But now we had done all we could. Man’ya was a lizardman, a very different kind of creature from any of the rest of us. Even Elvia, as a fellow mammal, was probably more like us humans than Man’ya was. We couldn’t even begin to guess how to care for her. We didn’t know what kind of medicine might work on a lizardman, or for that matter, if human medicines were even safe for them—especially for one not even a month old.
“What do elves and werewolves do when they get a fever?” Minori-san asked.
“Same thing as humans,” Elvia said, looking worried. “Sleep it off...”
Well, that made sense.
“But lizardmen... I’m sorry, I just don’t know,” Myusel said. “They were attached to a different unit in the army, so I didn’t serve with them...”
Before Myusel had become a maid, she had served in the army in order to earn her citizenship in the Empire. Thanks to her training, she knew basic first aid, and even, I was told, a magic spell for simple healing. The lizardmen, though, had been in a different unit—only natural, considering their distinctive physical capabilities—and I’m sure she had never encountered one with a fever.
Brooke and Cerise wouldn’t be back until the next morning.
“I’ll try contacting the garrison. Maybe they can work the lizardman network,” Minori-san said, and left the room. Obviously, Brooke wasn’t the only lizardman in the imperial capital of Marinos. If we could get in touch with the others, they might be able to tell us what was wrong, or even what to do about it.
“I’m going to go try to catch a few winks,” Hikaru-san said, also making to leave. “I’m sure you’ll need someone to take over nursing duties later.”
“I’ll go see if I can’t find a lizardman around, too!” Elvia exclaimed, and rushed out.
It was probably the right thing to do; neither of them could do much good just standing around here. Finally, even Myusel left to go get more cold water. Man’ya and I were alone in the room.
I gazed at the child. She looked so small lying there on the floor. Of course she did—she was small. A lizardman she might be, but she was still a child. A newborn.
“This sucks...”
This tiny child was suffering, and there was nothing I could do. I slid down beside Man’ya on the floor and just looked at her. She was breathing, but her eyes were still closed. At this point, I almost would have been happy for her to jump up and bite me, I was so desperate to see her move.
I was just letting out a sigh when I heard a hesitant squeak of the door opening.
“Shinichi-sama, it’s Myusel. I’m coming in.”
I sat up as Myusel entered the room, using the backup key she carried to get past the magical lock. She had a small bucket in one hand.
“I brought water. We should probably refresh the towel once in a while.”
“Good idea. Thanks.”
Myusel came over beside me and set the bucket down. “Man’ya-chan, is she...?”
“Not looking any better. It looks so hard on her.”
“Oh...” Myusel looked down mournfully at Man’ya, who was breathing painfully. “Um, ahem, Shinichi-sama?”
“Yeah?”
“I can look after Man’ya-chan, so you...” She seemed to want to tell me to go to another room and get some rest.
“Thanks... But it’s all right. I’ll keep an eye on her.” I smiled sadly.
“......u...?”
Man’ya’s eyes, shut tight until that moment, drifted open a little.
“Man’ya?” I got down on my hands and knees to look in her face. She seemed to be regaining consciousness; her head turned lazily to look at me. The towel on her forehead slid off. I reflexively reached out to grab it—
“Hrgh?!”
—and Man’ya clamped onto my hand.
“Shinichi-sama?!” Almost on instinct, Myusel tried to break in between me and the child, but I waved my free hand to say, No, it’s all right.
“Shinichi-sama...”
“It doesn’t hurt,” I said, not to Myusel so much as to Man’ya.
Maybe it was the fever, but her bite was awfully weak. It wasn’t like it didn’t hurt at all, but it was totally bearable. In fact, I was almost overjoyed to see her chomp on my hand.
Man’ya looked up at me, her jaws still locked around my fingers.
“That’s right,” I said softly. “It doesn’t hurt at all.” With my other hand, I patted her on the head.
She didn’t make a sound, just let go of me. I felt the tiny teeth release my fingers, but Man’ya didn’t spit my hand out of her mouth. Instead, she licked it gently with her ribbon of a tongue.
