Chapter 90
“The child’s will is important, too.”
One couldn’t force a child with a vast vessel to fit into a tiny dish.
“…Yes. I understand.”
It was immediately after this that Knox, face set in a grim expression, sought out Aisha’s bedroom.
And now.
Having arrived at the office under Knox’s guidance—
“I’m going! I’m going, I’m going!”
Hop, hop, hop.
After hearing the general gist of the situation, I was so excited that I started bouncing around Father like a rabbit.
“…….”
Calyps looked absolutely dazed as he watched me.
Regardless of his state, I was thrilled.
‘Yahoo! I finally have something to do!’
My body had been itching for some action anyway, so this was perfect timing!
Swish. Whoosh.
With a determined glint in my eyes, I hopped around, showing off my ‘Leaping Frog’ martial arts style.
“I don’t know who the opponent is, but I’ll take this chance to crush them and take King Arjen down a peg…”
“Don’t you think you might be the one getting crushed?”
It was then. A long, straight finger flicked my nose.
Father, who had knelt down at some point, was looking at me with a disapproving expression.
“King Arjen will ignore and mock you just for entering a duel without the Ice Ability. Aren’t you worried about that?”
Calyps asked with a face full of concern.
“Can’t I just win without the ability?”
I asked back, sounding remarkably confident.
Calyps let out a sigh as if he had expected that answer before continuing.
“No matter how talented you are, the child the King chose for the duel will also be highly skilled. If you let your guard down, you could get hurt.”
Oh.
I, who had been triumphantly throwing punches into the air, blinked like a startled rabbit at his words.
“Am I not allowed to lose?”
Even if it was a duel, wasn’t it just a ceremonial event anyway?
Did it really matter whether I won or lost?
“It doesn’t matter if you lose. Of course it doesn’t, but if you happen to get hurt…”
Muttering in a low voice, Father trailed off and eventually dropped his head.
“No. Right. A child is supposed to grow up getting a few scrapes…”
He sounded like he was trying to change his tune.
“…But isn’t that wrong?”
“Huh?”
With his head still bowed, he slowly lifted his gaze to look at me.
In that moment, I saw it. His usually calm eyes had sharpened into a fierce, triangular glare.
“Do you want to get hurt? Why are you so anxious to fight?”
Excuse me?
Wait, why the sudden outburst…?
“Daughter. Take my hand.”
“Pardon?”
I was staring at him in bewilderment.
“Take my hand. There’s somewhere we need to go.”
Father stood up with a grim expression and abruptly held out his hand.
Gulp.
My father… he was never exactly the affectionate type, but had the stress finally broken his personality?
I shot a nervous glance at Knox, but he merely shrugged as if he knew nothing and didn’t intervene.
In the end, I had no choice.
As soon as I took his hand, Calyps led me out of the office and began taking me somewhere.
Just like that, we descended from the third floor to the first.
‘Are we going outside the castle?’
I wondered, but then—
Calyps walked to the end of the hallway and opened an old door. With a creak, a staircase leading down to the basement appeared.
The place felt like an entrance to a completely different world.
As I took my first steps, I could have sworn I was walking on stone floors, but soon a chill so cold it made my bones ache began to seep through the soles of my boots.
From that point on, Dad picked me up and carried me down the stairs.
The deeper we went, the more a biting wind blew, enough to make the fine hairs on my skin stand up. My hair, which had been framing my cheeks, fluttered lightly in the draft.
Finally, we arrived.
“…Dad?”
“Since your body hasn’t adapted to the cold yet, the chances of failure are high, but we have to try.”
Before us was a massive, dome-shaped Ice Cave.
There was no ceiling, no horizon.
Just a shimmering feast of ice crystals.
I stood there with my mouth agape at the surreal sight, and then something cold touched my lower lip.
It was a shard of snow floating in the air.
“Normally, you should have had an adaptation period here right after you were born.”
Calyps, surveying the surroundings, suddenly asked me.
“Can you endure it?”
“Endure what?”
