Chapter 37

Chapter 37 : Ice Blue (1)

The little bird, which had been staring at the pure white bud blooming in the small tree pot, tilted its head and flew back to my shoulder.

As it did, four pairs of eyes turned toward me as well.

“Why does it only go to mister?”

Soi puffed out his cheeks and glared at me as though he’d been treated unfairly.

“It built a nest on mister’s head, that’s why.”

Konu, who looked as though he wasn’t paying attention and was only reading his book, flicked his eyes over.

“I haven’t seen that bird before. Where did you pick it up?”

A boy named Danta, who was close friends with Konu, scooted nearer with bright, sparkling eyes.

“What does it eat?”

Chiru fiddled with the cookie clutched tightly in his hand, looking back and forth between it and the little bird.

I pressed at my temples and sighed as I looked at the four little troublemakers who had come pouring in first thing in the morning.

Perhaps because it had eaten the fragment, the little bird had turned into an ordinary Phantasmal Species that was clearly visible even to other people.

Unlike the other Phantasmal Species, it was still incomplete, so perhaps that was why it looked like nothing more than an ordinary bird. Except for a few people, no one even imagined it could be a Phantasmal Species, and that was how matters had ended up like this.

The children were brimming with curiosity toward the fist-sized bird fluttering about the office, chirping as it flew.

Its vivid red coloring and round, fluff-ball body were obviously cute at a glance, so the children had no choice but to fall for it even harder.

“You lot come here to see this thing rather than me?”

“Why are you asking something so obvious?”

Konu, who had grown noticeably more familiar with me in the meantime, shut his book and shrugged.

Do you even know that you’re the reason those children started sticking to this place and checking in every single day?

I sighed, gave up, and leaned against the bar counter with a shake of my head.

It was my own fault for never explaining to the children that the little bird was a Phantasmal Species.

The same went for their parents and the other Surface Folk too.

In truth, even with things concealed that way, the only ones who came by just to see the little bird were those children.

The only people who recognized that the little bird was a Phantasmal Species were those with strong auras.

Among the people living at the ruler’s castle—Pan, Pering, Ochel, Ru, and the rest—only Pan’s closest circle truly recognized what the little bird was.

They hadn’t tried to kill it on sight, but all of them had found it unpleasant.

I once asked why they hated Phantasmal Species regardless of how they looked, and Pan, wearing his usual expression as though it were nothing at all, had calmly said something chilling.

“If I don’t kill it, then I die. That one dies, and that child dies too. All of them get devoured and disappear.”

They were always the ones doing the killing, and yet they spoke as though they were the ones who would die instead.

What could I do? I had heard that those Phantasmal Species were the very reason the Black Forest had ended up beyond the bounds of the domain.

If it was an instinct engraved in their blood, there was nothing I could do about it.

Still, Pan tolerated the little bird.

That was because it was thoroughly tamed, with its master clearly decided, and because its original form had been discovered in the Record Archive.

So I decided to bury the little bird’s true identity.

It was enough if those children were happy while feeding strange things to the little bird as it flitted here and there.

And the fact that Pan allowed it to remain at all already meant he had judged it harmless.

“Mister’s busy. Shouldn’t you all go play somewhere?”

“If you’re busy, then why doesn’t anyone come here?”

“Could you maybe not hit me where it hurts?”

“Hmph…… mister, you went outside somewhere, didn’t you?”

I glanced at the other three, still preoccupied with the little bird, then turned toward Konu.

He had an unexpectedly sharp side to him.

On top of that, he tended to trust me far too much.

Maybe he simply enjoyed the thrill of being let in on secret, underground matters that no one else knew about.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t good for him to grow attached to the Underfolk itself.

If he made me his standard for the Underfolk, then when he encountered another one later, it would only put him in danger.

“Don’t take too much interest in me.”

“Ugh. What are you even saying? What ridiculous vanity.”

“Ugh? Did you just say ugh? Hey. Come here.”

“Come there? Isn’t that you taking too much interest in me? Is this some new form of human trafficking?”

