There was a pause. Man’ya gave Myusel’s hand a quizzical look. She didn’t seem like she was about to attack it, but we already knew that reptiles were experts at ambush. I watched, anxious, but...
“She’s so cute!”
There was no biting at all. Man’ya politely let Myusel pat her head. In fact, she crawled closer to Myusel and stuck out her head as if to ask for more.
This seemed to flip some strange switch even for Elvia. “M-Me, too!” she exclaimed. “I wanna touch her, too! Can I?”
“Certainly. In fact, would you like to hold her?” Cerise said.
“Can I?!”
“I’d l-like to, too...” Myusel said. When Elvia had had a turn patting the baby on the head, Cerise picked up little Man’ya and handed her to Myusel. “Ohhh...” Myusel breathed as she held the child in her arms.
“Am... Am I doing it right?”
“Well, lizardmen are quite different from humans, elves, or werewolves,” Cerise offered. “It’s rare for us to carry our children from place to place. Instead, the younglings usually cling to their parents’ bodies. We pick them up, and then they find a spot that’s comfortable.”
“Huh, so that’s how it works,” I said, impressed.
It made sense: with five or six kids, a parent could hardly hope to carry all the babies at once. Plenty of animals, even mammals, transported their young on their bodies like that. Lizardmen were apparently one of them. And anyway, what we called “carrying” a child was fundamentally about allowing them to nurse, but lizardmen didn’t breast-feed. As I knew from experience, Man’ya had a perfectly good set of teeth for eating solid food even though she was just a newborn.
I guess in my own world, reptiles weren’t famous for paying a lot of attention to their offspring. Compared with that, lizardmen looked like pretty good parents—protecting their eggs and raising the young. Closer to humans than snakes.
“Me too, me too!” Elvia exclaimed, bouncing around Myusel, who was concentrating very hard on not dropping Man’ya. Her tail wagged furiously; she was obviously excited. But it wasn’t like when she saw the soccer ball. There was no sense that she had completely lost herself.
Huh. I had never really taken Elvia for the motherly type, but I guess instincts are instincts.
Speaking of which...
“Me too, if you don’t mind...” Minori-san said, getting up from the couch.
Wow, even her?
Man’ya was passed from Myusel’s arms to Elvia’s, then even Minori-san’s. She didn’t seem to mind being part of this impromptu relay, and hardly squirmed at all as she went from person to person.
Hmm. I guess lizardman children are supposed to be sponges when it comes to language. Maybe she was already learning that these people were her friends. Or at least, maybe she had learned not to randomly bite them.
Okay, then!
“L-Let me try!” I said, standing up. Hey, I like cute things as much as the next guy. “Oh,” I added, “what about you, Hikaru-san?”
“I’m fine just watching,” he said with an I’ll-pass wave. “I get nervous around tiny things.”
Yeah, I could understand that. You always had to worry that they might break if you so much as touched them. But as for me, having waved Man’ya around vigorously while she was latched onto my hand, I knew she was tougher than that.
“C’mere, Man’ya, sweetie!” I reached out for the child in Minori-san’s arms. Uh-oh. I already sounded like I was talking to a cat or something.
“I sense trouble brewing,” Hikaru-san said.
“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” I shot back, taking Man’ya—
“Gyu!”
“Nggghhaaaa!”
—who promptly chomped down on my arm.
“Man’ya, no!” Cerise said, freeing the child from my limb. At least she let go right away this time, but there was a fresh row of teeth marks around my left elbow. It hurt.
“Shinichi-sama, are you all right?” Myusel asked.
“Y-Yeah, thanks...” I nodded. It wasn’t exactly true—in fact, this hurt like heck—but the wounds weren’t deep or anything. I would get some disinfectant and be fine. “But why am I the only one?” Man’ya had been perfectly sweet for Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san. Was it because I was human? But so was Minori-san. Or maybe she only bit guys?
“I—I am so sorry, Master!” While I pondered, Brooke threw himself to the floor and produced a hatchet from God knew where. “Allow me to take responsibility for—”
“G-Geez, stop that! I told you you don’t need to—stop!”
This time Elvia grabbed him without my saying anything and successfully pried the hatchet from his hand. What was he doing walking around with something like that, anyway?! No gore! Please!
But there was a part of me that thought, So this is what it means to be a parent.
Brooke was normally so calm and composed. Even setting aside my difficulty reading lizardman expressions, he didn’t seem very emotive. I had very rarely seen him get excited. But when it came to anything to do with Man’ya, he always seemed on the verge of plunging into a kowtow and then comboing into splitting his belly open. I’d heard the birth of a child could throw a switch that turned a person into a totally dedicated parent—maybe that’s what I was seeing.
I almost admired it, in a way. There was nothing for me to criticize. But seriously, I wondered about this thing with the kid.
“Hey, Hikaru-san, I think you should try to hold Man’ya,” I said, turning to him where he sat on the couch.
“Who, me? Why?”
“I’m just wondering if she bites me because I’m a man.”
“She doesn’t bite Brooke.”
“Okay, a human man, then. If that’s the story, then she should bite you, too.”
Consider it a little experiment in Man’ya’s favorite targets. I would be really disappointed if I were the only one she wasn’t friendly towards, so I had a lot riding on this.
“In other words, you want me to be a human guinea pig,” Hikaru-san grumbled, looking at me
