THE WYRM AND THE HALF ELF

The strategy meeting's over.

Ugh, my shoulders are stiff.

I flap the wings on my back a few times and stretch.

Man, I'm sleepy, too.

Whether it's class or a meeting, I guess that kind of thing still makes me sleepy.

I mean, I know that was a really important conversation, all right?

That doesn't mean I'm not gonna get sleepy, though.

I'm just saying. Sure, it was technically a strategy meeting, but nothing particularly important got decided.

We're just going to be on standby near the teleport points, really.

I mean, we did get to tell Kuni and Kushitani about Negishi and all, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of time, but still.

Negishi…

...Hmm.

Does Shun seriously think he can beat her or what? I guess it wouldn't be the first time he's pushed himself too far.

Hyrince knows that, too, which is probably why he was trying to stop him, but I don't know if that did any good.

Hopefully, Katia can hold him back, but she doesn't understand how scary Negishi is, so she might end up wanting to believe that Shun can beat her, too.

Love is blind, after all. She has a ridiculous amount of faith in Shun, meaning I probably can't count on her very much.

Ugh…

I'm actually pretty unlucky, aren't I?

Same for Hyrince, too.

I returned to my assigned room after the meeting, but now my stomach hurts too much to sleep, for some reason.

Maybe I'll go out for a little walk.

As soon as I open the door and step outside, two elf men are there, as if they were waiting for me. I barely manage to suppress a scowl.

Instead, I ignore them and keep walking, and the two men silently follow me.

Leave me alone, will ya?

Sooo annoying.

What's up with these guys anyway?

We're not criminals, you know.

I don't get why they have to watch us at all times.

As I wander around irritably, I find a crowd gathering nearby.

It sounds like they're laughing, too. That's odd. In the time we've spent here in the elf village, I've never once seen an elf laugh.

They don't even smile; they just grimace all the time.

But everyone in the group in front of me is laughing aloud. Is there something funny going on? I take a casual little peek, not expecting much.

There I see Anna cowering, her cheek swollen and red.

Huh? Wait, what? What's going on here? Is that mark on Anna's cheek from a punch?

Did somebody hit her? And these guys are laughing at that?

"Hey, you! What do you all think you're doing?!" Right away, I start shouting at them.

The elves stop laughing immediately and turn to stare blankly at me. Their mechanical expressions make me even angrier.

"This is an issue among us elves. Strangers shouldn't stick their noses where they don't belong," one of the elves says curtly. He seems to be the leader of this little group.

"Well, let me make something clear, then. Anna is our friend. That means I'm not a stranger, so I'm free to stick my nose in, correct?" I step up to him and grab him by the collar.

"Or should I stick my fist in instead?" I ball my free hand into a fist and draw it back. I would love to pummel the smug elf's face right now, but I force myself to hold back.

The two guards who were following me have drawn their weapons behind me. Oh, come on! I'm trying to stay calm here, so why do you have to go and start things?

"You sure you want to be pointing your weapons at me? I am a member of the real hero's party, you know. Do you really want to make an enemy of the hero?"

I address all the elves present, not just the two behind me.

The elf whose shirt I'm holding shakes loose from my grip.

"Let's go."

The elves all turn their backs and start to walk away.

"Wait right there."

I grab the ringleader's shoulder and stop him.

"Apologize."

"No need."

"Maybe not for you, but we don't see it that way. Apologize. Now."

The elf leader tries to shake me off again.

I dig my fingers into his shoulder just strongly enough to keep him in place.

The elf's face contorts with pain.

"Do you really think your actions will go unpunished, girl?"

"You're the one who laid a hand on Anna first, aren't you? I'll let you go as soon as you apologize. Go on." He still doesn't give in.

I shrug and start putting more pressure on his shoulder. Before long, it reaches the point where I might start breaking things if I press any harder.

"All right, all right! Sorry!" Finally, he apologizes.

When I let go, he glares at me wrathfully but leaves without saying anything else.

Soon, the only people who remain are Anna, the four elves guarding us, and me. The two who are guarding Anna must have been there when the violence started. If they just stood there and watched without helping her, what are they even guarding us for in the first place?

"Thank you. I apologize for the trouble."

"Don't worry about it. Only a useless moron would stand by without doing anything to help,"

I respond, looking pointedly at the guards.

Their eyebrows twitch slightly, suggesting that my barb got through to them.

"Still, what about you, Anna? You're normally a terror when you're training us. Why wouldn't you just give those clowns a beatdown?"

I'm verrry familiar with Anna's intensity.

She's the one who helped me level up when I was younger, after all. I'll never forget the hellish training she put me through back then.

That's all well and good, but she also believed the superstition that consuming the flesh of a strong monster would make you that much stronger, so she always used to force me to choke the nasty stuff down. As the memories bubble to the surface, I let out a pained chuckle.

"If I could do such a thing, I would not have struggled so."

Anna glances at the four remaining elves.

Ahh.

Even if she wanted to complain, she can't because these guys are here.

"I can't believe they'd gang up on one girl, though! For having such long lives, elves sure do behave like children. Even human kids these days wouldn't do something so immature."

