Kays Translations

Chapter 46: Savoring Peace

Fuyou’s behavior was quite childish, but she had a good memory.

She quickly memorized the locations I showed her—the waterwheel by the river, the fishing spot, the fields, and the rice paddies.

She even remembered the location of the reverberatory furnace in the back mountain and my house, which was good… but that’s where the trouble started.

Excitedly, she hurried over to the well in the backyard and began driving her roots into the ground.

I yanked her out with all my strength, grabbing her by the sides and pulling her out like a sponge. Fuyou looked at me, surprised.

“Huh? I can’t do it here? Should I be closer to the house?”

“You were trying to put down roots, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You listened to my explanation and remembered it, right?”

“I did!”

“Alright, listen carefully. You must not put down roots in any of the places I showed you earlier. That includes this house. You can only take root in places I didn’t mention. In other words, stay away from me.”

“…Why? Do you hate me, mister?”

Fuyou looked up at me with teary, hurt eyes—but I was the one hurting here. Specifically, my stomach. And my appendix.

I had grown emotionally after making friends. I had learned to act somewhat sociable and talk a little more.

But that didn’t mean I had stopped feeling stress.

I had simply learned how to talk while pretending not to be stressed.

And even that wasn’t sustainable. The only reason I was managing at all was that I was dealing with a child.

I needed her to understand territorial boundaries quickly and disappear from my sight.

I didn’t want to put unnecessary strain on my digestive system.

“I don’t hate you, Fuyou, but I’m bad at dealing with you. Go away.”

“Dairi, that’s not a nice way to say it. She’s just a kid.”

“If I don’t say it straight, she won’t get it.”

Hiyori tried to scold me, but I had no choice. This was the only way to get through to her.

Fuyou was abnormally smart for a one-year-old, but her vocabulary was limited, and she didn’t seem to understand complicated words.

I struggle to hold conversations even with adults, you know? Expecting me to carefully choose my words for a child is way too much. Sorry!

When I shooed her away with a hand gesture, Fuyou instantly stopped crying and flailed her roots and vines in frustration. Oh, so that was fake crying, huh? Clever little brat.

“Nooo! I wanna live in mister’s house toooo!”

“Well, I don’t want that! Why would I have to see a kid I’m not even friends with every single day? Absolutely not!”

Matching her energy, I protested just as loudly.

Hiyori sighed, pressing her fingers against her mask-covered forehead.

“But Tsubaki, Sekitan, and Mokutan all live here! Why am I the only one who can’t?!”

“Mi! Mii mii mi!”

“Stop laughing, Tsubaki.”

“It’s not fair! It’s unfair! You stole it! You stole the place I was supposed to live!”

“Ahh, shut up already. If you keep whining, I’ll have to take action.”

From the way she was acting, she must’ve been spoiled rotten by the Flower Witch.

I tried to lightly threaten her, but she wasn’t intimidated at all. Instead, she threw an even bigger tantrum.

“No! No! No means no!”

“You sure? If you don’t behave, I will do something about it.”

“No! I’m gonna live in mister’s house too!”

“Alright, fine… NOOOO! NO NO NO NO NO! NOOOO!”

I collapsed onto the backyard dirt, flailing and screaming at the top of my lungs.

Fuyou froze, stunned.

Even Hiyori and the fire lizards, who had been watching from a distance, instinctively stepped back from the sheer intensity.

“I don’t wanna let Fuyou live in my houseeee! I don’t wanna see her faceeee! I don’t want her anywhere near me! She should live happily and peacefully somewhere far away from my sight, or else nooo nooo nooooo!”

“U-Uh… um… I-I’m sorry for being selfish…”

“Hah. Took you long enough to say that.”

Seeing that Fuyou had finally understood the difference in our levels, I stood up and dusted the dirt off my clothes.

Hah. That’s the overwhelming power of adulthood.

You see that, kid? This is something a child could never replicate.

Never defy me again.

I wish the Flower Witch would take a page from my strict discipline.

Fuyou hesitated for a while, glancing at me timidly, but when I told her to send a messenger familiar to keep in touch, she happily used magic to create a small, nut-like brown creature and handed it to me before skipping off into the mountains.

I watched her go. Just as her figure was about to disappear beyond the trees, a voice came from the familiar.

“Mister, I’ll settle here, okay?”

“That was fast. You’re still too close… well, I guess it’s just barely out of sight, so whatever.”

“Um, you know, when I spread my roots, I feel a little sleepy. But let’s talk a lot today and tomorrow too! And one day, I’ll become a beauty like my mother, so when that happens, come see me, okay?”

“What are you talking about? You’re a kid I took in. And you’re growing up here in Okutama. Obviously, you’ll be even more beautiful than the Flower Witch.”

When I gave this simple, obvious truth to the clueless child, she let out a strange, emotional sound through the familiar.

Then, suddenly, Hiyori’s hand shot out and crushed the messenger.

I looked at her, questioning.

After a brief silence, she gave a short answer.

“You hate long calls, right? Better to cut it off early.”

“Oh, I see. So that was a long call flag, huh?”

“And also… ah, never mind. Even if it’s a kid, be careful with your sudden, sharp statements.”

“Huh? What? Which one?”

