WE WENT INTO THE SEA OF TREES IN THE MANOR GARDEN
A month had passed since we last visited the manor.
This time, Beelzebub took the initiative to invite the family to visit.
Since the only one of us who had fixed working hours was Halkara, we adjusted our schedule very quickly.
I felt like Beelzebub would end up pouting if we didn’t go, so we paid our well-calculated visit.
“What do you think? Quite different from the last time you were here, no?”
When we arrived, Beelzebub first proudly showed us the hallway on the second floor.
A long red carpet ran the length of the entire corridor. It wasn’t white with dust like it had been last time.
“Sure. Compared to the dusty and cobweb-covered state it was in last time, it looks much more like a real manor now.”
“Big Sis, even ghosts like places that are more on the tidy side…,” Rosalie mentioned.
“You’re right. You wouldn’t want to pick a filthy place to live in… It gets hard to breathe with all that dust…”
“Well, I don’t breathe, so I don’t really know what that might feel like, but I hate spiders, and it’s a real pain living with big spiders. There were times I spent entire days jumping in fear…”
She must have been picturing a spider in her head, since she was shivering.
“Ghosts hate spiders, too…”
“I’m viscerally repulsed by the way they move… They look just like servants from hell, don’t they?!”
In Japanese folklore, spiders actually dropped their threads from heaven down to hell to offer people a chance to escape, but I guess this was just a cultural difference. I’d hate to actually see swarms of them crawling around in heaven.
“Spiders, hmm? There are some around here that are as big as my arm span,” Beelzebub said.
“That’s too big!”
Any bugs would be terrifying at that size, not just spiders!
“It’s all right. They pose no danger to us. They are kind creatures that eat the harmful ones for us.”
“Still, they can’t be that big! That’s basically just a monster at that point!”
I couldn’t live here in the demon lands… If I ran across one of those things, it’d stay burned in my memory for a century and a half…
“Giant spiders… I can’t handle that… Just thinking about it… I can see a light at the end of a long tunnel…”
Rosalie, her face pale, slipped through the walls of the building and went outside. There wouldn’t be any spiders in the sky.
“Hmm, she’s more of a coward than I thought.”
“Sure, but I’m wondering why you’re so calm, Beelzebub.”
Maybe this was a cultural difference, too. Apparently, there are people out there who can smash cockroaches with their bare hands. Maybe this was the same.
“The manor is clean now, so Falfa and Shalsha may be adopted into my household at any time, no problem.” Beelzebub was grinning. Why was she grinning?
“Say it as much as you like, but I’m not giving them up for adoption. It is my responsibility to raise them, so you don’t need to worry about them.”
Falfa, by the way, was running around the manor, now that there was more space for her to do things. Beelzebub was probably happy because Falfa was.
“Wooow, it’s so biiig! We can run around forever!”
She ran around and around and around, quietly and by herself. She sure was full of energy.
On the other hand, Shalsha was lying sprawled out on the floor, rolling herself down the hall.
“Shalsha, what are you doing…?”
“I’m testing to see how far I can go before I get dizzy. Hands-on practice is just as important as study at a desk.”
This was not good etiquette, but okay, just this once.
Shalsha was still rolling down the hall. She was going faster than I thought she could.
“Aww, that looks like fun~! Falfa wants to do that, too!”
Falfa rolled after her in hot pursuit. It was naughty of them to do that, but it was hard not to smile seeing it. At least for Beelzebub and me.
“Mm, that is how children should be.”
“Yeah~ I want them to grow up good and healthy.”
The area surrounding the house in the highlands was perfect for running around, but running around inside must be a different sort of fun.
“It wouldn’t be so bad to bring them over to play every once in a while.”
“You said it! I heard you say it with my own ears! I shall send you my holiday schedule, so do bring them along when I have off!”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t expect them all the time.”
I wasn’t planning on offering them up for adoption, but this could be like an auntie’s house, where Beelzebub could fuss over them. It wasn’t a terrible place.
