“Woodbaum!”
Woodbaum repeatedly rammed the door, again and again.
This was the first time I had ever seen him move so forcefully, but he was crashing against the door without a hint of hesitation, so I was worried that he’d end up breaking his antlers. I’m sure that the shock of the impact had caused all of the remaining leaves on his antlers to fall off.
“Stop, Woodbau, your antlers will break!”
“But……”
Stumbling a little, Woodbaum turned his eyes alone towards me.
“At this rate, Rekka will end up with another wound in her heart because of me. Even though she had finally started to overcome it.”
After saying that, he once again started to ram against the door, but even then it didn’t show any signs of opening.
There was a cracking sound as a bit of the tip of Woodbaum’s antler chipped off.
What should I do, at this rate both Rekka-san and Woodbaum might not get out of this safely.
“That’s right, a fairy!”
If we could at least illuminate the inside of the food storage, I could then use that time to utilise the transfer technique to seek help. Thinking that, I tried to transform into my humanoid form. It was easier to create fairies in that form compared to my fox form after all.
—however, it was then that the mouse squeaked once more.
Still in my fox form, my entire body’s fur blew up in an instant. My ears stood tall, my whiskers stretched tautly, and my entire body grew tense.
However, as I was stiff and unable to move, the mouse easily approached me.
And then, after going, ‘Squeak squeak’, it touched my forepaw.
“WAHHH!?”
Feeling it then started to climb up my leg, all the blood drained from my body.
“No no no!”
I quickly started to shake my foreleg and threw off the mouse.
Where did it go? Is it still at my feet? It’s too dark, I can’t see it!
Even as I fell into confusion, I desperately sniffed around in an attempt to locate the position of the mouse.
Why are all of the mice of this fort so stubborn! Between a fox and a mouse, isn’t it normally the mouse that should be running away?
The beastly scent of a mouse assailed my nostrils. I could still hear its footsteps nearby.
It’s still at my feet!
If it’s this persistent, then it might be the same mouse that was in the lounge. Perhaps it moved its den here after having the hole in the lounge plugged up.
And right now, it surely has targeted my soft, pink paw pads again, mistaking them for food!
It was rather pitiable to be doing this with a mouse as my opponent, but I was on the verge of tears as I sought Tina-san’s help.
“I’m scared……! It’s targeting my paw pads! Tina-san, carry me!”
I was scared of being nibbled on by the mouse if I stayed still, and even if I moved, I might step on the mouse, which was also scary. I didn’t want to be on the floor anymore.
“Another mouse? Where are you, Mil-chan? Come he-…….”
Tina-san immediately extended a hand towards me, but-
“Kyaaa! J-J-Just now, I might’ve touched a mouse!”
“UWAHHH! Tina-san!”
The two of us who were terrible with mice continued to scream in the darkness.
There was no further panic than this. It was chaos.
“—Mil-sama, Tina.”
However, the one who spoke with a calm voice in the midst of all that was surprisingly, Rekka-san.
“It’s okay.”
Relying on my whiteness to find me, she picked me up and placed a hand on Tina-san’s shoulder.
“Calm down, it’ll be okay. It’s just a mouse.”
My heart was still beating like crazy, but after being told that like I was being admonished, I sucked back my tears. My nose made a high-pitched squeak as I sniffled and said.
“Rekka-shaan……”
She’s like a goddess in the dark! My saviour.
It seemed that after seeing Tina-san and I, who were causing even more mayhem than she was, it conversely caused her to calm down. Woodbaum had also stopped trying to destroy the door, and came towards us.
Rekka-san suddenly let out a burst of laughter as she spoke.
“So the two of you are bad with mice? I was thinking that compared to the darkness and a confined space like this, a mere animal like a mouse was nothing. But well, everyone has things that they are afraid of.”
She patted my back to soothe me and continued.
“As I was thinking about what I could do to calm Mil-sama and Tina down, I remembered the knight who saved me back when I was kidnapped.”
“The knight that saved Rekka-san?”
Tina-san murmured.
“That’s right. Like how I caught the purse snatcher who attacked you in the past, Tina, I also had a knight who saved me in my time of crisis. They happened to be patrolling when they sighted a suspicious carriage, and then saved me, who was hidden inside of it.”
Rekka-san’s voice as she reminisced about the past was incredibly gentle.
“There were about three or four knights in total. But, amongst them there was one who left a particularly strong impression on me…….is what I say, but I can’t remember their face at all. That knight, from the moment they saved me, up until when they saw me back home, hugged my frightened self and kindly continued to speak to me. ‘It’s okay, you’re okay now’, they said. That made me feel that knights were such kind and reliable people. And that moment is what made me decide upon my future career.”
That seemed to make the corners of Rekka-san’s lips rise into a smile.
“These past few years, I’ve been so preoccupied with my own fears that I forgot my original resolve in becoming a knight. I also had a knight who was my goal.”
Even though we were locked inside a small, dark room, Rekka-san’s voice was as bright and calm as it was when she talked outside.
“Rekka-san, you’re not scared right now?”
When Tina-san asked that quietly, Rekka-san nodded firmly.
“Yeah, I’m not scared. I’m finding it a bit mysterious that I’m not scared, even though it’s dark, and we’re locked inside. I don’t know how I’d be if I were alone. Unlike the time when I was kidnapped, or the time when I was almost locked into the storehouse, right now Tina, Mil-sama and Woodbaum-sama are with me. I think that’s why I’m fine. Plus……”
She paused briefly before continuing.
“At first I also panicked, but if you think about it calmly, as long as we wait calmly, we’ll definitely be able to get out. Because with the knights here, they’ll definitely come to save their comrades if they notice that they’re missing, right?”
It was the moment when Rekka-san appeared to be smiling confidently in the darkness.
As if to affirm Rekka-san’s words, the door was knocked strongly from the outside.
“Are the four of you okay!?”
It was the One-Eyed Knight’s voice.
I cried, ‘kyun kyun’ in response. If he knew the exact number of people who were locked in here, then as expected, he probably had been watching us from somewhere today too.
And then, having noticed the disturbance, other knights also started to come in succession.
“Oi, just now there was a scream……ah, Vice Cap! What’s wrong? Eh? Mil, Tina and Rekka are inside? Woodbaum too?”
“Rather, the heck’s this? Why is there a tree sticking to the food storage?”
“It was probably the door originally. It’s Woodbaum’s power.”
It seemed that the inside of the door wasn’t the only part to have tree vines growing out from it. I could also hear the shaken voice of Head Chef-san saying, “Ohh……what the heck is this?”.
“I’ll destroy the door now. Hold on for a bit longer.”
After cheering us on, the One-Eyed Knight began giving instructions to the surrounding knights to bring axes and saws.
Upon hearing everyone’s voices outside, Rekka-san once again made a relieved smile.
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