A few days later, this shared lunch had somehow become a familiar sight among the students.
One side of the student cafeteria.
Elysia would sit down, and Haku would sit beside her or be held in her arms,
while Iris sat quietly across from them and ate.
At first, there had been many stares, but as time passed, everyone came to accept it as normal.
Some students even said things like this.
“The Haku table has such a calm atmosphere. It’s nice.”
No, that’s because Iris is quietly creating pressure.
That was what I thought to myself, but I didn’t bother saying it aloud.
One day at lunch, after finishing her meal, Iris spoke quietly.
“Haku.”
I lifted my head.
“At first, I wanted to understand you.”
I froze with a piece of bread caught between my front paws.
Iris’s face was as calm as ever.
“But lately, I have begun to think a little differently.”
Elysia looked at her as well.
Iris paused for a moment to choose her words, then continued.
“Before understanding, perhaps there needs to be a process of getting used to you.”
Those words were a little unexpected.
Unlike Iris, they sounded less like a research conclusion and more like something close to emotion.
“If I try to determine what you are right away, I will surely overlook something.
So for the time being, I will place more meaning on sharing a table than on observation.”
I blinked.
So that meant...
During lunch, she would prioritize eating together over research?
Elysia smiled gently.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
Iris nodded.
“Of course, that does not mean I will stop observing entirely.”
Of course not.
I immediately folded my ears back.
The corners of Iris’s mouth moved ever so faintly.
“But I will not interfere.”
I looked at her for a moment, then gave a small nod.
If it was just that much, it was fine.
I still hadn’t completely let my guard down.
Even so, maybe eating lunch together was all right.
That evening, at the dinner table in the Valerion ducal residence, when Elysia said she had been having lunch with Iris,
each member of the family reacted differently.
Leopold fell briefly into thought.
“If she is the young lady of Asteria, you must treat her with caution.
But if she is formally keeping proper boundaries, there is no need to distance yourself from her unconditionally.”
Isolde spoke softly.
“It is a good thing for Elysia to make a friend her own age. Of course, that is under the condition that Haku is not uncomfortable.”
Lucius looked at me with interest.
“Iris Asteria, is it...
She may be the first person to organize Haku’s peculiarities.
If handled well, she could even become a shield.”
Camilla was interested in a slightly different point.
“Big Sister, then does Haku eat lunch sitting between the two of you? That sounds so cute...”
I folded my ears back.
I wish she wouldn’t imagine things like that.
Mina quietly asked,
“Does Lord Haku feel uncomfortable during meals?”
Elysia looked down at me and smiled.
“He was a little wary at first, but these days, he seems all right.”
I pretended not to know and ate a piece of bread.
It was fine.
Probably.
Of course, the fact that Iris was still memorizing all of my eating habits in her head remained burdensome.
Even so, she did not interfere.
She kept her promise.
And sometimes, she really did look like someone simply sharing a meal.
By the standards of this academy, that much might count as a fairly normal relationship.
I quietly curled my tail.
The Stellar Radiance Society had institutionalized me.
The Accessory Crafting Club had made me their model.
The students regarded me as the one in charge of healing.
Iris observed me.
But perhaps,
all of those things were piling up little by little, and I, too, was growing used to this world.
In that way, the time Iris, Elysia, and I spent together gradually increased.
At first, there was a strong sense that Iris was observing me.
In truth, she was.
Even while sitting across from us at lunch and quietly eating,
she remembered which bread I ate first,
whether I only touched the soup after cooling it,
and how quickly I reacted when Elysia called my name.
She did not take out any record sheets.
She kept her promise.
But there was no way to stop her from recording things in her head.
‘Isn’t that cheating?’
Still, as time passed, I became somewhat used to that gaze as well.
Iris did not interfere.
She immediately withdrew any questions that made Elysia uncomfortable,
and if I flattened my ears or avoided her gaze, she did not dig any deeper.
As we ate lunch together like that, sometimes talked about the spirit greenhouse,
and peacefully spent time after class at the Accessory Crafting Club,
before I knew it, Iris was naturally becoming someone who stayed by our side.
A little over a month had passed since I came to this world.
Thinking back to when I had first stood in front of the bakery, soaked in rain, truly so much had changed.
I met Elysia.
I entered the academy.
I recorded the strange figure of 101 in resonance compatibility.
Elysia became a Double Crown.
And Iris became something like a lunch friend who quietly observed me.
One night, as I was thinking that,
a thought suddenly occurred to me.
‘Come to think of it... hasn’t my yokai power increased somewhat too?’
At first, I had known nothing.
I had not known what this body was, what the power flowing inside me was, or why the spirits treated me strangely.
But now it was different.
I had become able to gradually untangle the flow of Elysia’s aura, and I could even disturb the texture of small spells.
In the spirit greenhouse, I had seen the flow of mana around me twist in a strange way.
In that case,
even if only very slightly, perhaps the power I could handle directly had increased.
The problem was where to confirm it.
The academy was out of the question.
If I did it in the Department of Special Familiar Studies, Selena and Iris would come running immediately,
and if I did it near the Department of Elemental Magic, someone might detect an abnormal mana reaction.
Inside the Valerion estate would be better, at least.
There was a training ground, and it was also a time when most people would be asleep.
So I made up my mind.
While Elysia and the family were asleep, I would check it for just a moment.
Of course, I felt a little sorry about sneaking out.
If Elysia found out, she would definitely worry.
But I was not trying to do anything grand.
Just a little.
I only wanted to check how much the power inside me could move.
