SMFLS 05

Hello! My Future Father-in-Law (5)

Sertisha, who had witnessed with her own two eyes how the fur all over her body stood on end like a procession of caterpillars, set aside her thoughts for a moment and glared at Hicaros.

You, mister!! Who told you to rub an otter’s fur around like that?!

“Eeeeeng!!”

“Hmm?”

Hicaros looked down at her as if to ask, Why are you angry? Then he took Sertisha out of his cloak and set her on the ground.

Standing on the soft sandy beach, Sertisha looked up at Hicaros. For some reason, the baby otter’s gaze seemed extremely impure.

Is she hungry?

Don’t babies this age get hungry at all hours of the day?

Hicaros, who knew absolutely nothing about handling children, looked around while wondering what a young otter might eat.

While Hicaros’s eyes darted about in search of food (?), Sertisha began fixing the fur that he had rubbed into a complete mess.

It was very bad for a baby otter, whose body was vulnerable to temperature changes, to have her downy fur sticking up in every direction like this.

That was why all otter fur followed a set of rules.

The direction of each strand was determined so that the fur could trap air even underwater, and the younger the otter, the more delicate this order became.

Each strand had to overlap with the others while pushing against them, allowing the fur to retain body heat. If that balance was disrupted, the cold sea breeze would mercilessly seep through to the skin.

Sertisha pressed her chest with her front paws and smoothed her fur back into place. As the tangled down settled where it belonged, the tips that had been standing straight up gradually lay flat again.

Only then did she regain the feeling of warm air enveloping her body.

Sertisha let out a small breath before looking up at Hicaros again.

That mister touched me all over without knowing a thing.

As if to express her displeasure, the otter’s tail gave a little thump against the sand.

After busily patting and smoothing her fur back into order, Sertisha found herself face-to-face with a tightly closed scallop shell that had suddenly appeared in front of her.

“Hweeng?”

“What do you think? Do you like it?”

The shell was smaller than Hicaros’s enormous hand…

“Fweeeeeeng!!”

It was so unbelievably… pretty that her anger melted away!!

It was about the size of an adult’s fist and shaped like a fan, just like a scallop.

The shell’s colors were also beautiful, shining in all five colors.

I’ve never seen such a pretty shell before!

That’s definitely going to be my treasured shell!!

“Hweueng…”

Hicaros watched as the young otter stared at the shell as if spellbound, her eyes gradually filling with greed.

The little pink beans of her eyes followed his hand, tracking the object of her desire. The sight was so amusing that even Hicaros, whose lips rarely curved upward, found the corners of his mouth rising gracefully.

“Do you want it?”

“Hweeng!!”

Give it to me! Give it! Please! I said give it to me!

The otter bounced up and down beside Hicaros’s leg, having already lost all reason. With every little hop, her plump belly wobbled along with her.

Hicaros bestowed the ridiculously pretty shell upon the baby otter, who was clutching his trouser leg tightly.

It would be wise to get along with this young head of the family, who had likely inherited the Guardian Ability from the previous head.

And this obviously beautiful shell was the perfect way to win over an otter who was crazy about shells.

“Hweue…”

Holding the five-colored shell in her tiny hands, Sertisha grinned happily and rubbed her face against it.

I want to show Grandpa.

Thinking of her grandfather, who had loved collecting shells just as much as she did, dampened her mood a little. But she quickly shook her head.

No more being sad.

Tisha has to win that mister over now.

She looked straight up at Hicaros, who had been silently observing her for some time.

That mister was the one who made some kind of deal with Grandpa.

He hasn’t accomplished everything he wanted yet, so he might need my Guardian Ability. And I need him, too! So this is a deal!

Feeling Sertisha’s persistent gaze, Hicaros lowered himself toward her. Sertisha seized the opportunity and grabbed his enormous hand.

“Hweueng, hweeng!”

Just wait a little, mister.

Tisha will come kidnap—no, come get you soon!

The otter’s solemn cries did not reach Hicaros, who did not understand otter language.

He merely tilted his head to the side, wondering if she wanted even more shells.

However, their meeting did not end there.

The night before the succession ceremony. In other words, on the very same day they had met at the beach.

A cute intruder, completely without fear, barged into the room where Grand Duke Hicaros was staying and boldly announced beneath the faint moonlight.

“Please become my father-in-law!!”

A few hours earlier.

After parting ways with Grand Duke Hicaros at the sea and returning to her room, Sertisha couldn’t stop thinking about the afterimage she had seen just moments ago.

The moment a drop of Hicaros’s blood touched the blood flowing through Sertisha’s body, Ripples of Light had awakened on its own.

Normally, this Guardian Ability required her to pay with her own blood and use another person’s blood as a medium to activate it intentionally.

But the power had only just awakened and still couldn’t properly obey even its owner’s will.

Putting her complicated thoughts aside for a moment, Sertisha changed out of her otter form.

She was still clumsy at transforming while wearing clothes, so naturally, she was left completely naked.

Normally, she should have been wearing an artifact designed specifically for children’s beast transformations, but Sertisha hadn’t bothered to bring it along because she found it troublesome.

With a practiced motion, Sertisha wrapped a towel around her body, then pulled the cord beside her bed.

A moment later, there was a soft knock at the door.

“Come innn.”

