by Dojyomaru
“I see...”
It seemed to me that a castle reflected its country. Parnam Castle was built on the plains, and it was also the face of the country, so it was built to be showy. But Duke Chima’s castle was made for defense, so it was unrefined.
It was interesting how you could see the faces of the people who ruled a country like this.
Oh, but recently, Parnam Castle has been...
Big Brother had turned most of his own room into a sewing room, he’d made a restaurant to serve the dishes created by him and Poncho, and he’d even installed something called an “elevator” that used weights to take you up and down floors without using the stairs. It was pretty ridiculous.
Big Sister Liscia had told him off for that, with a frowny face.
Roroa had been cackling with laughter while watching the two of them, though...
If the shape of a country showed up in its castle, did that make the current Kingdom of Friedonia a ridiculous country?
Hmm... maybe it did.
There was the rhinosaurus preserve, the Van Shoujou Army, and even a black ryuu flying around so she could tell everyone the weather.
I was involved when it came to the silly things that involved animals, though.
I walked for a little bit while worrying about it, then came to a stop.
“...Huh?”
Erm... Where was this place again... exactly?
The unrefined way the castle looked meant there weren’t a lot of decorations, so all the hallways seemed the same. The same color of carpet, the same sort of doors, the same sort of candelabras... It all looked so samey, and I’d been lost in thought while I was walking, so I’d lost track of where I came from.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What do I do now?!”
My eyes darted around.
I remembered going up one flight of stairs... Ah, but where were those stairs now? Because the doors were evenly spaced, I couldn’t find the right one again, even if I looked around the area.
I took off walking at a brisk pace. I was hoping I could ask someone for directions, but wouldn’t you know it: there was no one around when I needed them.
Th-Th-This wasn’t good.
Ohh... I’m going to make Big Brother and everyone else worry...
I couldn’t imagine anything but their worried faces, and it made my ears droop. I just wanted to broaden my horizons so I could help them, but this was doing the opposite.
Ohh... Where am I, really...? Huh?
Reaching the end of the hallway, I realized it had gotten a little brighter.
It seemed to be a door leading outside, and the light of the setting sun was streaming in. If I went out there, someone might find me. Thinking that, I went outside.
Fwah?!
I squinted in the blowing wind.
Looking up, the sky was high above, and looking down, there were cobblestones. It seemed these were the castle’s walls.
Oh, I get it... I did go up a set of stairs, didn’t I?
This might be outside, but it couldn’t be ground level. It seemed that, because it wasn’t very big, Duke Chima’s castle was attached to the castle walls surrounding it.
When I walked along the edge of the walls, I saw something incredible.
Looking north from this castle, which was built backing onto a mountain, I could see the town of Wedan below, and outside the walls surrounding it, I could clearly see the forces of the Union of Eastern Nations fighting monsters. I remembered something Mr. Hakuya had said in history class.
“There are exceptions to this, but taking the high ground will usually give an advantage to your allies. That’s because being able to carefully watch what the enemy is doing means you can prepare countermeasures. Looking at history, there are many examples where the side that took the high ground won.”
I thought that was what he’d said, anyway.
By shutting himself up in this castle, observing the enemy as he fought back, and waiting for reinforcements, the Duchy of Chima had never fallen. This was a new discovery.
Then I noticed someone sitting on the edge of the wall.
“Huh?” I said, surprised.
From the look of it, it was a boy about my age.
The thin boy with chestnut brown hair kept looking up and down. When I approached to see what he was doing, it turned out he was drawing something.
There was a piece of paper spread across the board hanging from his neck, and he kept drawing something on it with charcoal, raising his head, looking through the telescope lying by his side, and then drawing something again, repeating the process over and over again. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn’t even notice me approaching.
“Um, what are you doing...?”
“Uwah?!” The boy was so startled that he jumped up.
He shoved on the glasses he’d left beside the telescope, and stared hard at me.
“Who are you?”
“Oh! Sorry to surprise you. My name is Tomoe.”
“I’m... Ichiha.”
Ichiha? He looked about my height, maybe a little shorter. He had a gentle face and thin arms and legs, so I thought he looked a bit like a girl. Maybe it was the glasses, but he looked like he was good at studying.
“Are you from this country, Ichiha?” I asked.
“Uh, yes... Um, how old are you, Tomoe?”
“Me? I’m eleven this year.”
“I’m ten. So you don’t need to be so polite to me...”
Huh. He was a year younger than me. It would feel awkward having an older girl be super formal with him.
“Okay, I’ll talk normally, then,” I said. “You can talk to me however you want, too, Ichiha.”
“Okay... Tomoe.”
“So, what were you doing here, Ichiha? It looked like you were drawing something...”
“Ah!”
When I tried to peak at his drawing board, Ichiha rushed to hide it.
“Ah!” Maybe I was being a bit too rude. “I’m sorry. You’re embarrassed to have people look at your work, right?”
“Ah...! Um... I don’t want to show you it, or maybe I should say it’s better if you don’t see it...”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
If he was going to make a big deal of it like that, I just wanted to see it more.
