[V2C20] The Cost of Human Skin
Translated by Jodas 2: Daily Lives of a New Teacher and the Apprentice MagesWhat in the world am I looking at? Wren asked himself.
Was this a dream brought on by the cold? Was it a nightmare?
There was a Monster with Tia’s face. White feathers grew from her arms, and those feathers disappeared as if being sucked into Tia’s arms.
The sight of a girl’s thin arms tearing open and feathers packing inside was beyond bone-chilling to him.
“Uuu, ugyuuuu…….Uuh, UU!!!!”
The Monster groaned in anguish. With Tia’s face. And voice.
Wren only now realized that that care-free smiling face that was always saying piyopp! could feel so cold without its usual smile.
“Agyuuuu…… uuu….. Haah, haah……”
Before Wren’s eyes, the Monster in the shape of Tia took something out, tossed it into its mouth, and bit down.
Doing so, white wings once again sprouted from the girl’s arms. That wasn’t all. He realized something off about her legs, and looked down to see they had also changed. They were birds’ feet, with sharp talons.
Wren knew what these Monsters were called. When he was young, he’d read about them in a book.
(…….a Harpy.)
The Harpy folded its huge wings, and wrapped them around Wren and Sevil.
Wren was too terrified to even speak as the Monster approached with Tia’s face.
Wren stared in terror into its fiendishly glowing amber eyes…….
“Hmphhmphhmphhmphhmph!!”
Her cheeks rubbed vigorously against him. It kinda hurt.
Then, Tia turned to Sevil and rubbed her cheeks the same way.
Her movements were ridiculously fast.
“Warm up! Warm up! Warm uppp…..!”
The Monster with amber eyes said with desperation.
“You know, I have hands kinda like a human’s at the tips of my wings, but my wings are wrapped around you, so I can’t rub you with my hands!”
The fluffy wings encircle Wren and Sevil as if to hug them.
Both the wings and the Monster’s body were warm.
Sevil questioned the Monster with a stiff voice.
“Tia, were you……..always a Monster?”
“Strange, it’s strange. Why, oh why?”
The cold air in the cave shuddered imperceptibly, and Jack’s voice overlapped with Sevil’s.
“Harpies can’t take human form, right?”
Indeed, just as Jack said.
Harpies were lesser Monsters. They weren’t terribly strong as Monsters went, and could not take a fully human form.
However, the Tia Wren knew was a human girl no matter how you looked at her.
Ironically, it was Jack that voiced Wren’s concerns for him.
“How come you can turn into a human? Why are you pretending to be a human?”
“…….Because a human clipped my flight feathers.”
Wren glanced with a start at Tia’s wings that enveloped him. Certainly, the feathers were unnaturally short in some places.
Wren recalled a sight he’d seen at his house. His father, who was a prominent merchant, adopted a strangely-colored bird, and he’d clipped that bird’s wings to prevent it from flying away.
(So there was a human who did the same thing to Tia?)
Wren was still overcome with confusion from the shock of learning that Tia was a Monster.
Regardless, the level-headed part of his mind thought as hard as it could to grasp the situation.
Tia was a Harpy, and a Monster. Plus, her flight feathers had been cut, which was something you would do if you wanted to keep a bird as a pet.
That almost sounded as if…….
(Almost like a human kept a Monster as a pet…..)
Feeling like he was peeking into an as-of-yet unknown abyss, Wren’s body shivered for reasons entirely unrelated to the cold.
During the Entrance Exam, he had witnessed a mage of the Wedge Tower controlling a Monster that had been sealed in a book. To clip a Harpy’s wings and keep it as a pet was novel in a completely different way, and he could sense a deep, human greed behind those actions.
Tia continued her confession in a sincere voice.
“I can’t fly any more. But, I want to fly. If I can’t fly, I can’t go home to Breakneck Gorge. I can’t meet my sister and the rest……. So in order to learn flight magic, I had them turn me into a human.”
“A Harpy pretends to be a human….to study? Hehe, Ahaha…….I guess it’s not impossible. After all, Monsters rely on Humans. We’re obsessed…….”
Jack laughed childishly.
With glee that felt entirely out of place.
“Hey, do you know what form a Harpy’s obsession takes?”
The voice that had been talking to Tia suddenly turned its attention towards Wren and Sevil. Both of them gasped, and Jack told them.
“You know, Harpies abduct human men and use them to reproduce. They drag him to Breakneck Gorge, have intercourse, then once he’s all used up, they toss him into the Gorge like trash!”
Jack gleefully described the cruel biology of Monsters that made Wren want to cover his ears.
That’s a lie! Wren wanted to scream, but it never left his throat.
He had learned some Monster Biology in group lessons.
As Jack said, Monsters all depend on humans in some form.
Some cannot live without consuming human flesh, some cannot live without sucking blood, and some require humans to reproduce.
(It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be……)
It had to be a lie that Tia was a Harpy.
It had to be a lie that they were such grotesque creatures that abduct human men to rape and kill them.
Please say it’s a lie! He looked up at Tia, pleading with his eyes.
Tia spoke with a carefree smile like she always does.
