Chapter 4 - "You Are Kind, Aren't You?"
'What do fairies eat?'
'Don't you know? Humans are so lacking in research. You act like you're at the top of the food chain, yet you're so ignorant.'
'It's wonderful that you, a former human, seem to be enjoying your life as a fairy. So, what is your food?'
'I won't tell you.'
'If I don't know that, you'll end up in trouble later on.'
'I don't intend to be kept by you, so I'm not telling!'
When I turned my face away with a huff, he silently smiled at me. It was scary.
I recalled that conversation from this morning.
Judging by the boy's demeanor, it seemed he had no intention of releasing me at all.
I had been here ever since I was captured three days ago. The bedroom and study were on the second floor of the detached house, so if he had placed me by the window there, I could have spent the day gazing at the scenery or even singing. But there was a limit to how much I could do to kill time.
I was placed in the bedroom, sitting slumped inside a cage. Perhaps because I had been inside the silver bars for so long, I was starting to feel lethargic.
As I was savoring the long passage of time, I heard a voice from somewhere go, "Cough."
It was an unknown girl coughing. It came from a room some distance away. The coughing was severe; it was definitely not shallow.
So, Stylus-san wasn't the only one living here. As that thought occurred to me, a sense of anxiety gradually began to sprout. After all, right now, there were probably only that girl and me in this mansion. The boy had gone to work. There was no one to nurse that child.
Cough, cough.
The muffled sound coming from afar sounded utterly exhausted.
"...Ugh."
—Isn't there anyone here?
I stood up and shook the cage's opening vigorously. But because it was made of silver, my body only felt heavier.
What crossed my mind was my human self. Even when I caught a cold, or even on holidays, my parents never took time off work.
—Stylus-san, Stylus-san.
I called out to him without raising my voice, pleading for him to come home.
Despite being an eight-year-old boy, Stylus-san was gone from morning till night for work. When he returned home and brought me, still in my cage, to the study, I would insist, "Let me out!" but Stylus-san would simply keep his eyes on his book.
"Are you hungry?"
"No. Fairies only need to eat once a month."
Incidentally, we eat natural things like flowers and leaves. It is said that items with high mana are preferable. Someday, I'd like to try eating leaves from the World Tree.
Putting that aside,
"There's someone else in this house, right? A girl."
"Did you get out of the cage?"
"No, I can't get out."
Why was he making such a scary face?
"In that case, it's fine."
"It's not fine. I heard terrible coughing during the day. Is there no one to nurse her? An adult?"
He closed his book and walked over to the cage. He rattled the opening, seemingly teasing me maliciously.
"There are no adults in this house. It's just my sister and me."
"That's impossible."
"It is possible, so there's nothing to be done. Our parents died. There was no one to take us in. All that remained were the house, the money, an eldest son who could earn a living, and a sickly younger sister. That is all. This world does not have welfare systems as developed as Japan in my previous life. ...Of course, it's not that such facilities don't exist at all, and we did receive offers for adoption. But I decided it was better for the two siblings to spend the money our parents left behind rather than entrusting it to someone else."
"But leaving a girl alone all day..."
"There are children without homes, let alone adults, all over the town. The fact that we can live such a cultured life is nothing short of fortunate."
How terrifying. This world was not peaceful enough to leave a young girl alone in a house. Humans fought among themselves, and there were kidnappings and robberies. Moreover, this was a world of swords and magic. It was fundamentally different from Japan, where merely possessing a weapon was a crime.
I couldn't organize my thoughts. As I opened my mouth only to fall silent again, he stuck his index finger into the cage. I was gripping the bars and did not move away from there. I understood there was no intent to attack.
"You are kind, aren't you?"
"I'm not kind; I'm just normal."
"If you worry about humans you dislike, I think that's more than enough."
That's because I'm not truly acting as a fairy from the bottom of my heart.
His index finger stroked my head. I thought that finger was kinder than I was.
"My sister's name is Lumina. Unfortunately, she is used to catching colds, so to speak. She also understands the necessity of my going to work. She is a smart child."
"Do you also understand that intelligence levels and loneliness levels are completely unrelated?"