I carefully rose from the small blanket beside the bed.
Elysia was quietly asleep on the bed.
Moonlight came through the window and settled faintly over her hair.
I muted my footsteps and climbed down to the floor.
A fox body was convenient in this regard.
Small and light.
If I crept along quietly, I made almost no sound.
I slipped through the gap in the door and passed down the corridor.
At night, the mansion had a completely different atmosphere from the day.
Moonlight stretched long beyond the large windows, and the armor and swords decorating the corridor gleamed faintly.
I could hear the footsteps of knights patrolling in the distance, but they did not see me.
No, to be precise, whenever it seemed like they might, I instinctively blurred my presence just a little.
‘...Huh?’
It was something I had done without realizing it.
The moment I tried to hide myself, the air around me trembled thinly.
It felt as if a shadow were melting into the moonlight.
I had not vanished completely.
But there was a sensation of gazes slipping past me.
I stopped in a corner of the corridor and blinked.
‘What was that just now?’
Illusion.
A blurring of presence.
Perhaps it was something close to the power of the first tail.
But it was still extremely faint.
The moment I became conscious of it, the sensation disappeared.
I stood there blankly for a moment, then shook my head again.
First, let’s go to the training ground.
There were more things to confirm now.
The training ground behind the mansion was empty at night.
During the day, it was where the knights and Elysia swung their swords, but now it was silent.
Wooden sparring dummies stood in rows, and faint traces of the day’s training remained on the ground.
A round moon hung in the sky.
I walked to the center of the training ground.
Cold night air seeped between my fur.
I was a little nervous.
But strangely, the inside of my body was calm.
I closed my eyes and tried to feel the depths within me.
It was not a power that entered from the outside like mana.
Nor was it a power that boiled up through blood and muscle like aura.
Somewhere deeper.
A flow like moonlight, quietly blooming from deep inside my chest, or perhaps somewhere below my stomach.
I drew it up very carefully.
At first, nothing happened.
‘As expected, is it still too much?’
The moment I thought that, a very small light gathered at the tip of my front paw.
Silver.
And a very faint pink.
The light flickered like a tiny ember, then floated gently into the air.
It was a flame.
But it was not an ordinary fire.
It was not a hot, blazing red flame, but a small, quiet flame that seemed to hold moonlight within it.
I stared at it blankly.
‘Foxfire?’
As if reacting to my thought, the flame trembled slightly.
I carefully moved my front paw.
Then the flame slowly followed.
Right.
Left.
Up.
Down.
I had made it.
For a moment, I felt something inside my chest beat strangely.
At last.
Though it was very small, I had directly drawn out my own power.
‘Oh...’
It was more moving than I had expected.
Of course, from the outside, I probably just looked like a little fox kit raising one front paw and staring blankly at a light, but from my perspective, this was quite a major step forward.
I focused a little more.
Then another flame appeared.
And another.
Three small foxfires slowly circled around me.
The silver-pink flames drifted quietly over the night training ground.
“...It really works.”
No words came out.
But in my heart, I murmured as much.
In my happiness, I put a little more power into it.
That was the moment.
One of the foxfires suddenly shook violently.
“Kyaung?!”
The flame shot forward with a whoosh and touched the arm of a nearby wooden sparring dummy.
It did not burst into a large fire.
Instead, the spot it touched silently blackened.
I froze on the spot.
‘That’s dangerous!’
I had let my guard down because it was a cute and pretty flame, but it definitely had power.
I hurriedly withdrew my yokai power.
Then the foxfires scattered in the air and vanished.
The training ground became quiet again.
But a small round scorch mark remained on the arm of the sparring dummy.
I approached it and sniffed.
There was almost no burning smell.
It felt less as if it had been burned by fire and more as if the energy of that part had been lightly erased.
‘This... could be really bad if I use it wrong.’
This was not something I could simply be happy about.
Gaining power also meant I had to be that much more careful.
I returned to the center of the training ground.
This time, instead of foxfire, I decided to wrap yokai power around my body.
The sensation from the corridor earlier, when my presence had blurred.
I recalled it again.
Hold my breath.
Lower my body.
Imagine each strand of fur blending with the air beneath the moonlight.
Then a very thin film seemed to form around my body.
A silver-pink light faintly rippled, then soon disappeared.
But it had not disappeared.
My presence had become very faint.
A small night bird sitting in the corner of the training ground tilted its head, unable to see me.
I moved slowly.
My footsteps made almost no sound.
My body felt light as well.
As a test, I leapt toward a low sparring platform.
Normally, it would have been a little difficult with a fox kit’s body.
But this time, I climbed up lightly.
‘Oh.’
As soon as I landed, I almost lost my balance and slipped, but in any case, I had gotten up there.
I wagged my tail on top of the sparring platform.
It was too weak to call it body reinforcement, and too lacking to call it a complete illusion technique.
But without a doubt, there were more things I could do than before.
Small foxfires.
A faint blurring of presence.
Very weak physical assistance.
It seemed this was about as much as I could do at present.
‘At this level... it’s not bad, is it?’
At that very moment,
an unfamiliar sensation brushed past my back.
I flinched and turned my head.
Behind my tail, an extremely faint afterimage of light floated.
One tail.
No, my real tail was still only one.
But behind it, an illusory tail that seemed to be made of moonlight swayed for just an instant.
A blurred silver-pink tail.
The moment I saw it, my entire body froze.
The second tail.
Those words surfaced in my mind.
But the next moment, the illusory tail vanished.
As if it had never been there from the beginning.
I sat there for a long while.