for the JSDF and personal items for the members of the garrison came, too. For that reason, we often went by bird-drawn carriage to pick up our deliveries at the garrison, but sometimes soldiers would drop things off at the mansion if they were in the area on other business. Today, that’s what had happened. Not to mention, all this stuff would never have fit in one carriage.

“Why is there so much stuff?” I asked aloud. I was the one who had placed the order, but this was clearly an unusual amount of deliveries. Or had someone else included a bunch of requests that made the pile this big?

“Probably because Summer Co**ket just wrapped up.” This calm assessment came from another employee of Amutech—and another of the three people responsible for this order—Ayasaki Hikaru-san.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “And WonFes was just recently, too.”

“We cut down on the number of genres we wanted them to check out, but there have been so many new groups making goods recently,” Hikaru-san said.

And so it was: we had ordered doujinshi and the like as well as all the official stuff, but of course it was impossible to order one copy of every doujinshi at “NatsuKomi”—Summer **miket. Instead, we had asked them to canvass only specific genres—but just like Hikaru-san said, there were lots of groups out there, and more every day. Not just making books, either, but shopping bags, body pillows, and more. Books, being all roughly of a similar size and shape, were easy to pack into cardboard boxes, but a lot of merchandise was less intuitive to ship.

And then there was WonFes (“Wonder Fe**ival”), a huge event all about plastic models and garage kits, held at almost the same time as Comi**t. Most of what came out of that show was statuettes and models, things that ate up a lot of space. But a lot of those figures and gadgets I mentioned could only be found at WonFes, so we had asked for a few of them to be sent over.

And I guess everything had arrived at once.

“Don’t tell me you don’t even remember what you ordered,” Hikaru-san said.

“I do! Vaguely. But it’s not like I ordered it all at once. Some of it was probably a while ago...”

C*mik*t and WonFes weren’t held quite simultaneously, after all, and it would take time to go to them and check everything out. The only way to be sure what the different groups had there was to get on the internet and look up the details, but because there was no network connection between Japan and Eldant, I even had that sort of thing shipped to me periodically on a hard disk. It meant a lengthy time lag before I got caught up on anything.

Then of course, there were times when release dates slipped (and not just for doujinshi; it could happen to anything), which of course meant it got to us even later. Say it had been six months since I requested something; of course I wasn’t going to remember what it was.

“Anyway, we’ve got to get this stuff inside.” I turned to the maid beside me. “Myusel, sorry to trouble you, but...”

This maid was a half-elf. The pointy ears were the proof. She handled whatever domestic tasks needed to be done in the household, and she had come out here to help with the cargo, but... honestly, I wasn’t sure about making this frail-looking young woman carry around these bulging boxes. Maybe if we stumbled across one with figures in it, it would at least be a little lighter than a box full of books.

“It’s fine.” Myusel smiled, looking completely at ease. Ahh, what a fine girl. A fine young woman y’ are, Myusel...

As my thoughts suddenly and inexplicably took on the twang of an old Osakan dude, I realized that the muscliest Japanese person among us wasn’t here.

“Hey, where’s Minori-san?” That was, Koganuma Minori-san, officer of the JSDF. She might have been a woman, but to be perfectly honest, she was way stronger and more physically capable than I was. “I’m sure a lot of this stuff is her BL.”

“Oh, Minori-san said she was going to go get Brooke and Cerise-san to come help. She thought there might be a lot of cargo today.”

“Ah...”

Well, there was. Even with Myusel to help, it would take an awfully long time to move it all inside. Minori-san had obviously come to the same conclusion when she had seen “the wall.”

“Elvia said she’d be by later, too... Oh, speak of the devil.” Hikaru-san pointed toward the house.

I looked back and saw Minori-san emerging from the open door, along with our lizardman gardener Brooke Darwin.

“Is it all here?” Minori-san asked, jogging up to us. She had a huge smile on her face. Without waiting for an answer, she tore open one of the boxes tagged on the side with a marker pen and started inspecting the contents. I thought she might burst into a happy “runtatta~ ♪” at any moment. She was practically floating.

“Minori-san, hang on...”

I guess she was really looking forward to something in one of these boxes. I acted a little chagrined, but the truth is, I understood how she felt. Any otaku, regardless of interests or preferences, wants to see their stuff when it arrives. If you aren’t eager to see it, are you even really an otaku?

But some of the stuff I had ordered was stuff I would rather the girls not see—which is to say, stuff I would be embarrassed for them to see—which is to say, stuff I might very well be torn limb from limb for if they saw. So I didn’t necessarily want to just pop open all the boxes right in front of everybody. I had to think Minori-san was in the same situation—I assumed it was some BL doujinshi she was looking for—but she didn’t seem to have my qualms. Then again, I was a lot less worried about the BL books themselves than about the unquenchable fire of Minori-san’s passion for them.

“These’ns belong to you, Master?” Brooke asked, shuffling toward the wall of boxes.

“Er, yeah, thank you,” I said. “From here to here. They’ve all got my mark on the side. Could you bring them to my room?”

“Yessir,” Brooke nodded.

“My mark,” by the way, was an icon Hikaru-san had designed, something to help the Japanese residents of the mansion keep each other’s possessions separate. It was nice and simple, sort of like the face of some SD character. It was so easy that even I, with my minimal artistic talent, could draw it, and above all, it was cute.

Myusel could actually read a pretty good number of kanji, and even Elvia and Brooke had picked up a fair amount just by being around, but Cerise, who was the last of the mansion’s occupants to have taken up residence here, didn’t know a word of Japanese, and even Brooke and Elvia had to study a kanji for a moment before they could figure it out. So we had created icons that were immediately distinguishable.

“Hey, is it just you, Brooke?” I asked. The lizardman was hefting a box from beside the grinning Minori-san. Hadn’t Hikaru-san said Minori-san was going to get Brooke and Cerise?

“This’s physical labor,” Brooke said around the box. “I’ll do enough for the both of us.”

Huh! Very manly. Lizard... manly.

As I’ve mentioned, Brooke and his wife Cerise were lizardmen, a reptile-like race. Brooke was our gardener, and Cerise worked as a maid in the mansion. They didn’t act all lovey-dovey in public, but moments like this showed exactly how much they cared for each other. Honestly, it was kind of heartwarming.

“Okay, cool. Myusel, could I ask you to take... let’s see. How about this little box?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s still pretty heavy, be careful.”

With some of the portering successfully delegated, I grabbed another box with some of my stuff in it—

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”

—and then practically dropped it when Minori-san uttered a piercing, shattering cry of joy. I scrambled to catch my box, then looked over to discover her madly unpacking some exceptionally carefully packaged item. She unfurled a puffy sheet of bubble wrap to reveal... a boxed soccer ball.

“What’s that, Minori-san?”

“It’s a ball signed by one of the voice actors from Prince of Soccer! I’ve been waiting for this forever!”

Prince of Soccer—wasn’t that, you know, that anime about those boys who played soccer? I’d heard it was wildly popular with girls these days. Allegedly these guys could warp time and space with their kicks, cause entire stadiums to crack in half when they scored a goal, and float through the air on top of a soccer ball. For the life of me, I couldn’t picture it.

But in any event, Minori-san looked overjoyed, clutching the ball to her chest.

“Is that, like, a limited edition or something?”

“It’s a prize! Only three people in the entire world have one! I can’t believe I’m one of them!” She looked like a kid with a new number-one possession, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses. I guess she was really happy about winning this autographed soccer ball. You know, I seemed to remember her being thrilled about another limited-edition ball from Prince of Soccer. A gold one. Or... at least gold-colored. I also seemed to remember Elvia being even crazier about it than Minori-san.

“This time I’m gonna hide this thing so well Elvia will never find it!” Minori-san said to herself.

“Elvia? What about her?” Hikaru-san said, looking perplexed. Come to think of it, I guess he hadn’t been here for that little episode.

“The last time I got a limited-edition ball from Prince of Soccer, Elvia decided it was her new favorite toy.”

Elvia had a special weakness for round objects—maybe it was a werewolf thing. And if it was yellow or gold, so much the better. So when she’d seen that soccer ball, she’d pounced on it like a dog with a toy.

“Ahh, I get it...” Hikaru-san smiled. His face showed a mixture of emotions, but he seemed to completely believe that sort of thing could have happened.

On the one hand, it was easy to picture how cute Elvia must have been playing happily with that ball—but as an otaku, he understood how it must hurt to watch your precious new limited-edition ball rolling through the dirt. I had heard of some especially dedicated people who even put on gloves when touching their limited-edition items. It was as if they were precious art exhibits or antiques. And for the people who owned them, maybe they were just that valuable.

“Man, that takes me back,” I said, closing my eyes. “That whole soccer tournament! Although I guess it did get pretty crazy in the end.”

We’d had teams with elves, dwarves, human knights, lizardmen, and even the JSDF, all participating in a soccer tournament together. This was not long after we had arrived in Eldant, which is to say immediately after the little incident between me and the Japanese government. We needed a nice event to smooth everything over.

I don’t know why I had expected soccer here to be anything like it was in Japan, though. In the end, magic came into play, along with all the varying physical abilities of the different groups, until the whole thing was as crazy as anything on Prince of Soccer. It was enough to make you wonder if it was really soccer anymore, but one thing it unquestionably was was fun, and the Eldant people all seemed to enjoy it, too. The only thing as extensive as the enjoyment had been the property damage, though, so we hadn’t held another tournament since then.

“That was when Cerise and Brooke got back together,” I said fondly.

“Back together?” Hikaru-san echoed. “Wait... They were apart?”

The soccer tournament would have been described in the papers Hikaru-san had read before coming here, but the reports probably wouldn’t have included a description of the rapprochement between two lizardmen. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you put in a white paper.

“Some... things happened,” I explained, “and their egg, it got broken. That’s what they told me.”

“Egg? They had an egg?”

“But the whole thing wasn’t, like, anybody’s fault. There was nothing Brooke could have done about it, but it really got to him. I guess he felt like a man who can’t protect his egg isn’t fit to be a husband... so he left Cerise. But then they made up, and now they’re a couple again.”

“Gosh...” Hikaru-san blinked, but he was smiling. He could be a slippery customer, but I guess even he was a sucker for a happy ending.

“I’m pretty sure they said something about a soccer ball looking a lot like a lizardman egg, right, Minori-san?” I said, looking to her for confirmation. But she was completely absorbed in examining the autograph on her ball from every possible angle, and didn’t seem to hear me.

“You’ve never seen one for yourself?” Hikaru-san asked.

“No,” I said. Now that he mentioned it, I realized I only had Brooke and Cerise’s word to go on as far as what a lizardman egg looked like. Apparently they carried it around by rolling it with their feet, so it probably wasn’t the shape of a chicken egg, but closer to a spherical ball. Come to think of it, weren’t sea turtle eggs supposed to be almost perfectly round? (I’d seen some videos of them laying eggs somewhere.) I guess there was nothing that said all reptile eggs had to be the same shape.

