Ch.102Two Faces (2)

*

“Ugh,”

I woke up with a shudder at the ticklish sensation on my knee.

Since reuniting with Silvia, I had developed a habit of looking around whenever I opened my eyes.

“She’s gone today too…”

Silvia was nowhere to be seen again today.

I wondered if she might be getting up early for walks while I was still asleep, but she definitely didn’t have such a habit when I lived in her cabin.

From the coldness against my skin, I could tell she had been absent from my side since nighttime.

No, actually, I had vaguely sensed it all along.

Like her, I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of time or dates, but I believe it’s been about a month that I’ve been endlessly waiting for her in this empty cabin.

Thanks to that month of solitude, my skin had naturally become sensitive to others’ warmth, and this heightened sensitivity vividly conveyed her absence to me.

Whenever I fell asleep, Silvia would disappear somewhere.

It seemed she didn’t sleep at all.

After spending the day working my body in this utterly lacking cabin, no matter how hard I tried to fight off drowsiness, my eyes would eventually close.

The last scene reflected in my slowly closing vision was always Silvia’s smiling face, looking at me with affectionate eyes.

However, I hadn’t once seen her falling asleep during these past few days.

Of course, she might simply be going to bed later and waking earlier than me, but the cold, empty space in the cabin every morning strongly suggested that she had left during the night.

“…Hah.”

I scratched my head, ruffling my hair while still lying down.

I hated these empty mornings so much.

They made me imagine ominous things.

“Am I going crazy…”

Every morning when I opened my eyes and confirmed she wasn’t there, I wondered if I might have gone insane.

Maybe Silvia never actually returned to me, and this was just a miserable hallucination I was seeing as I froze to death in the lakeside cabin.

That kind of worry.

Hah,

No,

Perhaps I’m watching all this while dying in the rain on the day I parted from Silvia.

Me, a spirit sorcerer?

Maybe that absurd story is just a pitiful product of my imagination—a weak person with no power.

The cold I feel throughout my body might be from the cold rain pouring down on my dying body in the forest.

No, that’s not it.

Speaking of rain, I should go back even further.

Perhaps all of this is just a long, dreamlike vision seen by me as I lay miserably with broken bones after the carriage accident on that rainy night.

It might be a world I’m seeing because I can’t accept reality as I take shallow breaths beside Laila, who is dying or already dead.

Actually, this was the most plausible hypothesis.

Meeting a hero, falling in love, hearing about my sister’s death, discovering hidden powers and destiny.

Looking at it briefly, this preposterous story, like a child’s dream, contained everything I had wanted.

Being a man, I too wanted to experience love with a beautiful woman and have sex.

It was hard to accept my proud sister’s sudden death, and because I secretly envied and was jealous of her, I desperately wished that abilities like hers were dormant within me.

Hah, it all fits perfectly.

Like the little match girl in the fairy tale, I became increasingly convinced that I might simply be seeing all these fantasies while dying.

“…Miss Silvia… please come back soon.”

I muttered, hoping she would return quickly.

I wanted to prove that my days with Silvia weren’t just pathetic figments of my imagination, to confirm it with the warmth of her embrace.

That’s why since our reunion, I’d been calling her “Silvia noona” and acting coquettishly in a way that didn’t suit me.

Only now could I properly understand Silvia’s feelings.

Only at this moment did I finally realize why she had behaved strangely, saying she would become my family.

This terrifying emptiness that remains invisible when alone, only becoming truly apparent when someone is by your side.

She had become addicted to my existence, to my warmth.

Just as I now thirsted for her presence.

“…That thunder and lightning.”

I suddenly remembered when she pretended to be my little sister in front of me long ago.

Back then, her strange behavior seemed very bizarre, but thinking about it now, that was an unkind thought.

I had seen her just yesterday, even spent the entire day with our bodies intertwined.

I missed Silvia so terribly.

Usually, she would appear by now, but today she still hadn’t shown up.