“Training for the Ice Ability. If you can hold out for a week, it’s not entirely impossible.”
“…Huh?”
I turned my head to stare at Calyps, wondering if I’d misheard him.
But seeing the look on my father’s face—as if he wanted to grab me and run out of there this very second—I realized I hadn’t heard wrong.
And so, my ability training began.
At first, I thought it was fine.
When the news broke that I was starting adaptation training, May dressed me in fur clothes and a hat, and Dad stuffed my mouth with sandwiches, saying I needed a full stomach.
And Lucas, upon hearing the news, came running to put leather gloves on my hands.
‘Dandelion! If it gets too hard, call for me. I’ll stay with you!’
Kyle, who had followed Lucas, transformed into a cat and tried to stick by my side.
‘Mew!’
Of course, he was escorted out by the scruff of his neck by Dad.
And Guide, who followed behind them—
‘L-L-Lady. You’re going to stay here for a w-week? You’ll d-definitely succeed.’
He was cheering me on, but he looked uneasy.
It wasn’t his usual timidness.
Even as he spoke to me, Guide kept glancing around like someone hiding something.
As if he were looking for something.
It was a bit strange, but whatever.
The good thing was that the Ice Cave wasn’t as cold as I had expected.
It looked like a cave straight out of Frozen, so I actually liked it. It felt like I’d stepped into a novel, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside—
“N-now, I’m… s-shivering.”
I take back the ‘not cold’ part.
I take it back after only ten minutes.
“Eek.”
I was shivering on an ice chair when my fading consciousness caused me to wobble and tumble over.
The shock snapped me awake. The moment my skin touched the frozen surface, a chill seeped into my very marrow.
The cave, created by the Ice Ability, hadn’t felt overwhelmingly cold at first, but without me realizing it, the frigid air had been slowly crawling into my bones.
Now, my entire body felt like a block of ice.
“What do I do? Only ten minutes have passed. I have to stay here for a week?”
I contemplated.
Should I be the bear that ate only garlic and mugwort for a hundred days to become human? Or should I be the tiger that ran away halfway through and lived as a beast?
Bear or tiger.
…Tigers are really strong, so that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
Slap!
“Get a grip, Aisha!”
I only managed to snap out of it after slapping my own cheeks.
I almost gave up on the Ice Ability.
“Anyway, I have to be here alone for a week? It’s cold, but I wonder if I can even stand the boredom.”
Another problem was how to spend a whole week here by myself.
I knew that usually, adaptation training in the Ice Cave was done when one was a newborn in need of care, so they would enter the cave with a nanny.
Of course, that didn’t mean the nanny would gain the Ice Ability. The nanny wasn’t of the Crost bloodline.
Anyway, my point was that newborns don’t know what boredom is.
But I’m a five-year-old tainted by the secular world, and I’m dying to do something.
“One, two.”
But all I could do was count the shards of snow floating in the air.
It was while I was staring blankly into space.
“Three, four, fiv…”
Just as I muttered ‘five.’
“……?”
I realized that a shard of snow fallen on the floor right next to me was a bit too large for a shard.
It was a white lump so conspicuous I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it until now.
And unlike the usual snow shards shaped like ice crystals…
It was fluffy.
‘Just like Kyle in his cat form….’
No way.
A hypothesis suddenly occurred to me, and I froze, turning pale.
I cautiously voiced the possibility that had come to mind.
“…Kyle?”
I thought he had been dragged away quietly, but did he sneak in?
‘If he turns into a cat, he’s just a tiny kitten! He won’t be able to stand this!’
Worried, I softly called Kyle’s name, but the white bundle of fur remained still.
At that sight, the image of Kyle dying in Ahili’s Circus flashed through my mind.
“Kyle!”
I hurriedly stood up to pick up the bundle of fluff.
But suddenly, the fluff ball shuddered, vanished from before my eyes, and—
“Agh!”
Something slammed into my face.
My vision was suddenly blocked, followed by the sensation of a soft, warm belly.
‘A belly?’
This texture. I felt like I had experienced this once before…?