Chapter 46
Fuyo was quite childish in both her words and actions, but she had a good memory.
She quickly memorized the waterwheel by the river, the fishing spots, and the locations of the fields and rice paddies that I taught her.
It was all well and good that she properly remembered the reverberatory furnace in the hills behind the house and the location of my home, but that was where the trouble began.
Fuyo happily hurried over to the well beside the backyard and started driving roots into the ground, so I pulled her out with all my strength.
When I slipped my hands under both her sides and popped her right out, Fuyo looked surprised.
"Huh? This spot's no good? Would somewhere closer to home be better?"
"You were trying to put down roots, weren't you?"
"Yeah."
"You listened to my explanation of the places and remembered them, right?"
"I remembered!"
"Listen carefully. You mustn't enter any of the places I just explained and showed you. Of course, this house is off-limits too. Put down roots only in places I haven't explained. In other words, stay away from me."
"...Why? Mister, do you hate me?"
Fuyo looked up at me with tears welling in her wounded eyes, but I was hurt too. Specifically, my stomach. And my appendix.
I had also grown mentally after making friends. I had learned to pretend to be somewhat sociable and talk a little.
But that didn't mean I had stopped feeling stress.
I had merely learned to talk while pretending not to feel stressed.
Besides, it didn't last long, and I only managed to keep up the act because I was dealing with a child.
She needed to understand her territory and get out of my sight soon, or I would be in trouble.
I didn't want to put a strain on my stomach and intestines with stress.
"I don't dislike Fuyo, but I can't handle her. Go somewhere else."
"Dairi, watch how you say that. She's a child."
"If I don't say it straight, she won't get it."
Hiyori tried to admonish me, but I couldn't help it. If I didn't put it that way, she probably wouldn't understand.
Fuyo was abnormally clever for a one-year-old, but she had a limited vocabulary and seemed unable to understand difficult words.
I have trouble holding a conversation even with a proper adult. There's no way I can choose my words and have a considerate conversation with a child! Sorry!!!
When I shooed her away with my hand, Fuyo held back her tears and flailed her roots and vines, exploding with indignation. You were fake-crying? What a crafty little brat.
"Nooo! I'm gonna live in Mister's house toooooo!"
"I don't want that either! Why should I have to see some brat I'm not even friends with every day? Absolutely not!"
I exploded with indignation to match her, but Fuyo cheekily rose to the challenge.
Hiyori pressed a hand to her forehead over her mask, looking exasperated.
"Tsubaki and Sekitan and Mokutan all live here, don't they! Why am I the only one who can't!?"
"Mii! Mimimi!"
"Hey, don't laugh, Tsubaki."
"That's not fair! You cheater! You took it! I was going to live there! You took it!"
"Oh, for crying out loud, you're noisy. If you keep acting this selfish, I've got an idea of my own."
Judging by how selfish she was being, the Flower Witch must have raised her incredibly spoiled.
I made a mild threat, but Fuyo didn't seem to take it seriously. If anything, she threw an even more violent tantrum.
"No, no, no! If I say no, then no!"
"Got it? If you won't listen, I'll do what I have to do, too."
"No! I'm gonna live in Mister's house too!"
"All right, I understand... Nooo! No, no, no, no! Nooo!!!"
I rolled around on the dirt in the backyard, shouted at the top of my lungs, and began kicking and flailing in a tantrum. Fuyo froze in surprise.
Hiyori and the fire lizards, who had been watching us from a short distance away, backed off in the face of such overwhelming intensity.
"I don't want Fuyo living in my houseeeee! I don't even want to see her face! I won't be happy unless she lives a happy, healthy life somewhere I can't see her! Nooo!!!!"
"Huh... Ah, um... I'm sorry for being selfish..."
"Hmph. You should've just said that from the start."
I nodded at Fuyo, who was now thoroughly frightened and seemed to understand the difference in our standing, then stood up and brushed the dirt off my clothes.
Heh. I had shown that brat how terrifying an adult could be.
Did you see that? The intimidating presence no child could ever muster. Don't ever defy me again.
I wished the Flower Witch would learn from my firm approach to discipline.
Fuyo nervously watched my expression for a while, but when I told her to send over a communication eyeball familiar, she happily used magic to produce a brownish, nut-like familiar, put it in my hand, and cheerfully set off into the mountains.
I watched her go, and before Fuyo's figure had even disappeared beyond the trees, a voice reached me from the familiar.
"Mister, I'm gonna stay here!"
"That was fast. You're close—way too close. Well, I can't quite see you, so I guess it's okay..."
"Um, spreading my roots makes me a little sleepy. So talk to me lots today and tomorrow too! And someday I'll become as beautiful as Mother, so come see me then, okay?"
"What are you talking about? You're the child I delivered. Besides, you'll grow up here in Okutama. Of course you'll become more beautiful than the Flower Witch."
When I taught a simple fact to an ignorant child who knew nothing about how things worked, something resembling a cry, yet filled with complicated emotions, came through the familiar.
Then Hiyori's hand smoothly reached in from the side and crushed the familiar.
When I asked what was going on with a look, Hiyori stayed silent for a moment before answering concisely.
"You hate long phone calls, don't you? Hang up early."
"Oh, I see. That was a long-call flag."
"And... well, even if the other person is a child, refrain from suddenly making piercing remarks."
