Chapter 25: Algernon, the Speaking Mouse

「I do not have what you call a "name." Call me what-ever you like.」

Though his intonation was odd here and there, the white rat began in Japanese so fluent it was hard to imagine from his appearance.

「Then for convenience, let’s call you… Algernon. Al for short.」
「That’s a pretty clever name—for you.」

I gave a wry smile at Nina’s remark. You could hardly call it something I’d borrowed from a novel.
Perched primly on the desk, Al was much smaller than I’d imagined—about the size of a common house mouse. In my previous life, when I was young, I’d seen a sewer rat in the city once.

That one had been larger, uglier, and looked ferocious. By comparison, the Al before me—perhaps an albino, pure white—looked almost cute.

「Are you the only one who can talk, Al?」
「Affirma-tive.」

Al answered in a stiff tone that didn’t match his appearance.

「There are other indi-viduals who compre-hend language. However, I alone can pro-duce speech.」

For that, Al’s manner was quite ceremonious—he sounded far more coherent than Rin, for one.

「So are you the rats’ leader—the top rat, so to speak?」
「Nega-tive. I negotiate only because I can speak.」
「Then there’s no point negotiating with you!」
「Nega-tive.」

Al replied calmly to Sig’s outburst.

「My nego-tiations are the consen-sus of us all.」
「So if we convey our demands to you, we can take it that they’ll be conveyed to all the rats?」
「By and large, affirma-tive.」

Hmm… so there are a few rats outside the chain of command?

「Then please stop ravaging our crops. If you go to the forest, there’s plenty of food there, isn’t there?」
「Re-fusal.」

Al answered dispassionately.

「There is no place more effi-cient for procuring food than your fields.」
「But it’s a problem for us to have the crops we worked so hard to grow taken away. If the growing crops are eaten, we won’t even have seeds to plant next year.」

As I answered, I felt a strange dissonance. For someone claiming to negotiate, Al showed no sign of being willing to make concessions.

「For example, if you help with some tasks—if you cooperate—we can provide some food as compensation. But being robbed one‑sidedly is a problem.」

At my words, Al twitched his whiskers in silence as if thinking it over.

「What could a tiny mouse like that even do?」

Looking down at him, Sig spoke in dissatisfaction.

「Yes—we are diminutive.」

Al admitted it frankly.

「Therefore it should be easy for you to pro-vide us with food.」
「Even so, there’s no reason we should.」

At Nina’s words, Al cocked his head.

「Why? You find it trou-ble-some to have your crops plun-dered, do you not?」

Genuinely puzzled, Al asked.

「If you will not cede food to us, then we shall simply plun-der it.」
「Don’t be stupid!」

Sig raised his voice and thrust his face toward Al menacingly.

「You’re the one who came to make a deal. If you keep stealing our food, we’ll burn every last one of your nests.」
「That would be trou-ble.」

Al gave exactly the same words as before.

「Right? Then knock it off.」
「Why?」

At the sight of Al tilting his head in a cute way, Sig grimaced.

「You don’t get it. You’d be in trouble if your comrades died, right? If you don’t want that, then stop.」
「Why?」

The way the rat kept repeating the same word suddenly scared me. I had no concrete reason why.
But…

「A reduc-tion in our comrades’ number would be trou-ble-some. However, that is not a reason to re-frain from plun-der.」

He was using the same Japanese as us, but… were we really communicating?
That was the thought that occurred to me.

「How…? Your comrades would die, and even then…!」

Starting to say more, Sig cut himself off mid‑sentence. As if shocked by something, his eyes flew wide.

「Sig?」
「No… it’s nothing.」

When I spoke to him, he shook his head, his earlier bluster gone as if it had been a lie.

「…All right. But it’s still a problem if you take food without limit, so let’s set a quantity. And as I said before, we’d appreciate it if you helped with some of the village’s work.」
「Under-stood.」

If they were mere vermin, it would be one thing, but killing a party you can talk with gives me pause. I acknowledged them as a kind of intelligent species and, for the moment, made that promise.

「You understand what will happen if you don’t keep the promise, don’t you?」

As he was leaving, Nina hurled sharp words at Al.

「…Of course.」

With that, Al answered and took his leave.

「So for the time being, that’s settled… I think?」

At my words, everyone present wore complicated expressions.

「We don’t need to give the likes of them any food.」

Sig muttered under his breath.

「I don’t think they’ll keep their promise. We should just kill them quickly.」

Words spoken with certainty. Perhaps not to the extent Sig felt it, but everyone there likely felt the same. Even I couldn’t bring myself to trust them much.

「If it comes to that, then we’ll just take them down when it does.」
「…Nina-sensei is strong, after all.」
「What’s that supposed to mean?」

At the implication in Sig’s words, Nina’s eyebrow twitched upward.

「Sig. You’ve been acting strange. What’s got you so on edge?」
「It’s your softness.」

He spat the words out and stared into my eyes.

…Huh? What do you mean?
I didn’t understand his intent and stared back into his eyes.

「I’m not putting up with this anymore.」

After a moment like that, Sig tossed out in a voice of exasperation and left the room.

「Wait, Sig…」
「Leave him be.」

Nina said that as I moved to call him back, and I lowered my outstretched hand.

—Sig left the village that night.


* * *


「I see. So you haven’t heard anything either, Rin…」
「Yeah…」

The mermaid girl nodded, looking unusually dispirited.

For all their bickering, she was probably the closest to Sig. Yet even Rin didn’t seem to know why he’d left the village.

We lost his trail once he exited the forest. Unlike in the woods, it’s extremely difficult to track traces out on the prairie. At the very least, he wasn’t hiding somewhere in the forest like before. If Nina couldn’t find him, that much was certain.

But as for where he went after that, we had no idea. It takes ten days on foot from here to Sig’s homeland. It’s not a distance you’d travel empty‑handed, alone. Besides, he was persecuted and shunned there. It’s hard to imagine he’d go back to such a place.

And yet, no other destination came to mind.

「He’ll come back when he gets hungry.」

Nina said coldly. She seemed quite angry in her own way.

「I hope so…」

This felt different from the time he stormed out of the school before.
Given what he said before leaving, I suppose he’d had enough of me and walked out… but those eyes. What was that look when he stared at me?
To be honest, a lizardman’s expressions are too different from a human’s for me to read sometimes. Sig may be a bit twisted, but at heart he’s straightforward, so up to now it hasn’t caused much trouble.

That wasn’t dissatisfaction, or disappointment, or disgust. It felt like something else entirely.

「So, what about the rats?」
「Ah, we’ve agreed on the amount to hand over for now.」

Just in case, we posted a watch, but as promised there was no rat raid last night.
It seemed Al had smoothed things over with the rats.

The amount we’d hand over to them was roughly a tenth of the harvest. It’s not a small share, but it’s not so much that we can’t make ends meet.

「For the time being, let’s expand the fields a bit more.」

It’s not a tax; there’s no fixed percentage.
The more we expand the fields, the more what we hand over to them will become negligible by comparison.

「Mm‑hmm.」

Yuuki nodded. Since the rat affair, she had stopped avoiding me.
That said, she wasn’t clinging to me like before. If anything, it was a comfortable distance.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a twinge of loneliness, but complaining would be selfish.

Fulfilling work, reliable comrades, children who look up to me—being dissatisfied in such a fortunate situation would be asking for punishment. There are minor issues, but we can just solve them one by one.

「…Let’s do our best.」

I murmured it to myself, as if to set my resolve.