Chapter 23: Ominous Omen

「Oh, Sensei, good morning. You don't look well—are you all right?」
「Good morning… No, I’m fine.」

Startled by Violet-san peering worriedly into my face, I answered as such.
I couldn’t very well admit it was a hangover.

「Um, where’s Yuuki?」

A wheat field spread out in all directions. Not seeing the lively redhead there, I asked.
It’s been over ten years since we started the special class, and we’ve taught them almost everything we can. With animal husbandry and farming finally on track, we graduated from daily lessons for the time being. Now they’re working as teachers at the school and as instructors for farming and animal husbandry.

「She’s probably still asleep today.」
「Really?」

I thought it rare for her, who is always up early, and asked,

「Because she said you turned her down, and she was drinking while crying until late last night.」

Violet-san said it as if it were nothing.

「Y-you heard that?」
「Yes. Rin-chan, Luka-chan, and I were consoling her.」

Her expression was the same as always, smiling; there wasn’t the slightest hint in her tone.
And yet that made it all the more frightening.

「…I’m sorry…」
「I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, am I?」

When I reflexively apologized, she gently reproved me, her tone unfailingly soft.

「You’re right…」

As I hung my head, Violet-san continued, “But—”

「I understand how you feel too, Sensei.」

She stroked the lush green wheat leaves and murmured.

「Living among humans, I came to understand: they live far too hastily. Not trees, but like blossoms that scatter almost as soon as they bloom.」
「Yes… that’s true.」

Thinking back now, perhaps Ultramarine refused so decisively because she understood that.

「So, why not make it me instead?」

Just when the air had turned somber, Violet-san suddenly said that in a joking tone.

「Uh, um, sorry…」
「Oh my. I’ve been turned down too, then.」

Violet-san laughed with a tinkling chuckle; I had no idea how serious she was.

「Once this wheat harvest is over, I’m thinking of returning to the forest.」
「…All right.」

I didn’t think it was heartless.
If anything, I understood her feelings all too well.

「Only, whether it all ends safely is another matter.」
「Rats, then.」

With a serious gaze, Violet-san nodded.

The Hihiirokane rat guards worked. Apparently they couldn’t chew through metal; with raised-floor granaries, we succeeded in preventing rat damage.

But the rats didn’t give up. If they couldn’t eat the stores, they began attacking the fields to eat crops still growing.

We’ve tried all sorts of measures—making traps, scattering poisoned bait—but the damage not only failed to stop; it seemed to grow worse year by year.

「I’ll come up with something else.」

Leaving those words, I set off to check on the other students.

On the way to the pasture, I stopped by the school building. In the classroom, Luka was writing letters on the slate with soapstone as she taught. The shy, retiring girl, seen like this, had become quite the fine teacher. She might be far better suited to teaching than I am.

As I watched her work intently, the bell announcing the end of class rang out. I’d hung a wooden clapper on a rope with a one-hour-duration levitation magic circle; when the time came, the magic unraveled and automatically struck the bell.

At the sound of the bell, Luka glanced outside the classroom, and her eyes snapped to meet mine.

「Wh-why are you watching, Sensei?!」

In an instant she flushed bright red and dashed to the window. Laughter rose from the students behind her.

「Class is over! Dismissed!」

At Luka’s shout, the students scattered from the room like spiderlings.

「It’s good to see your students adore you.」
「Geez, it’s embarrassing, Sensei. How long were you watching?」
「Oh, just a little. But enough to enjoy seeing you in teacher mode.」
「Please don’t tease me…」

Luka shrank back, her voice almost fading away.

「But teaching is fun. I kind of think it might suit me.」

Then, unusually, she showed a carefree smile.

「Being around human children… um, does that ever give you trouble?」

I couldn’t very well bring up lifespans, so I asked it like that. Luka tilted her head slightly in thought, then said,

「Let’s see. Human kids grow so fast, don’t they? Yuuki was like that too.」
「…Yeah.」

Startled by the sudden name, I nodded.

「So teaching them is really fun. They change so quickly.」

But at her next words, I caught my breath.

「What they couldn’t do yesterday, they can do today. If they can’t today, maybe they will tomorrow. That’s why every day is exciting—and I think it’s amazing.」

I felt I’d been shown that there’s a way of thinking like that too.
She really is far more suited to teaching than I am.

「Oh, but… would it be okay if I went back to the prairie for a bit?」
「Why!?」

So I was surprised by that request and couldn’t help shouting.
I found myself thinking: first Violet-san, now even Luka…

「Uh, well, I haven’t been back in over ten years… and I’d like to see my little brothers’ faces once in a while.」

With her ears pricking up in surprise, Luka answered, flustered.

「Ah—right… I see.」
「Don’t worry; I’ll come back properly.」
「Really? Oh, good. I was startled thinking you might be leaving us.」

I took her hand without thinking and let out a breath of relief.

「Um, Sensei… that much?」
「Of course. If someone as capable as you left, we’d be in real trouble.」
「R-right… Wait—c-capable!? Me!?」

For some reason she seemed briefly down, then suddenly grew flustered.
She’s served as class leader all this time, kept the younger problem kids in line, and even sparked the concept of magic circles—if she isn’t “capable,” who is?

「Of course. Thank you—counting on you from here on, too.」
「Okay…」

Leaving a thoroughly bashful Luka behind, I headed toward the pasture.