“Hey! Stop watching those weird crime detective shows.”

“Please respect my tastes.”

Konu snapped his book shut, took Chiru by the hand—Chiru was still feeding cookies to the little bird—and headed out of the office.

He ended matters with nothing more than a casual wave of the hand.

Once Konu, who acted like the leader of the group, left, the other two backed away as though reluctant to go, but disappeared all the same.

At last, a small peace of silence.

---

After returning alive from the cliff, I burned through every spare Point I had left on Original Work gacha pulls.

I’d gotten the seed and the fragment, but I still had no clue whatsoever about the creation method, so I was desperate for a hint.

But as with every ruinous luck-based game, I was utterly defeated.

“Hah…… f—king p—ce of sh———.”

Yes. I had no interest in other people’s romance. Was the Original Work actually some kind of adults-only love story? Because I, for one, would really like to know why my part of it was a survival story.

“The other day, were you suddenly generous because you thought I’d die if you didn’t throw me something? When were you ever all, wouldn’t you have liked to read the Original Work, while scratching at my temper, and now this is what you throw at me? Useless Original Work like that? Hm? Are you enjoying yourself, messing with me? If this is how you’re going to act, do you really think I’m going to live some delightful Original Work life? Why shouldn’t I just quit? What do you think, you bastard system?”

Only after pouring it all out with my head slammed against the table did I calm down a little.

What I wanted wasn’t much.

I only wanted to see the moment a Phantasmal Species was born, since apparently every Underfolk had one or two.

If the creation method might not even be on paper, then the possible range was far too broad.

This wasn’t something I could ask people about, whether here in the Record Archive, or in the library, or anywhere else.

Would people who hated Phantasmal Species know how they were made? If they did, they would have cut out the root of the matter from the start rather than merely isolating or killing the Phantasmal Species that threatened them.

It was my complete defeat.

This stagnant impasse kept gnawing away at my limits.

For some reason, after I obtained Woldeer’s puzzle fragment, the system that had been making such a commotion went quiet. It felt as though it had fled in anticipation of how furious I’d be, which only deepened my distrust of it.

There was no reason to think that just because the unfriendly system had finally started talking, it would suddenly become kind.

Whenever I enjoyed films, dramas, novels, or any sort of story, I had always despised spoilers with all my heart.

Not because they merely lessened the fun, but because they made my interest in the story itself disappear.

And now here I was, begging for them.

“Couldn’t you at least give me a handful of spoilers?”

The least you could do, if you’re going to work me like this, is throw me something, isn’t it?!

I felt like I might split in two at this rate, so I slammed my forehead against the table again and tried to steady my breathing.

It hurt.

The system, which used to toss me the occasional Field Quest or Time Quest at the drop of a hat, had now gone completely silent, and I had no idea what more it wanted from me.

Do it all on your own? Is that what it’s after?

I ground my teeth and fumed, but it wasn’t as though the Original Work had shown me nothing useful at all.

The problem was that what I needed right now never appeared, and instead I kept getting absurdly distant future developments thrown at me.

The nonaggression negotiations.

Ever since that earlier Original Work section, where Karon had been shown plotting something regarding them as the story advanced—

in truth, every time I read more, information about that had continued to spill out.

The place of negotiation would be the Domain of the Sky, and on the Surface Folk side, Ariti, the Ruler of the Spring, and Etel, the Ruler of the Sky and provider of the venue, would stand forward.

And on the other side, Karon was apparently planning to appear with only a single attendant.

I lifted my head, propped my elbows on the table, rested my chin on my hands, and thought.

Was the reason it had shoved so much of that Original Work ratio at me because it meant for me to get involved there?

The system had been consistent in one thing: destroy the Original Work.

That negotiation hall was one of the major meetings between Ariti, the female lead, and Karon, the male lead, in the Original Work.

If it wanted me to interfere with that, then—

“Wouldn’t Pan be the one to start the chaos?”

I dredged up the memory from the previous Original Work, the one where Pan had drawn the ire of the other rulers because somebody ended up dead at the negotiations.