“You don’t have to worry about that!”
He wasn’t sure what part exactly he didn’t have to worry about, but Tia had said it as such a matter-of-fact that Wren found himself carried away by her energy.
So they were fine, then. He allowed himself to relax for no reason in particular.
—He was naïve.
“After all, I can’t reproduce at all!”
Wren’s face tightened. Sevil similarly made a tough expression.
Only Tia was smiling.
“In order to turn into a human, I had to sacrifice my reproductive ability! That’s why I can’t lay eggs anymore!”
Wren’s lungs forgot how to breathe, and convulsed.
All kinds of questions arose in his head. But he couldn’t put any of them to words.
—That’s not the kind of thing you should be saying so happily! Do you understand what you’ve sacrificed? Why would you do such a thing? Why was your reproductive ability the sacrifice? Why did they do that to you? Are you laughing at us humans? Why, why, why……?
What should he ask first? How does he even start to talk about it? He couldn’t even get his own thoughts straight.
As Wren fell silent, Sevil asked Tia with a quiet voice.
“Tia, listen.”
“What’s up?”
“Why would you go through such lengths merely for flight magic…..?”
“Because I want to fly. I hate not being able to fly. Flying through the sky and singing songs are all that matters to Harpies.”
Wren balled his hand into a fist.
Do you understand just how much cruelty you’ve been put through? That’s what he wanted to ask.
She was captured by humans, and had her wings clipped.
In order to take human form, she had her reproductive abilities stolen.
Despite all that, Tia spoke with clear, direct eyes.
“Reproduction is important, but the sky and songs are far more important to me.”
Fluff, fluff White wings embraced Wren and Sevil, and Tia smiled.
“So, don’t worry about it! I won’t do anything bad to Wren or Sevil!”
Tia’s smile turned to a grimace.
The feathers around Wren shook, then slowly shrank.
Tia grit her teeth and groaned in pain.
“Uuu, uguu, uuuuuu…….!”
Tia’s feathers disappeared. It was as if they were being stored inside her arms. This was the same sight he saw earlier.
Apparently it caused a fair amount of pain, as Tia’s face writhed in anguish.
“Hah, hah” As Tia huffed out ragged breaths, she took a small vial out of her pocket.
It was hard to see in the gloom darkness, but there were what looked like candies in the vial.
“Pirororo…… I only have…. three candies left…..”
Tia took a candy out with shaking hands.
Wren’s eyes widened.
“Wait, you, do you need those candies whenever you turn back into a Harpy?”
“Yep, I do. Each one is five minutes, so with five of them, I have thirty minutes!”
“Twenty-five minutes, dumbass! ……No, there’s only three left, so that’s fifteen minutes.”
How do they get out of this situation in the remaining fifteen minutes? —Wren’s mind finally went to work.
Tia threw a candy into her mouth, and bit down.
White feathers sprung out of her arms and enveloped Wren and Sevil.
Tia truly was returning to Harpy form just to warm Wren and Sevil up.
“Harpy wings are super warm. So you’ll be okay. I’m sure you won’t die.”
Mumbling that much, Tia’s face twitched.
She looked as lost as a child who couldn’t find her mother.
“……You won’t die, right?”
Her usually high, bright voice now shook a little.
Not out of cold, but uncertainty.
“Wren, Sevil, you won’t die, right? I don’t want you to go cold……..”
Tia’s identity, her circumstances, things he wanted to ask her, things he couldn’t understand, things he couldn’t forgive—There were tons of things he wanted to say.
Turning all those over, Wren thought.
(…….Ah, for fucks sake!!)
That was a ‘fucks sake’ to help his mind set aside the questions he didn’t have the time to ask and switch over to what they should be doing here and now.
After all, Wren wanted to survive. Alongside Tia and Sevil.
Thus, Wren thought about what they needed to do to make that happen.
“Hey, Tia, what can a Harpy do?”
“Sing!”
“More detail, please…….”
“Umm, we can borrow strength from wind spirits……and things?”
“Too vague!”
Wren screamed, holding his head.
He didn’t have time to confirm what Tia’s songs could do.
(What else can she do? Does she have any tricks? Her wings are warm. She can sing strange songs. And…..)
Wren thought back on all the things Tia had said and done up to this point.
During the entrance exam, her ears were very good. She was strong enough to carry both Wren and Sevil on her back. However, probably not enough to stand against the Snow Boar.
She said she could borrow the strength of wind spirits, so maybe she could control wind to a degree? However, not enough to allow her to fly freely nor to send Jack flying. If she could do those things, Tia would have already done them by now.
She looked like her arms had been frozen over during their last battle with Jack, but she was completely fine.
(She probably has high resistance against magical attacks. That means Tia has quite a bit of mana, right? At least, she has enough mana to sing songs with special effects…….Probably, her mana capacity is way higher than a human’s. In that case…..)
Sevil seemed to have notice Wren’s expression changing. While opening and closing her hand, she smiled faintly.
“You’ve got the face of a reliable man right now, Wren.”
“At least say ‘pretty boy’.”
“If you have wisdom, share it with me, pretty boy.”