“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!
Man’ya looked at each of the babies clamped onto me and repeated the instruction. It took a few tries, but she must have gotten through to them, because the tiny fangs let me go.
“Wow...”
All we could do was watch in amazement. I had heard of the same sort of thing happening with human children—infants communicating with each other in ways adults couldn’t seem to understand. Some people even claimed that if you asked a slightly older child to “interpret”—say, a two-year-old, someone who had started to talk a little—that they would tell you the infant could remember being in its mother’s womb, or even recall things from his past life.
Well, I didn’t know how true any of that was. But in any case, Man’ya certainly seemed to be able to connect with her siblings somehow. She huffed in satisfaction as the other babies dropped away from me. I still didn’t know much about lizardman expressions—even on infants—but I took her current look to be one of joy.
“Aw, who’s the best big sister?” Minori-san cooed.
Ahh, so that was it: she was scolding her little brothers and sisters on my behalf.
“I’ve got to admit, Shinichi-san, you’re a force to be reckoned with,” Hikaru-san said, sounding impressed. “To bring even Man’ya into your fold... You’ve got no boundaries when it comes to girls, do you?”
“I’m sorry, what?!” How did he get to that conclusion?! And why were Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san all nodding?! Okay, so maybe when it came to Myusel and the others I had no excuse, but that hadn’t been on purpose! And I want to be completely clear: I have never, ever, in my whole life, ever had any of those kinds of feelings for a little kid! Anyway, she was a lizardman, for crying out loud! I guess dragons had become a fetish in America, but I was Japanese! And did we have to have this conversation right in front of the kid’s parents?!
“Hrrm...” Brooke let out a breath, as if he were making his peace with something. “W-Well, you, Master, I might allow...”
“Stop right there, Brooke!” I didn’t need that kind of loyalty! Not to be rude to Brooke and his kind or anything, but lizardmen were 100%, completely, totally outside the scope of my interests!
“Gyuuu!” While the rest of us had this completely ridiculous conversation, Man’ya was running and playing with her brothers and sisters, keeping an eye on them for us. She seemed to be giving them occasional pointers about what was okay and what wasn’t. It was weirdly wonderful to see this kid, who had been just an infant herself hardly a few days ago, act like a responsible older sibling. We watched Man’ya and the others all the way until it was time to leave for school, enjoying the sweetness and savoring the peace.
Chapter 3: Toransusekusharu?
The Guld Workshop: I doubt there’s an inhabitant of the Holy Eldant Empire who doesn’t know that name. Adults would be familiar with them, obviously, but even young children have probably been playing with toys bearing the brand of the Guld Workshop since before they could remember. There are a few other workshops in the capital, Marinos, but none as big as Guld. There are probably none bigger in the whole Empire—maybe not even in the surrounding countries.
“Workshop” may sound like a simple enough word, but this place got its start among the ore mines of northern Marinos, connecting the various dig sites with pathways until they formed a vast underground space. It’s not just a mine or a fabrication project, either; the place includes everything its workers (most of whom are dwarves) might need in their day-to-day lives. Intensely aware—and intensely proud—of all the work that went into creating this place, we dwarves quietly refer to it as “Under-Marinos.” More than five thousand people staff the Guld Workshop. The majority of the twenty thousand dwarves who live in the imperial city are either employees of the workshop, or at least friends or family members.
All of this, obviously, gives the Guld Workshop production capacity of a different magnitude from other facilities. Toys; eating utensils and other daily necessities; artwork; swords, shields, and even more advanced weaponry: if it’s fashioned with clay, hammered from metal, shaped from wood, or created with anything else that springs from the earth, Guld can make it. We grudgingly recognize the superiority of other craftsmen in just one respect: elves are more nimble workers of wood than we are. But even they use chisels and hammers produced by us.
And then there’s the man who oversees the Guld Workshop and all that goes on within it, the one ultimately responsible for everything that happens there: me, Rydell Guld.
The Guld family were major movers behind the construction of the royal castle, and so we’re accorded noble treatment despite being demi-humans. The workshop has been able to reach the extent it has thanks to the myriad rights and privileges granted to it by the Empire. It’s worth knowing, though, that despite being treated like nobles, we have never been given a grant of land over which to rule by the imperial family, as a human noble would be—because no matter how well they may be treated, no demi-human family, even the Gulds, can possess a demesne.
Nonetheless, the Guld family has, in effect, been given complete control over the Guld Workshop—that is to say, virtually the entire northern stretch of the