I stared Ichiha in the eye, making him aware of that fact. “I want to see it.” I wagged my tail, showing off how interested I was.
While I kept staring at him that way, Ichiha folded, and reluctantly held his drawing board out to me. “Let me just say... It’s nothing fun to look at, okay?”
“Eheheh.” I took the drawing board and looked at the paper on it. “Huh? This is...”
Seeing what was drawn there, I cocked my head to the side.
It was drawn far better than I’d have expected from a ten-year-old, but what really caught me was the model. There was a mysterious creature drawn there.
With quick strokes of charcoal, he’d drawn a realistic image of a two-headed dog with bat-like wings.
Come to think of it, Ichiha had been looking through a telescope as he drew this. What that telescope had been pointed toward was... the battlefield.
“Is this a drawing of a monster?” I asked.
“...Yeah.”
There were several layers of drawings on the board, and flipping through them, I found there were drawings of a bunch of different monsters. Each of them was well done, and captured what made the creature unique, but... what was it?
I hadn’t felt anything in particular just looking at one of them, but with several of his drawings in front of me, it felt like there was a sort of special focus here. It wasn’t like he’d just drawn them as a hobby.
“Wait, Ichiha... Do you only draw monsters?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Ichiha’s voice sounded very dry. His eyes quivered with—how shall I put this?—a sort of lonely sadness in them.
While I was still unable to find a way to talk to him, Ichiha let out a self-mocking laugh.
“It’s creepy, isn’t it? That I’m here just drawing pictures of monsters.”
“Um, that’s not really...”
“No need to force yourself. I know well enough what an oddball I am. Father and my brothers and sisters don’t have to tell me, either.”
I swallowed.
When he said that, his loneliness apparent, I was reminded of myself in the past.
Before being discovered by Big Brother Souma, I’d thought I was worthless. As refugees, we had lost our home, and I’d spent every day thinking, I must be such a heavy burden on Mother.
That’s why I...
Slap!
I grabbed Ichiha by both cheeks, and stared right into his surprised eyes.
“Bweh! What are you doing?!” he shouted.
“I think they’re good drawings. I don’t really know much about drawing, but I think you’ve captured the monsters so well that even I can understand what makes them special.”
“Y-You don’t need to lie to make me feel better...” Ichiha’s words were slurred by me pressing on his cheeks.
“I’m not just complimenting you! You have a reason why you draw nothing but monsters, don’t you? I’m sure my big brother would be interested in you!”
Ichiha’s eyes... They felt similar to Big Brother Souma’s, or Mr. Hakuya’s. They were the eyes of someone with their vision focused on something different from everyone else.
It made me want to introduce him to my big brother and teacher even more. Because I felt like they could find the value in this boy that I couldn’t.
I removed my hands from Ichiha’s cheeks, and pulled him by the arm.
“W-Wait, why are you pulling?!” he shouted.
“Ichiha, I want you to meet my big brother. I want you to show him those drawings. If you do... I feel like something is going to change.”
“What do you mean, ‘something’?”
“Something!”
I walked off while pulling Ichiha by the hand... and then quickly came to a halt.
“Wh-What’s wrong?” Ichiha dubiously asked me when I suddenly stopped.
“...Now that I think of it, I was lost,” I admitted. “I was told to stay in our room while Big Brother was talking to Duke Chima, but...”
“Hahhh...” Ichiha sighed and scratched his head.
Oh! That gesture! That felt a little like Big Brother, too.
Ichiha stepped out in front of me, and this time he led me by the hand. “If you’re one of Father’s guests, it should be the reception room, I guess. I’ll show you the way.”
“Really?! Thanks, Ichiha!”
When I hugged him to show my thanks, Ichiha turned a bright shade of red.
“Wait, huh?” I added. “Did you just say ‘Father’...?”
“I’m Ichiha Chima.”
While I stared at him blankly, Ichiha explained with clear self-contempt, “I’m the oddball... who’s the youngest of the eight Chima siblings.”
Ichiha was taking me back to where Big Brother and the others were, through one hallway after another, when suddenly he came to a stop.
“Ah!”
“Ichiha?”
I looked ahead of us, wondering what was up, and I saw three large men coming our way. They were all so muscular that you could see it through their clothes, so it was clear they had to be soldiers.
What concerned me was that they all looked injured.
One had a head wound, with bandages wrapped around his forehead, while another seemed to have a broken arm, as it was wrapped up and hanging from his neck. The last of them may have had a broken leg, as he was walking on crutches.
The soldiers noticed us, too.
“Huh? What’re some brats doing in a place like this?” the one with the forehead injury said, sounding like he was in a bad mood.
Then, looking down at us from above, he started staring.
“U-Um...” I said nervously.
There was a scary man looking down at us, and he seemed to be in a bad mood, so my legs started to tremble.
These days, I only had nice people like Big Brother Souma, Mr. Hakuya, and all the others around me. Even before that, at the refugee camp, the refugees had all worked together to survive.