“Now that you bring it up, I’ve never even seen a lizardman child,” I said.

I wondered what they looked like. I tried to picture one, but the best I could do with my minimal imagination was a sort of SD version of Brooke. You had the scales, the inscrutable expression, the kind of glinting eyes... Hmm, not very baby-like.

“I’m having some trouble with the mental picture here,” I said, tilting my head.

That was when I saw a figure emerge from the mansion, whose door had been hanging open.

“Oh,” I said.

A beast girl came pattering up to me. Elvia Harneiman...

She wagged her tail eagerly back and forth and said, “Shinichi-sama! Hikaru-sama! Minori-sama! Sorry to keep you waiti—”

But then she stopped short. Her big, round eyes were staring directly at... the autographed soccer ball Minori-san was holding. She hadn’t yet taken it out of the box (and probably never planned to), but it was one of those packages with one side cut away so you could easily see what was in it through a sheet of transparent material. Elvia could see that ball clear as day.

Minori-san started; she seemed to sense something untoward, and turned around. At which point—

“Rrrrf!”

Elvia made a sound exactly like a puppy excited by a toy and came charging in. Straight at Minori-san, or rather, at the ball she was holding.

Minori-san was pretty strong for a human woman, and super athletic too, but even she was going to find it hard to avoid a crazed werewolf. Elvia was an order of magnitude stronger than her, and Minori-san had to not only get out of the way, but protect her goods while she did it. I was sure this was going to end in a loud scream as Elvia stole another autographed ball.

“Hah!”

But at that moment, Minori-san pulled something out of a bag and flung it on the ground. There was a bright flash and a cacophonous explosion.

“A stun grenade?!”

A nonlethal flash-bang. The sort of thing the special forces would use when rescuing hostages or something. It didn’t shatter and cause injury like a normal fragmentation grenade, but the extremely bright light and extremely loud noise disoriented your opponents and sent them reeling. The blast just now wasn’t bright enough or loud enough to completely overwhelm our senses—in fact, I didn’t think it was even a real stun grenade. A little home cooking of Minori-san’s, I guessed.

What there was, though, was a whole lot of smoke.

“Yarf?!” Elvia exclaimed as she stumbled, suddenly unable to see.

“Mwahahahaha! I knew this would happen, so I got this little surprise ready!”

“If you knew this was going to happen, why didn’t you just take your precious ball to your room right away, instead of standing there staring at it?!” I quipped. It was like she had become a different character altogether—not a JSDF soldier, but a ninja.

“See ya in hell!” she exclaimed (like a certain slayer of ninjas), before turning and running away through the smoke. What was with her?

Hikaru-san went over to help Elvia up; meanwhile...

“Umm... Shinichi-sama...?”

“Master. What shall we do...?”

Myusel and Brooke stood there holding cardboard boxes, but lost in the fog. We couldn’t see three steps in front of ourselves. It would probably be almost dangerous to walk around carrying a box. Especially for someone who was already kind of clumsy, like Myusel.

“Uhh... Just hang tight. I’m sure the smoke will clear in a few minutes,” I said, and sighed.

One thing we obviously had to do with all the new stuff was find a place for it. Manga and novels went on the bookshelves. DVDs had their own special shelf, too. There were only so many places to display figures and posters and the like, so we kept them on another dedicated shelf and changed them out regularly. Besides, it was just common sense that anything—be it a book, a poster, or figure—displayed too long would end up sunbleached. Rotating them was practically a necessity.

It was also another big job. It would be hard enough if this was all purely my own personal stuff. But all the otaku goods in the house were purchased with public money, ostensibly to help foster exchange with this alternate world. Ideally, we wanted to avoid depreciation as much as possible.

That’s right: from the outside it may have looked as if I was living on Otaku Easy Street, but it wasn’t as if I was just throwing my hands in the air and crying, “Yahoo! Otaku buying spree on the government’s yen!” No, I absolutely was not! Totally not! I hadn’t the barest thought of such base personal benefit!!

..........................................Please believe me (weak voice).

Uh, anyway.

It obviously wasn’t the work of a moment to unpack everything, especially not when just flipping through a manga, trying to make sure it was what I expected, occasionally led to me sitting down and getting lost in reading it. I had a surprisingly small amount of time to really forget everything else and get completely absorbed in a book. Anyway, when I was doing this work, I made sure to split it up into lots of little pieces, taking breaks in between.

“Phew...” I left my room, stretching my arms in the air. I wasn’t going anywhere special. I just wanted a change of air. Often, my “breaks” consisted of doing a lap around the mansion and then getting back to work. Right now, my throat was feeling a little dry, so I went to the kitchen in search of some water.

“Oh.” I spotted Myusel coming down the hallway. “Hey, Myusel.”

She looked up when I called out—and her face immediately lit up. It seemed like she was really happy just to see me. We had been living in the same house for quite a while now, but still she always reacted like that. As an otaku with zero experience of dating an actual woman, I found it very, uh, heart-pounding.

“Is something the matter?” Myusel asked as she came up to me at a delicate jog.

“No, nothing. I’m just taking a little walk around the house to get a break from organizing stuff. Thought maybe I’d get myself a drink of water.”

“Let me make you tea!” she said and started back the way she had come.

“No, really, don’t worry about it. Are you cleaning right now, Myusel?” It was an educated guess: she was carrying a broom, a dustpan, and a big cloth bag.

“Yes, sir. I was going to pick up the leaves around the house and yard. And then there’s the laundry to do.” She gestured with her broom for emphasis. And that caused me to look at her hand.

“Myusel, what happened to your finger?”

One finger of the hand holding the broom was wrapped in a small white cloth. It didn’t look like some kind of fashion statement. In fact, something red was seeping through the cloth.

“What? Oh, when I was doing the dishes earlier, I broke a plate, I’m afraid...” She shrugged a little, but then added, “Um, I’m very sorry...”

“No, don’t worry about it.” I shook my head with a half-smile. “We’ve got plenty of dishes. But what about you? Did you hurt yourself?”

“I-I’m all right, sir. It’s just a shallow cut.”

“That’s good,” I said with relief.

Myusel could be very serious, or at least very hard on herself. So sometimes she kept pushing herself even when she was really tired, or tried to continue working despite an injury. If I didn’t check up on her to make sure she was doing all right, she certainly wouldn’t come to me herself to say she was in pain or something.

A little cut, though, was probably all right. Again, for better or for worse, she was very serious, and I didn’t think she would lie about something like how bad her injury was. But there was one thing I wanted to ask...

“Myusel, aren’t you being a bit of a workaholic?”

She’d already lugged all those boxes inside, and now she was launching right into housework without so much as a break. First she had carried around all those heavy boxes, then washed all our dishes, now she was cleaning, and then she was going to do the laundry. I know, I know, it was her job to do the housework, but even so, it seemed like a lot to ask.

And this was after her individual workload had decreased when Cerise had joined us.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen much of Cerise working around the house recently. Was something going on? She always showed up at mealtimes, so I hadn’t thought much about it. She, like Myusel, was pretty straitlaced, so I didn’t suspect her of slacking off, but I was worried that maybe she wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t an expert on lizardman health—you couldn’t exactly take their temperatures or check their complexion—but she had Brooke with her in the evenings, and I thought he would have mentioned to me if anything was wrong.

“If you don’t mind, Myusel, I’d be happy to clean up the yard.”

It was just a passing thought.

“What...?” Myusel’s eyes went wide, and for a moment it was like she didn’t understand what I was saying. But the moment it registered, she shook her head, hard. “N-No, I could never! I couldn’t make you do something like that, Shinichi-sama!”

“Aw, I was the one who suddenly added carting boxes around to your list of chores earlier. And we don’t have school today, anyway; I’ve got time to kill. I’d love to do something other than organize merchandise.”

Then I plucked the broom out of Myusel’s grip.

Her bandaged finger brushed my hand.

“I’m worried about that injury, too,” I added. “If you have to move your fingers too much, the wound won’t stay closed.”

“B-But...”

“I really appreciate all the work you do around here, Myusel. Think of this as just a little token of my thanks. Okay?” As I talked, I relieved Myusel of the other items she was holding. (I didn’t have to pry too hard.) She looked at me, confused, for a moment. As her master, whatever I said was effectively an order. I tried not to take advantage of that, but it was still the case that she couldn’t object.

“Listen, uh,” I went on, scratching my cheek. This was sort of—well, embarrassing. “This is an order from your master. Don’t do any more housework. Go back to your room and rest for a bit. Got that?”

I smiled at her as I spoke, and Myusel—whether because she finally accepted what I said, or because she was just resigned to it—nodded hesitantly. “Thank you, sir.” She looked at the ground, blushing just a little.

Arrgh, what is with this girl’s killer cuteness?!

“Shinichi-sama, you sound just like Brooke-san.”

“Huh? Brooke?” There was a name I hadn’t expected to hear just now. “Did he say something to you?”

“Oh, no, not to me. To Cerise-san.” Myusel continued to stare at the ground. “I heard him tell her, ‘You don’t need to do the housework.’ He said he would take care of it for her, and that she should go to her room and rest.”

“Oh, I see.” I did remember him saying he would do Cerise’s share of the box-carrying. So maybe she was feeling a little under the weather?

“I thought, the way he cares for her like it’s the most natural thing in the world, it’s just... very husbandly. They’re such a sweet couple. And to hear you say the same thing to me, Shinichi-sama...” Then she suddenly seemed to realize where she seemed to be going with this, and quickly looked up. “Oh, no, I don’t mean—I didn’t mean to imply—”

Uh, I think there was only one thing you could have been implying, talking like that. And I think she knew it, too, considering her ears were even redder than before.

Husbandly... A sweet couple... Huh.

For me personally, those words evoked first and foremost a mental picture of my mom and dad.

I was struck by an image: Myusel, wearing an apron like a loving young housewife. It quickly turned into an image of Myusel wearing nothing but an apron, and I chased the wayward thought out of my head as quickly as I could.

“Well, uh, I’m gonna get cleaning,” I said.

“Th-Thank you again, sir,” Myusel replied, still sounding awkward. And there we parted. I started down the hallway towards the yard, but then I glanced back, and found Myusel still standing where she had been behind me, her head respectfully bowed.

“Cleaning the yard” sounds like a lot of work, but I didn’t actually have to handle a very large area. It was normally Brooke, the groundskeeper, who would deal with the yard—pruning the trees, watering flowers, and getting any moss out the fountain, of course, but also taking care of any weeding. So although I had a look around, all that really needed to be done was to sweep up any fallen leaves around the building and gather them into my bag.

