“Woof? The same?”
“What is?”
Aji and ‘Aji’ tilted their heads in unison. Oops. Right. I didn’t think of that. Aji is a dog, so she doesn’t look in mirrors often, and she probably doesn’t pay attention to her reflected appearance. She would even smell different. To Aji right now, ‘Aji’ is just a human acting similarly to her.
“Alright. Ajis. I’m going to do a simple test now to figure out which one of you is the real Aji.”
“Woof? Toast?”
“Food?”
Sigh. Expecting a dog to have an awareness of dignity and uniqueness is probably difficult. Let’s stop talking and finish this quickly.
Among the food the regressor brought out was dried fruit. I took a dried persimmon and tore off a piece. The large dried persimmon, giving off a luxurious scent fitting of a regressor’s food, caught Aji’s eye. As I waved it left and right, Aji’s and ‘Aji’s’ eyes followed my hand.
I shouted.
“Aji. Sit!”
“Woof!”
“Stand!”
“Woof!”
“Good girl! Here, eat!”
“Woof woof woof!”
When I tossed the piece of dried persimmon upward, Aji and ‘Aji’ both leaped up. After an aerial contest, the one who seized the dried persimmon was Aji.
Chomping down on the dried persimmon, Aji’s eyes widened as she smacked her lips. Swallowing the dried persimmon in an instant, Aji’s eyes shone as she bounded around.
“Delicious! Sweet! Delicious!”
“It’s good, right? It’s dried persimmon. I hid it because I was afraid my share would disappear once you tasted it.”
Now I’ll have it stolen by Aji every time I eat fruit. Repeating this sad fact to myself, I now looked at ‘Aji’.
‘Ugh. The King of Dogs is purely high difficulty. How am I supposed to snatch that? This is going to be too easy to figure out~.’
No matter how easygoing the King of Dogs is, she’s still a king. It’s hard to match her agility. Anyway, I laid the bait. It wouldn’t be strange to distinguish Hilde from now on.
“Should I give it to you? Here. Try eating it if you can.”
I tore the dried persimmon into small pieces and hid them in both hands. Then, I slightly parted my fingers to make a gap and held them out to the two.
“Woof woof! Woof woof woof! Dried persimmon!”
“I told you it’s dried persimmon.”
Aji shoved her snout into the gap between my fingers without a hint of hesitation. When the gap was too small for her mouth to fit, she stuck out her tongue to try and pull out the dried persimmon. When even that didn’t work well, she just stuck her tongue out and licked the dried persimmon.
‘…Hmm. It’s not like I can’t copy that.’
There’s a model answer shown by the original right in front of me. Now. Hilde. You have to copy it, right?
Though there was a bit of hesitation, Hilde stuck her tongue out into my hands without much difference. You wouldn’t know just by looking, but the tactile sensation felt by my fingers was distinctly different. Aji was unhesitating, but Hilde’s tongue movements contained a slight hint of reservation.
‘As an actress, it’s an emotion that shouldn’t be there… but maybe, just a little, she’s embarrassed?’
Come to think of it, it really is peculiar. Even though we’re the same beasts, humans feel a strange emotion called embarrassment.
“…You really have sick taste, too.”
Let’s ignore the regressor’s muttering. If he doesn’t want to see it, he can close his eyes.
While both my hands were getting soaked in saliva like that, Aji clicked her teeth, seemingly getting impatient now. Frightened, I opened my hands and revealed the pieces of dried persimmon. Aji and ‘Aji’ devoured the dried persimmons in the blink of an eye.
“Sweet! Delicious!”
“Delicious! Delicious! Delicious!”
Look at those reactions. Feeding them is rewarding. Having swallowed all the dried persimmon left in their mouths, the two naturally turned their gaze to the remaining dried persimmon. I lifted the dried persimmon, which had now been reduced by half.
“Do you want more?”
“Woof! I’m hungry!”
“I got hungry!”
“Haha. But what should I do?”
In the short moment I crossed both hands, I hid the dried persimmon up my sleeve. And after finishing a few meaningless hand gestures, I opened my palms wide and showed them to the two.
“Ta-da! The dried persimmon disappeared!”
“Woof?!”
Aji made an expression as if the world had ended. Even a child would know it’s sleight of hand, but Aji, the King of Dogs, has no immunity to this kind of magic. If it disappears before her eyes, she believes it’s really gone.
Not knowing that fact, Hilde, whose acting was slightly delayed, calmly assessed the situation.
‘If she’s the King of Dogs, she’ll notice by smell that the dried persimmon hasn’t disappeared. I’m late so far, so I’ll take the initiative this time.’
‘Aji’ raised her nose and sniffed. Aji also heard the sound and followed suit, sniffing.
And the two looked at me as if they had made a promise.
“It’s here! It didn’t disappear!”
“Dried persimmon scent!”
‘Aji’, imitating Aji’s action from earlier, immediately thrust her head into the gap of my sleeve. But there was no way her face would fit inside. Instead, she tried to stick her hand in and pull it out.
However, the dried persimmon had already gone deep inside. The bulging shape near the sleeve was blatantly visible. ‘Aji’ pretended to find it by smell, sniffing as she made her way up my forearm. She gradually got closer to the dried persimmon, but a single thin layer of clothing blocked ‘Aji’ and the dried persimmon.
‘It’s too deep. I won’t be able to take it out without tearing the clothes, right? What would the King of Dogs do in this situation…?’
‘Aji’, now in a dilemma, observed Aji out of the corner of her eye. To get even a hint.
