Chapter 22

Chapter 22. "The Dark Elf, the Dwarf, and a Single Rose." 02

"What are you staring at like that?"

"......"

After hearing Exel's words, Frid timidly slipped behind Irisa's back and hid himself there. Peeking only his head out from behind her thigh, he looked up at Exel and muttered something quietly in Elvish.

At that, Irisa smiled faintly and soothed Frid, who was hiding himself against her legs, as she said,

"It may be because of your original form."

"Did they not say that elves have eyes that see the truth?"

Exel spoke as he pulled up the hood of the large cloak covering his body and drew it over his head. Watching him, Rene answered his question.

"The eyes that see the truth only manifest their ability after an elf has passed the coming-of-age ceremony. Because elf children are treasured so greatly, they are not taught any particular skills before that ceremony."

"But once they have gone through the coming-of-age ceremony, the story changes. From that moment on, they are taught everything they need in order to live as a full adult. By their own parents."

Irisa added a little more to Rene's explanation, and Exel, who had been quietly looking down at Frid with his hood drawn over his head, grinned and said,

"Siruna? Sirunadis runi, diba kanit. Derilkid iira rai dritmi."

At his words, Frid gave a small nod, and beside them Irisa and Rene watched with faint smiles.

I looked at them for a moment, then turned my head to the side. There, sitting quietly in a chair and staring out the window, was Luna.

It seemed that the new clothes Rene had brought did not fit her very well, because while keeping her gaze fixed on the window, she kept tugging at the area around her neck with one hand, or pulling down at the legs of her trousers.

Then our eyes met, and immediately a cold remark flew at me like the north wind itself.

"What are you looking at? Look at your wife instead. She is staring at you from right beside you."

Fed up with Luna's tone, I turned my head and looked at Rene. Standing beside me, Rene glanced back and forth between Luna and me, then smiled and said,

"This may be a little difficult."

"Time will solve it."

"Will it?"

"Yes. When I think about your past and mine, and our present as well, I feel Luna may end up much the same."

At my words, Luna tilted her head, while Rene beamed, clung tightly to my arm, brought her lips close to my ear, and whispered softly,

"Do you still remember what I was like at first?"

At her question, I smiled and nodded.

"Your smiling face, your crying face, your angry face, your flustered face, your sad face, your troubled face, and the way you were when I first met you. I remember them all. I could never forget them."

She pressed her lips together and smiled with her eyes, and after fixing that expression in my memory, I smiled back at her. Just then, from the side, I heard the voices of Exel, whose face was wrapped in bandages, and Jonathan talking.

"To say such things so boldly when there are this many eyes watching. I suppose you truly have no shame."

"I agree. I wonder when he will ever grow up."

I turned and glared at the two of them, but Exel and Jonathan immediately looked away and ignored my stare. Rene, still clinging to my arm, merely gave them a faint smile and said nothing.

Irisa, meanwhile, stood there holding Frid's hand and smiling warmly at us, but Luna, who had been sitting at the table beside her, cast us a chilly glance, rose from her seat, and said,

"Enough joking around. When are we leaving? I do not care where we go, but I want to leave this damned human city as soon as possible."

I found myself wanting to correct her manner of speaking a little. But I decided to leave it at that, no more than a thought. Because she was an elf.

Dark elves, perhaps, I did not know, but ordinary elves, as far as I knew, tended to dislike it when someone who was not family said this or that about the way they behaved.
And after hearing Luna's words, Exel, who had been shaking his head from side to side, said,

"Very well. If everyone is ready, let us go."

At that, Luna's face eased a little, and she immediately followed behind Exel. After her, Irisa and Frid went out hand in hand.

I rose from my seat and held out a small gem, taken from my shirt pocket, to Jonathan, who was getting up to see us off.

"This is for the inn, and everything else."

"Always gems, huh. We are grateful, of course, even if you never bother taking change, but anyway, Rene noona? Do you want us to send the baggage in the room over there the same way as last time?"

At Jonathan's words, Rene smiled brightly, slipped a hand to her neck, removed her necklace, placed it in his hand, and said,

"I will be counting on you again this time."

"Yes. I will send it at the usual hour, so wait for it."

"All right. Then I will see you next time."

"Safe travels, Mister Han. Rene noona. Let us meet again in half a year."

Rene and I said our farewells to Jonathan and stepped outside the inn. Then, among the others who had already come out first, Exel tilted his head and said,

"Hm? Miss Tarsis, come to think of it, what will you do about your luggage?"

At his question, Rene wrapped herself around my arm and smiled brightly, and I too smiled at the masked man, who had tilted his head with a curious expression.

And so we walked along the road, which had grown busy as evening drew near, all the way to the outer wall.

During that time, the ladies, including Exel and Rene, drew no small amount of attention because of their large builds and the hoods they all wore over their heads.