That was why this was the first time I’d ever had someone glare at me with such open hatred before. It was really scary. I wanted to run away, but my legs wouldn’t move.
While I was unable to say anything out of fear, the man on crutches started eyeing me. “Is she a beastman from the north? She’s dressed nice, but... I’ll bet she’s one of them refugees.”
“Tch! What an eyesore. Some refugee brat shouldn’t be wandering around the castle.” The man with his arm in a sling spat those words at me with a cold glare. “We were out there fighting, and we got hurt this bad, while some refugee gets to sit comfy back in the castle? It ain’t right!”
“Hey, hey, no need to get worked up at some kid...” said the other soldier.
“Shut up! We oughta throw her off the castle gate and use her as bait for the monsters.” With that, the man with his arm in a sling reached for me with his good arm.
“N-No...!” I squealed.
“Hold on!” In order to defend me as I covered my ears in terror, Ichiha stepped forward. “This girl is a guest of Father’s! Stop disrespecting our guest! Besides, it’s not her fault that you got hurt, is it?!”
“What was that, you brat?!”
With the men intimidating him, Ichiha’s arms and legs seemed to be trembling, but he still desperately hung in there and stared them down. “I’ll bet you got hurt trying to show off to my sister, right? And now, since you can’t distinguish yourselves anymore because of your injuries, you’re taking out your frustrations over losing the competition for her on this kid!”
“You little...! Watch your mouth!” The soldier with his arm in a sling grabbed Ichiha by the collar with his good hand.
Because he was only ten, and small on top of that, that was enough to lift Ichiha into the air. Ichiha groaned in pain.
I came back to my senses and shouted, “S-Stop it!”
“Hey, that’s got to be overdoing it,” one of the other soldiers objected.
“Think what’ll happen if we cause a commotion here,” the third one agreed. “It’ll hurt our position in the United Forces.”
“...Tch.”
With the other two telling him off, the man with his arm in a sling grudgingly let go of Ichiha.
Set free, and with his hands on the ground, Ichiha coughed loudly.
I immediately ran to his side. “Are you okay?! I’m sorry you went through that for me...”
Coughing, Ichiha said, “I-It’s not your fault, Tomoe. I stuck my neck out on my own.” Ichiha smiled at me, though it was a bit weakly. “Besides, if I abandoned you here, my sister would get mad. She just barely told me to get involved with other people, after all.”
“Ichiha...”
“Wait, this kid, he’s the youngest brother of the House of Chima, isn’t he?” the man on crutches said in alarm, looking at Ichiha.
When he heard that, the man with his arm in a sling let out a snorting laugh. “What, the inferior youngest brother? They say all his brothers and sisters are talented, but this runt’s got no gift whatsoever, right?”
“Yeah, I hear that’s why he’s not part of the reward this time,” the man with bandages around his forehead said, nodding.
As the three men laughed mockingly at him, Ichiha hung his head and clenched his fists as he stood there and took it. He must have been frustrated at the humiliation, but he was doing everything he could to suppress his anger.
He probably thought I’d be in danger if things got any more out of hand.
Maybe he was thinking that if it was just him being mocked, that was fine. So long as they didn’t turn their scorn on me.
“Ha ha ha! It must be hard on Duke Chima, having a worthless son,” one of the soldiers mocked.
“He’s got a girlish face,
too. It’s too bad... I bet there’d have at least been someone willing to take him if he were a real woman.”
“Guh...” Gritting his teeth, Ichiha endured the verbal abuse.
That’s enough! You don’t have to put yourself through this for me! I thought, and I was about to step forward, when... it happened.
“...Do you have some business with my little sister?”
It was a quiet voice, but clearly filled with anger, and when I looked up, Big Brother Souma, Aisha, and Mutsumi Chima, the woman we had met in the courtyard, were on the other side of the three soldiers.
Aisha and Mutsumi both had angry faces, and while Big Brother Souma was pretending to be calm, his eyes were not smiling.
The three men turned toward the newcomers, and tried to complain.
“Whaaat? Are you this refugee’s—bwuh—!”
Before the man with his arm in a sling could get the rest of his words out, Aisha closed in and seized his face in her right hand. I thought I heard an unpleasant squishing sound.
“...Sire,” Aisha said coolly. “May I?”
“You have my permission.”
It was a short, but disquieting exchange.
Then Aisha, incredibly, proceeded to lift the man up with one hand.
The strength to lift up a grown man was incredible on its own, but that she had the grip to not let go of his face while doing so was astounding.
The man with that grip applied to his face had to be in an unimaginable amount of pain.
He flailed his arms, struggling.
Aisha looked at the man and asked, “How does it feel to be lifted up? You don’t like it? Did your parents never teach you not to do things to others you wouldn’t want done to yourself?”
Ah! But... when the man had lifted Ichiha up, he’d done it by the front of his shirt, not by putting an iron claw on his face...
The remaining two men got angry.
“What?! Who is this dark elf?!”
“Why, you...! Let him go!”
They reached for the hilts of the swords at their waist, trying to draw their weapons.