Red Hood (3)

Cat shook her head, naturally saying no when asked if the wolf remained inside the house, despite having answered no when asked if the wolf had bitten her grandmother and gone outside.

She had clearly come to us asking us to defeat the wolf that took her grandmother, but then she suddenly changed her story. Witnessing that scene in real-time, I was simply dumbfounded.

‘Was it not Red Hood, but The Boy Who Cried Wolf?’

In fact, no wolf had even come in the first place, and just as the thought was about to cross my mind that we might have made a pointless trip, Ethan this time posed a question to the girl based on a new hypothesis.

“If it didn’t bite and take her with its mouth, did that big wolf perhaps carry or hug your grandmother away?”

“……!”

Right, a Werewolf.

I had momentarily forgotten that this was a medieval fantasy world. That in this world, there existed hybrids of humans and animals called Werebeasts.

Among them, a design that suspiciously wealthy people would particularly like… no, if it was a Werewolf species that displayed more animalistic traits than human ones, there was a sufficient possibility that it would look like a wolf through a child’s eyes.

And if a Werewolf had kidnapped her grandmother, there was a sufficient possibility that she was still alive….

“No.”

“…Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“…….”

…Right, no matter what, it wouldn’t be resolved that easily.

To be honest, a Werewolf was the most likely possibility, but since she said it wasn’t, I couldn’t press her further. She was saying yes with such bright, clear eyes, and I couldn’t scold her to stop lying.

First, keeping in mind the possibility that what Cat saw was a Werewolf, I corrected the misunderstanding between her and me.

“Did the wolf and your grandmother perhaps hold hands and leave the house together?”

“No.”

“…Then, did the wolf perhaps kidnap your grandmother by carrying her on its back?”

“Hmm, no.”

“……Then did the wolf perhaps kidnap your grandmother by wrapping its tail around her body?”

“…What do you mean by that?”

“…Nothing.”

I had clearly presented all possible options for a wolf, but Cat kept repeating “no, no” at the end of every sentence, to the point where I started to wonder if this child was teasing me. It wasn’t like we were suddenly playing twenty questions.

If it wasn’t taken by biting with its mouth, nor wrapped with its hands, nor carried on its back… are there any other options?

Perhaps Cat’s grandmother never existed in the first place and she was a fictional being created by her imagination, just as this thought crossed my mind, Ethan this time asked Cat a question about her grandmother’s kidnapping.

“…If that’s the case, why do you think that wolf kidnapped your grandmother? Isn’t it possible that the wolf just came in briefly and left when your grandmother wasn’t home?”

“…H-but…. Th-that wolf said so….”

“…Said, what?”

“Yes. It said, ‘I kidnapped your grandmother, so if you want her back, just sleep quietly for two nights and wait.’… But, even after two nights since that day, my grandmother still hasn’t returned….”

“…….”

“…….”

…Seeing as it spoke to Cat, it seems certain that it’s a Werewolf.

And thanks to Cat’s recent statement, I was able to obtain another piece of information: Cat did not directly witness the moment her grandmother was kidnapped.

She had simply heard the wolf say it kidnapped her grandmother and believed it verbatim. Perhaps the wolf… no, the Werewolf, didn’t actually kidnap her grandmother, and there was a possibility that she simply hadn’t returned home for some other reason.

‘Maybe it’s actually possible to find her grandmother.’

Rather than telling the young girl that she had lost her only remaining blood relative, it was much better to put in some effort and conduct an investigation.

Thinking that, I entered the open room among the two rooms in the house to find traces of the Werewolf that had invaded.

“Is this Cat’s grandmother’s room?”

“Yes!”

“And this is also where you saw the Werewolf… no, the talking wolf?”

“Yes!”

…Now it feels like we’re finally communicating. When she only said “no, no,” I honestly felt like my chest was going to burst.

Perhaps due to traces of the Werewolf’s intrusion, as I looked around the grandmother’s slightly messy room, I picked up a suspicious string that had fallen on the floor.

‘…What is this thin piece of cloth…?’

It was mixed among the clothes on the floor, so at first I thought it might be a necklace, but it didn’t seem to be. Since the strings to tie it were on both sides, it didn’t seem to be made for wearing around the neck.

And yet, it was too small in area to be called clothing. To the point where I wondered if it even functioned as clothing.

