The Curse No Sword Can Sever (10)

After finishing our diversion in Vistcoat, what awaited us when we returned to the royal capital was...

"It's not fair that Shizuki got to have all the fun!"

Mizuha pouted as she said that, snatched Win away, and hugged him, refusing to return him to me.

No, no, even if she called it unfair, it wasn't as though I'd told her she couldn't come along.

But when a child barely ten years old became emotional, such logic was unlikely to get through to her.

So, to rescue the kidnapped Win, I desperately tried to placate Mizuha and promised to take her somewhere as soon as I finished the piece I was submitting to the competition. That finally earned her forgiveness.

Of course, taking her somewhere couldn't mean going far away. At most, I could take Mizuha and Win to a forest near the royal capital and show them around.

As for Win, he seemed to have realized that it was best not to oppose Mizuha in her current mood. Even as he pleaded with me for help with his eyes, he obediently played the part of a doll.

Mizuha still seemed a little unsatisfied, but she must have understood that my offer was the greatest concession I could make.

She didn't return Win to me, but she nodded and waited for me to finish my smithing.

Well, perhaps thanks to that, with the pressure of a little girl pushing me from behind, I handled my smithing as though I'd never suffered a slump at all, smoothly completing a piece to my satisfaction in about two weeks.

And, though this happened a little later, the result of the competition to which I submitted that piece was that I took first place.

...Somehow, I couldn't help thinking that, although Mizuha was still young, she really was Kaeha's daughter.

In any case, today I had brought Win and Mizuha to the largest forest near the royal capital.

The forests of the Kingdom of Rudoria had seen a proliferation of monsters after the elves left, and elf adventurers, with Airena at the center, were still out in force culling them.

If unusually strong monsters appeared, or if so many appeared that they posed a danger, I was occasionally called in as well.

However, because this forest was close to the royal capital, culling operations were carried out relatively early. The strong monsters and large packs had already been eliminated, so as long as I was nearby, there shouldn't be much danger.

Mizuha held a wooden training sword in her right hand and Win's hand in her left as she walked a few steps ahead of me.

I had a vague idea of why she had wanted me to take her out like this.

Like Shizuki, Mizuha had been properly disciplined as the daughter of a dojo head, and she normally didn't make many selfish demands.

She sometimes showed her childish side by putting on airs as an older sister toward Win or fighting with Shizuki, but she generally knew how to behave around adults.

Even so, she was still a child.

From my perspective, Kaeha and her mother had given both children all the love they could.

There was no room for doubt about that, and Shizuki and Mizuha probably understood it as well.

But somewhere inside, they must still have yearned for a father's affection.

In Shizuki's case, that feeling manifested almost as a competitive spirit, and he challenged Kreias to a match.

The result had been rather heartwarming, but that was an action Shizuki had taken after struggling with his feelings in his own way.

In Mizuha's case, it was much simpler... her yearning for a father's affection had manifested as a desire to be spoiled.

Of course, by wanting to be spoiled, she didn't mean that she wanted to cling to someone. It was more like a desire for approval: wanting someone to accept her selfishness, wanting to show her good qualities, and wanting to be acknowledged.

It seemed dangerous to me. If she grew up carrying those feelings, she might become easily deceived by bad men. But if she could release at least some of them with me, indulging her a little didn't seem like a bad thing.

"Eisa-san! Look, what's that?"

I followed Mizuha's pointing finger with my eyes and recognized what lay there. When the two of them tried to rush toward it, I hurriedly scooped them up and stopped them.

Oh, wow. That gave me a bit of a scare.

What Mizuha had found was a hole roughly fifty centimeters in diameter, gaping open in the ground.

With no sign of concealment, the hole lay boldly exposed... and it was the lair of a snake monster.

The snake had no special abilities or even poison. It was simply large and strong, so it was probably among the weaker types of monsters.

Once they understood how to deal with it, even a few fledgling adventurers would be more than capable of hunting one.

But to a child, it was a threat capable of swallowing not only Win but even Mizuha whole.

I suggested that we quietly pass by without provoking it.

"Huh? It's a monster, and we're not going to defeat it?"

Mizuha tilted her head in puzzlement and asked me.

The fact that she thought of hunting it instead of being frightened upon hearing the word monster showed how remarkably bold she was.

I wondered if Mizuha would become an adventurer someday too.

If so, gaining experience fighting monsters certainly wouldn't be a bad thing, but...

"I don't mind, but then that snake will become our lunch. I don't like defeating something just for the sake of killing it, you know."

She was still a little too young for that.

If she was going to boast about defeating monsters, she first needed to acquire the strength to do so on her own.

Mizuha had grown up in the royal capital, the biggest city in the Kingdom of Rudoria, and apparently had never considered the possibility of eating a snake. Her face went visibly pale.

Win, on the other hand, had eaten snake while we were traveling, so he knew it didn't taste bad at all and looked completely unfazed.

He might even have been thinking that he wanted to eat it again after so long, but the clever boy saw Mizuha's pale face, silently took her hand, and led her away.

"...Y-yes, you're right. We didn't come here to hunt monsters today. Let's quietly move away. All right, Win? Quietly."

With Mizuha satisfied, Win and I quietly left the area and continued deeper into the forest.

Our destination was still a long way off, so we couldn't afford to waste time in a place like this.