Chapter 91
At that same time.
‘Oh, oh no… what do I do… I wanted to tell Lady Aisha… but the t-timing….’
Guide, who had somehow ended up accompanying the Crost party to the Ice Cave, was shaking like a leaf.
Initially, when they suggested going to see Aisha together, he felt a glimmer of hope. He thought he’d be able to pull her aside and whisper that he thought he’d lost Bibi.
But contrary to his expectations, Calips and Lucas never let the princess go, and the bizarre creature that suddenly transformed into a cat hissed and scratched, refusing to leave her arms.
Conclusion: Guide had to find Bibi on his own.
The problem was…
“Hey. You want to come eat cake with us?”
“The cake is good. It’s just that for every bite I take, Brother Lucas takes three.”
“Kyle, butt out! Who said I wanted to eat with you?”
Lucas and the cat-human were now refusing to let him go.
“U-um, well…”
“Why? You don’t want to? The cake is really delicious.”
When the terrified Guide began to stutter, Lucas draped an arm around his shoulder. From Lucas’s perspective, it was a friendly gesture meant to make him feel less like a stranger, but…
‘S-scary!’
To Guide, the arm of the young lord of Crost—a man higher than the heavens—felt as heavy as lead.
‘What happens if I say no? Will I be sent straight to the dungeon?’
Guide’s body trembled violently.
He couldn’t possibly say no to the young lord in the first place, but if he kept stalling, Bibi would surely be discovered by someone in the meantime.
Of course, the people of the Duke’s Castle were vaguely aware of Bibi’s existence. However, how many people here would be okay with a monster lunging at their face as a way of saying hello?
‘What if Bibi pounces on someone else?’
If she pounces, Bibi and I will be sent… to the End of the World…
“No!”
Lucas and Kyle stopped in their tracks at the sudden, shrill scream.
“…W-what?”
Startled, Lucas carefully pulled his arm away. His eyes widened when he saw Guide, who was now streaming tears.
“Brother Lucas made him cry. Someone find Brother Lucas’s personality, quick.”
“Shut your mouth!”
As Lucas’s face turned red at Kyle’s mockery—
‘I-I upset Lord Lucas….’
At the thought that he had offended a great and noble aristocrat, Guide’s legs finally gave out.
And then—
“Waaaaah!”
He burst into a fountain of tears.
I want to see the butcher! I want to see Bibi!
“Uwaaaaaah!”
“Why, why are you crying? Are you really crying because I’m scary?”
“Five demerit points for Brother Lucas.”
“Kyle, I told you to shut up!”
“I-I’m going to go to the dungeon now! No, I’ll be abandoned at the End of the World!”
Unlike Aisha, this poor boy was only on his first life. To a mere five-year-old, facing an angry Lucas was the greatest trial of his life.
In the end, Guide confessed everything.
“I-I lost Bibi! There’s a monster wandering around the Duke’s Castle!”
At the sudden confession, Lucas and Kyle looked at each other in shock.
‘He lost a monster?’
‘100 demerit points for him.’
Conversing through their eyes, Lucas was the first to take charge of the situation.
“Hey. Stop crying and tell me, what did you lose? You lost a monster?”
“Hic, B-Bibi is v-very active… so she n-needed a walk, but…”
“You take a monster for a walk…?”
Lucas scratched the back of his neck with a dubious expression.
He already knew that a trainable monster had come to the Duke’s Castle and that the boy he’d just met, Guide, was the child from the rumors.
But he actually took it for walks.
Setting aside how fascinating that was, there was a more important matter. They had to find the monster before trouble started.
“What does it look like?”
Fortunately, if Lucas had a strength, it was that as the heir to Crost, he became calm quickly in serious situations.
At the calm question that didn’t sound as angry as he expected, Guide finally wiped his tears with the back of his hand.
“S-s-she’s white and long. She has f-fuzz too….”
White, long, and fuzzy.
“Hmm.”
Lucas muttered, lost in thought.
“What even is that?”
Even the heir of the great Crost family couldn’t imagine a monster’s appearance based on such a description. However, Lucas had a secret weapon.
“Do you have anything that monster used? Something that might have its scent on it.”
“A-an object?”
Stuttering his reply, Guide sniffled and rummaged through his pockets.
“Oh. L-like this?”
Hesitantly, Guide held something out.
“What is this?”
“My s-sock.”
To be precise, it was a sock with a hole in the big toe. Guide explained, blinking his tearful eyes.