Thinking about whether we should toss them right on the fire—maybe make some baked potatoes with them—I started gathering up any leaves I saw.

Taking a survey like this made me realize just how large our yard really was. Like I said, the “yard” was everything the mansion wasn’t actually standing on. Out front, we had flower beds and the fountain and stuff, but in the back, there was even more uninterrupted land. Yes, there was a place to dry laundry, storehouses, and the little building Brooke and Cerise lived in, along with a smattering of other small structures. Even the workshop where Petralka’s body-double doll had been made was still there, on the assumption that we might want it for something else someday. But even if you added all of that together, “unoccupied yard” still won out over “places with buildings.”

The point is, even just collecting fallen leaves entailed fairly significant labor. It didn’t help that I wasn’t used to the work, and that I had recently spent a couple weeks locked in my room, leaving me even physically weaker than usual.

“Myusel does this every day?” I muttered. I really had to hand it to her. Until Cerise had come here, she’d been completely on her own doing all the cleaning, laundry, and cooking, everything that made our lives run smoothly. And on top of all that, she had been an occasional teacher in our school. I always knew that if you translated a homemaker’s work into an hourly wage, it would be a substantial amount of money... But Myusel didn’t even have a washing machine, dishwasher, or vacuum.

I had a thought: “You know, I could afford those things.”

As General Manager of Amutech, I did draw a salary, which was deposited regularly in my bank account. When I wanted some bit of merchandise from Japan for personal reasons, the amount was withdrawn from my account, but for the most part, I didn’t spend a lot of money over here, so it was just piling up.

I start to think about how much easier Myusel’s life would be with a refrigerator, a washing machine, dishwasher, and maybe a cordless vacuum. I would have to find one simple enough for her to use; maybe it was time to requisition a catalog. If I picked my moment carefully, I might be able to get a discount on an outgoing model, or find something newer on sale. There were plenty of great deals I could—

“Wait.”

Picking out household appliances? Wasn’t that what newlyweds did?

My face flushed as I remembered what Myusel had said earlier, and I went back to cleaning.

“Hm?” I stopped when I spotted something that was definitely not a leaf or grass in the bushes. It almost looked like... a ball. A little smaller than a soccer ball, I figured. It was speckled brown and dark green. Buried in the dirt and grass, I could easily have overlooked it. If I hadn’t been poking around looking for stuff to throw away, I might never have noticed it.

Did that mean it was... camouflaged?

“What is that, a rock? No, couldn’t be.” It might look like a stone from a distance, but on closer inspection, it was too smooth and round. The surface curved cleanly, no points or angles to be found anywhere.

I gave it a gentle poke with my broom, but it didn’t so much as budge.

What the heck was it? I shifted my broom so I was holding it in the same hand as the bag, set the dustpan on the ground, and gradually moved my right hand a little closer to the thing. I touched the surface.

“Huh...?” You couldn’t tell by looking, but it was actually gritty to the touch. Were these... scales?

“Gyoo!”

“Eeyargh!” I shouted as severe pain lanced through my outstretched hand. “Oww! Ow ow ow!” I tried to draw back, but I couldn’t. Half the palm of my right hand had been swallowed. The thing had bitten me. Its mouth looked like a jagged line.

“What?! What the heck?!” I cried, pulling my hand back forcefully, afraid the thing was going to bite my fingers off. It was too firmly attached, though, and wouldn’t come loose. Instead it sort of hung from my hand. It was awfully heavy, but I waved my hand wildly with strength born of panic. “Gaaahhhh! Somebody help meeeee!”

Not to brag, but I have a very low tolerance for pain. I can’t even watch gory movies. They’re as bad as if I were getting hurt myself. So now I just squeezed my eyes shut and struggled as I bellowed for help. Of course, I dropped the broom and bag in my other hand when I got bit.

“Shinichi-sama?!” Myusel said, shocked. I opened my eyes and turned toward her just as she was running up to me. I thought I’d told her to rest in her room—oh yeah, her room was near the back door of the house. She must have heard me shouting. Anyway, I was sure grateful.

“M-Myusel, help me! This thing...!” I blubbered. I felt pathetic, but it hurt, and I was scared.

Myusel, though, stopped cold with a look of shock.

“Help, get this thing off me...!” I was too busy being panicked to notice the change in her demeanor. I thrust my entrapped right hand toward her. Seriously, this hurt bad!

“Right, y-yes, sir.” Myusel reached out and tugged on the thing. And to my surprise, it calmly let go of me.

“Yikes!” With a cry worthy of a bumbling side character, I fell on my butt. I took a quick survey of my hand to see if I still had all my fingers, and I was happy to discover they were all present and accounted for. But there was a series of small holes in a line along my palm and the back of my hand. They were oozing... blood?! Was that blood?!

These were definitely bite wounds!

“U-Um, Shinichi-sama!”

“Ahhhhhh!” There was a new, prickly pain, very different from when I had been bitten, that spread across my hand. None of the individual bite wounds were very large or deep, and it wasn’t critical to stop the bleeding or anything, but...

“Shinichi-sama...”

“What? What is that thing? What’s a dangerous monster like that doing around here?!”

“This thing... No, this child—it’s a lizardman infant.”

“Say what?” I blinked, almost forgetting my discomfort as I looked at the thing Myusel was holding.

The surface was still a dapple of burnt brown and dark green. But it wasn’t a sphere anymore. It had arms and legs—even though they were very short—and even a tail. They must have been folded in earlier. It looked almost like... a stuffed dinosaur or lizard. Except for the scales.

“A lizardman...?”

“Gyoo!”

The tiny reptile (or anyway, reptile-like person) flailed its little arms as if trying to get away from Myusel. Actually, “tiny” was purely relative: it was obviously bigger than your average lizard.

“But that means...” I leaned in for a good look at the child. I guess I was looking for family resemblance to Brooke or Cerise.

“Gyoo!”

“Naaaaghhhh!”

I had leaned too close and ended up with a bitten nose.

It sat in the sun shining through the window of the small building: a soccer ball split clean in half, like you could practically see a ba-dum! sound effect above it.

Except it wasn’t a soccer ball. It was a lizardman egg.

“So... that’s a lizardman’s egg?” I asked, studying it closely.

There was a rush mat on the floor, on which rested five other eggs that hadn’t yet hatched.

“It does look just like a soccer ball.” I guess if you measured really closely, it probably wasn’t regulation size, and it didn’t have the official black-and-white pattern. It had what was probably camouflage instead, to conceal it from predators. But it definitely gave off a soccer ball vibe.

“But it’s not,” Minori-san said from just behind me. “So Elvia, hands off.”

I shared her concern—it seemed like it would be all too easy for Elvia to forget herself and jump on the egg—but the beast girl replied with surprising composure, “I’m not gonna touch it.”

“Really?” Minori-san asked. “Even though it’s almost exactly the same size and shape as a soccer ball?”

“Yeah, but it smells,” Elvia said, her nose twitching.

“Smells...?”

“Yeah. That odor says bad news if you grab it.”

“Huh...” Minori-san said, cocking her head. I was surprised, too, but on second thought, I guess it was only natural—literally.

Werewolves in general, not just Elvia, got very excited when they saw something round. If they went and mindlessly attacked any lizardman eggs they saw, werewolves and lizardmen would have been mortal enemies before you knew it—in fact, it would practically have been a predator/prey relationship. We’re not talking about the sort of general annoyance that elves and dwarves felt for each other—this would be a struggle for survival. A bloodbath the minute they saw each other.

But Elvia claimed the smell of the egg told her to stay away. If that was true of all lizardman eggs and all werewolves, then whatever that odor was, it was preventing war between the two peoples.

All very interesting. Maybe I was overthinking it, or maybe this was specifically the egg’s way of telling any werewolves, I’m not your beloved moon, stay away from me!

I suddenly found myself wondering who would win in a fight: a lizardman or a werewolf. I guess it was sort of like asking which was better, judo or karate—not a very meaningful question. Who won would depend so much on circumstances and individual qualities, not to mention a bit of luck, that you could hardly say one would always prevail.

“I’ve never seen a lizardman egg before,” Myusel said, gazing at them with interest. “Or infant, either.” She turned back to look at Cerise, standing beside Minori-san and cradling the newborn gently. The same one that had been chewing on my nose shortly before.

After the nose-biting incident, Myusel and I had hurriedly sought out Brooke and Cerise. We had no specific proof that this was their child, but it seemed like the obvious conclusion—and anyway, we sure had no idea what to do with it.

Cerise, we found right away. She seemed awfully surprised when she saw Myusel holding the baby. Lizardman faces don’t show emotion quite the way humans are used to, but by now even I knew that little details like the speed with which their tongues flicked in and out could indicate when they were startled. The biggest evidence, though, was the way she breathed, “But why...?”

But why what, we didn’t know, but we explained the situation to her and she brought us to the little annex where she and Brooke lived. That was where we saw the six eggs, one of them split open.

“Why just one?” Cerise murmured. She seemed very perplexed.

“What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

“Well...” After a moment’s hesitation, Cerise explained to us. “As you know—as you can see—we lizardmen reproduce by laying eggs. How long it takes to hatch varies by season, but early hatchings are extremely unusual. I expected to wait at least another ten days...”

Lizardmen, apparently, laid eggs in pairs. So this meant Cerise had laid three pairs of eggs in a row. And somehow, not one of us had noticed.

Obviously, lizardman babies don’t grow in a womb, so they aren’t like humans where a mother’s belly gets bigger and bigger as the child grows, so much so that it starts to impact her daily life. Cerise could keep working just like normal. Maybe the reason she’d been absent the last few days was because she had been tired from laying eggs. It was why Brooke had told her to take off.

Come to think of it, Brooke had asked me at one point if it would be all right if he and Cerise had a child. This was evidently the result. I’d felt the topic was delicate enough that I hadn’t asked for details, but had said it would be fine.

“I wonder if that could be the reason?” Minori-san said now, pointing to a window. Sunlight poured through it. It was a sort of skylight, but the glass around here wasn’t like the industrially manufactured, consistent stuff I was used to in Japan. The thickness of any given pane of glass could vary widely, and sometimes the material was warped. Here, it almost acted like a lens, focusing and heating the light that came through it.

“I vaguely remember hearing that how long it takes an egg to hatch can be affected by temperature,” she said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. There’s a numerical relationship between temperature and incubation that’s consistent across a species. Like, if it takes a month to hatch an egg at 25 degrees, then the number is 750. At 20 degrees, it would take forty days, but at 35 degrees, it would be just twenty-five days. I think the sunlight from the window must have been hitting just the one egg.”

“It’s possible,” Cerise said. “Brooke and I aren’t here during the day, so we didn’t notice.”