I wondered what I tasted like.
After a while, Man’ya simply fell asleep, my hand still resting between her jaws. I turned to Myusel. “I know you’ve got a lot to do, Myusel,” I said. “I’ll shout if I need any help. Don’t worry.”
“Yes, sir. But please do call me, if anything happens.”
“I will.” I nodded and dunked the towel in the bucket Myusel had brought.
It might’ve sounded good, but I guess I fell asleep practically the moment Myusel left. When Hikaru-san had come to trade places with me yesterday, I had told him I would be fine watching over the baby, but I guess I dozed off lying next to Man’ya. And I had been so sure I would never fall asleep on the cold, hard floor.
“Uuuumm...........................” I blinked. The last thing I remembered before dropping off was Man’ya’s face, just across from mine. She had opened her eyes while she sucked on my fingers, but then she had gone back to sleep. Not wanting to wake her up, I’d just dozed right alongside her, my hand still in her mouth.
“Man’ya?”
All I saw in front of me now, though, was empty floor. Man’ya was nowhere to be seen. Even the memory of the feeling of her tongue lapping at my fingertips was gone.
“Wh-Where’s Man’ya?!” I felt the blood drain from my face.
Man’ya was gone. Had something happened while I slept? Where could she have gone, still in a torpor from her fever? I seriously doubted she was up walking around...
“What are we gonna do?” I sat up quickly, looking around the room—and froze.
There was Man’ya in a corner. But she...
“Man’ya...!”
I rushed over to her. She was facing the wall, and had rolled up into a ball so I couldn’t see her face. But I could see a wound of some kind, a big one right on her head. She must have gotten up and about while I was sleeping and ended up hurting herself.
Talk about a screwup...!
I touched Man’ya—and she promptly squished.
“Wha? What...?!” I cried. Man’ya deflated like a balloon with the air let out. She had already seemed pretty sick, but now she looked like a frog that had tried and failed to cross the road. What had I—
“Wait...” Then it started to dawn on me. “Skin...?”
“Ugi?” She had arrived beside me without my noticing it—Man’ya, who now cocked her head curiously at me.
“Man’ya?! But how? Oh, I see...” What I had rushed over to had been nothing but Man’ya’s old skin. Man’ya hadn’t been inside it all. She had probably been on the other side of the bed or something. It was simple: she had shed her skin. And she had done it so neatly that it seemed to leave a duplicate of her. That wound in her head must have been where she had crawled out of the old skin.
“Ahhhh...” I sat down right where I was, weak with relief. Man’ya was still looking at me.
“Man’ya,” I said.
“U?”
“How’s your fever?”
“Gi?”
She tilted her head again as if to say she didn’t understand. But I assumed her fever had broken. In fact, she gave a very relaxed-looking yawn. At least she didn’t seem to be in distress anymore.
“Thank goodness...” I said. Then there was a knock at the door. I went over and opened it to find Myusel standing there, with Brooke and Cerise. She must have brought them straight here
when they got back.
“Shinichi-sama, how’s Man’ya-chan?” Myusel asked, worried.
“Oh, about her—”
“Emokureu!” Man’ya squeaked, poking her head out from near my feet. (That meant “Welcome home,” by the way.)
“Man’ya-chan?” Myusel said, startled to see the child in such good spirits.
“Uh, Brooke, Cerise, can I talk to you for a minute?” I gave Man’ya to Myusel and ushered them all into the room, where I showed them the flattened duplicate of the child.
“My goodness,” Myusel said.
“This isn’t some kind of illness, is it?” I asked.
“No sir, just some shed skin.”
“But it came off so neatly,” Cerise said.
“So she wasn’t sick after all. I’m so glad...” My shoulders slumped with relief.
Reptiles shed their skin. Obvious enough—but I had never seen a lizardman do it, and didn’t know what the skin looked like after it was shed. I had no idea if any of this was normal.
