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“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!”
Emilia was yanked from her near slumber by a sudden voice.
Looking up, she muttered, “Er, what?”
“I’m late! Emergency! I’m not sure why, but I must hurry!”
Emilia looked around for the owner of the voice. When she found him, her eyes grew wide as saucers. Emilia leaned against the tree and spotted an ash-colored cat running straight ahead on two legs. This particular cat was very familiar to Emilia, as he was like family to her. It was her spirit, Puck, racing toward her.
“Puck? Why are you in material form—? Hey! Wait, don’t go!”
Puck, who should have fit in the palm of her hand, was about the size of a human child for some reason. As a rule, Puck could change his size at will, but he rarely did so.
When she heard the panic in his voice, Emilia hastily shot to her feet, thinking something might be wrong. But Puck didn’t even give Emilia so much as a glance and said, “Ah, what good fortune. I’ll just hop down this bottomless hole!”
And with darling little trotting noises, Puck deviated past Emilia and ran behind the tree. Then after a loud shout, she felt Puck’s presence grow distant.
“Wait, what?! Puck! Why are you ignoring me? Aww!”
Hurt by the unusual treatment from her family, Emilia scurried behind the tree where he’d gone. There, she found not Puck, but a hole in the middle of an empty patch of ground.
Don’t tell me that little shout was him jumping into this hole…
“What’s a hole doing here…? Could it be that Subaru is hiding one of his treasures in here…?”
Emilia had basically decided the boy was guilty until proven innocent. Anyway, she carefully inched herself closer to the hole to peek down it. The dark hole was so deep that she couldn’t see the bottom. The air seemed like it might suck her in at any moment, and Emilia caught her breath in terror.
“Pu-Puck? Can you hear me? If you can, please answer meee!”
She tried calling down the hole, but all she heard was her own voice bouncing back at her. Starting to panic, Emilia turned around to call someone in the house for help. And then—
“I can’t explain anything if you’re out there, soooo come on dooown.”
“Huh?”
Just when she heard a second familiar voice, Emilia felt somebody yank her from behind. Surprised by the sensation of a pair of arms grabbing her from the hole, she then fell, her surprise transforming into shock.
“No! No way! I-I’m gonna turn into a pancake!”
Falling headfirst into the hole, Emilia felt a chill run down her spine as she imagined her head smacking against the ground. She kicked against the wall to turn herself upright, pushing the floating hem of her skirt down as she figured out a way to safely come to a stop—but before she could, she landed on something soft.
“Eeewah!”
It felt like a stack of papers was cradling her. Emilia kicked and squirmed out of it. She plucked off something that was stuck to her hair and clothes. It turned out they were dead leaves. Apparently, there’d been a pile of them at the bottom of the hole and that was what had broken her fall.
“Phew…that scared the living daylights out of me.”
But her relief was fleeting. Emilia nervously glanced at her surroundings. It looked like she was inside a hollowed-out tree trunk, but it would have to be a tree several centuries old. Plus, she was underground.
“Ah! Puck!”
Emilia was looking around her with a puzzled frown when she caught sight of a tiny cat in a pathway deep in the back of the space, peering out at her. Puck leaped at the sound of her voice and cried out, “Oh dear, I must hurry, or I’ll be late!” glancing many times at his bare wrist in an obvious lie.
“But you don’t have a watch. This little prank of yours has made me quite cross with you. Now come here!”
As Emilia ran, kicking off the dried leaves as she went, Puck took off in an equally fierce dash. Emilia was startled by his speed, thinking the creature was quite out of place there. Puck’s mad dash away from her down the dark pathway made Emilia quickly lose sight of him. But she still ran with all her might, springing out of the dark pathway and into a lit room.
“Err…what is this place? And where’s Puck?”
Gasping quietly for breath, Emilia stared at yet another unfamiliar scene before her. Upon closer glance, it was a cute room, colored brightly. It had a table, a furnace, and a vase on the windowsill holding flowers she had never seen before.
“I wonder whose room this is… I hope they won’t be angry I barged in like this.”
Feeling a very real worry about the strange situation she found herself in, Emilia looked around the room for any sign of Puck or its inhabitant. But since the room wasn’t all that big, Emilia quickly learned to her disappointment that Puck was not there. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason she was disappointed.
“There’s a door leading outside, but I’m far too big to fit through it.”
Not even Emilia could hide her frustration over this. Never before had she felt she was significantly taller than the average person, even though all the girls in the mansion—Ram, Rem, and Beatrice—were all shorter than her and very cute.
“No, Emilia, not even Beatrice could fit through a door that small. So whoever built it must have been very careless.”
Snapping herself out of her disappointment, Emilia looked around to see if there was some other way out. Then she found a tiny key and a strange medicine bottle on top of the table. The key was probably for that defective little door. The question that remained was—what was inside the medicine bottle? The label said, To Emily, with love.