「Why are you always like this!?」
「Eeh, because it’s more fun that way, isn’t it?」

Even before they came into view, I heard an angry shout and a laid-back retort.

「You two never change…」
「Ah, Sensei!」
「What, you came all the way out here? Got nothing better to do?」

Half exasperated, I poked my head over the fence; Rin hopped over, and Sig tossed a snide remark. But his voice had a spring to it, and the joy he couldn’t hide showed on his face—cute in its own way, or so roundabout it looped back to honesty.
Same sharp tongue, but Nina doesn’t even change her expression.

「What were you two arguing about today?」
「Listen to this. She won’t follow the procedure at all—she started cleaning before feeding them.」
「Ahh…」

In the end, my Behemoth-breeding plan fell through. We did manage to pen a Behemoth, but getting out to the Behemoth’s enclosure was too hard and—well, disposing of the dung was practically impossible.

A Behemoth eats amounts of feed befitting its giant body, and as a natural consequence drops a staggering volume of dung. According to Luka, in time that dung becomes fertilizer and a forest grows again, but if you fence them in it all concentrates in a narrow area and piles up.

Carting that unbelievable quantity of foul-smelling excreta back and forth every day to spread it across the prairie—no one wants that job, and purely as workload it wasn’t realistic.

That said, we did make progress in animal husbandry itself. Fences reinforced with Hihiirokane withstand deer charges, and magic sustained with magic circles helped prevent escape. They still won’t grow tame, but we managed to keep them without undue strain.

「Rin, why did you do that?」
「I thought it’d be fun…」

Since they don’t tame, the basic approach at the ranch is to clean while the deer are feeding. Heap Hiiro yams in the trough, close the fence around the trough while they’re eating, clean, then release. If you don’t, the deer, which have come to see the ranch as their territory, move to drive you out.

But it was also true that Rin now had the ability to call that “fun.” Her magic isn’t stable, but in raw output she’s top class. Even without an incantation, fending off a charging deer would be easy for her.

「But you might end up getting hurt, right? You might be fine, but the deer could get hurt. There’s a reason behind the method Sig decided on.」
「Okay…」

I met her eyes and gently reasoned with her, and she nodded.

「Good. Then you can do it the way Sig says, right?」
「Okaay!」
「She never listens to me…!」

Seeing Rin raise her hand so obediently, Sig clenched his fist, apparently finding that galling in its own way.

「By the way, we’re having trouble with rats in the fields—got any good ideas?」

When I’m stuck, I generally ask these two for their opinions.

「Hmm… build the fields in the water.」
「Like we can do that!」

Sig immediately shot down Rin’s idea after only a moment’s thought.

「Ah, but if the rats can’t swim, how about making a river around them?」
「That might be a good idea.」

What was it called again? Right… irrigation. If we draw an irrigation ditch, we won’t have to go fetch water from the river, and it might also block rat incursions to some extent. Rats can probably swim, but we could shape the ditch so they can’t climb up from inside.

「Thanks, I’ll try it.」

These two really are reliable—and a good pair.

「You’re welcome!」
「There’s no way your idea’s usable! He was talking to me!」

So why are they so bad together…?


* * *


As it turned out, the irrigation-ditch plan Sig came up with worked extremely well. The rats apparently weren’t good swimmers and couldn’t cross the ditch. Even a ditch low enough for a human to step over easily was sufficient to keep them out.

We solved the teacher shortage, farming and animal husbandry were going well, and we’d managed to reach the point where, at this rate, we could even avert the ruin a hundred years from now. Everything seemed to be moving in a favorable direction.

Yes.

Except that Yuuki stopped speaking to me.

Well, strictly speaking she didn’t stop entirely. She still spoke when necessary and returned greetings properly. But whenever I tried to set up a chance to apologize and talk about that day, she’d find some reason or other to slip away, and she stopped coming over to me on her own.
After all that clinging until now, too.

It’s selfish of me, since I’m the one who pushed her away, but it felt terribly lonely.

I thought time would make it easier, but Yuuki’s attitude didn’t change; the longer I waited, the harder it got to apologize.

「A bridge?」

I heard about it on a day like that.

「Yes. There was something spanning it that could only be a bridge.」

Summoned by Violet-san, I went to the fields. Laid across the irrigation ditch was a single wooden stick.

「It looks like they crossed here…」

Where Violet-san indicated, the lush wheat—at its base were tooth marks. Rats.

「…It’s not like a branch just happened to fall here by chance…」

Most of Hiiro Village uses land carved out of the forest. Though the fields on the outer edge are right up against the woods, they’re not so close that branches would drop in. It was best to assume someone intentionally moved a branch to span the gap.

「Pranks by kids? Or someone just set it there without thinking?」

It was hard to imagine the rats themselves lugging a branch over and laying a bridge.

「I did ask around, but no one had any idea.」
「Hmm. Well, if we warn people that building a bridge like this could let rats in, that should take care of it.」

I wanted to believe no one in this village would knowingly do something that harmed our food. Even if we were more comfortable now, this wasn’t some age of plenty like modern Japan.

「Understood. I’ll spread the word.」
「Sorry to trouble you, and thank you.」

But at the time, I was still underestimating it completely—
—the living creatures of this world.