“Our apologies, Master. ’Tis at about this time when lizardmen children first shed their skin. ’Tis a perfectly normal event for us, and we simply forgot to tell you about it.” Brooke bowed his head.
“Aw, hey, don’t worry about it. I should have thought to ask.”
“So do lizardmen always get a fever when they shed their skins?” asked Myusel, who was still holding Man’ya.
“No, certainly not always,” Cerise answered. “But it’s possible she was having trouble regulating her body temperature.”
“How’s that?”
“Very young children sometimes aren’t good at storing up heat.”
You’re probably familiar with so-called warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. Warm-blooded animals, like us mammals, can make their own heat to make sure their body stays the right temperature. Cold-blooded animals (snakes and lizards being the best known representatives), on the other hand, are more strongly influenced by outside air temperature, and their body temperatures can fluctuate significantly.
That doesn’t mean, though, that a reptile’s body temperature is always equal to the external temperature. Even cold-blooded animals need heat sometimes. The chemical reactions in their bodies are most likely influenced by their temperature. If they want to move fast, for example, they would need enough chemical reactions for their muscles to respond, and for that, you need a certain amount of heat.
So when snakes and lizards and the like sit out in the sun, they’re storing up heat, after which they will frequently start to move. If they get too cold, all the chemical reactions in their bodies slow down, and they lose the ability to move. In extreme cases, they can even just freeze in place and die, sort of like hibernation gone terribly wrong.
That much I knew from books. But lizardmen weren’t in any of my reading. Maybe the sunlight that had caused Man’ya’s egg to hatch prematurely had also left her with plenty of stored-up heat. That could have thrown off her metabolism, so to speak, and caused her to release a lot of heat when she shed her skin. That was the theory, anyway. Or maybe she was just getting rid of unnecessary, excess heat as she shed her skin.
“Now that you mention it, I do remember the sun being especially hot yesterday,” Myusel said, nodding.
“I’m just happy she’s all right,” I said. “I was going crazy with worry...”
“Y’ have our most heartfelt thanks, Master,” Brooke said, bowing deeply to me.
Cerise, after a glance at Myusel, likewise bowed her head. “We’re told that you were with her the entire time,” she said to me. Myusel must have told them.
“Aw, I really didn’t do anything. Man’ya beat that fever by herself.” Heck, I’d fallen asleep halfway through. “Come on, don’t bow to me,” I urged them. Then I looked over at Man’ya. She was reclining happily in Myusel’s arms. She looked like the picture of health, like nothing had happened. “Talk about a relief,” I smiled, reaching out to pat Man’ya on the head.
At which point the child latched her jaws onto my fingers. Yep. She was back to her old self.
“Hey!” Brooke reached out in a panic.
But I said, “Don’t worry, Brooke, it’s okay.”
It wasn’t exactly that I wanted to be bitten, but it was just such a relief.
Hang on... It... doesn’t hurt?
“Man’ya...?” I said, and she pulled her mouth away from my hand. Once again, she started licking my fingers with that long, snakelike tongue.
Wow! I marveled at how much I had leveled up in just a day!
“Man’ya learned a new skill: Nibble!”
I was very, very pleased. Then came a sound that made my eyes go wide.
“Shii-ichi.”
“H-Hey! That was my name!”
“Yes, I heard it, too!” Myusel said. We looked at each other, and I clenched a fist in triumph. There was no mistaking it: Man’ya had said my name. I guess I had finally graduated from being “raemu” to being a friend.
“She’s finally started to understand how kind you are, Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said.
“Wow...” This was hard to process. I was so happy. Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye...!
Brooke, however, sounded less thrilled. “He’s our honored master,” he admonished his daughter. “You must not address him by his name alone.”
Aw, c’mon, she’s just a kid!
“It’s all right, Brooke.”
“No, Master, I can’t allow—”
“Seriously, it’s fine. Man’ya isn’t technically my servant, anyway.” I gave her another pat on the head.
“Gyu.”
This time the lizardman girl didn’t bite me at all, but offered a friendly gurgle.
