NOMAMWTM Chapter 29

Charlotte hesitated.

[Ah, when I'm a rabbit, only my master can hear my voice.]

She pondered how to explain, then simply thrust Nero, who she'd been holding in her arms, at him.

"Um, I didn't know either."

[No, wait. Master—]

"He says he's a demon."

"......What?"

Charlotte was tired of being misunderstood, tired of being mistaken.

The best solution, then, was to tell the truth about everything.

Trapped in an estate where people were dying, she had nothing left to hide.

"......You say that so easily."

He stared back and forth between Nero and her for a long while before muttering in a low voice.

He laughed. Heh. Weak, hollow.

Charlotte sensed something was wrong.

She hadn't expected him to believe her immediately, but his voice held too little strength.

It was the tone of someone who expected nothing more. She felt like she'd made a mistake even though she hadn't made one.

[Mm, I forgot to tell you not to mention it to the kid.]

Nero muttered.

"......Why?"

Charlotte whispered very quietly, watching Michael's expression.

[This shell is that kid's familiar's body.]

"What?"

She didn't understand at first.

The masses weren't Michael's familiar, but since he was a mage—not a mutation like her—he would naturally have one.

But for it to be Nero's body, what did that—

[Dead for a long time now. He went berserk once because of it, I think. I wasn't really paying attention back then.]

"......"

She found herself in a very difficult position. Her actions had been too quick.

"......Um, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

She'd tried to clear up a misunderstanding and made a mistake instead.

She couldn't just throw him away. What should she do?

[Your expression is strange.]

Nero was unnecessarily perceptive.

Michael looked at her with darkened eyes.

She hurried to explain the truth, worried he might misunderstand again.

"Just, just in case, I'm telling you—I really did find him in the garden. Really. The familiar thing, um, I only just learned that too."

"Yes, I'm sure you did."

But naturally, he didn't believe her.

Silence descended.

A familiar was a mage's soul companion.

She knew how important and precious they were to mages from watching her mother and her mother's familiar.

Speaking honestly was good, but this was a topic she shouldn't touch further.

Charlotte quickly changed the subject.

"I'm Charlotte Ethel."

"......What?"

She continued speaking, ignoring his frowning expression.

"I was...... um, I don't really know exactly where it is, but I was born in a rural village in the southern empire."

She set Nero down, thinking it would be better if he stayed out of Michael's sight. He'd follow on his own.

"Until I was fifteen, I lived with my mother, and after that I lived with Baron Ethel, my biological father."

Michael watched her unfold her past with emotionless eyes.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You said I was like a monster. Monsters wouldn't have past stories like this."

It was an unremarkable life, but these things belonged to only one person, so she thought she'd tell him.

With no clear way to dispel his suspicion now, Charlotte felt like grasping at any straw.

"Anyone can fabricate a life story like that."

"You don't have to respond, just listen. It's better than hearing about monsters, isn't it?"

"......"

Someone could lie and make things up moment by moment, but could they fabricate an entire person's past?

Charlotte didn't think so.

Wouldn't he realize it eventually?

She wanted to do something—anything—to make him believe she was human.

That day, she wandered throughout the estate, earnestly expressing to every single mass she saw how terrible death was. She chattered away to herself as she did.

Since she'd told Michael he didn't have to respond, he truly didn't respond at all.

"I know I was born in a rural village, but I don't know exactly what it looked like. Even if I went back to my hometown, I probably wouldn't recognize it unless I got right in front of the house I lived in. I was locked up from the time I was four..."

After that day, Charlotte searched for the masses throughout the vast estate every day.

One day passed.

"My mother raised me with plenty of love, but the one thing she wouldn't let me do was go outside."

Charlotte told the story of when she was first confined.

Even though she'd been very young, the memories from that time remained vividly clear.

The days when she was locked in the cabin when with her mother, locked in her room when her mother went out.

Being so young, at first she accepted it without understanding, but then she saw children playing outside in storybooks and asked to go out and was scolded.

Once she escaped, was caught and brought back, and got her bottom spanked until it was bright red. Smack, smack.

Two days passed.

"But also, it wasn't all bad. Living with my mother was fun. Oh, my mother was a mage. Just like Michael. That's why I thought the monsters were Michael's familiar at first."

Childhood memories. Days when she'd giggle watching her bookworm mother research magic every day, and laugh happily when her mother would sometimes use magic to lift feathers and tickle her all over.

But also days when she felt frustrated at not being able to go out, and cried because she wanted to have friends.

Days when instead of friends, she came to love books she could focus on for hours.

Three days passed, four days, five days, six days, and when a week had passed—

Once she actually started talking, she remembered many things even from such a young age, so she wandered off-topic here and there, and since she thought Michael wouldn't like it if she talked too much, she spoke in short bits, and now the day had come to talk about when she turned ten.

In the past week of wandering the estate searching for the masses, no one had died.

She'd learned this fact by anxiously questioning Michael every morning.

He'd coldly snapped at her not to ask such things, but Charlotte seemed to have built up a tolerance to his coldness and kept asking without caring.

Nero snorted from the side that who knew how long this would last.

But at least to her eyes, it seemed to be working.

So she searched even harder for the masses, and today was no different.

Today she planned to visit the first floor of the estate's west library, which she hadn't been to yet.

"Um, where was I."

Charlotte said slowly as she descended the stairs.

Michael walked beside her without responding.

He seemed to think of her words as music playing from a phonograph.

No, she'd be lucky if he thought of them as music. He might think of them as noise.

She gave a small inward laugh at her own situation and glanced at him. Today, as always, his face was coolly indifferent.

She opened her mouth, which didn't come easily.

"When I was ten, I learned why my mother locked me up."

She stared at her feet.

Ten years old. When the most frightening thing, the thing she least wanted to remember, had happened.

The scene she remembered vividly even eleven years later—no, the scene she couldn't forget.

The moment that had been stained bright red before her eyes flashed past.

"......Why......was that?"

Charlotte flinched and whipped her head around.

"Yes, yes?"

Michael had spoken to her for the first time in a while, and she hadn't heard it.

"Why were you locked up?"

He repeated himself curtly.

"Uh, um..."

She stared at him blankly, then her eyes sparkled.

He'd shown interest for the first time.

"Wow, do you believe me a little now?"

Suddenly she felt energized.

Her complexion brightened considerably. But Michael just looked at her coldly, as if he'd never done otherwise.

"You don't seem to be trying to kill me, so I asked."

He spat the words like chewing them.

"Don't misunderstand. You're a monster, and I know what you want is to make us all sink into peace and then drag us down to despair in a single moment. Don't misunderstand just because you've bewitched Mother."

He must have known she was in contact with Adeline.

"......Um, it's a bit of a painful story. But first, since I inherited my mother's blood, I'm also a mage."

Even though she'd tried so hard, his response was far too cold, so Michael's words just now stung a tiny bit, just a teeny tiny bit, but she quickly ignored such small pain and just continued with her old story.

Even after she revealed she was a mage, Michael showed no surprise and closed his mouth again.

"......But I'm a mutation. I am a mage, but I can't control any magic power at all. My mother said my body overflows with magic, but the moment it leaks outside my body, even the weakest magic becomes uncontrollable and could lead to a rampage. So I keep it sealed, and this is an artifact my mother made for me. Look, it's a real artifact."

She dangled and shook the necklace around her neck to show him. Michael didn't even glance at it.

"......Ah!"

In the midst of this, a good idea flashed into her mind.

With this, Michael might actually believe she was truly human.