“……Anne?”
The only person who called her Emily was her much younger friend Annerose, who was a relative of Roswaal’s and someone she had spent very little time with. She did not understand why Anne would have left her a gift in that room, but she knew the little girl would mean her no harm. That alone was immediately clear.
“Okay, I’ll drink you.”
So that’s why Emilia gulped the entire potion without hesitation. It was only after she swallowed that she suddenly said, worried, “What if this is a potion that affects my body in some way?”…and the transformation that happened immediately after confirmed her worry.
“Ah—ah—ah!”
Suddenly, the room looked bigger—and bigger—and bigger. The table, which was once at hip height, was suddenly soaring high above her. The windowsill and vase of flowers were high as the sky.
“No, the room didn’t get bigger… I got smaller.”
Immediately realizing the cause of her metamorphosis, Emilia’s eyes widened as she examined the room that now seemed much larger. Then she patted her body all over and was relieved to find her clothes had shrunk with her.
“I mean, people would think me strange if I walked out of here naked. But at least I can go out that door now.”
Quickly forgetting to question the cause of her shrinking a bit more, Emilia struck a power pose and marveled over how amazing Anne was. Then she vigorously turned the doorknob—and grunted in disappointment when she realized it was locked. She had left the key on top of the table. Where she could no longer reach.
“Moping won’t solve your problem, Emilia… Okay, it’s time to climb!”
Emilia’s unbreakable spirit was her virtue, but as she rolled up her sleeves and tried to climb the leg of the table, for all her bravery, she was quite reckless. It was then that her violet eyes suddenly spotted something near the leg of the table.
It was a white plate with a cookie set upon it. The plate had a one-page letter on it. She picked it up and read it: A little insurance in case the little lady’s gift gives you trouble.
There was only one person who had distinctive handwriting like this.
“Oh, what’s this? Did the silly Billy forget her key?”
Confused, Emilia glanced up, cookie in hand, when she heard the voice call to her from above. And looking down at her from the table was Puck, the key swishing back and forth in his long tail. As he stared at Emilia with big, round eyes, there was an uncanny humanness to him.
“Gosh, you’re hopeless. You’re supposed to hit save before making a choice. Everybody knows that. Life is hard and full of bitterness—just like that cookie!”
“Sorry, I don’t quite follow you. And I don’t think a bitter cookie would taste all that good.”
As Puck smiled smugly down at her, Emilia responded with her usual spunk. But it confused her a little—this was more the sort of banter she shared with Subaru, not Puck. Puck was acting like Subaru today.
“Anyway, stop joking around and just give me the key,” she said. “And make it quick. Everyone in the mansion will start to worry about me.”
“You should be more worried about yourself than them. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you…”
“Hyah.”
“Meowww.”
Annoyed by Puck’s smugness, Emilia commanded the lesser spirits to blast Puck away on a gust of wind. He slammed against the window and dropped the key, which Emilia slid to catch. Then she went straight to the door to unlock it.
“Come on, Puck, stop messing around and let’s go home. Return to your crystal and— Puck?”
Scolding Puck like a child, Emilia turned around to see that Puck was no longer by the window. She frowned. Somehow, he had hidden himself again.
“Seriously! Why are you being such a pain today?”
Huffing with anger, Emilia walked out the door. And there to greet her was a field of grass and, beyond it, a big forest. Emilia was surprised by the unfamiliar scenery, but she still set out toward the woods. And yet…
“No matter how long I walk, I’m not getting any closer to the forest…”
She could see it before her eyes, but no amount of fast walking got her any closer to it. That was because she was small now, and as such, the distance she had to travel had gotten much bigger.
“I’m hungry, too… Oh, that’s right.”
Emilia suddenly remembered she had a cookie. When she unwrapped it, its sweet aroma tickled her empty stomach, enslaving her mind.
“Thanks for the treat, Mr. Clind.”
She spoke a few words of gratitude for the servant of Annerose’s family, the one who had written her the letter. The cookie was soft and freshly baked. The flavors dancing on her tongue made Emilia writhe with glee. And then with reluctance, she popped the rest of the cookie in her mouth all at once and—
“Huh? Huuuuh?”
After her sweet treat, she had a look around and noticed the scenery was changing—or rather, her body was getting bigger again, returning to its original size. It was then she understood what the letter had meant by the words in case the little lady’s gift gives you trouble. She knew she had Clind’s thoughtfulness to thank for it.
“Mr. Clind really is great…and now the forest is only a skip away!”
Getting bigger had brought the woods within her reach. It was still very large, even though she was bigger now, but the former anxiety she’d felt over its size had disappeared.
Emilia clenched her fist, struck a power pose, stared at the trees up ahead, and said, “Okay, my adventure begins now!”
It was a rather fatal sort of line to say before bounding into a forest.
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