Luna in particular kept frowning at the people who pointed at her and muttered things, and more than once she quietly raised a hand as if to cast magic at them, so Rene and I had to work rather hard to stop her.

In the end, however, we passed through the inspection at the outer wall and were able to enter the Forsaken Forest, where each of us had a place to call home.

After going a certain distance into the forest, we decided to stop and rest for a while. Exel, seated on a large rock and moving a hand toward the bandages wrapped around his face, looked around and said,

"It is quiet."

"That is because someone like you is here. What monster would charge at a pervert?"

As Luna looked around the forest, she sneered at Exel, who was undoing the bandages wrapped around his face, and the two of them began bickering with sly expressions.

"A child? I am thirteen now. I am not a child."

"If one calls a child a child, what of it? And thirteen, did you say? I am sorry, but how old do you think I am, this man you keep calling a pervert? I have seen more full moons rise and fall than you."

"So what if you are older? Who was it that beat those soldiers down while practically drooling? No matter how I look at it, your eyes back then were the eyes of a pervert."

At that, the fingers Exel was using to loosen his bandages twitched slightly, then slowly began moving again. Looking down at Luna, who did not even come up to his waist, he went on,

"When did I ever drool while beating them? I was merely enjoying myself. It was so absurd, and so amusing, that powerless humans dared capture and trade elves, who are far superior to them, and then, as if that were not enough, drew their weapons on us when we sought to grant those elves their freedom. So I played with them a little. If the way I looked then seemed perverse to your eyes, fine, I will admit it. But so what? You little elf with the tiny chest."

That was the finishing blow. The moment she heard him say this and that about how small her chest was, Luna's calm face instantly flushed bright red.

She shut her mouth tight and jerked her head away, and Exel, wearing the look of a man soaked in victory, turned toward the place where Rene, Irisa, and I were sitting and threw both hands into the air.

"I win."

"...Congratulations."

Imitating the way nobles clap, I said that, and Luna, standing beside Exel, had turned her back on both him and us, her whole body trembling. Was she holding back her fury? I looked at her small back and smiled faintly, then turned my gaze around once more.

A dense forest. Huge trees stood all around us, looming over us as though boasting of their height, and thick vines had climbed up the nearby trunks and hung here and there.

Since it was autumn, fallen leaves littered the ground all around us, and whenever the wind blew, they scattered and swirled this way and that.

It was a beautiful sight.

If only this were not the Forsaken Forest, a place from which, once entered, one could never emerge again.

I lifted my head and looked up at the sky. It was already nearing evening, and darkness came early in the forest. Yet the strange thing was that the monsters in this forest were not coming anywhere near our group.

We had encountered monsters several times on the way here, but not once had they attacked us. The troop of man-eating monkeys we had met just a while ago had been the same.

They were among the most troublesome creatures in this area. They looked like monkeys, but they traveled in groups, attacking their prey and devouring it.

Yet when they suddenly appeared and looked at us for a moment, they immediately fled without even looking back.

I looked at Rene, who was sitting beside me, pouring water from a canteen and handing a cup to Frid, who was leaning against Irisa, and said,

"The monsters are not coming near us. It is a good thing, but I cannot help wondering about it. Do you have any idea why?"

After handing the cup to Frid, Rene closed the canteen and pointed with her slender finger at Luna, who was standing with her back to us.

"It is thanks to Luna. Monsters will attack ordinary elves, but they will never attack a dark elf. I do not know why. And there is one more reason as well..."

Ho. So we had not been attacked because of Luna? But there was another reason too?

When I looked at Rene with curiosity, she smiled at me and pointed to Exel, who was standing beside Luna with his arms folded and glancing around the area.

"They saw Exel and fled in terror. That troop of monkeys from earlier was one such case. Exel, could you explain it?"

Exel, who had turned his eyes and one ear toward us while keeping his head angled toward the forest, shrugged at Rene's words and said,

"So you knew?"

Rene raised her hand and pointed at Irisa, who was sitting beside us.

"I heard it from Irisa."

Exel turned to look at Irisa, and she answered him with a faint smile. At that, he scratched the fur at the back of his neck a little and said,

"Yes. That is correct. It is because of me. Some of them still remember me."

"Remember you?"

At my question, Luna too turned around and looked up at him, and Exel gave a broad shrug.

"When I first came here, they kept attacking me. I got angry and rampaged through the forest. There are probably some among them who still remember the way I looked back then."

We all nodded at his explanation. So, despite appearances, he was the sort who solved problems in a very blunt way.

He could have simply chased off whatever was nearby, yet he had rampaged through the entire forest?

As I was thinking that, Rene looked at Irisa, who was seated beside her, and said,

"We only need to go a little farther now. Ah, and we have a bath at our house as well. It might be nice for you to enjoy a proper wash for the first time in a while."

At those words, Irisa got to her feet with a bright expression, then helped Frid beside her stand and said,

"Let us hurry."