So, to sum up: a warped pane of window glass had acted like a lens or prism, focusing the light and producing an effect that even Brooke and Cerise hadn’t anticipated—but only on one egg. I guess we could count ourselves lucky it hadn’t ended up fried. It’s one thing when glass bends or splits light, but when it focuses it on a single point, that point can get very hot. If the temperature had gone up to fifty or sixty degrees, the point at which proteins start to degenerate, this baby might not have been born at all.

“So this little one was born first, and decided to have an adventure in the yard,” Minori-san said, glancing at the child Cerise was holding. “Which is where Shinichi-kun found it.”

“Yeah, and had no idea what it was. It was all... round.”

“That’s something we do to protect ourselves from enemies while we’re resting,” Cerise said, as the infant in her arms gave a big yawn. Rows of little fangs were already growing in its mouth. The twenty-odd puncture wounds in my hand were a testament to the nastiness of that creature’s jaws. Ugh, just remembering it made my hand hurt again... Even if Minori-san had disinfected and bandaged it with supplies from a first-aid kit. My nose had suffered less thoroughly and got by with just a Band-Aid. It might be a baby, but it was also a lizardman... and I guess they grew faster than humans.

There were lots of animals, even other mammals like horses and deer, whose infants were capable of walking within an hour of being born. Maybe humans were just behind the curve.

“Still, Cerise, you should have let us know your eggs were going to be hatching,” I said with a half-smile, and she looked apologetic.

“I’m quite sorry about that. As I said, I thought I still had a while until they hatched, and I intended to inform you properly then...”

She seemed to be set on not getting any special attention or treatment from us.

You might recall that the reason Cerise and Brooke had lived apart for a while, or been separated or whatever you want to call it, was because their eggs had been broken without hatching. In their minds, they probably felt it was too early to tell anyone about the eggs until they were safely hatched. They didn’t want to celebrate prematurely.

“Well, whatever the case, I’m just glad this little one is safe and sound,” Minori-san said, smiling.

“You’re right about that,” I said. The first of the eggs had hatched with minimal fuss. My eyes met those of the child Cerise was holding, and I found my mouth softening into a smile. There were obvious differences between human and lizardman babies, including the fangs, scales, and general appearance, but it had that sort of SD cuteness. It did look just like a tiny version of Brooke and Cerise, and it was actually really charming.

Not only that, but when our eyes met, the baby waved its tiny arms and legs in response to me.

Wow, that’s so sweet! Without really thinking about it, I reached out to give the child a pat. I was sure it had just been surprised before. Not to mention the whole poking-it-with-a-broom thing. But right now, we were all nice and calm, and I was sure it would be fine—

“Gyu!”

“Nrgh?!”

—or not.

The innocent flailing suddenly became animal speed as the child latched onto my fingers.

“M-Master!” Cerise quickly grabbed the child’s mouth so it couldn’t bite down any further. That meant I at least escaped with all my fingers intact (again), but boy, those tiny teeth really bit deep. This was a hunter, latching onto prey so it couldn’t escape.

At that moment, the door of the little house came flying open. “Cerise!” Brooke rushed in. Of course, his face looked substantially like it always did, but from his body language you could tell how and agitated he was. He was holding a scythe, presumably something he used to cut grass while doing the groundskeeping. “I—I heard one of them was b—”

He saw the child in Cerise’s arms and couldn’t say another word.

It was perfectly understandable that he, the father, would be in a tizzy on hearing that one of his eggs had hatched earlier than expected, but Brooke was completely frozen to the spot.

“Born.........................”

He looked at us blankly. Specifically, looked at me, and at the baby lizardman currently biting down on my fingers.

“Master.” Cerise forced the child’s jaws open so I could finally free my hand, which I gratefully pulled back. During the entire thing, Brooke was completely silent. Everyone in the small house, with its nervous air, looked at him—and finally he slumped to the ground right where he was.

Huh?

What was with him? I had been sure he was going to take the child in his arms in a fit of joy. Maybe the emotion had just overwhelmed him?

“Master...” Brooke said, his voice uncommonly soft.

“What?” I asked, going over to him. I noticed Hikaru-san arriving through the open door. He was out of breath; probably from running after Brooke who had raced over when he heard about his child.

But anyway...

“Me, I’m... a father.”

“You sure are. Congratu—”

“And being as I’m a father now...” For some reason, he lifted the scythe in his hands.

Uh, um... This was a very small room for such a big weapon...!

“...let the responsibility for my child’s misbehavior be on—me!”

“Stop! Halt! Don’t! Elvia, stop him!”

“On it!”

Before Brooke could bring the scythe down, Elvia grabbed his arm. But it was all she could do to hold on; there was no hope of wrenching the weapon away from him. They were almost equal on strength, Brooke’s arm trembling as Elvia dangled from it.

“Do not stop me, wolf! Master, please, let this be settled with one arm of mine!”

“No! You really don’t have to settle anything!” I cried.

I said I couldn’t stand gory stuff!

The relationship between me and Brooke was ultimately one of master and servant. I could see what was going on here: the servant’s child had injured the master, and now Brooke thought someone had to pay for it. That if he sacrificed an arm, I might be satisfied. But that was going too far! Even the you-know-whos settled grievances with just one finger! And apparently even they were modernizing in a hurry these days and chopping off fewer fingers than ever! Okay, not really relevant.

“Lizardmen are carnivores, right? Maybe the baby just doesn’t know it’s not supposed to eat humans yet.” Minori-san’s comment was almost but not quite on point. And what was I, a prey animal?! I mean, yeah, I guess I pretty much was. But this kid was only a few hours old and it was already hunting game several times its size. That’s aggression for you.

“Wh-Whatever, listen—the kid was just born, it can’t even talk yet! These things happen! It’s okay! I’m all good, right? I’m hardly even hurt!” I hid my injured hand behind my back as I spoke. It was actually exceedingly painful, but if I said anything like that, I could tell Brooke would lop his arm straight off, so I just put on my best face.

“Anyway,” I said, trying to change the subject at least a little, “I’m amazed how it gets around when it just hatched. Lizardmen grow in a hurry, huh?”

“Yes,” Brooke said, finally starting to calm down. At least he had lowered his arm, Elvia and all. “At least compared to humans, I should think. I would expect the child to be walking within the day, and speaking three or four days from now.”

“Geez, there’s fast and then there’s fast!”

It took humans a year to start standing and walking, and at least that long to make more than baby gurgles. Sure, you might get a word or two out of a younger infant, but meaningful sentences started at around three or four years old. Lizardmen were way ahead of us. Wait... Could it be lizardmen were actually a lot smarter than humans...? Or maybe they had about the same intellectual capacities as humans, but just reached them faster?

It was all enough to make my head spin. But I was sure starting to feel some biological inferiority...

Maybe I should have expected as much from a world with magic and dragons and stuff.

“So, Brooke,” I said, with my best it’s-really-no-big-deal smile. (Uh-oh. Maybe lizardmen were no better at reading human facial expressions than we were at reading theirs. A mystery for another time.) “Hurry up and hold your new child.”

“Thank y’, sir,” he said after a long moment, finally hefting himself off the floor.

“Here, Brooke,” Cerise said, walking over to him and handing him the baby.

He took it with hesitation and wonder. For a while, he just stared at the kid, who waved and squirmed in his arms. He looked partly moved, and partly just confused. We all watched him, our hearts in our throats.

After a long silence, he said, “Cerise.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Just that. We waited, but he didn’t say anything else.

Cerise said, “Of course.”

Just that. They weren’t embarrassed, or tongue-tied. They had a bond of trust that made those words enough. Maybe this was what it meant to be so close to someone you could almost read their thoughts.

This husband and wife, they were really... awesome.

I discovered that made me happy.

Some time after Brooke’s emotional meeting with his child...

We had gathered in the living room for a bit of a banquet. I wanted to take this opportunity to get to know Brooke’s new family member.

I had wondered if lizardman infants would look sort of craggy in comparison to human babies, but the kid’s big, round eyes made it surprisingly (in a good sense) lovable. I guess plenty of people hate snakes, but when you really look at them, they’ve got cute eyes. I’ve heard lots of girls have pet reptiles. As long as you’re okay with the scales, they really look pretty sweet.

But anyway...

“Come to think of it, what are you going to name it?” I asked Brooke and Cerise as I watched the baby tumble on the carpet.

“Yessir. We were considering Man’ya.”

“That’s a nice name.” It... fit this child, somehow. It was cute.

Speaking of cute, I was just realizing that the baby was a girl.

Myusel and Elvia crouched by Man’ya, enjoying watching her as she wandered around. Man’ya, for her part, was capable of standing upright, but her balance wasn’t very good yet, and every few steps she would tumble to the ground. Luckily, she didn’t have far to fall, and she instinctively curled up into a ball, so it didn’t seem to do her any harm.

“U-Um, Cerise-san?” Myusel looked up at Man’ya’s mother with some nervousness.

“Yes, do you need anything?”

“W-Would it be... all right if I touched her...?”

“Of course, go ahead,” Cerise said.

“What, really?” I asked, all too aware of my punctured hand, but Myusel, completely enamored of Man’ya’s cuteness, said, “It’ll be all right—I think.” She didn’t sound completely convinced. Nonetheless, she reached out to the child.

There was a pause. Man’ya gave Myusel’s hand a quizzical look. She didn’t seem like she was about to attack it, but we already knew that reptiles were experts at ambush. I watched, anxious, but...

“She’s so cute!”

There was no biting at all. Man’ya politely let Myusel pat her head. In fact, she crawled closer to Myusel and stuck out her head as if to ask for more.

This seemed to flip some strange switch even for Elvia. “M-Me, too!” she exclaimed. “I wanna touch her, too! Can I?”

“Certainly. In fact, would you like to hold her?” Cerise said.

“Can I?!”

“I’d l-like to, too...” Myusel said. When Elvia had had a turn patting the baby on the head, Cerise picked up little Man’ya and handed her to Myusel. “Ohhh...” Myusel breathed as she held the child in her arms.

“Am... Am I doing it right?”

“Well, lizardmen are quite different from humans, elves, or werewolves,” Cerise offered. “It’s rare for us to carry our children from place to place. Instead, the younglings usually cling to their parents’ bodies. We pick them up, and then they find a spot that’s comfortable.”

“Huh, so that’s how it works,” I said, impressed.

It made sense: with five or six kids, a parent could hardly hope to carry all the babies at once. Plenty of animals, even mammals, transported their young on their bodies like that. Lizardmen were apparently one of them. And anyway, what we called “carrying” a child was fundamentally about allowing them to nurse, but lizardmen didn’t breast-feed. As I knew from experience, Man’ya had a perfectly good set of teeth for eating solid food even though she was just a newborn.

I guess in my own world, reptiles weren’t famous for paying a lot of attention to their offspring. Compared with that, lizardmen looked like pretty good parents—protecting their eggs and raising the young. Closer to humans than snakes.

