Chapter: 03
Hello! My Future Father-in-Law (3)
The scene continued with the day Sertisha officially inherited the position of head of the Ritea family. To be recognized as the head of a beastfolk family, she had to undergo the beastfolk succession ceremony.
As the chieftain who ruled over the semi-aquatic beastfolk, Sertisha held her succession ceremony at the Temple of the Five-Colored Waves. Up until that point, there had been no problems.
The ceremony proceeded without a single objection.
Her older relatives and retainers treated Sertisha kindly.
However, after the succession ceremony, they began revealing their true colors one by one.
“Chieftain, this is for the sake of the Ritea family. The beaver beastfolk will become a poison to our family. We must capture every last one of them.”
Under pressure from the elders, Sertisha burned down the settlements of the beaver beastfolk, who had protected the barriers surrounding Ritea territory for generations. She also captured or purged every last one of the crocodile beastfolk, hippopotamus beastfolk, seal beastfolk, turtle beastfolk, and other races that had supported the Ritea family.
Then she filled the vacant positions with the family elders and the beastfolk who had joined forces with them.
In the dream, Sertisha was no longer Sertisha.
She was nothing more than a puppet who had to do whatever they told her to do.
The Ritea family had been reduced to a battered shell by its elders.
The young sea otter had been broken in both body and mind by the elders’ cunning torment and abuse.
Just like the adult Sertisha she had seen earlier, she was gradually losing all her color.
Then, one late night, the adult Sertisha, her body and mind chilled to the core, dragged her exhausted self into a shabby room that had now become all too familiar.
With all the retainers who had supported the family purged, Sertisha herself had fallen into disfavor.
An old window through which the sea breeze whistled, walls covered in mold, and a bed so old that it creaked whenever she moved.
Everything was controlled, from the food she ate to the clothes she wore.
Sertisha was little more than a tool for satisfying the elders’ greed.
Watching the adult Sertisha lying alone in bed, young Sertisha bit her lip tightly.
I don’t want to see any more. It’s only a dream, so why does it make me so sad……?
She felt so frustrated, so miserable, and so furious that her emotions threatened to overwhelm her.
It’s only a dream……
That small, frail back, curled up all alone, looked unbearably pitiful.
As young Sertisha unconsciously reached out toward her own back in the dream, something resembling dark, murky smoke entered her field of vision from somewhere.
Huh……?
Could this be……?!
Young Sertisha hurried toward the old door.
Just as she had suspected, dark smoke was slowly seeping through the gap beneath the door.
Even though she was young, there was no way she wouldn’t recognize what that smoke meant.
Fire!
There’s a fire!!
When the acrid smoke filled the room, the adult Sertisha, who had been sleeping, opened her eyes. Seeing the smoke filling the room, she immediately got out of bed and grabbed the doorknob.
But—
Click— Click—
The door wouldn’t budge, as though something were blocking it from the other side.
The adult Sertisha turned deathly pale and desperately pounded on the door.
“Help me!! There’s…… there’s someone here……! Gasp……! Someone’s in here!!”
Even as the acrid smoke choked her, the adult Sertisha continued screaming with all her might.
Even as the black smoke filled the room.
Even as the flames spread all the way to the door.
The adult Sertisha cried out desperately, her voice filled with utter despair.
Please save me.
I’m in here.
Tears welled up in young Sertisha’s eyes, too.
Her chest felt heavy and painful, as though she were drowning underwater.
The terrifying black flames blazed fiercely.
They continued burning without stopping.
They burned until the adult Sertisha’s voice finally vanished like sea foam.
“Gasp—!”
Sertisha, who had wandered through the dream for what felt like an eternity before finally returning to reality, gasped for breath.
Perhaps it was because the memories of the black flames remained so vividly in her mind. Her eyes darted frantically around every corner of her grandfather’s bedroom.
After several minutes, Sertisha’s blurry vision gradually sharpened. Her painfully tense body began to relax as well.
Once she recognized her surroundings, only one question remained.
Why?
Why did that room catch fire?