At Sertisha’s permission, the door opened, and her personal maid, Tillo, entered the room with several other maids.

Seeing Sertisha, Tillo asked the other maids to prepare bathwater, then stood beside her.

“Did you enjoy your trip to the sea?”

“Mm-hmm. It was nice going back after so long. I even found a pretty shell.”

When Sertisha happily showed off the ridiculously pretty scallop, Tillo let out a small gasp of admiration.

“Wow… For a scallop, it’s incredibly pretty.”

“Right? For a scallop, it’s a total beauty-shell.”

Sertisha hadn’t had time to examine it closely earlier, but this scallop’s beauty was extraordinary. Its surface was perfectly smooth, without a single imperfection, and it gleamed with a lustrous sheen.

“I should wash this one while I’m bathing, too. It’s a little sticky, probably because it was in the seawater.”

“Or would you like me to wash it for you?”

“Oh, no way! I’m the only one allowed to touch my scallop!”

“Ah… Yes, ma’am.”

Good grief. Her Majesty the Shell-Obsessed Otter.

Fortunately, Tillo’s thoroughly impudent gaze did not reach Sertisha, who was completely absorbed in the scallop.

Cradling the shell protectively, Sertisha climbed into the bathtub the maids had prepared. While the maids attended to her bath, Sertisha gave the scallop its very first bath of its own.

After washing the shell until it was squeaky clean and covered in bubbles, Sertisha wasted no time finishing her bath and throwing herself onto the bed.

Tomorrow was Sertisha’s succession ceremony.

The worries that had briefly receded while she was distracted by the scallop now began creeping back in.

The succession ceremony would be the day Sertisha officially became the head of the Ritea family. But it would also be the day a guardian was appointed to look after the family until Sertisha, who was only six years old, came of age.

“I can just make a deal with the Grand Duke mister to become my guardian.”

In truth, ever since Ripples of Light had manifested, Sertisha had been seeing the future in her dreams every night. And the endings of all the futures she had seen so far had been the same.

They all ended in death.

Sertisha had continued to hope that there might be even a single ray of light in those dark futures.

But her wish had never come true.

The retainers she had been close to, as well as the adults from collateral branches of her own bloodline, had all used her. They had smiled as they stabbed her in the back, eventually driving her to her death.

Perhaps that was why Sertisha, lying flat on her back in bed, couldn’t fall asleep right away.

She was afraid that she would be shown her own death again.

Even if these were distant futures that had not yet been determined, seeing her own death was hardly pleasant.

Sertisha turned her head and looked at the five-colored scallop beside her pillow, along with the several other shells she had collected.

A gift from the mister I’ve only met twice.

Other than Grandpa, the Grand Duke mister is the only adult who’s ever given me a shell.

Remembering the way he had awkwardly bent over to pick up the shells was so funny that Sertisha’s stiff lips relaxed into a giggle.

Then, as if it were a talisman, she placed the five-colored scallop on her belly. Somehow, having it there made her fear and anxiety fade a little.

Praying that she wouldn’t dream anymore, Sertisha closed her eyes.

At that moment, the five-colored shell resting on her belly began to emit a faint glow.

Its tightly closed halves slowly opened, but Sertisha was already fast asleep and didn’t notice.

And then…

She fell into countless possible futures.

The future in her dreams began all over again.

The end was always death.

In one dream, she was killed by adults dressed in black. In another, she drank poison and took her own life.

As she was dragged through countless branching futures, Sertisha could no longer bear to look at the cruel scenes unfolding before her. She curled up into a ball and buried her face.

“Sniff… That’s too cruel. I’ve seen enough by now, haven’t I?! Please, stop… Stop showing me thisss!”

Her tears gathered into droplets and plinked down beneath the water’s surface.

Is the future something I can’t change?

What about the mister? What happened to him?

Did the deal fail, too?

Like someone who had lost even her last remaining hope, Sertisha sobbed, tears streaming down her face.

No matter how much she cried or struggled, the future continued to show her cruel scenes, as if determined to make her witness her own death.

Then, it happened.

A pure white light began to melt gently down over the dark, gloomy space. Sertisha raised her head and stared blankly at the brilliant whiteness.

It wasn’t an ordinary light.

“It’s white.”

It reminded her of the white pearl that her future self—the one she had first seen—had spoken of.

The light soon took the shape of a pure white pearl and floated in midair.

“So it really existed… The white pearl…”

Vmmm—

Vmmm—

The white pearl vibrated softly, then bounced around Sertisha as if responding to her words.

Before long, it naturally seeped into Sertisha’s body.

At the same moment, Sertisha’s eyes flew open.

Her eyes snapped wide.

She quickly scanned her surroundings.

Not much time seemed to have passed, as the night still lay thick beyond the window.

A faint light shone in the darkness outside.

But what caught her eye wasn’t the light. It was the… pure white buttocks… resting on her belly…?

“U… Ueeeng? Wh-what?!”

Sertisha abruptly sat up and stared at the pure white rump that had tumbled down to the foot of the bed.

The white lump wiggled and bounced for a moment before raising its head and looking around, like someone who had just woken up.

Then a pair of thin, bright yellow pupils settled on Sertisha.

The pure white creature looked at her and spoke.

“An’ who… might you be?”

“……?”