"Of course."
Therefore, it seemed he was striving to bring his research to a quick conclusion while going to work every day.
"In that case, if I say I'll let you keep me, can I nurse that child?"
If he wasn't going to let me go anyway, it would be better for my mental hygiene to perform some 'good deeds' here. It was much better than being stuck in a cage.
When I appealed to him with my gaze, he smiled ambiguously and said, "That is an attractive proposal."
He promised to let me meet his sister once I was mentally prepared. As far as I was concerned, I was ready anytime, so it was probably Stylus-san who needed the mental preparation.
*
In the second week, my treatment was upgraded from imprisonment to house arrest. Amazingly, he started letting me out of the cage.
Of course, he still wouldn't let me leave the study.
If I touched the windows or doors, I would get caught by something like a barrier and suffer from something like electricity, but so what? I was free!
Enjoying the up-and-down movement for the first time in a while, I briefly sat seiza on the head of Stylus-san, who was diligently reading as always. Then I flew around again. I tried sitting on the boy's shoulder. Then I bounced around again.
When I ignored his warning to calm down, he silently left the room and reappeared with a bundle of paper he had fetched from somewhere, rolled up, so I decided to restrain myself.
Making his shoulder my designated spot, I peered into a book with an incomprehensible title like 'Magical Psychology.' I had no idea what was written in it.
Since he was here, his sister must be sleeping.
He would do housework and take care of his sister, and when things settled down, he would come to the study. That seemed to be his lifestyle. He even carried me into the bedroom, so I tended to misjudge the situation, but the time I spent with him during the day was surprisingly short.
Come to think of it, I suddenly remembered that Elenoa was actually a strong fairy.
The version I knew was the male 'Eren,' but Elenoa's basic stats shouldn't have changed. She was a high-performance support character reputed to rarely drop out of parties, possessing mana that was in a league of its own even among fairies. There were even challenge run videos titled 'Trying to Clear the Game Without Elenoa.'
In other words, I, 'Elenoa,' should be able to become a powerhouse in this world.
And so,
"I wish to try using magic."
"Rejected."
"Why!?"
He dismissed me outright, leaving no room for negotiation.
He finally lifted his face from the book and stared intently at me. His expression was terrifyingly blank.
"If you become able to use magic, you'll run away, won't you?"
"Rather, why won't you let me go? If you don't become the Demon Lord, then even if I were asked to go to another world, it would have nothing to do with you."
Currently, the Demon Lord existed, though I didn't know which generation he was. If Louis the boy left his evil deeds to that guy and lived a decent life, a future where he was killed by the Hero was unlikely.
Nursing his sister was conditional on "not being able to escape from here." If I could escape, I would have fled at supersonic speeds.
"I have no intention of becoming the Demon Lord, but that's a separate matter. You are not allowed to learn magic. It would be a waste to let you go."
I shuddered.
I had recently realized that his gentle smile was his standard equipment. There were different types of smiles; the kind that seemed to genuinely cherish someone was mostly seen when the topic was his sister. The atmosphere turned pitch black mostly when I insisted that I "wanted to escape."
It was scary, but I couldn't give up on magic. Waiting for the cold atmosphere to subside, I jumped down from my Master's—sarcastic, of course—shoulder. I stood on the desk and said,
"Stylus-san, please take one book from that bookshelf."
"Does any book do?"
"Yes. Ah, ah, don't move! Stay right there!"
"...Haa."
He seemed to have guessed what I wanted to do, so he sat back down in his chair and pointed at a bookshelf several meltores away. He selected one book from within and curled his finger upward. It was a motion like hooking his fingertip into the air.
The book moved on its own, sliding smoothly from the bookshelf to his hand. It was a smooth operation. Just from that, I felt I had caught a glimpse of his ability.
"Is this fine?"
He placed the flying book at my feet. I thought that gentle levitation magic belonged to the wind attribute.
It was not something an eight-year-old could do.
—There was no doubt. As expected, his talent was amazing.
"Was it no good?"
"Eh, no, it's not no good. It's not no good at all."
The title of the book was 'Magic Dictionary for Good Children.' It might have been no good after all.