Aji was currently happily enjoying a feast with a whole dried persimmon in her mouth.
‘Huh?’
“Ta-da. Actually, there were two dried persimmons.”
I put one in my pocket beforehand.
If the premise is false, then all subsequent propositions are false. A magician’s magic must always start by disrupting the premise. There wasn’t just one dried persimmon to begin with, and Aji, with her excellent sense of smell, noticed right away. While ‘Aji’ was distracted, Aji had already taken the dried persimmon out of my pocket and was tasting it.
In other words, the proof that ‘Aji’, who climbed onto me almost as if embracing me and buried her face in my chest here, was Hilde.
‘Aji’ saw her own figure again. The sight of herself climbing onto me, shoving her nose in, and sniffing.
As if broken, ‘Aji’ stopped moving. I took the dried persimmon out of my sleeve again and said.
“Hilde.”
“…Woof.”
“Even so, this is a bit embarrassing, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“What are you doing. Come back.”
‘Aji’, no, Hilde slowly raised her body. Perhaps the shock was a bit big this time, the tips of her ears were slightly dyed red.
With an awkward expression, Hilde scratched the back of her neck.
“Ahaha. I was completely fooled~. As expected, I can’t beat Father.”
“Don’t be too disappointed. The one solving the quiz is at an overwhelming advantage compared to the one making it. You really were like a puppy.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s a compliment. Here, a gift. The dried persimmon you wanted so much.”
I pushed the dried persimmon, which I felt a bit reluctant to eat now, into Hilde’s mouth. Hilde glanced sideways at me and tasted the dried persimmon as if dissatisfied. Since the taste didn’t change just because it was hiding in my sleeve, Hilde’s mood quickly improved.
“I thought it would be easy because I’m the King of Dogs. That was ‘my’ miscalculation.”
“Raise your head. Being caught by me is not embarrassing at all. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to guess. Right, Mr. Shei?”
The regressor, who had been watching without a word, startled and answered.
“…No, I noticed a long time ago too.”
‘It’s confusing when just looking normally, but if I use the Seven-colored Eyes, it’s clearly visible. Seven-colored Eyes, Green Eye Dog Eye.’
The regressor looked at Hilde with green eyes. The Green Eye is an eye that sees through. Although it can’t see through the body filled with qi, the regressor found another use for it.
‘Right. Just as I thought. The Green Eye can’t see inside the body…. But it can see the material of the clothes. Aji’s clothes are a standard, basic shirt, but Yeonggwi’s clothes are a special clothing packet. Yeonggwi changing her outfit was thanks to the specially made clothing packet after all.’
Come to think of it, even if she transforms, her clothes can’t do that. When she transformed into Tir last time, Tir personally made clothes out of darkness, but Aji doesn’t even know what clothes she’s wearing.
Even Hilde can’t carry every kind of clothing in the world. Instead, she uses a special clothing packet that can become every kind of clothing in the world. It’s alchemical equipment that can become not only clothes, but also weapons, equipment, or even puppy ears and tails depending on how it’s made.
Instrument of Creation, a myriad of transformations.
It looks like a superior version of my cards, but it’s Hilde who is weird for making a mold with qi gates and using it. If it were me, my qi and mana would go down the drain every time I changed it.
‘The ears and tail are also attached to the skin. It seems she even uses a bio-terminal. Certainly, I can’t help but admire that transformation art…. But as long as I have the Mask of Agartha, there’s no need to learn it.’
The regressor, who was looking for a chance for a fateful encounter even in the meantime, shook his head and said.
“Anyway, why do you keep giving such mismatched quizzes? They’re all going to get caught anyway.”
Why do I give quizzes? Don’t you know something so obvious?
“You really don’t know, Mr. Shei.”
“Don’t know what?”
“The reason for giving a quiz is set. I give them so you can guess it right.”
Because she wants someone to notice.
No matter how she transforms. Even if she imitates someone else. She keeps testing because she wants you to guess it right. Having to explain even something this obvious, we really have a long way to go.
The regressor, having heard my kind explanation, still seemed to have unresolved questions as he tilted his head and asked.
“So I’m asking why we have to guess it right.”
Regressing must have cost him his sensibility. Tired of explaining, I ignored the regressor and went to eat the dried persimmon. I need to taste it too.
I plucked the stem off a dried persimmon and tore it in half. A sweet scent rose from the long, torn flesh. After fully appreciating it with my eyes and nose, just before putting it in my mouth, a thought came from across from me.
‘I see. ‘I’ wanted ‘myself’ to be acknowledged.’
It was Hilde’s thought. Hilde, stopping mid-chew of the dried persimmon, fell into thought, repeating the words I had said.
‘That I am here.’
The Juggernaut came to a sudden stop. As the front snapped up as if hitting a jaw, the furniture shook and objects fell to the floor.
Sitting in a chair elegantly drinking tea, I ended up spilling the tea all over my front. The classical view that water defeats fire was true. Because hot water was hotter than fire.
“Ah, it’s hot!”
I quickly shook my clothes to cool the tea. The laws of nature are mysterious; just by flapping my clothes, the hot tea quickly lost its heat.
This is magic, and this is nature. It’s weird to use qi or magic just because it’s hot.
“Woof! Woof! Woof! It’s an earthquake! It’s an earthquake! Danger!”
“Aji. This isn’t the ground. Earthquakes don’t happen here.”
Meanwhile, Aji is startled and jumping around. Is it because the Juggernaut has gifted such a comfortable journey so far? She seems to have completely mistaken this place for the ground.
“What? What’s going on? It hasn’t shaken even once until now.”