And they both might get bored of staying in the house in the highlands all the time. It was perfect for a slow, leisurely life, but that also meant there was not a lot of stimulation. The demon lands would have plenty of that, at least.
But the children got bored quicker than I thought they would. Once they reached the far end of the corridor, they both slowly plodded back to us.
“I’m done with the hallway.”
“I think I’ve had my fill.”
Oh, they looked unimpressed already…
Beelzebub was shocked, probably because she spent such a long time cleaning the house for them…
“I wanna explore the garden next!”
“The garden in this manor is vast, like the sea. I do wish to take a stroll in it.”
I see, so that’s where their interest lies.
“Beelzebub, did you manage to clean up the garden, too?”
But Beelzebub looked at her feet and shook her head.
“I did not get around to that…”
All of us from the highlands house family went to the garden, though it was less of a garden and more of a sea of trees.
“The trees here have spread their roots far… It will not be easy for even a demon gardener to handle, apparently… It will take an immense amount of time to sort out…”
“Yeah, it’s not like it’s all packed into one tiny area. I understand.”
But my daughters were instead looking on with sparkling eyes.
“We can play explorer!”
“It will be worth going in.”
With that, they plunged straight into the forest.
“Hey! Don’t go too far in!”
They weren’t listening to me.
“Sigh… Well, they might get bored soon and come back, though.”
But Beelzebub’s expression was clouded. “This is not good… They will not be able to return if they go too far in…”
“Wait, wait, wait… You have to be exaggerating, right?”
“Among the plants might be some that would attack animals.”
I was reminded once again that we were in the demon lands. She meant that the trees and grass might try to hurt the two!
“This is very bad!”
My family immediately started insisting we go save the girls.
“Lady Azusa! We must hurry into the garden immediately!”
“Madam Teacher, they’re not safe! I will offer my help!”
I appreciated Laika’s and Halkara’s thoughts. But—
“Halkara, you don’t have to come. I can see you ending up injured in there… I can see that very easily.”
“Whaaat?! That wouldn’t happen, Madam Teacher! I am an elf! I definitely would never get lost in a forest!”
That “definitely” wasn’t very convincing…
“Then let’s assume you don’t end up getting lost.”
“Please don’t ‘assume’; you know what they say about assumptions…”
I’m sorry, but I’ve seen you cause trouble so many times… Please let me protect you.
“Fine. Let’s pretend you don’t get lost.”
“I’m not a child to play pretend with… But all right… Continue with what you were going to say…”
“You know there’s still a risk that the plants growing in there might attack you, right? Like a plant that spits acid that only dissolves your clothes or something?”
“Those risqué situations don’t happen all that often~”
“Well, something on that level might be more of a joke, but your ability as a fighter does make me nervous, so I don’t think you should go in.”
Beelzebub, owner of the manor, crossed her arms and nodded.
“Those who can fly are the only ones who should go into the forest in the first place. Even if one gets lost, they may be able to fly and escape that way.”
“Oh, okay then! So everyone besides Halkara can help me find the girls, right?”
Flatorte, Laika, and Rosalie all said “Yes!” in turn.
“Waaaah! It feels like I’m being left out!”
I knew how she felt, but if Halkara ended up getting hurt because of this, then I wouldn’t know what to do.
“Sorry, but you’ll have to stay back. If there are any good plants for medicines, I’ll bring them back.”
“Okay… Do be careful.”
And so we stepped into the sea of trees in order to find the girls.
But it was still a garden at the end of the day, so if all of us did our part searching, we’d find them right away.
—So I once believed.
Ten minutes later, I was walking all alone in a dim wood.
The other members of the search party were nowhere near me.
I hadn’t been separated from them; we’d fanned out to extend the breadth of our search, but I couldn’t even hear the others anymore…
“The demons just love to blow everything out of proportion… What kind of garden is this…?” I muttered to myself as I passed under something that looked like a giant gate made of roots.
They say jungles felt like this.
There wasn’t any kind of road, so I just weaved my way forward through the trees, but I lost my sense of direction right away. It was especially worrying when so many of the trees had thorns.