"Huh? What? Which remark?"
"If you don't know, never mind. What is wrong with your sense of tact? Make up your mind whether you're socially inept or silver-tongued. Honestly."
Hiyori went home, seeming a little angry about something.
What was with her? She keeps calling me socially inept, but she doesn't make any sense sometimes either, you know? We're even.
Just as Fuyo had said, she spent several weeks spreading her roots, remaining sleepy the entire time.
She contacted me every day through the familiar, but her messages were limited to self-contained yet unsettling reports: she had caught a bug she had never seen before, strangled a monster by herself for the first time, or found old white skeletal remains crushed beneath a rock at the bottom of a cliff.
She never made the selfish requests I had feared, like telling me to do this or that. The firm discipline I had given her at the start seemed to have worked.
Unlike Hiyori, she didn't make long phone calls or suddenly call in the middle of the night. Her calls came at one of three times: sunrise, solar noon, or sunset. Plants could apparently sense those times very clearly. Probably.
The calls were a pain, but I quickly thought of a way to turn that nuisance into a benefit. I would turn the child's diary-like phone calls into work reports.
I had Fuyo take care of the wasabi I had found in a mountain stream and the logs for cultivating shiitake mushrooms near the reverberatory furnace. I also showed her where to find seasonal mountain vegetables and where bears had their dens, and had her memorize those places.
Fuyo was such an easy mark that she happily accepted the work I asked her to do. There wasn't the slightest sign that she found it troublesome or disliked it. She was going to get tricked by some bad plant someday. Would she be all right?
One day, in return for the rare delicacy of a bear's paw that Fuyo delivered to the well in the backyard with her roots—it had clearly been violently torn off—I made a jigsaw puzzle of Fuyo's face and brought it to her as an educational toy. She was delighted and said, "When Mister dies, I'll suck it all up for you♡"
The monster's sensibilities are really showing... Creepy. But whatever. I don't care what happens after I die.
Though, considering that resurrection magic might exist, maybe I would prefer her to wait a little and see what happens after I die.
Fuyo and the fire lizards were in a cold war, and apparently she had given up putting down roots only around the reverberatory furnace, which the fire lizards claimed as their territory. They kept a reasonable distance from each other, but every time they met, they seemed to compete in one-upmanship to establish their rank.
They weren't trying to beat each other senseless. It felt more like they were competing for second place beneath me, the leader of the pack. Surprisingly peaceful.
Wild animals surprisingly rarely injure one another during dominance contests. Whether they win or lose, they end up wounded, and injuries affect their chances of surviving afterward. There is a good reason they settle matters of hierarchy through intimidation, growling, and a little shoving. Monsters are the same.
As for Fuyo and Hiyori's relationship, it was a little complicated.
After learning that Fuyo's magic power was just under 400K, Hiyori dispelled the fog of disorientation she had spread over Okutama and had Fuyo put it up instead. With the underground network of roots combined with the fog, Okutama became an extremely dangerous area that confused and killed intruders.
The fact that Hiyori, who tended to be overprotective, entrusted Fuyo with guarding me showed how much Hiyori trusted Fuyo. However, the fact that she kept insisting Fuyo carry a familiar of her own at all times suggested that Hiyori didn't completely trust her either.
Hiyori hadn't come to Okutama for the past few days.
After a future-seeing mage warned Hiyori that Cuanos would be stolen, Hiyori was holed up at home under tight security.
One apparent reason Hiyori had assigned Fuyo to guard Okutama was to keep its defenses from thinning out when she couldn't move herself.
Thanks to the warning, the day Cuanos was supposed to be stolen passed safely without incident.
However, the thief apparently hadn't given up, and orders had come down to remain vigilant, so Hiyori couldn't move carelessly.
I had been warned over and over never to come to Ome because it was dangerous, so I was making wands at my leisure in safe Okutama.
In fact, it did seem dangerous.
After all, without the warning from the future-seeing mage, Cuanos would have been stolen.
The mere fact that someone was supposedly going to pull off a magic-wand theft from the mighty Blue Witch told me they were no ordinary criminal.
I had heard that Fire-Inheriting Witch had also suffered a wand theft, but that title-holder was fundamentally human despite inheriting the title of Witch under special circumstances. The Blue Witch, on the other hand, was at the very top of the witch hierarchy. The two were in completely different leagues.
Who could the culprit be? This was ominous.
Personally, I couldn't help getting excited at the idea that Cuanos might be stolen. It was seriously inappropriate, so I didn't say it aloud.
Sometimes a work of art becomes far more valuable after being stolen.
The fact that someone wanted it badly enough to commit a crime, along with the intriguing history of having once been stolen, was what gave it value. Picasso's paintings had been stolen all over the place, too.
My naïve, absurdly carefree fantasy that it might be stolen and then immediately recovered was blown away without a trace by the state of emergency declared by the Tokyo Witches' Assembly a few days after the theft of Cuanos was prevented.
The future-seeing mage, who had been looking into the future, learned of a grave crisis approaching Tokyo, overexerted themselves trying to prepare for it, and lost consciousness.
The last time the future-seeing mage lost consciousness, Tokyo had nearly been destroyed by a mushroom pandemic.
Now, something just as serious was about to happen. Or perhaps it had already happened.
This was no time to be taking it easy.
Tokyo is in deep trouble!!