Good. Good.
Satisfied, I turned to Man’ya, who had been watching my every move.
“Guess we won’t be seeing any more of that g—urgh?!”
Just as I was delivering a dry-cool bit of wit to close things out, the dummy came flying back up. The unexpected blow knocked me to the ground, where I sprawled right in front of Man’ya.
Uggghh, so not cool!
Man’ya, though, didn’t laugh at me, just looked at me with those round eyes.
So. Uh, had I succeeded in convincing her I was strong? I brushed off some dirt and propped myself up on one knee, then reached out to her...
“Raemu!” she exclaimed, and her teeth clamped down.
Wow, lizardman children do learn words fast.
Mostly Man’ya still made meaningless “Gyu!” noises, but at just three days old, she could already call Cerise amu-amu (Mama) and Brooke apu-apu (Papa). Sometimes she would even parrot an Eldant word here or there.
Man’ya, if you were wondering, wasn’t wearing a ring to enable interpreting between the Japanese and Eldant languages. But I had learned enough conversational Eldant to understand what she had said. It was a simple word that meant: food.
“Eeeyow...” I hissed, her tiny teeth digging into my hand. But I fought the urge to shout. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t cry. The whole point was to make Man’ya realize I was stronger than her, so it was imperative that I seem unconcerned about her attacks. “Hm? Did you do something?” was what I wanted to communicate.
Heh... I curled my lips slightly in an attempt at a disinterested smile. It hurt, but I could endure.
“See? It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt at all,” I said, like the heroine of a certain anime beckoning over that fox or squirrel or whatever it was. Kanou Shinichi, time to strut your stuff!
“Gyu!”
“It doesn’t hurt!”
“.........”
“It... doesn’t...”
“.........”
“.........”
“.........”
“Aaaaargh yes it dooooooooes!”
This kid’s fangs were really painful! Tiny but so, so sharp! And she had, like, thirty of them, all digging into my hand at once! I flapped my arm, trying to shake Man’ya free, but she seemed to have decided it was her turn to strut her stuff, and stayed steadfastly attached to me. Out of options, I took a tree branch I had brought along for this purpose and wedged it into her jaws, using it like a lever to force them open.
I was somehow able to free myself. Ahhhhh. My right hand was starting to look like a pincushion. Too many more of these bites and it would be as torn up as if it had been hit with buckshot.
Man’ya, for her part, was still staring at me...
“...Raemu.”
“Not raemu!” I exclaimed.
So she really did see me as her next meal!
“Aw, for...!”
Man’ya and I had known each other for all of five days now.
We seemed destined to be predator and prey forever.
There was a long and winding road ahead, filled with traps and danger, hurdles and obstacles, and lots of other words that meant a rough time.
I was in an absolute slump.
Over the past several days, I’d tried a few different things to make friends with Man’ya. I’d gotten down on all fours so we were the same “height.” I’d tried tempting her with a toy, and sometimes even came up behind her and just swept her up in a hug. But every attempt ended with her exclaiming “Raemu!” and clamping her jaws down on my arm, fingers, or other readily available extremity, sometimes so hard I almost jumped out of my clothes. I was covered in bite marks by now.
“It hurts...” I groaned as I soaked the wounds in medicine.
“Are you all right, Shinichi-sama?”
I was lying on the couch in the living room, Myusel attending to my various injuries. Man’ya’s teeth were small—or if you will, fine—so there wasn’t a lot of bleeding, but they did create an extensive network of delicate punctures that stung every time they were swabbed with medicine.
“Not really, but yeah,” I said, trying to smile. “I’m real sorry about this, Myusel. And thanks.”
I took another inventory of my body: my arms and legs were covered in bandages. Real gauze rolls; the little stick-on things weren’t doing the job anymore.
“Man... How do I convince her I’m a friend, not food?” I sighed.
“I’ve got an idea: how about you just give it up already?” This exasperated suggestion came from Hikaru-san, sitting on the other couch reading a book. He shrugged elaborately and closed his reading, looking over at me—or really, at my bandaged hands and bitten fingers. “I think if you get any more hurt, Brooke is finally going to commit hara-kiri.”
“Hrrm...” I was unsettled by how easily I could picture it. “Wearing long sleeves and pants has done the trick so far.” Myusel had finished bandaging me, so I rolled my sleeves back down.
Hikaru-san wasn’t wrong: if I drew too much attention to the wounds, I was afraid Brooke would try to “take responsibility” for his kid again. I didn’t think any of this was particularly his fault, but knowing something about Brooke’s social position, I hardly expected him to just go, “Y’know, you’re right!” and laugh it off. (Did lizardmen even laugh?)
And so, with that in mind, I’d been keeping my quest to make friends with Man’ya a secret from Brooke and Cerise.
“Seriously, quit already. It’s the perfect solution: Brooke doesn’t have to kill himself to make up for his daughter’s attacking you, and you don’t have to kill yourself trying to get on the kid’s good side.”
“But what if she starts by thinking of me as prey, and ends up thinking of all of humanity as a potential food source? It’s all well and good when I’m the only one she’s biting, but what if Petralka were to come over and Man’ya went after her?”
We would be lucky if Brooke was the only one who had to “take responsibility” for an incident like that. Heck, lizardmen could end up extinct in the Eldant Empire.
“She hasn’t shown any interest in biting anyone but you, Shinichi-san. I think