Since Anna can't voice her concerns, I decide to complain for her.

…Not that I'm really one to talk, since I was a bully myself in my previous life.

"Are elves aaalways like that? I guess they still haven't grown up, then. Why else would they do something that even a child knows is wrong? I'm sure that particular group of elves must just be extremely stupid."

Oof, that one hit home!

I'm sorry, okay?!

I get it!

I was extremely stupid and childish myself in my past life!

"But I'm sure it'll be fine from now on! These guys will totally protect you if it happens again, after all. They must've just been so shocked that their fellow elves would do something so vulgar that they couldn't move, right, guys?"

I turn a bright smile toward the two elves who were guarding Anna, and their faces twitch. They're picking up on the heavy sarcasm I'm laying down here, then.

But they know that if they argue back, they'll just be acknowledging that all elves are actually that vulgar. That's the setup I was aiming for, anyway. See, I want to believe that the elves aren't actually that stupid. That they know what they're doing is socially unacceptable. But it turns out elves are ludicrously prideful. No matter how much I make fun of them, they're never going to admit that, yes, they are that stupid.

So all they can really do here is agree if you ask me.

"Very well. We shall inform the other elves not to sully the dignity of our race."

I can practically see the veins popping in their foreheads, but they still gave in.

Hey, I did it! Even if I had to stab myself in the heart a few times in the process. In my previous life, I bullied a certain girl a lot. Although I guess I don't know if you could quite call it bullying.

Her name was Hiiro Wakaba. That vixen who bewitched the guy I liked with her ridiculously good looks. Just remembering it makes me mad. I worked up all my courage to confess to that upperclassman.

Imagine how I felt when he said, "Sorry, I like Wakaba"!

I know it's not really her fault, but at the time, I couldn't help it. When I went to her in tears to complain, she did nothing but stare me down with those cold eyes. I think something inside me snapped at that moment. Ever since then, I began to view Hiiro Wakaba as my mortal enemy, and I would pick on her whenever I got the chance.

I regularly insulted her to her face. I hid or destroyed her stuff. I put a razor blade in her desk.

You know, all the clichés. But no matter what I did, she just ignored it with a cool expression.

That just pissed me off even more, and it might have escalated if my friends hadn't stopped me.

"Wakaba's scary, you know. You better not push her much further." Ai and Himi both told me this very seriously, and my other friends said the same.

I knew something was up with her, too, but I just couldn't stop myself. Whenever Wakaba looked at me with those eyes that seemed to stare right through me, I couldn't help getting angry.

Those eyes said I wasn't even a blip on her radar. At some point, it stopped being about the guy I liked. I just couldn't stomach the look in her eyes. It's not like I was going out with that guy anyway, and Wakaba didn't seem to like him back, either, so she never really took him from me in the first place.

Maybe I'm being punished for doing stuff like that.

I thought about that for a while inside my egg.

To be honest, I don't remember much about being in the egg.

It sort of feels like a dream now, y'know?

But I do remember being trapped somewhere dark and cramped.

And when I finally broke out of that awful place, I was a wyrm.

First I think I died without even realizing it, and then I was reborn as someone's pet dragon thing. That's got to be divine punishment, right? When I learned that all my other classmates were in this world, too, I made up my mind to apologize to Hiiro Wakaba when I saw her again.

To say sorry for doing all that stupid stuff. But then I learned that Hiiro Wakaba was already dead. Which means I'll be stuck feeling guilty like this for the rest of my life. Maybe that's my real punishment.

"Anna, you knew something like this would happen, right? Why would you come all the way here with Shun knowing they were gonna give you a hard time?"

I finally ask something that I've been wondering about for a while. I always knew that Anna was pushing herself too far by coming with us. But I couldn't figure out why she would stubbornly insist on coming anyway. Especially now.

She knew that elves hated half-elves, and she must have known that she would suffer if she came here. "I have sworn my fealty to the Analeit royal family. If I were to stay behind for my own sake, it would betray that oath." I can't tell how much of her answer is how she really feels and how much is merely a formality.

Personally, I think she has special feelings toward Shun that have nothing to do with that oath. I don't think it's romantic or anything, though. Maybe it's more like a maternal instinct?

Yeah, that almost makes too much sense. Anna sees Shun as her child, I think. It's natural for a mother to want to protect her child. She's trying to protect Shun from any suffering, no matter how hard it is on her. It's not simple loyalty.

She probably wants to help Shun no matter what because she has maternal feelings toward him, right? Thinking about it that way, I feel much better. Anna is like a foster parent to Shun.

Lucky you, Katia.

I guess this person isn't your rival after all. In a sense, though, this bond might be even more powerful.

Motherly love is pretty strong. It might even manifest more intensely than romantic love.

Shun tends to push himself already, but if he ends up in danger, Anna will probably protect him even if it comes at the cost of her life.

They're not related by blood, but they're still basically family. That means one more person who might throw themselves headfirst into danger.

Man, I'd really like to just let Hyrince handle all this…

I guess I'll step in if I have to, though. If that's what it takes to make sure everyone survives.