“Me too, me too!” Elvia exclaimed, bouncing around Myusel, who was concentrating very hard on not dropping Man’ya. Her tail wagged furiously; she was obviously excited. But it wasn’t like when she saw the soccer ball. There was no sense that she had completely lost herself.

Huh. I had never really taken Elvia for the motherly type, but I guess instincts are instincts.

Speaking of which...

“Me too, if you don’t mind...” Minori-san said, getting up from the couch.

Wow, even her?

Man’ya was passed from Myusel’s arms to Elvia’s, then even Minori-san’s. She didn’t seem to mind being part of this impromptu relay, and hardly squirmed at all as she went from person to person.

Hmm. I guess lizardman children are supposed to be sponges when it comes to language. Maybe she was already learning that these people were her friends. Or at least, maybe she had learned not to randomly bite them.

Okay, then!

“L-Let me try!” I said, standing up. Hey, I like cute things as much as the next guy. “Oh,” I added, “what about you, Hikaru-san?”

“I’m fine just watching,” he said with an I’ll-pass wave. “I get nervous around tiny things.”

Yeah, I could understand that. You always had to worry that they might break if you so much as touched them. But as for me, having waved Man’ya around vigorously while she was latched onto my hand, I knew she was tougher than that.

“C’mere, Man’ya, sweetie!” I reached out for the child in Minori-san’s arms. Uh-oh. I already sounded like I was talking to a cat or something.

“I sense trouble brewing,” Hikaru-san said.

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” I shot back, taking Man’ya—

“Gyu!”

“Nggghhaaaa!”

—who promptly chomped down on my arm.

“Man’ya, no!” Cerise said, freeing the child from my limb. At least she let go right away this time, but there was a fresh row of teeth marks around my left elbow. It hurt.

“Shinichi-sama, are you all right?” Myusel asked.

“Y-Yeah, thanks...” I nodded. It wasn’t exactly true—in fact, this hurt like heck—but the wounds weren’t deep or anything. I would get some disinfectant and be fine. “But why am I the only one?” Man’ya had been perfectly sweet for Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san. Was it because I was human? But so was Minori-san. Or maybe she only bit guys?

“I—I am so sorry, Master!” While I pondered, Brooke threw himself to the floor and produced a hatchet from God knew where. “Allow me to take responsibility for—”

“G-Geez, stop that! I told you you don’t need to—stop!”

This time Elvia grabbed him without my saying anything and successfully pried the hatchet from his hand. What was he doing walking around with something like that, anyway?! No gore! Please!

But there was a part of me that thought, So this is what it means to be a parent.

Brooke was normally so calm and composed. Even setting aside my difficulty reading lizardman expressions, he didn’t seem very emotive. I had very rarely seen him get excited. But when it came to anything to do with Man’ya, he always seemed on the verge of plunging into a kowtow and then comboing into splitting his belly open. I’d heard the birth of a child could throw a switch that turned a person into a totally dedicated parent—maybe that’s what I was seeing.

I almost admired it, in a way. There was nothing for me to criticize. But seriously, I wondered about this thing with the kid.

“Hey, Hikaru-san, I think you should try to hold Man’ya,” I said, turning to him where he sat on the couch.

“Who, me? Why?”

“I’m just wondering if she bites me because I’m a man.”

“She doesn’t bite Brooke.”

“Okay, a human man, then. If that’s the story, then she should bite you, too.”

Consider it a little experiment in Man’ya’s favorite targets. I would be really disappointed if I were the only one she wasn’t friendly towards, so I had a lot riding on this.

“In other words, you want me to be a human guinea pig,” Hikaru-san grumbled, looking at me with ice-cold eyes.

“It would be so sad if I was the only one she didn’t get along with.”

“God, you... Bah, fine.” Hikaru-san heaved himself up off the couch and went over to Cerise. It looked like maybe he was interested in holding Man’ya in spite of his protestations. “Just be sure you get her back right away if she latches onto me,” he said, then slowly, carefully reached out toward the baby.

We all watched with bated breath. And Man’ya...

She climbed politely into Hikaru-san’s arms. More than politely, in fact. She practically seemed to be nuzzling up to him.

Hikaru-san’s expression softened. It’s a good feeling to have something small and cute warm up to you. Supporting Man’ya with his left arm, he stroked her head with his right hand. No sign of biting anywhere.

“Gyu,” she said. She sounded downright affectionate.

“But why?!” I wailed. “Why only me?!” How could the difference between us be so stark?!

It wasn’t fair! What had I ever done to her? I mean, besides poking her with a broom when we first met.

Did she hate me? Was I the object of hatred?!

“Maybe she just doesn’t realize you’re a guy, Hikaru-san!”

“I can’t say that’s impossible, but...” Hikaru-san looked thoughtful. “You think maybe it could actually be a kind of imprinting?”

“Buh?”

“Or maybe she just sees you as beneath her, Shinichi-san.” Hikaru-san passed Man’ya back to Myusel as he talked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you know. Predators attack animals that look weak to them, right?”

“That’s ridiculous!”

Even if I did admit that two weeks as a shut-in had left me without much confidence in my muscles!

“I can’t speak to the lizardman life cycle, but maybe she remembers you’re the first thing she ever bit, and now she thinks of you as food.”

“That’s the worst kind of imprinting I’ve ever heard of!”

I thought imprinting was supposed to be when baby animals assumed the first thing they saw was their mother—something cute like that, right?! What was this law-of-the-jungle stuff?!

“How was it for us?” Cerise said.

“’Fraid I can’t recall...” Brooke replied. I guess they wouldn’t; it was immediately after they were born.

Unlike mammals, which fed their young with milk, lizardman babies didn’t get liquid sustenance from their parents. They had to be able to feed themselves the moment they hatched. Considering how many reptiles simply left their eggs to fend for themselves, a hunting instinct made sense. It just happened to cause her to hunt me.

So, wait.

Did that make me Man’ya’s first prey? Like maybe if I were fighting with someone and losing badly, she would step in and save my skin with a “Hold it. He’s my prey”? Was this a tsundere thing? No, no it wasn’t. (Fantasies inspired by far too much agitation.)

“I can’t believe this...” I hung my head, virtually overwhelmed by the outrageousness of the situation. A wave of Man’ya moe was washing over Amutech, and I was the only one who couldn’t share in it. How lonely, to be an outcast.

“Is that really how you feel...?” Myusel asked Man’ya doubtfully. “Gyu!” she replied, tossing her tiny hands in the air as if to make very clear that yes, yes it was.

Breathing as quietly as possible, I gazed at Man’ya from the shadows. Did I look like a total creeper stalking some kid? Yeah, pretty much. I was no Hikaru-san, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that an incident was going to occur even if I didn’t do anything.

“Gyu.”

Man’ya was playing by herself in the yard. I was the only one around; everyone else was busy with work. Apparently, lizardman parenting was pretty laissez-faire, hence why Man’ya was wandering around unsupervised. They seemed to figure that as long as she didn’t go off the property, there really wasn’t anything to threaten her. Like an errant carriage that might run her over, for example.

Man’ya seemed like a cheery baby for the most part. She pulled up some grass here, dug a little hole there, chased after some bugs, going happily from one object of interest to another.

“Gyu?”

Suddenly, though, she seemed to sense that she was being watched. She tilted her head quizzically. I walked out from the shadow of the tree I’d been hiding by and approached her slowly. She watched me steadily, not moving. She just kept those big, round eyes focused on me.

“Heh...” I started to smile. Hikaru-san’s theory was that Man’ya saw me as weak, an inferior form of life, and therefore as prey. I knew how smart lizardmen were, though, and I reasoned that if I could just convince Man’ya that I was actually bigger and stronger than she was, she would reclassify me in her mental catalog.

Now, I wasn’t planning anything crazy. I wasn’t going to attack the kid or something. I just had to show off some kind of abilities that would make her think, “Whoa, this Shinichi-san isn’t half bad!”

And to that end...

“Heh heh heh heh...” I chuckled, producing a hastily assembled “mu ren,” a wooden training dummy. You know the type. The vaguely humanoid wooden posts that Shaolin monks are always using for training in movies? It had a weight at the “waist,” so even if it leaned a little from a good smack, it would come back upright.

“Gyu?”

Man’ya looked at me and the dummy curiously, as if to say, What’s that? I set up the post, took a couple steps back, and assumed a fighting stance. And then...

“Hwacha!”

One good punch. Right smack in the dummy’s face, sending it wobbling. Perfect. Great start.

“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyahhhhhhhhh!” I followed up with a flurry of quick punches.

It’s the Most Secret Technique of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution of Kicking Ass!! Offense is the Best Defense Fist!! (Came up with this name on the spot.)

The dummy swung back and forth under the fury of my blows.

“Now I’ll finish you!” I exclaimed, coming around for a showy roundhouse kick. “Taaaake this!”

Sheer centrifugal force slammed the dummy back. Then it must have gotten caught in some branches of the nearby bush or something, because it stopped cold at an angle of about sixty degrees.

Good. Good.

Satisfied, I turned to Man’ya, who had been watching my every move.

“Guess we won’t be seeing any more of that g—urgh?!”

Just as I was delivering a dry-cool bit of wit to close things out, the dummy came flying back up. The unexpected blow knocked me to the ground, where I sprawled right in front of Man’ya.

Uggghh, so not cool!

Man’ya, though, didn’t laugh at me, just looked at me with those round eyes.

So. Uh, had I succeeded in convincing her I was strong? I brushed off some dirt and propped myself up on one knee, then reached out to her...

“Raemu!” she exclaimed, and her teeth clamped down.

Wow, lizardman children do learn words fast.

Mostly Man’ya still made meaningless “Gyu!” noises, but at just three days old, she could already call Cerise amu-amu (Mama) and Brooke apu-apu (Papa). Sometimes she would even parrot an Eldant word here or there.

Man’ya, if you were wondering, wasn’t wearing a ring to enable interpreting between the Japanese and Eldant languages. But I had learned enough conversational Eldant to understand what she had said. It was a simple word that meant: food.

“Eeeyow...” I hissed, her tiny teeth digging into my hand. But I fought the urge to shout. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t cry. The whole point was to make Man’ya realize I was stronger than her, so it was imperative that I seem unconcerned about her attacks. “Hm? Did you do something?” was what I wanted to communicate.

Heh... I curled my lips slightly in an attempt at a disinterested smile. It hurt, but I could endure.

“See? It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt at all,” I said, like the heroine of a certain anime beckoning over that fox or squirrel or whatever it was. Kanou Shinichi, time to strut your stuff!

“Gyu!”

“It doesn’t hurt!”

“.........”

“It... doesn’t...”

“.........”

“.........”

“.........”

“Aaaaargh yes it dooooooooes!”

