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Chapter 29

Chapter 29

「How dare you speak that way to Witch-sama…!」

Noel flared up, his fur bristling with anger at the stranger who had called me a fraud. That was the reaction I expected, but the man merely looked down at him with a bored expression.

「I’m not here to talk to you. Be quiet… I command you: the puppy shall fall into a peaceful sleep.」

「…Huh?」

The moment he uttered those words, Noel’s body went limp and began to topple over. I hurriedly extended some vines growing along the wall to catch him before he could hit the floor.

…Was that real magic just now? It was my first time seeing anything like it.

「Casting without a chant, huh…? Or is it something other than magic?」

(Eep…! How does he know that!?)

The man strode straight into the house and stopped in front of me. He was tall and lean, and from where he stood, looking down at me, his presence was overwhelming. Being glared at from such close range, I couldn’t stop the internal screaming.

For now, I used plant magic to create a hammock and gently laid Noel down in it.

「You don’t seem fazed. A real magician shows up at your door and you’re not shaken at all?」

(Real…? Wait, don’t tell me… this man is…)

「I’m Nikolaus. Court Mage… and the last surviving member of the demon race. So… what exactly are you?」

Yup, this was it. A real demonkin had shown up at my house. I was still screaming internally. My face muscles were locked in a perpetual smile, because this body tends to grin harder the more distressed I get.

(Wh-what do I do…!? I can’t speak, and there’s no good way to cover this up…!)

I took a small step back, then bumped into the chair I’d been sitting in earlier and plopped into it. Nikolaus took that as a cue to sit as well, across the table from me in the chair Noel usually used.

「You’re angry I put the beastkin boy to sleep? I didn’t hurt him.」

(…Wait, do I look mad? My mouth should be smiling, though…)

「Beastkin don’t get injured from something that minor. You’re overprotective… or are you just pretending to be a kind witch?」

(Ugh… Well, yeah, I am pretending to be a kind witch…)

This situation was bad. I couldn’t speak, and my usual translator, Noel, had been knocked out. Meanwhile, a real demon was bombarding me with questions, and if I used my voice, I might end up killing him. I had no way to answer.

「You can’t talk? Or are you just choosing not to?」

(Stop asking questions that hurt so much!! This guy is terrifying!!)

「If you really are a demon, shouldn’t you at least answer a fellow kin’s questions? You can write, can’t you?」

Nikolaus pulled a sheet of paper from his coat and even placed a pen that resembled a fountain pen in front of me. The man was disturbingly well-prepared.

The problem was, I could only write in Japanese. According to village chief Daon, Japanese is treated as an ancient script here. But Daon didn’t seem very knowledgeable about it either. It might just be similar-looking but actually a different system altogether.

Still, I had no way to dodge this. Trembling, I carefully wrote: 「Can you read this?」

「…Ancient script, huh. Yeah, nobody uses this anymore. It’s been long lost—even back when I was a kid, people rarely used it. If you really studied it just to fake being an ancient witch… that’s some serious dedication. Even among demons, only a handful in the entire country can read it—myself included.」

To my surprise, he could read it.

Nikolaus then took the pen and wrote something on the paper in return, but the script was a wildly deformed, cursive-like version, nearly impossible to decipher. It was like the cursive of cursive, and I had no idea what it said. Thinking maybe it was upside down, I flipped the paper and stared hard, but nope, still unreadable.

「…Don’t tell me you really can’t read that?」

He seemed a little taken aback when I tilted my head slightly, the only response I could manage. Whatever he had written must have been something that should have triggered a clear reaction. So my blank expression surprised him.

「…There’s no way someone could really have been holed up in the mountains for five hundred years, you know.」

(Yes, you’re absolutely right… That makes no sense…)

That backstory was something Noel and Daon came up with. Over time, everyone started treating it like established fact, but the truth is I’m just a Mandragora that grew up in the demon forest. I wasn’t around for whatever war happened five hundred years ago, and considering I was raised in dragon blood-soaked soil, I must’ve been born after that war.

I don’t even know how long I was in that forest. After being yanked out of the ground, I lived there for about a month… But before that, I had likely been underground, soaking up nutrients for ages. …How many years old am I, anyway?

「If you were alive… why didn’t you come find me?」

Nikolaus’s voice trembled as he muttered those words.

The last living member of the demon race. Maybe, just maybe, he had been hoping, praying, that someone like him was still out there. His anger at 「fakes」 might stem from a deep longing to find someone real.

(I’m so sorry I’m just a Mandragora… What do I do? If I keep lying, he might be happy, but if he finds out the truth, I’m screwed. And the guilt’s already killing me…)

My heart filled with regret, I quietly wrote 「I’m sorry」 on the paper. That one was completely sincere. From the bottom of my heart, I really was sorry that I turned out to be a Mandragora.

「…I think I know why you’re hiding. That moving Mandragora—it’s mine, isn’t it? You stole it.」

(…Huh?)

At that moment, a small figure came running in through the door. One of the seedlings I’d summoned earlier to check the situation outside, completely forgotten by me, had just returned.