Why was the door blocked?
And more importantly—
Was the dream I just had a vision of something that would happen in the future?
“Tisha, if things keep going like this, I’ll be persecuted? Tormented? And then I’ll be worked to death and die…… Th-This can’t happen!!”
What kind of sea otter am I?! My grandfather raised me with so much love!
He gave me lots of shells and pretty stones, and he decorated my room to make it cute and beautiful!
And now someone expects me to live with disgusting shells, ugly stones, and a filthy room?!
“Tisha will never put up with that!!”
Sertisha shook her head violently. Then, a memory suddenly popped into her mind.
Oh, right! Come to think of it, didn’t adult Tisha tell me to find a white pearl in that dream?
She hadn’t had time to think about it earlier, but now she had a rough idea of why she had experienced such a strange dream.
It was connected to her grandfather becoming a pearl of the sea.
Every beastfolk possessed a unique supernatural ability belonging to their race.
A racial ability was a special power unique to each race, derived from its inherent characteristics.
Among these abilities, there was an extraordinary power that manifested only in the head of a Guardian family.
It was far more powerful than ordinary racial abilities, and only one person in an entire family could possess it at a time.
People called it a Guardian Ability.
In particular, the Guardian Ability of the Ritea family was known to pass naturally to the next generation of chieftain when the current chieftain died.
It was a unique Ritea family tradition that had continued since ancient times.
And the Guardian Ability of the Ritea family was called Ripples of Light.
It was the power to read the ripples that appeared in the flow of life through light. By detecting the traces of ripples created by the flow of life, emotions, and time, one could glimpse fragments of the past and future.
Sertisha remembered her grandfather telling her that when she inherited this power, she might be able to see the future for several days without having to pay any price, as a side effect of its awakening.
“If Tisha’s Ripples of Light have awakened…… then everything I saw in that dream must be real.”
If things continue like this, someone in the family will kill Tisha.
He definitely said to find a white pearl, right?
I don’t know what it is, but I have to find it!
Finding the white pearl was important, but the most pressing matter for Sertisha was appointing a guardian.
If the chieftain was too young, they could personally appoint someone to serve as their guardian.
However, appointing one of the family elders to that position was absolutely out of the question.
“I’m sure they’ll kill Tisha, just like in that dream!”
A sudden chill ran down her spine, and she shivered.
“The only person in our family I can trust is…… my eldest aunt, the Saintess of the Five-Colored Waves…….”
Unfortunately, her eldest aunt was living in seclusion inside the temple, making it difficult even to meet her.
“Hmm…… In that case…… who should I appoint as my guardian?”
At that moment, the image of the imposing man she had met at the funeral came to mind.
The only person who had possessed color in that black-and-white world.
“That man…… He’s the King of the West. There’s no way someone like him would agree to become Tisha’s guardian.”
Sertisha desperately shook her head, trying to dispel the thought.
“First, I’ll look for the white pearl instead of worrying about a guardian. Maybe I’ll find the answer that way!”
Her bold determination continued through the following day…… and then the day after that.
Unfortunately, the results were far more disastrous than her determination suggested.
“Why! Isn’t! There! One?! Why, why, why?!”
From that day onward, Sertisha searched every corner of the estate daily. She inspected all five treasure vaults that only her grandfather, as chieftain, had been permitted to enter, and searched every inch of the estate, from the basement to the very top floor.
In fact, pearls were as common as dirt in the sea otter family.
They had all kinds of pearls lying around, from red pearls to pink pearls and blue pearls.
But there was nothing like the white pearl adult Tisha had mentioned.
She had searched through every single pearl in the enormous estate, yet she couldn’t find even the slightest trace of a white pearl.
There were only three days left until the succession ceremony.
She absolutely had to find the white pearl before then……
“Chieftain! These are the last pearls we have!”
“Tillo…… I think I’ve already lost…… Just looking at pearls makes me so angry…….”
Tillo, her personal maid and a sea otter beastfolk, set down a large-looking box beside her and hurried over.
