APIBAGS Chapter 2

Let's ransack everything!

The diary I hadn't found yesterday might still turn up somewhere. I'd already turned Evangeline's room inside out, so now to search the others.

This was the washroom, this was the bathroom, this was the sitting room, and—ah, here!

The door was stiff and took some effort to open, but it turned out to be what looked like a storage room. Some things were covered in cloth; assorted odds and ends sat packed into wooden crates rather than paper boxes. And... how is any of this supposed to get moved?

Everything under the cloth turned out to be paintings. I'd spotted some paints nearby too—it seemed Evangeline had a hobby of painting. There were bookshelves here as well, so it seemed to double as a reading room. No wonder the curtains had been drawn.

I left the paintings alone and looked over the books. I couldn't read the text, but a diary would be something she'd written by hand—it would show, wouldn't it? And then I landed a big one. The cover was pitch black, which was a bit odd, but this was unmistakably something written by hand. There were even traces of ink that had bled through and smudged. Numbers written on the cover—it had to be.

I was flicking hastily through the pages when something slipped out and fell. A slip of paper? I picked it up.

A summoning circle?

A circle with geometric patterns inside it. This was a summoning circle, no question. Insane. A summoning circle—out of a diary.

Looking at it now, the work I'd transmigrated into was probably something with a bit of age to it. You don't see summoning circles and contracts with supernatural beings come up much anymore these days.

I didn't deliberate. I was going to draw this summoning circle. Whether something like a spirit lord or a dragon came out, I had to try. A villainess needed at least one way to defend herself.

There happened to be paint here. There was no blank canvas and I couldn't find any decent paper, so I decided to draw it on the floor. In these stories that's always done on the floor anyway.

On the off chance I might run out of paint partway through, I chose the red, which had the largest quantity. All the brushes had hardened and wouldn't flex, so I just dipped my finger in the paint.

First a large circle, then a triangle and a star... text filled it too. I'd been drawing carefully when my hand caught on a rough patch of the wood floor. Fortunately nothing had gotten lodged in the skin, but it did bleed. It hurt an unreasonable amount for such a small thing, so I switched to the stiff, dried-out brush for the rest.

Inconvenient, but manageable. Should have done that from the start. A poor head makes for a tired body.

Done!

It was a bit lopsided and had an odd quality to it, but I'd finished it! In novels something usually erupts immediately, or some change occurs—but nothing happened. Was I supposed to chant something after drawing the circle? There was a chant written beneath the elaborate summoning circle on the original paper... but what good was that? I couldn't read it.

The drawing felt like a waste to just leave there, so I'd try saying anything that came to mind.

"Spirit lord? Spirit? Dragon? Excuse me...?"

Nothing happened.

"Um... I'd like to form some kind of contract, would anyone who's interested please come out?"

Begging pathetically wasn't going to help. It seemed I really did need to recite the chant. I'd have to master the writing first and try again later.

Can't even summon without being literate—what kind of garbage Isekai is this.

Count Rohanson looked down at the maid before him.

She wasn't a criminal, yet Daisy stood with her head bowed, eyes clamped shut and trembling. Given that Count Rohanson was not an unreasonably harsh employer toward his staff, her state of fear seemed well beyond what was necessary.

Understandably so—Daisy had spent the past two days attending to that Evangeline at close quarters. Whatever had taken up residence within might be something else entirely, but the outward appearance was enough of a resemblance to make fragments of Evangeline visible in her master's face.

Understanding this, Count Rohanson made no move to reproach the maid. Daisy had been on terms of close friendship with his late daughter regardless of their difference in station, and it was because of that connection that she had readily volunteered to attend to the thing. The count spoke slowly.

"So. What has it been doing?"

"It asked me about the young lady, my lord. How old she was, what her family situation was like. Whether there were any foods she preferred or habits she had. And it acts as though it has truly become the young lady. When I mentioned that the young lady used to go out for a walk at eight o'clock, it said it would do the same. It put on the young lady's clothes and walked around, and..."

The freckle-dusted face that usually carried a sweet expression twisted. The eyelashes pressed tightly shut trembled. Daisy spoke as though in confession to a priest.

A rage-fueled cry that had swelled gradually died away into near-silence. It seemed almost to want to become Evangeline. She couldn't finish the thought aloud—she'd recognized how emotional she was becoming. The person who would find that most unbearable had to be the count, Evangeline's own father.

"It didn't seem to care in the slightest that the maids who saw it fainted."

Was that the whole of it? Daisy's mind returned to the moment she had seen Evangeline standing there watching the maid being dragged away by the arms, sobbing her desperate pleas to be spared. The thing watching had been that crimson gaze—and the emotion alive in it was unmistakably contempt. A disdain, as though looking at a worm writhing on the ground.

The Evangeline that Daisy had known was not like that. That frail girl could never have said a harsh word to anyone, even if it meant suffering herself. To want to become the young lady and then look at someone with such contempt was wrong.

Wrong. Don't look at me like that.

Daisy lowered her head in fear of meeting that gaze. And as for those eyes—were they looking at her still, even now?

"And then it suddenly said it wanted to learn to read."

"To read?"

Daisy nodded and continued.