This kid’s fangs were really painful! Tiny but so, so sharp! And she had, like, thirty of them, all digging into my hand at once! I flapped my arm, trying to shake Man’ya free, but she seemed to have decided it was her turn to strut her stuff, and stayed steadfastly attached to me. Out of options, I took a tree branch I had brought along for this purpose and wedged it into her jaws, using it like a lever to force them open.

I was somehow able to free myself. Ahhhhh. My right hand was starting to look like a pincushion. Too many more of these bites and it would be as torn up as if it had been hit with buckshot.

Man’ya, for her part, was still staring at me...

“...Raemu.”

“Not raemu!” I exclaimed.

So she really did see me as her next meal!

“Aw, for...!”

Man’ya and I had known each other for all of five days now.

We seemed destined to be predator and prey forever.

There was a long and winding road ahead, filled with traps and danger, hurdles and obstacles, and lots of other words that meant a rough time.

I was in an absolute slump.

Over the past several days, I’d tried a few different things to make friends with Man’ya. I’d gotten down on all fours so we were the same “height.” I’d tried tempting her with a toy, and sometimes even came up behind her and just swept her up in a hug. But every attempt ended with her exclaiming “Raemu!” and clamping her jaws down on my arm, fingers, or other readily available extremity, sometimes so hard I almost jumped out of my clothes. I was covered in bite marks by now.

“It hurts...” I groaned as I soaked the wounds in medicine.

“Are you all right, Shinichi-sama?”

I was lying on the couch in the living room, Myusel attending to my various injuries. Man’ya’s teeth were small—or if you will, fine—so there wasn’t a lot of bleeding, but they did create an extensive network of delicate punctures that stung every time they were swabbed with medicine.

“Not really, but yeah,” I said, trying to smile. “I’m real sorry about this, Myusel. And thanks.”

I took another inventory of my body: my arms and legs were covered in bandages. Real gauze rolls; the little stick-on things weren’t doing the job anymore.

“Man... How do I convince her I’m a friend, not food?” I sighed.

“I’ve got an idea: how about you just give it up already?” This exasperated suggestion came from Hikaru-san, sitting on the other couch reading a book. He shrugged elaborately and closed his reading, looking over at me—or really, at my bandaged hands and bitten fingers. “I think if you get any more hurt, Brooke is finally going to commit hara-kiri.”

“Hrrm...” I was unsettled by how easily I could picture it. “Wearing long sleeves and pants has done the trick so far.” Myusel had finished bandaging me, so I rolled my sleeves back down.

Hikaru-san wasn’t wrong: if I drew too much attention to the wounds, I was afraid Brooke would try to “take responsibility” for his kid again. I didn’t think any of this was particularly his fault, but knowing something about Brooke’s social position, I hardly expected him to just go, “Y’know, you’re right!” and laugh it off. (Did lizardmen even laugh?)

And so, with that in mind, I’d been keeping my quest to make friends with Man’ya a secret from Brooke and Cerise.

“Seriously, quit already. It’s the perfect solution: Brooke doesn’t have to kill himself to make up for his daughter’s attacking you, and you don’t have to kill yourself trying to get on the kid’s good side.”

“But what if she starts by thinking of me as prey, and ends up thinking of all of humanity as a potential food source? It’s all well and good when I’m the only one she’s biting, but what if Petralka were to come over and Man’ya went after her?”

We would be lucky if Brooke was the only one who had to “take responsibility” for an incident like that. Heck, lizardmen could end up extinct in the Eldant Empire.

“She hasn’t shown any interest in biting anyone but you, Shinichi-san. I think it would be fine. But if you’re really worried, the simplest thing would be just to keep her away from any humans for a while. Lizardmen mature fast. Once she can understand language a little better...”

“I get what you’re saying, Hikaru-san,” I said with a half-smile, interrupting him. “But this is Brooke and Cerise’s daughter, and I really want her to understand that I’m a friend. I’m so eager to get to know her.”

Or to put it another way, it was disheartening to be the only one who wasn’t her friend. Man’ya seemed to like everyone else in the house just fine. And Brooke and his family weren’t going anywhere. It wasn’t realistic to hope I could just avoid his kids forever.

“It’s okay, Shinichi-sama, I’m sure of it.” Myusel, wrapping up her most recent round of first aid, clenched her fists as she spoke. “I know you’ll find a way to be friends with Man’ya-chan!”

“Myusel, baseless, subjective pronouncements are going to trap Shinichi-san, not help him,” Hikaru-san said. Man, he was cold. Right, but cold.

“I don’t think it’s baseless...” Myusel looked at the ground for some reason. “Like me... Before I came here, I was always... a little shy, I guess. I made a lot of mistakes in my work. But in spite of all of that, Shinichi-sama, he...”

I blinked. “Shy? You, Myusel?” A little retiring, maybe. Clumsy for sure. But I had never thought of her as outright shy. “You never seemed that way to me.”

“But that’s exactly what I—because I’ve been able to work with you, Shinichi-sama...”

According to Myusel, at her last posting, she had been frequently criticized as “careless” or “slow.” She had worked at three separate noble houses before she came to our place, but never for very long—hardly more than a trial period at each, you might say. Plus, the complication of being a half-elf made her reluctant to talk to people, so she couldn’t even get close to the other maids at the places she worked. She ended up bullied, isolated... It didn’t sound like a good time.

Now that I thought about it, back when we had first met, she had come across as terrified that she was going to be yelled at every time she made a minor mistake, and now I realized that maybe it was because she’d felt this mansion was her last chance.

Obviously, I hadn’t realized at the time that Myusel thought she was shy, or that she was hiding some kind of inner turmoil. Instead I just burst out, “IS THAT A REAL MAID?!” and generally made such a fuss that she probably felt she had better start talking or she was going to get left behind.

“So it’s... thanks to you, Shinichi-sama,” Myusel concluded, her cheeks red.

Whoa-oh-oh. Too cute!

“Yep. Okay. Thank you very much,” Hikaru-san broke in, sounding put out for some reason.

Oh, what?

“Anyway, Shinichi-san, if you’re really dead set on this, I won’t stop you.”

“Cool. Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.”

At the very least, I was going to get myself out of the “raemu” category.

Myusel was a superb maid. She said she hadn’t worked very long at any one place before this, but when I thought about how that was exactly what had enabled her to end up at our mansion, I was secretly kind of grateful for it.

When it came to food, in particular, you couldn’t hope for a better cook. I have to think that at her previous workplaces, the senior maids, not to mention any professional cooks, probably didn’t let some newly arrived broom jockey anywhere near the kitchen. So I’ll bet none of her previous employers ever suspected her culinary gifts.

She showed special attention to the details in her cooking. In addition to herself, a half-elf, this mansion was populated by humans, a werewolf, and a couple of lizardmen, for a total of four different races, and Myusel made separate dishes with specific ingredients for each of them. As a werewolf, for example, Elvia had stronger senses of smell and taste than the rest of us, so even when her food looked approximately like ours, it was often just lightly cooked, without any spices. Brooke and Cerise, by contrast, got a thoughtful assortment on their plates, but it was generally raw. Vegetables might be pickled, but never cooked. Periodically, Myusel would add fruits to get them some variety.

And what about Man’ya? She ate substantially the same things as her parents, just a little less of them. She sat between the two of them in a high chair Brooke had built, chowing down with gusto. Pickles, in particular, she would simply swallow whole.

“Do you like it?” Myusel asked, looking at the child sweetly.

“Gyoo!” Man’ya replied, nodding. She didn’t, however, bother to stop eating. She seemed really... baby-like. In that respect, it seemed like lizardman and human children weren’t so different. Myusel wasn’t the only one who smiled when she looked at Man’ya; we all did.

“Master,” Brooke said out of the blue. “I really am sorry t’ ask, but might I be excused from my duties for the day tomorrow? M’ wife and I are going to do our homecoming.”

“Homecoming?”

“Strictly speaking, we’d be going back to our clan’s reservation,” Cerise said. “It’s about a half day’s journey from here by bird-drawn carriage.”

“Oh, really? Sure, fine by me. But why so suddenly?” I had no particular reason to stop them. But neither of them had ever mentioned going back to their reservation until this moment. Why bring it up now?

Brooke had once been considered a hero of his clan, and Cerise-san was the daughter of a prominent chieftain in the Tribal Council, so if something was up at home, they might well be called back. If this “homecoming” was just for a pleasant visit, then I would be happy to send them on their way, but if something serious was going on, they needed to go deal with it, not waste time asking for my permission. And they should spend more than just one day on it.

But Brooke said, “We’ve got it in mind to inform the chieftains about Man’ya.”

“Oh, is that all? Wait, you never told them?”

“We figured on waitin’ until all the eggs had hatched, but...”

Incidentally, it was now nine days since Man’ya had been born. The other eggs hadn’t hatched yet, although we expected they would soon.

“Man’ya was born just a bit too early, it seems.” Brooke looked at the child sitting next to him. Man’ya, who was stuffing herself with so much food she looked like she might burst, noticed him watching her and looked up at him, cocking her head. As gestures go, it was—well, it was adorable! “I’m aware of how a heated egg might hatch sooner than the rest of a clutch,” said my gardener, “but it’s just been too long. We wanted to tell the chieftains about the birth, and confer with the elders about the other eggs.”

Ah—that made sense. Man’ya looked happy and healthy, but they were worried that her premature birth might cause problems down the road. They probably wanted to ask if anyone else had experienced anything like this, and see if they could get any advice.

“Besides, we’re worried that once the others are born, we might not be able to take enough time to go back. Best do it when we’ve only one.”

“It’s fine by me,” I said. “Oh, but Myusel, you’ll have to take over all of the housework for the day. You all right with that?”

“Er, yes,” she responded, a little surprised when I suddenly turned to her. “I’ll be fine.”

I guess she had handled everything all the time before Cerise got here. And there was no school tomorrow, so I could help out, too. We would manage.

“Pardon us for the trouble. And thank you very much,” Cerise said, and she and Brooke both bowed their heads. Even Man’ya nodded in a monkey-see-monkey-do imitation of her parents, getting a smile out of all of us.

“We’ll just leave Man’ya to play by herself like she always does, so you won’t need to worry about her,” Cerise said.

“You’re not taking her with you?”

“The carriage will only take us partway,” Brooke replied. “The last leg’s a challenging stretch through the mountains. I worry it might be difficult with Man’ya. Anyhow, we only intend on the briefest stay. Best to travel light.”

“Okay.”

I couldn’t imagine a ten-day-old human infant being apart from its parents for an entire day, but Man’ya could already walk on her own and even eat solid food. Maybe it would be safer if she didn’t go on any hikes. You know what they say—curiosity killed the... uh, lizardman.

“Sounds good. Just leave Man’ya to us.”