“If you don’t get it, never mind. Seriously, I can’t tell if you’re bad at communication or weirdly smooth-talking. You’re such an enigma.”

With a somewhat irritated expression, Hiyori walked away.

What’s with her? She always calls me socially inept, but sometimes she’s the one who doesn’t make sense, you know? We’re even.

As Fuyou had said, she spent the next few weeks spreading her roots and remained sleepy the entire time.

Although she contacted me every day through her familiar, it was only to report things like catching an unfamiliar bug, strangling a monster on her own for the first time, or discovering an old skeletal corpse crushed beneath a rock at the bottom of a cliff. All violent and unsettling, but at least each story had a clear conclusion.

She didn’t make any selfish demands like I had feared—no “Do this” or “Do that.” Looks like the firm discipline I gave her at the start had paid off.

Unlike Hiyori, she also didn’t ramble on the phone, nor did she suddenly call in the middle of the night. Her calls came in three predictable patterns: sunrise, noon, and sunset. Probably because, as a plant, she had a natural sense of time based on those moments. I think.

Talking to her was still tedious, but I quickly figured out how to turn that tedium into something useful—I’d turn her diary-like phone calls into work reports.

I assigned Fuyou to take care of the wasabi I found in a mountain stream and the cultivated shiitake logs near the blast furnace. I also taught her the locations of seasonal mountain vegetables and bear dens, making her memorize them.

Eager to please, Fuyou happily accepted the tasks without hesitation. No complaints, no reluctance. She’s way too gullible—she’s definitely going to get tricked by some shady plant one day. Is she going to be okay?

One day, she even delivered me a bear’s paw (which had clear signs of being roughly torn off) to the well in my backyard using her roots. As thanks, I made her a jigsaw puzzle of her own face for educational purposes. She was overjoyed and responded with, “When you die, I’ll suck up all your nutrients for you, okay? ♡”

Yep, that’s a monster’s way of thinking. Scary. But whatever—she can do as she pleases. I don’t care what happens after I’m dead.

Although… considering the possibility of resurrection magic, I might want her to hold off on absorbing me just in case.

Fuyou and the fire lizards were in a state of cold war. She had given up on spreading her roots around the blast furnace, which the fire lizards had claimed as their territory. They kept their distance from each other but engaged in dominance battles whenever they crossed paths.

That said, it wasn’t like they were out for blood. It felt more like they were competing for the position of second-in-command, with me as the boss of their little group. Surprisingly peaceful.

In the wild, animals rarely fight to the point of injury during hierarchy disputes. Win or lose, wounds lower survival rates, so they settle things with intimidation, growling, or light scuffles. The same applies to monsters.

As for Fuyou’s relationship with Hiyori—it was a little complicated.

Once it was confirmed that Fuyou’s mana was just under 400K, Hiyori removed the “Fog of Confusion” she had cast over Okutama and had Fuyou replace it with her own.

With the combination of her underground roots and the Fog of Confusion, Okutama had transformed into an ultra-dangerous zone that led intruders astray and killed them.

Hiyori was normally overprotective, so the fact that she trusted Fuyou enough to entrust my safety to her said a lot. But at the same time, she made sure I always carried my own familiar, meaning she didn’t trust Fuyou completely either.

Hiyori hadn’t visited Okutama for the past few days.

The Seer had warned her that “Kyanos will be stolen,” so she was in full lockdown mode at home.

One reason she had Fuyou take over Okutama’s defense was to ensure it remained secure while she was unable to move.

Thanks to the warning, the day Kyanos was supposed to be stolen passed without incident.

But the thief hadn’t given up yet. Hiyori was still on high alert and couldn’t move carelessly.

She had also told me—over and over again—not to come to Ome under any circumstances, so I was taking it easy in safe, peaceful Okutama, working on crafting my staff.

Honestly, though? It did seem dangerous.

If not for the Seer’s foresight, Kyanos would’ve been stolen.

The fact that someone had nearly pulled off a heist against the great Blue Witch meant that the culprit wasn’t just any small fry.

I’d heard that even the Flame Witch had once been targeted by a staff thief. But while the Flame Witch had inherited her title under unique circumstances and was fundamentally still human, the Blue Witch was in an entirely different league—one of the strongest among witches.

Who could the culprit be? It was unsettling.

Personally, I couldn’t help but get a little excited about the whole “Kyanos getting stolen” thing, which was, I admit, completely inappropriate. So I kept my thoughts to myself.

Sometimes, a stolen work of art becomes even more valuable.

The very fact that someone desires it so much that they resort to crime, along with the intrigue of a theft in its history, increases its worth. Picasso’s paintings, for example, have been stolen countless times.

I was idly wondering if it might get stolen and then swiftly recovered when my relaxed, naïve little fantasy was utterly shattered.

A few days after the thwarted theft, the Tokyo Witch Assembly declared a state of emergency.

The diviner who had foreseen Kyanos’ theft had discovered an even greater impending crisis approaching Tokyo. And in his efforts to prepare for it, he had overexerted himself—falling into a coma.

The last time the Seer collapsed like this, Tokyo was nearly wiped out by a mushroom pandemic.

Now, something just as bad—or possibly worse—was about to happen.

Maybe it had already begun.

This was no time to be slacking off.

Tokyo was in danger!!

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