“Gasp! You mustn’t die! If you die, Chieftain, who’s going to make sure I get fed?! Sob, sob!”
“If Tisha dies, bury me beneath the sea next to Grandpa…….”
“Waaah! Chieftaiiiin~!!”
“What a ridiculous performance…….”
Delphina, a duck beastfolk who was Sertisha’s playmate and prospective aide, clicked her tongue as she watched their melodrama from the side.
Delphina knew that Sertisha had inherited the Ripples of Light. She also knew what the future held for her.
“Haah…… It’s already shocking enough that the previous chieftain passed away while I was briefly away. And on top of that, your future is…… Haah, damn it…… The more I think about this, the angrier I get.”
“Mm…… That’s why Tisha absolutely has to find this white pearl.”
“I know. Adult Tisha, right? Anyway, the grown-up version of you told you that you absolutely had to find it.”
“But does a white pearl like that really exist?”
Although Tillo didn’t know the details, she naturally joined the conversation between Sertisha and Delphina.
One day, their young chieftain had suddenly summoned her in secret and ordered her to gather every single pearl in the entire estate.
Ritea pearls were so common in the Ritea territory that they were practically worthless there.
Tillo couldn’t understand why her young chieftain would order her to collect every last one of them. Nevertheless, she was her master’s servant—no, her employee—and had to do whatever she was told.
So she had gathered every pearl in the estate and brought them all over.
In response to Tillo’s question, Delphina answered in her place.
“It’s perfectly normal for there to be no white pearls among the pearls produced in Ritea. White pearls exist only in legends.”
“Huh? A pearl from a legend?”
“Huh? What’s with that reaction? Don’t tell me you don’t know?!”
Delphina was horrified by Sertisha’s bewildered response.
Tillo, who was standing beside her, also stared at her young mistress with an expression that seemed to say, Is our master an idiot?
“Whaaa…… What was it again……? Hehe.”
“Hehe? You think this is funny?! How can you not know something like that when you’re the chieftain?!”
“Chieftain, Tillo is truly disappointed in you! You really don’t know the legend of the Five-Colored Pearls?”
“Hmm…… The legend of the Five Guardians?”
“……”
“Umm……”
The two girls were left speechless.
Sertisha rolled her eyes from side to side, pretending to be distracted by something else.
To be fair, before she was a chieftain, Sertisha was still just a six-year-old little baby.
She preferred playing to studying and loved sweets……
No matter how powerful a family she was heir to, it was only natural for a six-year-old like Sertisha to prefer playing over studying.
The reason her grandfather had constantly been so troubled was Sertisha’s heir training.
Although Sertisha was fairly clever, skipping lessons was practically routine, and dozing off during class was an everyday occurrence.
She did like stories about the Guardians, but she had paid little attention to anything beyond the main story, letting the rest wash over her like waves.
Naturally, she had no idea what legendary pearls Delphina was talking about.
Seeing her shameless young boss pretend to be distracted, Delphina’s delicate brows furrowed deeply.
At the same time, her determination to properly educate the young chieftain grew stronger and stronger.
“Sigh…… Listen carefully, my future boss.”
Before explaining the Five-Colored Pearls, she first needed to give a brief explanation of the Five-Colored Guardians.
They were the five Guardians who had saved the Continent of Di Lesha from ruin at the hands of the Black Goddess.
So, where had these five Guardians come from?
They were all divine beasts born from primordial nature.
The divine beast Elioren, born from the warmest light.
The divine beast Valteon, born from the flames of a raging inferno.
The divine beast Orbellin, born from the purest and clearest forest.
The divine beast Pria, born from the frozen wilderness of an icy wasteland.
The divine beast Neris, born from the deep darkness beneath the sea.
After driving away the Black Goddess with their mighty natural powers, the Five-Colored Guardians sacrificed portions of their own strength and transformed them into pearls to restore the continent, which had been devastated by their long battle.
The Guardians then passed these pearls down to their respective children, and the various stories experienced by their descendants became the continuation of the legend of the Five-Colored Guardians.
