TYF 3

Chapter 3

“Why give something this expensive to a kid like her? Well, I guess in a ducal house where money is rotting away, it’s just pocket change.”

The maids took turns secretly selling off Rierusha’s belongings and living in luxury.

That was why there wasn’t a single toy in Rierusha’s room.

Paper and colored pencils were especially popular, disappearing within a day.

It was also the decisive reason Rierusha still couldn’t properly read or write even by the time she turned ten.

Even the tutor the family had assigned her would just spend time halfheartedly and then leave.

The tutor greatly resented the fact that he had been made to teach Rierusha, who had fallen out of the duke’s favor.

“If you bother me, I will tell His Grace everything. So you know what you should do, don’t you? Now, hold out your hand. Bad children must be punished.”

Rierusha’s fingertips twitched. A bad memory surfaced, and without realizing it, she shook her head hard.

Thinking she had walked for quite a while, Rierusha let out a breath and looked back.

Soon, a flicker of despair brushed across her wavering eyes.

“W-why am I still only heeere?”

She had only managed to get out about halfway through the castle.

Rierusha patted her aching legs with her small hands.

Looking closely, her neck, fingers, and wrists were covered in colorful children’s accessories.

Yes, she was going to sell all of those, too.

“Waaah, it huuurts.”

As her body had gotten smaller, her stamina had vanished, too. To only realize that now.

The current Rierusha’s stride was so tiny it made her want to cry—she was moving only as much as an ant’s eye crust.

Rierusha looked down at the cloth bundle that now felt like baggage, then put strength into her hands and moved her feet.

The sunlight outside gradually faded, and a dense, shadowy forest appeared.

‘If I just pass through here, it’s outside!’

However, there was one thing Rierusha did not know at all.

This forest was known as the most dangerous in the empire, called, by name, the “Forest of Monsters.”

* * *

“What is this. It’s not like a rat gnawed it or something.”

A silver-haired boy who looked only about ten years old lifted a piece of bread riddled with holes and frowned.

The boy had come to look for her because he was bothered by the fact that he couldn’t see Rierusha, who usually snuck into the Tower of Truth.

Around the boy, maids were trembling, kneeling with their foreheads pressed to the floor.

“Where did Rierusha go?”

“Th-that is…….”

“Why is her room so empty again?”

The boy, here for the first time, narrowed his eyes.

Nowhere in this castle could he feel any trace that seemed to belong to Rierusha.

Don’t tell me…….

The boy’s expression hardened stiffly.

“You’re not going to tell me Rierusha has disappeared, are you?”

“……W-we were wrong! Please spare us. Lady Rierusha is always so disobedient and free-spirited……!”

The maid who attended Rierusha personally turned pale and begged with both hands rubbing together.

Trying to avoid responsibility as much as possible by blaming Rierusha instead.

Of all days, on a day when the second young master had come looking, she had been the one on duty for personal attendance.

The maid ground her teeth in resentment inside, but she couldn’t even think of lifting her forehead.

‘Why is the second young master suddenly being so capricious!’

Everyone in House Arakrene had a bad temperament.

Especially now that the eldest, the heir, had become a husk of himself, there was no one who could stop the second, Ricador, except the Duke of Arakrene.

So it went without saying that the child’s capriciousness reached the heavens.

Ricador, in particular, had no mercy for those beneath him, and was sensitive and prickly.

And of all things, she had gotten caught up in Ricador’s whim today.

‘Why did the second young master come to see that half-wit?’

She found it a little strange, since she knew he disliked her, calling her a rat.

Wasn’t it Ricador Arakrene who always found her first and drove her out whenever Rierusha sneaked into the Tower of Truth?

‘Still, it’s fine. Who’s going to care if that one child disappears? She’s nothing but cold rice in the family.’

Surely this time, too, she was hiding somewhere, plotting something to get attention.

Once Ricador left, she planned to find Rierusha immediately and scold her harshly so she could never do this again.

The maid watched Ricador’s mood, reassured. Fortunately, he didn’t seem terribly angry.

Just then, the knight who had been searching around the castle at Ricador’s command returned.

“We found a trace of Lady Rierusha, Young Master Ricador.”

“What is that?”

In the knight’s hand was a colorful bracelet.

It was a common toy bracelet children would play with.

But Ricador, who had never seen such a childish thing in his life, motioned with his eyes as if asking what it was.

“It seems to be Lady Rierusha’s. …It was dropped near the Forest of Monsters.”

“……What did you say?”

In that moment, the maid’s face turned white.

The Forest of Monsters.

Ricador’s gaze as he looked back at the maid grew sharp.

* * *

“Hmph, I’m not scaaared. Hmph, not scaaared at all.”

Rierusha opened wide her watery eyes that looked as though tears might spill any moment.

As if tense, she bit her lips tight and kept busily glancing around in anxious unease.

It felt like something might suddenly leap out from somewhere.

Even Rierusha, with an ordinary body no different from a regular person, realized by now that this was not an ordinary forest.

Because she couldn’t hear even the chirping of birds you would normally hear.

Even if she didn’t know what that meant, a child’s instincts were crying out in anxiety.

‘When I came with Brother Ricador, it didn’t feel like this.

Then what is this creepy atmosphere?’

It had been a mistake to vaguely assume it would be fine, since she had lived in the castle all this time and never once had any flying creature come out of the forest to wreak havoc in the garden.

And since it was a forest within the family’s grounds, she thought surely it couldn’t be dangerous.

So, without realizing it, this forest had been recognized by Rierusha as a place that was not dangerous to her.

But…….

Drip, drip—sticky liquid began at the crown of her head and fell down her cheek.

“Th-this…… what is it?”

Rierusha, who had been wiping at her chin, froze with a start.

When she slowly raised her head, a monster dozens of times larger than her body was looking down at her.

At a glance, the monster’s eyes looked starving.

“H-hhk……!”

Thud.

Startled enough to lose her breath, Rierusha dropped the bundle she had been holding.

Before she could even grasp the situation, Rierusha bolted forward with no thought at all.

“G-go awaaay! I’m scaaared, monsteeer!! Waaah, save me. I hate it! Nooo!”

What confidence had made her think she could come into the forest alone?

Even as she ran, fear that the monster would catch up soon made chicken-dropping tears spill out.

“Sniff!”

She hated getting hurt so much.

She didn’t want to feel that chilling sensation of dying again.

‘I only wanted to protect my family……!’

In truth, she didn’t want to leave the ducal castle.

Why couldn’t she be happy together with her family?

‘Was that too big a wish?’

Rierusha didn’t notice the tree root sticking up from the ground in time, and she tripped and fell.

“M-mama……!”

Her body slammed straight into the dirt, and her tender skin was scraped.

There wasn’t a place on her whole body that didn’t hurt.

But compared to the pain that would soon come, it was nothing.

‘If it was going to be like this, then why did I even come back to the past?’

After finally making it back alive, to end up being eaten alive by a monster.

Sensing her end, Rierusha squeezed her eyes shut tight.

That was when it happened. A piercing chill wrapped around her, and explosive magic power began to pour out from around Rierusha’s body.

Pop-! Pop-!

At the same time, a strange sound rang out.

“……Huh?”

When she still didn’t feel pain even after a long while, Rierusha cautiously opened her eyes.

Soap bubbles were floating thickly everywhere.

“……Soap bubbwles?”

When she turned around, the monster trapped inside the bubbles couldn’t move an inch.

The moment she watched the scene in wonder.

“Who said it was fine to come into the forest without permission?”

Unbelievably, Ricador appeared.