Volume 7 Chapter 2 Part 3
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Translation by burnt.marshmallows
Editing by Team Foxsunes
「Do you need anything from me?」
As I put my thoughts into words, the man deepened his smile further. Following his name card, he proceeded to take a memo pad and pen out from his pocket and held them right in front of me.
「There’s no need to rush like that. Let me first congratulate you.」
「What exactly are you「congratulating」me for?」
I do not recall ever having been congratulated by someone I had never met before. Yes, someone I had never met before. I knew that it was not becoming of me to dislike someone based on my own prejudice against him. Yet, for some reason, I just could not bring myself to like this person. Maybe it was because of how his smile gave off the feeling of a vulgar sense of curiosity.
At my unfriendly reply, that man laughed out loud and scratched his cheek with the head of his pen. His eyes flickered with a repulsive glow.
「Now there, now there. Do you not understand? What else could it be about, other than the fact that you have been blessed with the child of the Palace’s Head Magician and the World-saving Hero, Agedilus! There’s no way that that rumor has not made its way throughout the entire country.」
「Ah, so it’s about that. In that case, thank you for going through the trouble to congratulate me.」
It was an insincere expression of gratitude, but it seemed that this man was not congratulating me wholeheartedly either, so the feelings were mutual.
This man said that the rumor of my pregnancy…… or more accurately, the rumor of the expectancy of the child of the Palace’s Head Magician had spread throughout the kingdom. That was for sure. Even while I was taking a walk through the capital today, I heard many instances of people whispering that rumor around to each other. Everyone was just getting excited discussing the rumor on their own accord, never expecting that I, one of the main people involved, would be right beside them.
That rumor was discussed with many different types of sentiments. 「A joyous occasion」.「I wonder if it will be a guy or a girl. But no matter what, the child will probably be adorable, since it is Sir Agedilus’s」.「It’ll be good if a healthy and lively child is born」.It tickled my ear every time I heard conversations like those. But that was only limited to the well-meaning rumors that were being spread.
I’m repeating myself, but the rumor of the Palace’s Head Magician conceiving a child was discussed with many different types of sentiments. And there were rumors that were not quite as joyous. There were rumors that made me want to cover my ears. Hehe, that man gave me a repulsive smile.
「I wonder what kind of monster the child of a pure black magic user would be? As the mother of the child, I was wondering if you had any thoughts about that? 」
The man who stood in front of me had brought up the very topic that I didn’t want to hear about while laughing, and in a very pompous manner, I might add.
For a moment, I could not understand what he was trying to say. After a momentary pause, the moment that I finally understood what he said, albeit delayed, everything in front of me seemed to turn white. My body was overtaken by an enormous rage. My body started to tremble from the anger. I hugged the paper bag that contained that wool yarn tightly into my chest, in order to somehow suppress the trembling and rage.
If I started to shout angrily and let my emotions run loose, I would be playing right into this man’s hands. If I tried to emotionally deny anything, he might think that I was making excuses or trying to hide something. That’s why I chose to reply to him with my eyes looking straight at him, without trying to look away from him. It seemed that he didn’t expect me to react that way. Glancing at him, I saw that he had opened his eyes wide in surprise. I continued.
「No matter what anyone says, this child is mine and that man’s adorable child. There is nothing else that I need to say.」
「Hm? Do you plan to say the same thing even if a monster was born?」
「Yes, of course. Be it a monster or anything else, it’ll still be the child between that man and I. A child more adorable than any other.」
As I replied with a smile, that man’s smile began to twitch, disappointed. Sorry to get your hopes up…… You’d be wrong if you thought that I’d say that. Serves him right.
「Is that all you wanted to talk about? Well then, have a nice day.」
「W-wait just a second.」
As I tried to walk past him, he grabbed my arm in a bid for me to stay. What a stubborn man. It seemed that he wanted to get a story out of me that would be convenient for him, no matter what.
The bracelet on my right hand, that he was grabbing, glowed. If I used this to call him, that man would probably appear right here in a split second. But this reporter obviously hated 「Pure Black」, and yet still wanted to write a ridiculous article about our child. I could not possibly drag that man out here in front of this reporter. That man would probably tell me not to worry about it. But this was no joke. I was not going to show my precious person to a reporter like this. It would be such a waste.
「Could you please stop it? I’m going to scream.」
「Well well, don’t say that. Just a short answer will do. I’m sure that even you, my lady, would have some anxieties about whether your child would be a born a monster?」
Is he still saying that? No matter how hard I glared at him, without even trying to hide my displeasure, this man’s wretched smile showed no signs of breaking down. Actually, it looked as though he was waiting for me to blow up any second now.
Calm down, me. I don’t have time to be dealing with people like this. There isn’t much time before the set time I promised my wet nurse that I would be back. Moreover, this man’s words were a bad influence on my child.
Telling myself that, I tried to pull the arm that he was holding in my own direction. In my head, I clicked my tongue at this man, who did not seem like he was going to let me escape that easily. It was then when it happened.
ーSwish, a shadow cast over my head.
「Hm?」
「What?」
The voices of me and the reporter goofily overlapped. At the same time, something…… no, 「someone」had come in between me and that man with a soft thud.
「W-what’s wrong with you!?」
The person who had come between us was a small-framed person who had their head covered entirely by a slightly dirty rag. Of course, small-framed meant that the person was about the same height as me. But because of the baggy cloth that the person was wearing, one could see how scrawny the person looked, which in turn made it feel more befitting to call them 「small-framed」.
Wondering where on earth this person could have come from, I instinctively looked up. But I could not find anything that looked like it would allow someone to stand on. There were only the walls of the buildings that were around us. Unless this person actually jumped down from one of the rooftops of these buildings?
No, now was not the time to be thinking about these kinds of things. Why did this stranger suddenly cut in at this timing? That was what I should be thinking about. The person appeared as though they were standing in a way that they could cover my back. Or maybe thinking that was just me being overly self-conscious.
「M-move aside! I have business with the woman behind you!」
The man charged towards the person in front of me in a bid to push them aside. As the person in front of me lost their footing slightly, the rag cloth on their head fell off.
「ーーー!」
Who was the one who gasped? It might have been me, it might have been the man, or it could even have been the person who was standing in front of me. The person who was under the rag cloth was a young boy. I could only see his back, but his lean body definitely suggested that it was the body of a young boy. He had messy ash grey hair that reached the tip of his shoulders. One could see that it had been left to grow unkempt.
But that was not the most distinctive feature that the boy had on his body. What had really caught the eyes of the man and I, was his ears. His two triangular ears, covered in pitch-black fur, sat pointed on the left and right of his head.
He was probably from the canine family…… and not just any regular dog. His ears looked like those of a wolf. As those ears moved, the man’s face twitched greatly.
「I-it’s one of the demonic race……!」
「Ah?!」
Throwing me aside, the man ran out of the alleyway for his life. The beastly-eared young man steadied me with his thin arms, in a way so effortlessly that did not entirely match how thin his arms were, preventing me from falling backward. Ah, that could have been dangerous. I was lucky that he saved me from falling down like that.
With that, I looked up from his arms, at the face of the young boy who had stopped me from falling. Because of his long fringe, I could not see his facial features very well. I could infer much other than the fact that he was probably at most around fifteen or sixteen years old. But what also made an impression were those eyes of him that peeked through the gaps in his ash grey hair. His eyes were a beautiful, transparent-looking yellow color that resembled citrine.
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