"It said it had amnesia and couldn't remember the letters, and asked me to buy a primer."

Daisy had made the promise to attend to the thing, so she couldn't go out herself to buy a book—she'd only stepped away briefly intending to ask someone else. In that brief time, the room had been empty. She'd wondered if it had absconded somewhere with the young lady's body and searched the entire fourth floor. Then she'd found the last door at the end of the corridor standing open—the room that the young lady had never permitted anyone to enter. There had been no finding the key, so it had simply been left. She'd idly wondered for a moment how it had managed to get inside.

The door had been left just barely ajar. Opening it further would make a sound. That would mean meeting those eyes that looked at people like crawling things. Daisy held her breath and peered through the crack. The thing inside was clearly holding a book.

"Saying she couldn't read in order to get me to leave—that was a lie, clearly. When I came back I saw her reading. And then... and then..."

What came after this part was vivid. She wanted to forget it, and the more she tried, the sharper it became.

"Blood was coming from one of its fingers. It had drawn some kind of pattern on the floor with that blood, I think. Even just looking at it made me feel ill."

While the thing drew on the floor with its fingers, there was a harsh sound. The sound of fingernails being dragged frantically across a surface.

"And after it finished drawing, it was muttering something, but the one word I clearly heard was... 'contract.'"

The sound had been difficult to make out. Daisy pressed her ear closer to the door. In doing so, she had accidentally nudged it slightly further open. She had prayed desperately that it hadn't been noticed. But their eyes had met. Daisy had squeezed her eyes shut in terror. And that was the entirety of what she had seen.

"A contract..."

Count Rohanson stroked his chin. A pattern drawn in blood, and a contract. No matter how he considered it, the circumstances seemed far from reassuring. Some form of ritual? As though it weren't already enough to have that thing occupying his daughter's body, and now something else called up in blood potentially adding another entity of a different kind into the situation.

The count exhaled slowly. All of this was because his daughter had taken her own life. The temple refused to preside over the funeral or accept her remains, so a malevolent spirit had come to dwell in that body. The trouble was that the malevolent spirit couldn't be driven out even with holy water.

There was no solution, so all he could do was keep watch. He was about to offer Daisy some words of encouragement for her continued efforts, when he suddenly found himself noticing anew the state of the maid before him—eyes still pressed shut.

"By the way—why have you been keeping your eyes shut?"

"Why? I'm frightened, of course. It's still looking at me. My lord."

Daisy asked in return, genuinely puzzled. Still looking? The count turned his head.

And then he met the eyes. Clumped together, staring back.

A three-eyed leopard-print cheese cat has chosen me as its person. What even is the quality of this isekai? Why is even the cat extraordinary?

I had no idea where it had come from, but when I woke up it was lying in the bed right alongside me. Was it a cat the county house kept? I'd have to ask the maid when she came to wait on me.

Though it was a different person from last time. Made sense—they were probably rotating shifts. Naturally enough.

"Are there many cats in the county house?"

"Cats? We put them all down long ago."

All of them were dead?

The maid gave a supplementary explanation: something about a plague spreading from the cats, so they'd had to. It seemed something like the Black Death had gone around here too. Well.

meow.

"...Don't you hear a cat crying somewhere?"

"I don't hear a thing."

"That's strange... it sounds so close."

I fought desperately to look innocent. Of course it sounded close! Don't! Little one, don't cry! If you cry they'll find you! They'll kill you!

Fortunately the maid left without searching the room.

My heart nearly fell out of my chest. I'd always been the type to oppose adopting a pet without the family's consent before this—and now here I was, the very person who'd snuck home a foundling cat without asking anyone. 'Dad was totally against cats and now look at him—!' I used to hate those kinds of 'update' posts. And here I am, being one. The person who'd recklessly brought home a stray without consulting the household—that's me.

But they were going to die! They said they'd all been put down because of a plague. This one's family was probably already gone. Couldn't I take it to a priest and a doctor, get it properly checked, and keep it? They weren't going to kill a county lady's pet, surely.

I had to get the count's permission first.

He was in his study, I thought someone had said? At least I remembered roughly where the rooms were—thank goodness for small mercies. I went down the stairs and headed for the second floor. I knocked on the door and the butler appeared.

"I'd like to see the count."

"I'll go and inquire, my lady."

The butler returned quickly.

"I do beg your pardon, my lady. The count has said he is too occupied at present and cannot receive you."

"Is that right?"

Wow. The villainess's father is really something else. Daughter dies and comes back to life and he doesn't come to see her, hasn't shared a meal with her once since I arrived, and now that I've come to him, he shuts the door in my face? No wonder his daughter grew up a villainess. Even calling it 'too busy' as an excuse was too generous.

"If you have a message, my lady, you may relay it through me."

The butler bowed his head. What on earth did Evangeline do to this man that he's bowing ninety degrees at me? I put a hand on his shoulder to tell him to please stand up and he startled so sharply I nearly jumped too. I wasn't going to hit him!

"I'd like to keep a cat."

"A cat, my lady...?"

"Is that not allowed?"

"No, not at all..."

Yes! Permission acquired!

With a light and cheerful step I made my way back.

"Your name is Pudding!"