Two days later, the other eggs had finally hatched, and our house was pretty lively.
“Gyu!”
“Gyu?”
The newborns toddled around the yard, dug in the ground looking for bugs, and wrestled with each other. They all seemed to be having a good time. It turns out race or species or whatever doesn’t matter: watching chubby, short-limbed children play is adorable no matter who you are.
“We’re so sorry about all the noise,” Brooke and Cerise said, bowing their heads. I guess most lizardman children weren’t this active. Considering that Man’ya had been the same way, maybe it was because the mansion was situated a little bit closer to sea level than the lizardmen’s reservation, meaning the temperature was a little higher on average. Some extra warmth and plenty of oxygen would make just about any living creature outgoing. Anyway, it was just a theory. And it didn’t really matter.
“It’s all good,” I said. “I’m just glad they’re happy and healthy.” The rest of us were watching the children play, smiles on our faces. “Speaking of which, where’s Man’ya?” I didn’t see her among the rowdy, excited kids.
“I suppose she might be playing in the yard somewhere, like she usually does,” Cerise replied.
I glanced around for any sign of her, and meanwhile the other kids came trundling over to us as if to say, Play with us!
“Oh—!”
“Grr!”
Some of them grabbed on to the hem of Myusel’s skirt, while another took an interest in Elvia’s tail. One tried to get Minori-san to pick it up, while another babbled at Hikaru-san in incomprehensible baby talk. Brooke and Cerise tried to keep them under control, but there were only two of them to deal with five separate children. Each of the others found themselves with a kid to entertain, and even if they didn’t always seem quite sure what they were doing, they seemed to enjoy doing it. Hikaru-san, in particular, seemed to have it a bit rough, his Gothic-Loli dress getting pulled and tugged from every direction.
“We’ll make it clear to them they’re not to interfere with your work,” Cerise said. I nodded, just as one of the kids came wandering toward me.
“Ugi?” The child stared me down with an expression that made me think of Man’ya when she had just been hatched.
I sm
iled at the baby, crouching down. “What’s up?” I reached out to pat it on the head...
“Gyu!”
Chomp.
“Eeyow!” I cried as the child munched on my fingers.
Myusel looked over when I shouted. “Shi-Shinichi-sama?!”
At the exact same time:
“Ugi!”
“Oo!”
The kids babbled and squeaked and all started piling over toward me. Before their parents could stop them, they started biting my arms and legs.
“Ouch! Agh! Wh-Why?! Why me?!” Why didn’t anyone else ever get bitten?!
“Stop that right now!” Cerise started pulling the children off me, passing them to Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san in turn. The kids, for whatever reason, sat placidly in their arms, with no sign at all of imminent chomping.
“Guess Man’ya isn’t the only one who sees you as prey,” Hikaru-san said, crossing his arms.
Minori-san, hugging one of the children, smiled a little. “It is strange.”
“I wonder if I, like, emit something that makes them think of me as food.”
“What?! You mean like a slutty-bottom pheromone...?!”
“No, I don’t! This isn’t BL! They’re just straight up eating me! Anyway, forget the banter and help me!” Wasn’t she supposed to be my bodyguard?!
“M-Master, I—I will take responsibility in place of my children...!”
In stark contrast to me and Minori-san, who weren’t really worried about the situation, Brooke had managed to produce a scythe from God knew where and was preparing to amputate an arm. Myusel and Elvia hurriedly stopped him. But there was still one question in my mind...
“Why am I the only one?!”
I now had bite marks all over my body. I was starting to think I knew how a cow felt after it had been attacked by a school of piranhas. I could hardly tear them away; I was standing there with brimming eyes, trying to bear it, when:
“Tontosamu!” someone commanded. That meant basically, “Don’t do that!”
Something came darting out of the nearby bushes, stopping in front of me. It was—
“Man’ya...”
The little girl who had been playing somewhere in the yard.
“Echibu tontosamu!” Don’t bite him!
Outbreak Company: Volume 14 Page 11