“B-Bibi likes biting this, so she played with it a lot. It’s a b-bit damp because of Bibi’s spit, though…”
“Oh.”
Poke.
Lucas let out a soulless exclamation at the explanation and, without hesitation, shoved a finger into his own nostril. Then he said:
“You can just give it to him.”
“P-pardon?”
“That guy. He’s got a good nose. He’ll find the monster by smelling that sock.”
“……Me?”
Kyle, who had been standing there with a blank face, widened his eyes like a startled rabbit.
At that same time.
“…….”
I was engaged in a silent struggle with the squishy belly fat covering my face.
I knew the moment I felt the texture of that belly.
This thing was Bibi. Why was she here?
I stood there like a statue for about a minute in confusion. Finally, my darkened vision cleared like a curtain being pulled back, and someone peeked down at me.
Eyes like black beans. A prim, V-shaped mouth and a dainty pink nose.
“Kyuuu….”
It was definitely Bibi.
The problem was that her normally white face had turned blue, and her body was shivering violently.
“Bibi, how did you get in here?!”
“Kyu-yak.”
When I carefully lifted Bibi off my head, the poor fluffball let her head droop like a piece of limp laundry.
Anyone could see Bibi was freezing. First, I needed to warm up this puff of fur.
“Bibi. Come here.”
I hurriedly unwrapped my scarf and coiled Bibi’s long, vibrating body around my neck. Then, I tied the scarf tightly over her.
This way, Bibi could feel both my body heat and the warmth of the scarf at the same time. This was what you called double insulation!
“This is the Main Castle, and Guide lives in the annex. How did you get all the way here?”
Did she follow me in when Guide was seeing me off? I didn’t notice anything like that.
At my monologue, Bibi popped her head out from the scarf.
“Kyui, kyui.”
She answered with the utmost sincerity. Of course, I had no way of interpreting it.
“…What does that mean?”
“Kyuuu!”
When I asked again, Bibi raised her voice as if frustrated. But as expected, communication was impossible.
“Right, thank you. That was a great talk.”
Regardless, I gave the hardworking Bibi a compliment. Keeping the frustrated Bibi wrapped around my neck, I found a spot in a corner.
“Anyway, Dad said he’d come every hour, so let’s wait until then.”
I had been freezing just a moment ago, but having the warm heat of a living creature wrapped around me made things feel a bit better.
However, Bibi didn’t give up on communicating with me.
“Kyuu. Kyuut.”
As I sat huddled in the corner, staring blankly at the ceiling, the Ferry’s cries echoed through the Ice Cave.
“Bibi. I’m sorry, but I can’t understand a single thing.”
In the end, I had no choice but to confess honestly.
“Kyu!”
“Goodness. I wonder what you’re trying to say…. You’re being noisy now, so stop.”
I was too tired to even respond anymore.
“Kyuu….”
Bibi looked dejected, but I kept my mouth shut.
‘If I ignore her, Bibi will eventually stay quiet, right?’
Dad would be here in an hour anyway. I could just tell him then to return Bibi to Guide.
Kyuu, kyuu.
With that thought, I tried my best to ignore the pitiful cries. I was picking my ear with my finger and blowing on it when—
“You little brat! If you can’t understand what I’m saying, you should at least pretend to interpret it! Are you going to take responsibility if this old lady dies of hunger?!”
“Aaah!”
An elderly woman’s voice suddenly rang out, nearly piercing my eardrums.
“W-who? Who is it?!”
I sprang up like a coiled spring and hurriedly looked around.
Naturally, there wasn’t a soul in sight, let alone an old woman. This was the Ice Cave, after all.
‘But why did I hear a person’s voice…?’
Shudder.
Suddenly, goosebumps erupted down my spine.
‘No way. Are there ghosts in this world too?’
Well, of course there would be. This was a world with monsters and magic. It would be stranger if there weren’t ghosts.
“…….”
This was an emergency.
Scuttle.
I pressed my back against the wall and grabbed Bibi, who was hiding in the scarf. If something popped out, I’d tell Bibi to say hello.
“G-ghost, please go away.”
But the old lady ghost didn’t answer.
“I-if you’re hungry, I have some bread… would you mind eating that and leaving the cave?”
“Then give it to me already.”
It happened again. Upon hearing the elderly voice once more, my body froze solid and my jaw dropped.
Plop.
Suddenly, a small, dainty pink paw was thrust into my line of sight.
“Give it to this old lady. Hurry!”
Bibi was making her request to me in a dignified voice.