“We’ll make sure everyone other than Shinichi-san keeps a close eye on her,” Hikaru-san said.

“And just what makes you say that, Hikaru-san?” I demanded. “Is it because you’re a bully? Are you bullying me?”

“You, Shinichi-san, need to focus your efforts on not being raemu.”

“Hrm...” I grumbled. Not much I could say to that.

“Be a good girl and do what they tell you,” Cerise said to Man’ya.

“Gyu!” Man’ya answered, and waved her arm.

Brooke and Cerise left the mansion early the next morning. For the rest of us, life went on pretty much as normal. Myusel had housework to take care of; Elvia was in her room drawing. There was no school, so Minori-san and Hikaru-san were both in their own rooms. And as for me...

“All right...!”

Breakfast was over, and I was on my way to the yard with some fruit Myusel had prepared for me. It wasn’t a snack for myself; I was going to give it to Man’ya. My plan was that by plying her with fruit, I would teach her that I wasn’t food, but a giver of food. A feeder, not to put too fine a point on it. I felt a little pathetic having to resort to what amounted to bribery, but considering the epic failure of the “look cool” approach, I was starting to get a little desperate.

“Today’s the day!”

The current situation wasn’t just bad for my fingers; it was taking a mental toll on me to constantly worry that Brooke might do himself in to save his family’s honor.

Taking pains to hide in the shadows of trees or among the grass, I looked for Man’ya. I knew she was playing in the yard somewhere. I was afraid if I just suddenly called out to her, she’d bite me, so I would have to pick the right moment to give her this fruit. I was starting to feel like the gamekeeper for some wild animal.

“Man, it’s kind of hot today.”

It seemed brighter than usual. I was starting to sweat as I wandered around the yard. I wiped it away on my sleeves, looking around for the little lizardman (lizardgirl?). And then I spotted her, crawling around on the ground with her back to me.

I stopped. It looked like she was digging in the dirt.

Perfect.

“Man’ya...” I called. With a strangely lethargic movement, she raised her head, then turned toward me.

Keep the initiative...!

Ready to pull my hand back in a hurry if she looked like biting me, I held the fruit out to her. I pinched it between my fingers so that even if she dove for me, she would get the fruit first. (Though there was always the possibility she would ignore the fruit and just bite my hand from the side. Then it would all have been for nothing.)

“Here, this is for you.” I could feel my heart rate increasing, but I kept hoping for the best as I waited for a reaction.

Man’ya stared fixedly at the fruit in my fingers. And then, suddenly... she swooned.

“Whoa!” Wary of being bitten, I reached out too late. Man’ya simply toppled to the ground. She didn’t fall—it was almost like she had gone unconscious.

“Man’ya?!”

I looked at the child splayed on the ground, then pitched my fruit aside and reached out to her with both hands. That was normally the instant I would have been bitten, but now there was no sign of an attack. She was eerily still, and when I touched her, her scales, normally chilly, felt weirdly warm to the touch. In fact, they were hot.

I picked up Man’ya in my arms, then set off for the mansion as fast as I could. For a child, she was quite a load to carry. But she was completely limp; she didn’t move a muscle.

“I wonder what could be wrong with her...” Minori-san said, looking down at Man’ya where she lay on my bedroom floor.

In addition to my bodyguard, Myusel, Elvia, and Hikaru-san were all packed into my room—in other words, everyone in the house except Brooke and Cerise.

It was Minori-san who had helped make Man’ya comfortable when I brought her in, and Myusel who had brought the damp towel now resting on the child’s forehead. We had put her on the bed at first, but Hikaru-san had hit on the idea that if she had a fever, the floor might be better, since warm air rises. And it was true that Brooke’s little house didn’t have anything like a sofa or bed, just rush mats on the floor. Maybe direct contact with the ground or the earth was best for lizardmen.

But now we had done all we could. Man’ya was a lizardman, a very different kind of creature from any of the rest of us. Even Elvia, as a fellow mammal, was probably more like us humans than Man’ya was. We couldn’t even begin to guess how to care for her. We didn’t know what kind of medicine might work on a lizardman, or for that matter, if human medicines were even safe for them—especially for one not even a month old.

“What do elves and werewolves do when they get a fever?” Minori-san asked.

“Same thing as humans,” Elvia said, looking worried. “Sleep it off...”

Well, that made sense.

“But lizardmen... I’m sorry, I just don’t know,” Myusel said. “They were attached to a different unit in the army, so I didn’t serve with them...”

Before Myusel had become a maid, she had served in the army in order to earn her citizenship in the Empire. Thanks to her training, she knew basic first aid, and even, I was told, a magic spell for simple healing. The lizardmen, though, had been in a different unit—only natural, considering their distinctive physical capabilities—and I’m sure she had never encountered one with a fever.

Brooke and Cerise wouldn’t be back until the next morning.

“I’ll try contacting the garrison. Maybe they can work the lizardman network,” Minori-san said, and left the room. Obviously, Brooke wasn’t the only lizardman in the imperial capital of Marinos. If we could get in touch with the others, they might be able to tell us what was wrong, or even what to do about it.

“I’m going to go try to catch a few winks,” Hikaru-san said, also making to leave. “I’m sure you’ll need someone to take over nursing duties later.”

“I’ll go see if I can’t find a lizardman around, too!” Elvia exclaimed, and rushed out.

It was probably the right thing to do; neither of them could do much good just standing around here. Finally, even Myusel left to go get more cold water. Man’ya and I were alone in the room.

I gazed at the child. She looked so small lying there on the floor. Of course she did—she was small. A lizardman she might be, but she was still a child. A newborn.

“This sucks...”

This tiny child was suffering, and there was nothing I could do. I slid down beside Man’ya on the floor and just looked at her. She was breathing, but her eyes were still closed. At this point, I almost would have been happy for her to jump up and bite me, I was so desperate to see her move.

I was just letting out a sigh when I heard a hesitant squeak of the door opening.

“Shinichi-sama, it’s Myusel. I’m coming in.”

I sat up as Myusel entered the room, using the backup key she carried to get past the magical lock. She had a small bucket in one hand.

“I brought water. We should probably refresh the towel once in a while.”

“Good idea. Thanks.”

Myusel came over beside me and set the bucket down. “Man’ya-chan, is she...?”

“Not looking any better. It looks so hard on her.”

“Oh...” Myusel looked down mournfully at Man’ya, who was breathing painfully. “Um, ahem, Shinichi-sama?”

“Yeah?”

“I can look after Man’ya-chan, so you...” She seemed to want to tell me to go to another room and get some rest.

“Thanks... But it’s all right. I’ll keep an eye on her.” I smiled sadly.

“......u...?”

Man’ya’s eyes, shut tight until that moment, drifted open a little.

“Man’ya?” I got down on my hands and knees to look in her face. She seemed to be regaining consciousness; her head turned lazily to look at me. The towel on her forehead slid off. I reflexively reached out to grab it—

“Hrgh?!”

—and Man’ya clamped onto my hand.

“Shinichi-sama?!” Almost on instinct, Myusel tried to break in between me and the child, but I waved my free hand to say, No, it’s all right.

“Shinichi-sama...”

“It doesn’t hurt,” I said, not to Myusel so much as to Man’ya.

Maybe it was the fever, but her bite was awfully weak. It wasn’t like it didn’t hurt at all, but it was totally bearable. In fact, I was almost overjoyed to see her chomp on my hand.

Man’ya looked up at me, her jaws still locked around my fingers.

“That’s right,” I said softly. “It doesn’t hurt at all.” With my other hand, I patted her on the head.

She didn’t make a sound, just let go of me. I felt the tiny teeth release my fingers, but Man’ya didn’t spit my hand out of her mouth. Instead, she licked it gently with her ribbon of a tongue.

I wondered what I tasted like.

After a while, Man’ya simply fell asleep, my hand still resting between her jaws. I turned to Myusel. “I know you’ve got a lot to do, Myusel,” I said. “I’ll shout if I need any help. Don’t worry.”

“Yes, sir. But please do call me, if anything happens.”

“I will.” I nodded and dunked the towel in the bucket Myusel had brought.

It might’ve sounded good, but I guess I fell asleep practically the moment Myusel left. When Hikaru-san had come to trade places with me yesterday, I had told him I would be fine watching over the baby, but I guess I dozed off lying next to Man’ya. And I had been so sure I would never fall asleep on the cold, hard floor.

“Uuuumm...........................” I blinked. The last thing I remembered before dropping off was Man’ya’s face, just across from mine. She had opened her eyes while she sucked on my fingers, but then she had gone back to sleep. Not wanting to wake her up, I’d just dozed right alongside her, my hand still in her mouth.

“Man’ya?”

All I saw in front of me now, though, was empty floor. Man’ya was nowhere to be seen. Even the memory of the feeling of her tongue lapping at my fingertips was gone.

“Wh-Where’s Man’ya?!” I felt the blood drain from my face.

Man’ya was gone. Had something happened while I slept? Where could she have gone, still in a torpor from her fever? I seriously doubted she was up walking around...

“What are we gonna do?” I sat up quickly, looking around the room—and froze.

There was Man’ya in a corner. But she...

“Man’ya...!”

I rushed over to her. She was facing the wall, and had rolled up into a ball so I couldn’t see her face. But I could see a wound of some kind, a big one right on her head. She must have gotten up and about while I was sleeping and ended up hurting herself.

Talk about a screwup...!

I touched Man’ya—and she promptly squished.

“Wha? What...?!” I cried. Man’ya deflated like a balloon with the air let out. She had already seemed pretty sick, but now she looked like a frog that had tried and failed to cross the road. What had I—

“Wait...” Then it started to dawn on me. “Skin...?”

“Ugi?” She had arrived beside me without my noticing it—Man’ya, who now cocked her head curiously at me.

“Man’ya?! But how? Oh, I see...” What I had rushed over to had been nothing but Man’ya’s old skin. Man’ya hadn’t been inside it all. She had probably been on the other side of the bed or something. It was simple: she had shed her skin. And she had done it so neatly that it seemed to leave a duplicate of her. That wound in her head must have been where she had crawled out of the old skin.

“Ahhhh...” I sat down right where I was, weak with relief. Man’ya was still looking at me.

“Man’ya,” I said.

“U?”

“How’s your fever?”

“Gi?”

She tilted her head again as if to say she didn’t understand. But I assumed her fever had broken. In fact, she gave a very relaxed-looking yawn. At least she didn’t seem to be in distress anymore.

“Thank goodness...” I said. Then there was a knock at the door. I went over and opened it to find Myusel standing there, with Brooke and Cerise. She must have brought them straight here when they got back.

“Shinichi-sama, how’s Man’ya-chan?” Myusel asked, worried.

“Oh, about her—”

“Emokureu!” Man’ya squeaked, poking her head out from near my feet. (That meant “Welcome home,” by the way.)

