Chapter 80.6 Noel – Part Two

While Noel was still feeling frustrated and helpless, the village child who had run to fetch someone returned with the knights. The knight order had gone outside the village with the adventurers today, but they must have just returned. They seemed to have come without even taking time to rest, and there was a faint smell of monster blood on them.

Leonhart, who was at the front, noticed before anyone else that the Witch was crying, and hurried toward them with a stern expression Noel had rarely ever seen on his face.

But the Witch, for her part, lowered the hand that had been covering her face and smiled exactly as she always did, as though nothing had happened at all. If Noel had not seen her crying, he probably would not have been able to tell. She truly looked just like usual.

(Witch-sama… she doesn’t want Leonhart-san to worry about her.)

Noel knew that the two of them were close. Sometimes they spent time alone together, and there were probably things between them Noel knew nothing about.

Trying not to let him see her crying. Somehow, that brave front only seemed to make Leonhart angrier. The Witch apparently realized that he had seen through her forced smile, because she awkwardly took a step back.

「Witch-dono… It’s all right. I’ve already heard what happened from the village child, and we’ll make sure they’re properly judged.」

Theft was supposed to be a serious crime. Even if the kind Witch could not bring herself to punish them, the law would not forgive them. Of course Noel would not either, nor would Leonhart. In fact, no one living in this village would forgive such an unlawful act.

「Theft is a serious crime. They will definitely receive severe punishment. …So please, don’t be so sad.」

This was not the Witch’s fault. But because of how kind she was, perhaps she thought the incident had happened because she was here and was blaming herself.

The merchants alone were at fault for committing a crime despite knowing how serious it was, and they would receive the punishment prescribed by law. The Witch had done nothing wrong, so there was no reason for her to blame herself, nor any reason for her to grieve. …That was probably what Leonhart wanted to tell her, so that she would not blame herself.

(…But Witch-sama is still sad, isn’t she?)

Her smile never faltered. But Noel had learned that no matter how sad she was, the Witch could hide her feelings behind that smile.

Perhaps there had been many times before when she had been afraid, anxious, or sad. And yet the Witch had probably kept smiling so that everyone else would feel at ease.

(Maybe Witch-sama has been suffering through even more things, and I just haven’t noticed… Miriya-san seems better than me at sensing how people feel…)

There were times when Miriya spoke to the Witch at moments Noel himself would never have recognized, so she seemed to have a stronger instinct than Noel when it came to sensing the subtleties of people’s emotions. From now on, Noel would have to think and act more carefully so that he could understand the Witch’s feelings better too.

The knights moved briskly to restrain the corrupt merchants, but at that point the merchants began making excuses. They insisted that they had done nothing and that the mandragora had attacked them without reason.

Perhaps that excuse might have worked somewhere outside Bit Village. But it would not work here. Everyone in this village lived alongside all kinds of monster plants, including the mandragoras that were the Witch’s familiars, and benefited from them. Not once had any of those plants ever brought harm to them.

「Ah, Sora-kun…」

The Water Plant slipped into the merchants’ clothes and pulled out a bag. Before the frail mandragora could be hurt, Leonhart quickly secured him and moved him to safety.

And from inside the bag that the Water Plant had been concerned about came another mandragora. Apparently the one who had been abducted was this Peach Plant, who was well liked by the women of the village and had been dressed in clothes modeled after the uniforms worn by servants in noble estates.

「Woo! As expected of Sora-kun, so cool! Now kiss her!」

「No, that’s a bit…」

「The hero who saves the princess gets married to her, Noel. Don’t you know that?」

The Water Plant and Peach Plant were embracing as though celebrating that they were both safe, but they were mandragoras, not a hero and a princess. Incidentally, because they possessed both stamens and pistils, they were not male and female either. Noel knew more about things like that than the other children because he lived with the Witch and helped care for plants, so he wondered whether he should shatter the fantasies of children who were still dreaming such things, and ultimately decided to say nothing.

(They’re all still kids, after all. I’m going to become an adult before them, so I need to start thinking about how an adult should behave too…)

Now that they had found undeniable evidence, capturing the merchants was easy enough, but the question was where to keep them in a village with no jail. As the knights discussed that, a voice came down from above.

「I’ll send them over.」

「…Mage-dono… You’ve returned?」

Apparently Nikolaus, who had been away from the village for several days, had returned. The Witch smiled happily when she saw him, and this time even Noel could immediately tell she was genuinely pleased without having to think too deeply about it.

To the Witch, Nikolaus was a cute child of her own race, no, he was not a child, so perhaps he was more like a junior she wanted to look after, someone young and inexperienced. The Witch always seemed happy whenever he appeared, so perhaps the sadness from earlier had faded now.

(Mage-sama acts cold, but… I think he’s probably happy too.)

Nikolaus scoffed at the Witch’s smile and turned his face away, but he did not actually seem to be in a bad mood. Back when Noel’s village still existed, slightly older boys would sometimes make the same expression when a woman they admired praised them, so it was also extremely obvious that Nikolaus was fond of the Witch.

「The severity of a theft sentence changes depending on the value of what was stolen, you know. I’ll throw them into the harshest prison there is. …Stealing the property of a demonfolk is a serious crime. Who knows how valuable one of this one’s familiars would be as a rare material.」

He had deliberately mentioned even the laws concerning property belonging to demonfolk, phrasing it in a way that would be easy for the Witch, who was unfamiliar with the modern human world, to understand. Perhaps impressed by that, the Witch watched Nikolaus with a bright smile.

It seemed that Nikolaus’s arrival had lifted the Witch’s spirits. Perhaps hearing from a modern demonfolk that this method of judgment was also correct had reassured her.

「As expected of Mage-sama…!」

The thought slipped out of Noel’s mouth. Nikolaus was clearly adored by the Witch, and the two of them were close.

And suddenly, a question occurred to him.

…Just who did the Witch like the most?