Chapter 12

Chapter 12 : Let’s Change the Look (2)

Clicking my tongue, I crumpled up the plan that had seemed as though it would be the easiest way both to survive here and to destroy the Original Work.

Ever since our first meeting, my Contribution had risen whenever I was with Pan. Even if I was only a minor character, my rank had still gone up, and I had started exerting at least a faint influence over the Original Work.

So I considered another possibility.

What if the premise that Pan knew me was simply a gap created when the Original Work had been slightly twisted, and the world had hurriedly added plausibility to patch it over?

In any case, this was a world that only functioned properly if I was not here.

If I had possessed the body of some passing extra, then the face I had confirmed in the mirror while dyeing my hair should not have been unmistakably my own.

So I had intended to stick close to the one who looked most like the root cause and see what I could gain from him……

But of course it was never going to be that easy.

“You are thinking hard, are you not?”

“…….”

“Though perhaps you do not know? Ah, right, you do not remember.”

Are you joking?

“If you go faaaar away to some remote little kingdom, there are many people like you there. Those who belong to neither the Surface nor the Underground and were cast aside.”

Pan rattled it off smoothly, wearing the expression of someone inventing the story on the spot.

You know, the exaggerated sort of face where the eyes drift left and right as though he were recalling something poignant.

I folded my arms and said nothing, waiting to see how far he would take the lie.

“I took you in place of a gambling debt this time.”

“In place of a debt…… me?”

“I have never lost a wager in my life.”

“I was wandering the Black Forest until just a few days ago, though?”

“Ah……!”

If you are going to improvise the setting that blatantly, how much am I supposed to play along?

I clicked my tongue as I watched Pan openly trying to swindle me.

For a moment, Pan’s eyes wandered as though his thoughts had gone into a brief buffer, then he let out an “Ah!” and opened his mouth again.

“You ran away while I was bringing you back, so I lost you.”

“I did? From you?”

The kind of question that really meant, As though I could ever have managed that?

Pan tapped the table lightly and continued without a shred of embarrassment.

“I let my guard down. That was when you fell off the cliff. Since it was near the edge of the Black Forest, is it not possible that you ended up wandering there?”

“I did?”

“You did.”

“Was hurling myself off cliffs my hobby?”

“You leapt quite boldly. I was a little surprised. As for your memory—I imagine that is when you lost it.”

He even smiled with his eyes at the end, brazen as could be.

As if to say he was just saying whatever came to mind.

It made me wonder.

Why would he, the ruler of the forest and an important figure in the Original Work, go so far as to fabricate a backstory for my sake just to reassure me?

Why had he chosen to save me and bring me here, even overturning the judgment of the other rulers and taking responsibility for my identity himself?

He gave me medicine when I looked as though I might die. When I said I needed hair dye, he made that too.

It left a bad taste in my mouth. A very bad one.

“I cannot just nod along and believe that. The details are a mess. The gambling debt, the cliff, all of it.”

“Details, hm? Would it suffice if I simply said you are my slave now?”

“Excuse me?”

“You can repay the debt, or die, or go back to the Black Forest and sleep rough again. I do not particularly care which. Though if possible, I would recommend repaying it with labor. We are short on manpower these days.”

“That is just a setting you made up on the spot!”

“Did I not say so? I like making the details feel real.”

When a person gets hit with a kind of nonsense they never saw coming, there are moments when their mind simply goes blank.

That was exactly what was happening to me now.

I had stayed quiet because I assumed he was only making excuses, and somehow I had turned into Slave No. 1.

It was a title perfectly suited to Minor Role C.

Ah. I had walked right into it.

---

Ding!

[Randomly loading a scene from 〈Your Regret After Killing Me〉.]

[2 points have been deducted.]

「(Excerpt omitted)……Everything was lavish and grand. Inside the transparent glass greenhouse, the world’s rarest plants bloomed in full, flaunting their freshness.

Ariti gazed quietly at Karon, who lay draped across a pure white swing in the center of the greenhouse.

Karon’s red eyes swayed along with his jet-black hair, which stirred softly back and forth.

He was clearly drunk.