“Man’ya-chan?” Myusel said, startled to see the child in such good spirits.

“Uh, Brooke, Cerise, can I talk to you for a minute?” I gave Man’ya to Myusel and ushered them all into the room, where I showed them the flattened duplicate of the child.

“My goodness,” Myusel said.

“This isn’t some kind of illness, is it?” I asked.

“No sir, just some shed skin.”

“But it came off so neatly,” Cerise said.

“So she wasn’t sick after all. I’m so glad...” My shoulders slumped with relief.

Reptiles shed their skin. Obvious enough—but I had never seen a lizardman do it, and didn’t know what the skin looked like after it was shed. I had no idea if any of this was normal.

“Our apologies, Master. ’Tis at about this time when lizardmen children first shed their skin. ’Tis a perfectly normal event for us, and we simply forgot to tell you about it.” Brooke bowed his head.

“Aw, hey, don’t worry about it. I should have thought to ask.”

“So do lizardmen always get a fever when they shed their skins?” asked Myusel, who was still holding Man’ya.

“No, certainly not always,” Cerise answered. “But it’s possible she was having trouble regulating her body temperature.”

“How’s that?”

“Very young children sometimes aren’t good at storing up heat.”

You’re probably familiar with so-called warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. Warm-blooded animals, like us mammals, can make their own heat to make sure their body stays the right temperature. Cold-blooded animals (snakes and lizards being the best known representatives), on the other hand, are more strongly influenced by outside air temperature, and their body temperatures can fluctuate significantly.

That doesn’t mean, though, that a reptile’s body temperature is always equal to the external temperature. Even cold-blooded animals need heat sometimes. The chemical reactions in their bodies are most likely influenced by their temperature. If they want to move fast, for example, they would need enough chemical reactions for their muscles to respond, and for that, you need a certain amount of heat.

So when snakes and lizards and the like sit out in the sun, they’re storing up heat, after which they will frequently start to move. If they get too cold, all the chemical reactions in their bodies slow down, and they lose the ability to move. In extreme cases, they can even just freeze in place and die, sort of like hibernation gone terribly wrong.

That much I knew from books. But lizardmen weren’t in any of my reading. Maybe the sunlight that had caused Man’ya’s egg to hatch prematurely had also left her with plenty of stored-up heat. That could have thrown off her metabolism, so to speak, and caused her to release a lot of heat when she shed her skin. That was the theory, anyway. Or maybe she was just getting rid of unnecessary, excess heat as she shed her skin.

“Now that you mention it, I do remember the sun being especially hot yesterday,” Myusel said, nodding.

“I’m just happy she’s all right,” I said. “I was going crazy with worry...”

“Y’ have our most heartfelt thanks, Master,” Brooke said, bowing deeply to me.

Cerise, after a glance at Myusel, likewise bowed her head. “We’re told that you were with her the entire time,” she said to me. Myusel must have told them.

“Aw, I really didn’t do anything. Man’ya beat that fever by herself.” Heck, I’d fallen asleep halfway through. “Come on, don’t bow to me,” I urged them. Then I looked over at Man’ya. She was reclining happily in Myusel’s arms. She looked like the picture of health, like nothing had happened. “Talk about a relief,” I smiled, reaching out to pat Man’ya on the head.

At which point the child latched her jaws onto my fingers. Yep. She was back to her old self.

“Hey!” Brooke reached out in a panic.

But I said, “Don’t worry, Brooke, it’s okay.”

It wasn’t exactly that I wanted to be bitten, but it was just such a relief.

Hang on... It... doesn’t hurt?

“Man’ya...?” I said, and she pulled her mouth away from my hand. Once again, she started licking my fingers with that long, snakelike tongue.

Wow! I marveled at how much I had leveled up in just a day!

“Man’ya learned a new skill: Nibble!”

I was very, very pleased. Then came a sound that made my eyes go wide.

“Shii-ichi.”

“H-Hey! That was my name!”

“Yes, I heard it, too!” Myusel said. We looked at each other, and I clenched a fist in triumph. There was no mistaking it: Man’ya had said my name. I guess I had finally graduated from being “raemu” to being a friend.

“She’s finally started to understand how kind you are, Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said.

“Wow...” This was hard to process. I was so happy. Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye...!

Brooke, however, sounded less thrilled. “He’s our honored master,” he admonished his daughter. “You must not address him by his name alone.”

Aw, c’mon, she’s just a kid!

“It’s all right, Brooke.”

“No, Master, I can’t allow—”

“Seriously, it’s fine. Man’ya isn’t technically my servant, anyway.” I gave her another pat on the head.

“Gyu.”

This time the lizardman girl didn’t bite me at all, but offered a friendly gurgle.

Two days later, the other eggs had finally hatched, and our house was pretty lively.

“Gyu!”

“Gyu?”

The newborns toddled around the yard, dug in the ground looking for bugs, and wrestled with each other. They all seemed to be having a good time. It turns out race or species or whatever doesn’t matter: watching chubby, short-limbed children play is adorable no matter who you are.

“We’re so sorry about all the noise,” Brooke and Cerise said, bowing their heads. I guess most lizardman children weren’t this active. Considering that Man’ya had been the same way, maybe it was because the mansion was situated a little bit closer to sea level than the lizardmen’s reservation, meaning the temperature was a little higher on average. Some extra warmth and plenty of oxygen would make just about any living creature outgoing. Anyway, it was just a theory. And it didn’t really matter.

“It’s all good,” I said. “I’m just glad they’re happy and healthy.” The rest of us were watching the children play, smiles on our faces. “Speaking of which, where’s Man’ya?” I didn’t see her among the rowdy, excited kids.

“I suppose she might be playing in the yard somewhere, like she usually does,” Cerise replied.

I glanced around for any sign of her, and meanwhile the other kids came trundling over to us as if to say, Play with us!

“Oh—!”

“Grr!”

Some of them grabbed on to the hem of Myusel’s skirt, while another took an interest in Elvia’s tail. One tried to get Minori-san to pick it up, while another babbled at Hikaru-san in incomprehensible baby talk. Brooke and Cerise tried to keep them under control, but there were only two of them to deal with five separate children. Each of the others found themselves with a kid to entertain, and even if they didn’t always seem quite sure what they were doing, they seemed to enjoy doing it. Hikaru-san, in particular, seemed to have it a bit rough, his Gothic-Loli dress getting pulled and tugged from every direction.

“We’ll make it clear to them they’re not to interfere with your work,” Cerise said. I nodded, just as one of the kids came wandering toward me.

“Ugi?” The child stared me down with an expression that made me think of Man’ya when she had just been hatched.

I smiled at the baby, crouching down. “What’s up?” I reached out to pat it on the head...

“Gyu!”

Chomp.

“Eeyow!” I cried as the child munched on my fingers.

Myusel looked over when I shouted. “Shi-Shinichi-sama?!”

At the exact same time:

“Ugi!”

“Oo!”

The kids babbled and squeaked and all started piling over toward me. Before their parents could stop them, they started biting my arms and legs.

“Ouch! Agh! Wh-Why?! Why me?!” Why didn’t anyone else ever get bitten?!

“Stop that right now!” Cerise started pulling the children off me, passing them to Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san in turn. The kids, for whatever reason, sat placidly in their arms, with no sign at all of imminent chomping.

“Guess Man’ya isn’t the only one who sees you as prey,” Hikaru-san said, crossing his arms.

Minori-san, hugging one of the children, smiled a little. “It is strange.”

“I wonder if I, like, emit something that makes them think of me as food.”

“What?! You mean like a slutty-bottom pheromone...?!”

“No, I don’t! This isn’t BL! They’re just straight up eating me! Anyway, forget the banter and help me!” Wasn’t she supposed to be my bodyguard?!

“M-Master, I—I will take responsibility in place of my children...!”

In stark contrast to me and Minori-san, who weren’t really worried about the situation, Brooke had managed to produce a scythe from God knew where and was preparing to amputate an arm. Myusel and Elvia hurriedly stopped him. But there was still one question in my mind...

“Why am I the only one?!”

I now had bite marks all over my body. I was starting to think I knew how a cow felt after it had been attacked by a school of piranhas. I could hardly tear them away; I was standing there with brimming eyes, trying to bear it, when:

“Tontosamu!” someone commanded. That meant basically, “Don’t do that!”

Something came darting out of the nearby bushes, stopping in front of me. It was—

“Man’ya...”

The little girl who had been playing somewhere in the yard.

“Echibu tontosamu!” Don’t bite him!

Man’ya looked at each of the babies clamped onto me and repeated the instruction. It took a few tries, but she must have gotten through to them, because the tiny fangs let me go.

“Wow...”

All we could do was watch in amazement. I had heard of the same sort of thing happening with human children—infants communicating with each other in ways adults couldn’t seem to understand. Some people even claimed that if you asked a slightly older child to “interpret”—say, a two-year-old, someone who had started to talk a little—that they would tell you the infant could remember being in its mother’s womb, or even recall things from his past life.

Well, I didn’t know how true any of that was. But in any case, Man’ya certainly seemed to be able to connect with her siblings somehow. She huffed in satisfaction as the other babies dropped away from me. I still didn’t know much about lizardman expressions—even on infants—but I took her current look to be one of joy.

“Aw, who’s the best big sister?” Minori-san cooed.

Ahh, so that was it: she was scolding her little brothers and sisters on my behalf.

“I’ve got to admit, Shinichi-san, you’re a force to be reckoned with,” Hikaru-san said, sounding impressed. “To bring even Man’ya into your fold... You’ve got no boundaries when it comes to girls, do you?”

“I’m sorry, what?!” How did he get to that conclusion?! And why were Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san all nodding?! Okay, so maybe when it came to Myusel and the others I had no excuse, but that hadn’t been on purpose! And I want to be completely clear: I have never, ever, in my whole life, ever had any of those kinds of feelings for a little kid! Anyway, she was a lizardman, for crying out loud! I guess dragons had become a fetish in America, but I was Japanese! And did we have to have this conversation right in front of the kid’s parents?!

“Hrrm...” Brooke let out a breath, as if he were making his peace with something. “W-Well, you, Master, I might allow...”

“Stop right there, Brooke!” I didn’t need that kind of loyalty! Not to be rude to Brooke and his kind or anything, but lizardmen were 100%, completely, totally outside the scope of my interests!

“Gyuuu!” While the rest of us had this completely ridiculous conversation, Man’ya was running and playing with her brothers and sisters, keeping an eye on them for us. She seemed to be giving them occasional pointers about what was okay and what wasn’t. It was weirdly wonderful to see this kid, who had been just an infant herself hardly a few days ago, act like a responsible older sibling. We watched Man’ya and the others all the way until it was time to leave for school, enjoying the sweetness and savoring the peace.