Not knowing the purpose of the H-shaped black piece of cloth, which seemed to be made of thin strings, as I expressed my doubt, Cat cautiously asked me a question.

“…Excuse me, unnie?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you holding my grandmother’s underwear…?”

“Underwear, you say? …This?”

“Yes. That thing you’re holding, unnie, it’s my grandmother’s panties….”

“……Uh, kyaaaak?!”

At the words that this thin piece of cloth was women’s underwear, I, startled, quickly threw away the H-shaped string I was holding.

“Th-this is underwear?! This kind of thing that doesn’t even cover the parts it’s supposed to, nor has any intention of covering them?!”

If by chance the wind blew and her skirt fluttered, calling this piece of cloth-no, this string of cloth-that would immediately expose her lower body, ‘panties’ was probably only something Cat and the owner of this string would do.

Just how perverted must one be to confidently wear this kind of underwear? And if Cat’s words were true, the owner of this underwear must surely be….

‘…That I haven’t met Cat’s grandmother yet is at least a relief.’

If I had known her face, I would have imagined her wearing this underwear in even more detail.

“…Lily, is that your type?”

“N-no, Ed!”

“…Right. If you need anything, tell the Head Maid. She’ll probably buy almost anything if Lily asks for it.”

“I said no!”

Who are they seeing me as, some lewd exhibitionist?

My head unnecessarily heated up at Ethan’s absurd suspicion, making strange misunderstandings just because I looked closely at some underwear without knowing it was underwear.

‘…Now that I look, the clothes scattered on the floor with it seem to all be clothes worn by one person.’

Putting aside the black string that may or may not be clothing, the other clothes had subtle traces of being slightly torn at the back and waist.

The fact that the string panties from earlier were her grandmother’s underwear meant that these torn pajamas and the pajama pants with frayed seams that were with it were all clothes worn by Cat’s grandmother.

From the circumstances, it was also highly likely that these were the clothes her grandmother was wearing on the day she disappeared.

‘If they were going to kidnap her, it would have been fastest to just take her without bothering to undress her. Why were all the clothes torn like this?’

What if the statement that a Werewolf kidnapped her grandmother was true, and that Werewolf was one with peculiar tastes among Werewolves?

What if, in the house it broke into in the middle of the night, it felt lust for Cat’s grandmother, and then Cat appeared just as it was about to pounce, causing it to flee in a hurry?

‘…It wouldn’t be something like that, would it? No way.’

The developers of 『Luminor Academy』 that I know, even if they didn’t create a Lilith virgin route, were quite skilled at making ‘marketable games’.

Heroines full of personality and charm, and various capture routes, and guys who knew where otaku would cheer and get excited. That’s why a game made in a peripheral Asian country ended up on Steam, translated into various languages worldwide, and sold.

Guys with such sensibilities would never have created an episode like this ‘grandmother lover’. They knew best that there would be more than a few guys who would hate it if they put something like this in.

If so, let’s think about it again, but this time excluding ‘that reason’. A rational reason why the Werewolf that broke in during the night had no choice but to tear off Cat’s grandmother’s clothes.

‘Did it try to unwrap the packaging before eating…?’

‘Before eating’ here means a meal in the literal sense. Not a sexual innuendo.

But Werewolves in this world are treated as ordinary Beastfolk, and there would be no particular reason for them to commit cannibalism.

And if it really did something like that, there should have been traces of resistance or scattered blood somewhere in this house, but no such traces were visible no matter how I looked.

Furthermore, there was no particular sense of resistance in the torn clothes. If someone had tried to do something by force, it wouldn’t have been torn so cleanly.

‘Wait, looking closely at these clothes….’

Looking at the traces of the torn top and pants, the two torn clothes had one thing in common. That was, both the top and bottom were torn along the ‘seams’.

If they were torn by external force, it would have been a bit difficult for them to tear so neatly along the seams. Usually, the fabric would rip with a ‘whoosh’ or be shredded into rags and pieces.

Tearing in this manner only happens when uniform force is applied to the entire garment and it’s pulled with almost the same intensity.

As if wrapping a large balloon with clothes and then inflating it until it bursts from inside the clothes, in this manner….

“……Ah! I got it!!”

“Kyaak?! Uh, unnie?”

“…Lilith?”

Cat’s testimony, the talking wolf, traces of clothes torn from the inside.

…All the mysteries have been solved. The truth is always one!