At that moment, I felt another tickle on my knee and flinched.

“…?”

Wondering if perhaps some insect from the deer hide had transferred to me—since the leather wasn’t properly treated yet—I slowly lifted the deer skin I was using as a blanket.

“Pia?”

My tiny guardian spirit was wiggling under the blanket, licking my knee.

*

Was it the day before yesterday?

During a passionate night with Silvia, my knee had gotten scraped without me noticing.

It was such a minor wound that even Silvia hadn’t noticed, and I didn’t want to whine about treating such a trivial injury, so I left it alone. Now Pia had suddenly appeared and was licking my wounded knee, so my surprise was understandable.

No, more than that, I was bewildered that Pia had appeared on her own without me summoning her.

Pia wasn’t in her usual form surrounded by flames, but instead had a bluish silver glow.

Come to think of it, I remembered the green woman explaining that this spirit wasn’t actually a fire spirit, but had simply been appearing through my flames because I didn’t know how to properly communicate with spirits.

The sight of the tiny fox cub repeatedly licking my scabbed knee had a fatally cute quality that was somehow soothing just to look at.

I smiled and gently stroked Pia’s head.

Pia flinched momentarily at my touch, but soon began pushing her head up against my palm, as if begging for more petting.

That behavior made me feel like the emptiness and depression that had been tormenting me earlier were subsiding a bit.

Remembering that I had been able to endure Silvia’s absence because Pia had stayed by my side during that time, I said:

“…Thank you.”

Whether she understood my words or not, Pia looked at me with bright eyes, then smiled with the characteristic squint of a fox as she accepted my caress.

Her ears on top of her head twitched slightly as if pleased.

I gently lifted Pia’s body.

Having sought comfort by hugging Pia’s warm body while sleeping during Silvia’s absence for more than just a day or two, I missed the feel of that fluffy tail and wanted to give her a proper hug after so long.

“Pia, have you gotten bigger?”

When I placed my hands under her front legs to lift her, I could clearly feel a heavier weight and a much larger circumference than before.

I looked at her with a puzzled expression, but Pia just stared back at me as if to say “what are you talking about?” while sniffing with her nose.

“Did you grow that much… I don’t remember giving you any food, or wait… do spirits even eat anything?”

I pondered briefly about the sudden change in my guardian spirit, but seeing Pia squirming her four legs as if asking why I wasn’t hugging her quickly, I decided it didn’t matter.

I embraced Pia against my chest.

“Kying”

With a thin, cute cry, Pia nestled into my arms.

Actually, her larger size made hugging her feel even better.

The soft body and fluffy fur,

And the clean, smooth feeling of skin made me think I could hold her for minutes or hours on end.

“…Wait”

Skin?

I pulled Pia away from me in surprise to look at her.

“What?”

Pia asked me with wide round eyes, as if wondering what was wrong.

Asked me…?

I froze for a moment, unable to grasp the situation.

“Hurry, hug me.”

Pia had transformed into what looked like a six-year-old child.

“Pia?”

The child nodded and then threw herself into my arms.

I was so surprised that I stiffly patted the child while holding her.

Judging by the bluish silver hair, this was definitely my guardian spirit Pia.

No, why had she taken human form?

“Pet me.”

“Ah, okay…”

As I stroked her head as requested, I felt two large pairs of ears that were flattened against her head and swept back.

When my hand touched them, those fox-like ears perked up.

I slowly ran my fingers through Pia’s hair, feeling for where human ears should be, but there was nothing there except fluffy hair.

“…Are you really… Pia?”

“?”

Pia looked like she didn’t understand my question.

Or perhaps she was wondering why I would ask something so obvious.

As I absentmindedly patted Pia’s head, still trying to process the situation,

Suddenly, the cabin door opened.

“Ash, are you awa—”

“Ah, Miss Silvia.”

“…Huh?”

No, the gates of hell had opened.

.