And Luna too, who had been angry after losing her argument with Exel, suddenly made her way toward us with shining eyes.

When Exel saw that, he turned his head away and let out a soft laugh. Rene and I looked at each other and smiled brightly, then rose to continue on our way.

So we set out again in the same formation as when we had entered the forest.

Rene and I took the lead, followed by Irisa and Frid, and then Exel and Luna behind them.

We were traveling on foot, yes, but more than half our group consisted of elves, plus there was a werewolf, and a human man capable of keeping pace with elves in a race. So we were able to move at an incredible speed. The only problem, if there was one, was that two of the four elves were children. Now and then, Frid failed to keep up and stumbled.

And this time, it happened again.

Thud~!

"Frid, are you all right?"

If this had been the ordinary human way, Irisa would probably have run straight to Frid, scooped him up, fussed over him, and checked whether he was hurt anywhere. But the elven way was different. Irisa walked over to the fallen Frid, quietly crouched in front of him, and held out her hand.

"Here, take your mother's hand and stand up. Frid, you can stand on your own, can you not?"

"Yes. ...Aaah~"

Frid took Irisa's hand and slowly rose from where he sat, but suddenly he clenched his teeth and dropped back down to the ground. At once Irisa's eyes softened with concern.

"Your leg. Is it hurt?"

"...Mm."

Frid nodded with a frown, clutching his ankle as he knelt there. Then, from behind, Luna, who had been silently watching the back of Frid's head, folded her arms and muttered,

"Oh dear, now that you are hurt, I suppose your mother will have to carry you. Some people really have it easy."

Rene and I turned to look at Luna behind us. Luna averted her gaze slightly to the side, then imitated the sort of thing Exel was good at doing at times like this, namely a shrug of the shoulders, and we both gave a somewhat bitter smile.

Irisa, however, who had heard those words, merely kept her faint smile and continued to hold out her hand to her son. Yet Frid, instead of taking it, had turned to look at Luna. Luna cast him a sideways glance, placed a hand on her hip, and said again,

"The kind of person I hate most is one who refuses to walk on his own legs and only wants to walk on someone else's."

At that, Frid turned his head back and looked at Irisa, who was crouched before him with her hand extended. No matter what Luna said, Irisa simply held out her hand to her son with a calm smile on her face.

"Frid? Take your mother's hand. We need to go home, do we not?"

Frid stared quietly at Irisa's white hand as it slowly came toward him. Then he lifted the hand that had been clutching his ankle and pushed hers aside.

Irisa widened her eyes in surprise, held her rejected hand, and stared blankly at Frid. Meanwhile, Frid began straining to rise on his own.

"Ugh... ngh!"

He nearly fell several times, but grinding his teeth, he somehow managed to stand. Beside him, Irisa let out a small sigh. Then, once he was on his feet, Frid turned his head slightly back, gave a crooked grin, and spoke in halting words.

"I-I will walk... on my own legs now. Not on... not on someone else's. Never... never again will I lose... um... what is precious to me... and cry."

"Yes. Well done."

Luna threw out those cool words, then strode past them and went ahead first.

Irisa quietly watched her son standing on his own feet. Then she turned her head and looked at Luna's back as the dark elf walked ahead of us, turned back again, smiled faintly, and began unwrapping the cloth from around her own head so she could bind Frid's ankle.

"My beloved child, it makes me proud to hear you say that you wish to stand on your own feet without borrowing another's hand. But that is not our way. So you must also learn the heart to gratefully take the hand another offers you at times like these. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mother."

Frid nodded with a bright smile, and Irisa, meeting his gaze, smiled warmly as she placed a hand on his head.

Then she rose, began walking slowly forward once more, and Frid, clutching his mother's hand tightly, limped after her.

Exel, who had been quietly watching them with us, made an amused face and said,

"Rather than hauling the child up, she merely offers him a hand and hopes he will stand by taking it himself. This... could it perhaps be..."

Exel turned his head slightly and looked at Rene. Without even turning around, Rene gave a light laugh and said,

"Yes. That is right. From the time we are small, our parents educate us that way. They do not do everything for us.
Instead, they offer only small bits of help that allow us to solve things little by little ourselves. By learning to overcome things with such small help from childhood onward, one grows into an adult capable of solving problems alone, even without someone else stepping in to help."

After hearing her explanation, I nodded. So that was it. That was what it was. That was the difference between humans and elves.

Suddenly I felt extremely pleased.

At a moment like this, I would have liked to kiss Rene or something, but I could not do that with Exel here, could I?

After listening to Rene, Exel nodded and said,

"Hmm, is that so? They are educated from childhood so that they may grow into fully formed adults. I understand. In any case, we should get moving as well. The people ahead do not know where your house is, after all."

We nodded and began walking after Luna, Irisa, and the others ahead of us. The sky was gradually darkening, and with the wind blowing rather coldly, it seemed tonight would be quite chilly.

We really need to reach home before evening falls.