“Or…… do I have to stop that chaos instead?”

In the Original Work I’d summoned this time, there had also been a part saying that the havoc Pan caused at those negotiations weakened Ariti’s position and let the talks be dragged along exactly as Karon wanted.

The ending might be driven by the protagonist’s heart, but I still couldn’t tell which direction would work in my favor and stop the war.

With only fragmentary information, I was no better than a reader myself.

And the real problem wasn’t even that.

“Shouldn’t I…… not meet Karon right now?”

I rubbed at the red earring hanging from my ear and frowned.

Karon’s lot had openly suspected that I was Sek.

Karon, who looked ready to seize me on the spot and start some disaster the moment he saw me, wasn’t the sort who’d look at me and calmly say, “Ah, I see. It isn’t him,” and leave.

Isn’t the rule supposed to be that you only meet the final boss after you’ve grown stronger?

I lodged a firm protest, but the system remained silent.

Perhaps I should have achieved more Achievements first, saved up a mountain of Points, and then spun the gacha all at once.

Ding!

[Everything gets spoon-fed only through infancy.]

Oh, really.

You never once bothered to set the table in the first place.

I tried that tiny little act of defiance.

I knew it was meaningless. It wasn’t as though I’d ever lived a passionate, driven life to begin with.

It was simply that I had no other choice, when the butterfly effect of my actions kept getting slammed in front of my eyes in real time.

“Is anyone there?”

Just then, the little bell I’d hung on the door gave a proper jingle, and a familiar voice came in with it.

I looked up, and my eyes met Selly’s as she poked only her head in to peer inside. Instinctively, I put on a business smile and greeted her.

“It’s been a while. Come in.”

I rubbed at my forehead, still throbbing from how many times I’d banged it against the table, and noticed the square, wrapped canvas in Selly’s hands as she stepped inside.

“That…….”

“Yes. It’s that painting. You said you were going to buy it, but you never contacted me, so I came to force the sale.”

“What?”

“I’m joking. It’s a gift.”

“A gift? Why?”

“Does there have to be a reason?”

“It doesn’t have to, but that isn’t the kind of painting you should simply give away. You have to take something for it, even if it’s only a little.”

“……That’s too much praise. Thank you.”

“What? No, I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

Selly really did look as though she meant to force it on me if necessary. Ignoring all my protests, she set the painting on the table and pushed it toward me.

Selly’s painting was far beyond the level of a mere hobby. Even with my own much-abused eyes, I could tell it was too precious not to sell for a high price and earn her a name. It was not the sort of thing to be tossed off as a neighborhood gift……

“I already counted your solving my problem as the price, didn’t I?”

“That was unpaid from the beginning.”

“Then please think of it as a gift given out of goodwill.”

As though afraid I might keep refusing, Selly tore the wrapping paper off herself and began looking for a suitable place to display it in the office.

“Ah, this would be a good spot.”

She propped the painting up on the right shelf next to Pan’s potted plant and the ball-jointed doll modeled after the Ruler of the Sky, then smiled with visible satisfaction.

The shadow of that once-worn, deeply depressed person was nowhere to be seen now.

Seeing Selly as she was now made me unexpectedly solemn.

Because I had been so desperate only to clear the quest that I’d handled things rather roughly, and yet now—

I could no longer quite tell how long I intended to keep treating this world as nothing more than one of text and myself as only an observer.

“I’ll count this spot as the price instead. Did you know? The fixer’s office is famous for a few things lately.”

“Besides this one?”

I jerked my chin toward the little bird asleep on my shoulder.

Selly, quite seriously, started counting off absurd things on her fingers.

Apparently Pan’s plant, the Ruler of the Sky doll, and the little bird had become a bundled tourist package.

“Ahaha, I can’t possibly count useless things like that as payment.”

I meant that sincerely. I hated owing debts.

Since Selly clearly really wanted to leave the painting there, she thought for a long moment and then came up with a compromise.

“Then I have a fixer’s request I’d like to make. Please count that as payment.”