With an absent, unfocused stare, Karon’s gaze turned toward Ariti as she sat before him.

“Karon.”

At Ariti’s call, focus returned to Karon’s eyes. Hoo—he let out a low breath.

The Underworld Lord who had ruined and shattered her daily life beyond repair.

“I hate you.”

She knew his drinking habits. Today was the sort of day he would forget completely by tomorrow.

Ariti smoothed away the crease in her brow and carefully stepped closer to Karon.

“And yet I have come to like you.”

At that very moment, a large hand wrapped around the slender back of Ariti’s neck. Karon……(To be continued)」

My expectations had been high because of the beginner’s luck last time.

I had hoped that, as before, it might reveal something about Pan, or about the forest’s territory, or some other fundamental setting. Instead, it was a complete miss.

If it had at least continued from the previous excerpts, that would have been one thing.

The Original Work I skimmed through this time took place much later. Ariti, who had once been full of hatred and disgust, had come to like the very same person?

For a moment, the image of Ariti I had seen when I was trapped in the cage surfaced and vanished again.

“I need to stop wasting points.”

Right.

While I was out here filming a survival story with my neck perpetually on the line, what was I supposed to do by watching someone else’s romance?

All I could do was pray that the war born from the ruler of the Spring and the Underworld Lord’s violent love story would not erupt immediately.

Then again, I was curious about exactly where the warlike scene I had seen before fit into the timeline.

Thinking back on myself, all those times I had panicked in advance and cowered because I was convinced I had landed in an apocalypse and a war story at once……

The current scenery was peaceful to the point of absurdity.

There was still hostility between races, yes, but no matter where I looked, there was no trace of war. Was this not a paradise?

And on top of that, the weather was excellent.

Pering had told me not to go outside, but it was not as though he could forbid me from sitting in a quiet place to enjoy a little breeze.

I had unfolded a chair on the wide terrace, leaned back, and was currently photosynthesizing in the sun.

The softly blowing wind, the shade cast by the leaves, every part of the environment was comfortable.

The Original Work had been a bust.

I had brought the travel record out with me to look through it some more, but my eyelids kept drooping under the drowsiness brought on by a full meal.

“Is Slave No. 1 so idle? Sitting around reading a book and all.”

When I opened my eyes, Pan was perched precariously on the opposite railing, looking at me.

I stared at him with that sly smile draped over his face and thought to myself.

Had I ever actually said that particular combination of words aloud?

Yesterday, after I sent him away while half-tuning out all that talk about repaying debts and being sold off, Ochel had told me something rather interesting.

The ruler of the forest reigns over everything in the forest.

Every blade of grass, the air itself, even the corpses left to rot.

When I heard that he was aware of every single thing that happened in the forest, I found myself wondering whether his brain was all right.

Because if he was insane, that sounded exhausting.

“What sort of book is that? I heard you were hugging it tightly yesterday too.”

“When was I ever hugging it like that? Do not act it out so dramatically. It is ugly.”

He was exaggerating as though he were imitating a fan who had just won a favorite celebrity’s signed photo card, so I lightly kicked the railing he was sitting on.

“You are making a rather bold attempt at murder.”

“I know you would not die even if you fell.”

“Slave No. 1’s insubordination……!”

“Why are you picking a fight? You told me to stay in my room, and I have been doing so obediently.”

“I heard it is your only possession. Happen to find it in the Black Forest, perhaps?”

“……Mind your own business.”

I quietly slid the book aside.

I could see Pan’s eyes tracking it with determined persistence.

It looked less as though he had come merely to pick a fight with me while I was leisurely photosynthesizing and more as though he had come specifically to steal this book.

“Why did you come?”

I wanted to get rid of Pan as quickly as possible. This place, where I was fed three meals a day and allowed to sleep whenever I pleased, and where I could sit blankly and do nothing in peace, was the ideal environment, and he was only interrupting it.

But Pan did not look as though he had any intention of leaving.

Sliding down from the railing, he perched carelessly in the chair beside me and began reaching for the book tucked against my side.

“What?”

“Hm?”

“What do you think you are doing with that finger?”

I slapped away the finger that had just barely brushed the cover of the book, then picked it up and draped it over my shoulder instead.