The teeniest bit of silver lining was that as of now, I hadn’t found any hostile plants yet.
If they were just lost, then we’d eventually recover them without incident.
“Faaalfaaa! Shaaalshaaa! If you’re there, say somethiiing!”
No response.
And the sun was even quickly vanishing behind clouds. The daylight hours were short in the demon lands.
“Ooh… I’m starting to lose hope, too…”
—And then, something appeared from the thicket!
It was like a cousin to a boar. It was probably native to the demon lands.
“Oink, oink!”
I braced myself for an attack, but instead it just looked surprised to see me and dashed off into the wood. I could hear its hooves galloping away.
“There are even animals living in here. It’s its own ecosystem. Man, that really scared me…”
—But then, something just underneath the surface of the earth sped right toward me!
“What?! What is this?!”
I braced myself again. There were too many mysteries in here; I couldn’t catch my breath.
Some grass was moving.
Was it moving because of the roots underground? The earth was upturned. Had I finally come across a plant that attacked people?
And then, the grass popped out from the ground right before me.
What, do the roots have a mouth for prey, now?
To get to the point, they did.
No matter how I squinted at it, the roots of the grass looked like a small human girl.
She was probably five or six years old. Smaller than Falfa and Shalsha. She even wore clothes, although they were dirty from her time underground.
“Phew, I sure was scared when that balloon boar suddenly ran at me! I hate it when he steps on me.”
I thought it was grass, but that was apparently her hair. Well, maybe that wasn’t quite the right way to put it. Maybe it was better to say that the grass on her head looked like hair.
“Hey, uh, who are you?” I started with a simple question.
She looked at me.
Then she blinked.
Time stood still for a moment.
“…Ahhhhhh! It’s a human, a human!”
“Why are you so surprised?!”
I’m the one who should be shocked here!
“A-and…you look like you’re a witch. Oh no… What should I do? She’s gonna kill me!”
“Rude! I’m not an assassin or anything like that!” My level was unnaturally high, but I had a kind, peace-loving heart.
“She’s gonna smash me to pieces! Oh nooo!”
“Do you think witches are barbarians?!”
Now she’s just being cruel! She’s treating me like a monster!
“I have to get outta here… I didn’t even think demons would ever come here, never mind humans!”
The strange…girl dove back underground and started slithering away.
I thought about chasing after her, but she whizzed right by all the spots where roots got in my way, so I quickly lost sight of her.
“Who was she…? Whatever, I need to concentrate on finding Falfa and Shalsha first. Let’s just forget about that thing for now…”
I went right back to searching for the girls.
And then, another ten minutes passed.
“Everyone, I found them!”
Dragon-form Laika loudly flapped up into the sky and yelled. It was easy to see a large dragon, no matter how deep in the forest anyone might be.
We found my daughters safely under her.
I bounced up the trunk of a tree (yes, like an action game—my stats allowed me to do that) and then hopped onto Laika’s back from the top of the tree.
Falfa and Shalsha clung to me like little koalas with tears in their eyes.
“We went just a little ways in and then couldn’t tell which way we came from… We wanted to go back, but we couldn’t…”
“It felt like we were lost for hours… It was a terrifying, indescribable experience…”
I smiled wryly. They’d lived for years, and yet they were still children.
“See, you can’t go off on your own like that. In the demon lands especially—you don’t know what’s out there.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy…”
“Sorry, Mom…”
“It’s all right. As long as you understand. It’s all right.”
And that closed the book on that.
Even in Japan, there were people in the countryside who said things like, I own half of this mountain in front of you. But I rarely ever take a good look around it. I guess this was the same concept.
Simply owning land and having a good grasp of what was on the land were two different things. The girls had thought of the garden as Beelzebub’s, which meant they weren’t ready for it.
That day, we stayed the night at Beelzebub’s manor and had a relaxing time.
Shalsha claimed she wouldn’t be able to sleep with a different pillow, but she was out like a light.
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