“I was just curious. What sort of book is it? It looks quite old, and I can feel magic from it.”

“A diary.”

“Hm?”

“I said it is a private diary.”

Not mine, but still.

At that, Pan frowned around the eyes in disappointment and leaned back, retreating for the moment.

Was there no safe vault anywhere?

“You still remember nothing?”

“If I did, would I be sitting around like this? Why? Have you decided to tell me the truth about my past instead of giving me details, settings, and excuses?”

“……Even if it was a hastily constructed setting, it would still be your identity. If you keep speaking to me like that, it puts me in a rather bad mood.”

He sat there with his chin propped on one hand, smiling sweetly, and looked fully prepared to put me to work as an actual slave, so I shut my mouth.

All I want is to live comfortably without doing anything, Lord of the Forest Chezer Pan.

“I came because there is something I need to warn you about. Do not go toward the forest.”

Since we were already in the very heart of a forest that sprawled endlessly in every direction, I glanced around and asked,

“When you say the forest, do you mean the Black Forest?”

“That is right. The bridge has been cut.”

“The bridge over that gorge?”

He meant the very bridge I had fallen from while fleeing Hwipone.

Why would a bridge that had remained perfectly intact even under such an impact, without so much as a single rope snapping, suddenly be cut now?

“We did not do it. They cut it from that side.”

“And by that side…….”

“The Underfolk.”

The word had become familiar by now from hearing it so often, and a hollow laugh escaped me.

So that was it. He came to probe me because I might have some connection to this Underfolk business, and while he was at it, to see whether my memory had returned.

“I am not the one who cut it.”

“I said the Underfolk cut it, so why are you volunteering a confession? I know it was not you.”

After that, Pan went on to list various other warnings.

The Black Forest was, in fact, a buffer zone connected to the Underworld, and Underfolk did occasionally appear there, but not the kind that left traces like this or used brute force to cut down bridges.

He told me that a barrier had been erected, so they would not be able to enter, but I was not to even think about going out there myself.

I stared at Pan blankly as he said that.

After all, I myself had been caught in that same barrier.

Did it still not matter to him at all that I might be Underfolk?

The two factions were openly hostile, and yet it was strange enough that a ruler would have some personal connection with someone from the Underfolk.

“Those wings of Hwipone’s, were those his Frame?”

“Why?”

“Then do people on your side have those same strange wings too?”

“Me? No.”

So perhaps the structure varied from person to person, or by territory.

If so, then the strange red markings on the man who tortured me might themselves have been his Frame.

They always seemed to grow darker whenever he drew out a weapon.

“How do you bring out a Frame? Show me.”

“Me? No.”

Smiling sweetly, Pan rose to his feet, as though his business here was finished.

His meaning was clear. He had said what he came to say, and that was that.

I thought he was about to walk off after dusting down his clothes, but instead he snapped off a nearby branch.

The branch still had leaves on it, so it looked less like a club and more like something one might wave around for ritual purification. Tapping it against the floor, he said,

“You really should not bring your Frame out.”

“Why not?”

“Because then everyone would find out you are Underfolk.”

He really was deciding that all by himself now.

Using the branch, Pan brushed my bangs aside.

The living leaves swept across my forehead and around my eyes. I reflexively shut my eyes, then opened them again, only to find Pan’s arrogant face looming above me in sharp focus.

“You should cut it, do you not think? People would feel safer if they could at least see your eyes.”

“You already dyed it for me. Do I not even have the freedom of my own hair anymore?”

“You ask the obvious, Slave No. 1.”

“No matter how I think about it, I have never actually said that phrase aloud. Do you perceive people’s inner thoughts too?”

“Were you thinking something improper?”

“Hmm…… perhaps. I was considering preemptive censorship just in case.”

“Yes, do not. Everything shows on your face anyway.”

After casually sticking the broken branch into the wooden floor, Pan brushed off his hands and stood.

The branch, which ought to have died by then, had already forced roots into a gap and taken hold, fresh and alive.

Shrugging, Pan added one final remark and then leapt down to the path below.

“If you are curious about anything, call Ochel. That is why I assigned her to you.”