CH 43

At the Northern Fort V2C43: End of the First Errand (2)

In order to speak with him regarding Branch Captain-san’s matter, Kugalg and I searched for the Prince.

After reaching the end of the corridor, we found a staircase, so for the time being we decided to go down it.

My mental image was that I’d go bababababam! -and easily descend the stairs, but once I actually tried going down them, I missed my footing and ended up rolling down them with great force.

While there was a carpet laid on them, the stairs were fairly long, and ultimately I ended up crashing into the wall across from the stair landing.

“M-Milfee!?”

Kugalg shrieked with horror at my spectacular fall down the stairs.

“Are you okay!?”

“Owwie……”

I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all.

I might’ve broken all sorts of bones throughout my body. My neck bone might’ve broken too.

I couldn’t see my own appearance, but I felt like some of my joints were pointing in weird directions. And it wouldn’t be strange if blood was coming out of all sorts of places.

“Owwwiee……!”

I rolled around on the dance floor and complained about the pain.

I was the type that didn’t think to pretend to be okay in order to avoid worrying those around me at times like these.

Rather, I was part of the group that actively complained to have those around me sympathise with me.

“My bones are broken. It hurts.”

“Should I call that one-eyed human!?”

Kugalg paced around flusteredly as he spoke.

“The One-Eyed Knight……?”

I blinked my eyes rapidly.

Right now, if Kugalg goes to that room to call the One-Eyed Knight, then I’m sure that everyone there will be worried and come to check on me.

The King, the Queen, the Maid-san, and the Royal Guards too.

However, I still wanted to maintain airs with people on ‘that side’.

The One-Eyed Knight and everyone else have already seen my foolish side, but the King and them still haven’t seen my slightly silly parts.

“Don’t call him……I’m fine.”

I don’t want the King and them to see me on the verge of tears because I tumbled down the stairs. I somehow managed to stand up and question Kugalg.

“I don’t look weird, do I? There isn’t any blood coming out of my head? My ears haven’t come off, have they?”

Though it was that significant of an impact, Kugalg immediately replied, “You’re the same as always”.

Even when I checked my own front legs, they weren’t bent in any strange directions.

Huh? It doesn’t seem to be all that bad.

Strangely enough, once I realised that I wasn’t injured, the pain suddenly seemed to have vanished. It didn’t seem like I broke any bones either.

“The pain went away.”

“That’s good.”

While it was good, it didn’t make sense at all. If I was fine then no one would worry about me.

Even though I was thinking of having the One-Eyed Knight comfort me later.

It couldn’t be helped, so I once again set off to find the Prince.

However, the stairs still continued on before me. Unless I could overcome this hurdle, I wouldn’t be able to reach the bottom of them.

Seeing Kugalg jump down a step and then smoothly descend, I called him to a stop with a, “Wait, don’t leave me behind!”.

After failing once, I grew afraid of going down the stairs.

However, I couldn’t just stay here forever.

I paced around the dance floor hesitantly for a while, and then resolved myself to take the first step forward.

Gah, I really can’t do it! Going down from the front is scary.

It felt like I’d go rolling down them again if I lost my balance.

In the end, I decided to slowly go backwards.

I carefully lowered my hind leg.

However, perhaps because my leg was too short, not even the tips of my claws could reach the next step.

“Just a little more.”

Kugalg informed me, but exactly how many centimetres was ‘a little more’?

My leg won’t stretch any further than this. I’ll rip at the crotch.

When I tremblingly stretched my leg to the very limit, I finally felt my paw touch the carpet.

*sigh* I took a breather on the narrow step, and then once again turned around and began to stretch out my leg.

As Kugalg, who had already reached the bottom of the stairs a long time ago, leisurely scratched his head with his hind leg, I slowly and steadily continued to go down the staircase.

We somehow managed to clear the stairs and arrive at the ground floor.

I went down to the ground floor based on gut feeling, and didn’t actually know where the Prince was. In any case, we’ll have to walk around to search for him, so we ran all around the castle’s corridors.

While knights guarding the castle and the servants cleaning the castle looked at us with mystified expressions, none of them tried to catch us.

While walking down the outside corridor that had white pillars lined up along it that supported the ceiling, I gave a side glance towards the water fountain that sat in the middle of the wide courtyard and continued forward.

“Ah!”

The Prince was not in the courtyard, but instead I found an acquaintance.

Bringing along two maids on a walk was a white dog that resembled a Maltese.

Her name was Alexia, and she was a girl younger than me, currently at one and a half years old.

She was the royal dog owned by the royal couple.

She was wearing a one piece dress with plenty of lace and frills on it, and there was also a ribbon on her head.

While I was also always being given fluttery dresses to wear by  Branch Captain-san, I was jealous at how much more the clothes suited her compared to me.

Tap tap tap, I dashed over in Alexia’s direction.

Alexia also discovered me and started to wag her tail. You cute girl, you.

Incidentally, Kugalg was leisurely following after me.

“My! Spirit-sama.”

The attending maids also greeted us with some surprise.

I’ve only met Alexia two times before, but she was like a younger sister to me.

Up until now, there hadn’t been any others who were younger than me, so I was happy when I heard that the Queen had started to take care of a puppy that had white fur like me.

“Are you doing well Alexia?”

She was just a normal dog, so naturally she couldn’t answer my question.

Instead, she turned her butt in my direction and tried to have me sniff it.

Stop.

Sniffing each other’s butts was a dog-like greeting, but I was a spirit and a former human so I also rejected this greeting. No thanks to sniffing or being sniffed.

“You aren’t being bullied at the castle, are you?”

I looked into Alexia’s cute, round black eyes and said.

Alexia was an incredibly gentle and well-behaved child, so I was concerned for her.

Every time I looked at the toys that she had received with envious eyes, she always gave them to me and went [I’m fine, so please go ahead].

This noble girl was naturally doted upon by the Prince as well, because of that it made me feel like she would be maliciously harassed by some mean noble ladies. Or so my overactive imagination made me think.

I hope they weren’t pouring red wine onto her dresses at parties and going, “Oh dear, pardon me” sarcastically.

Just in case, I tried sniffing the one piece dress that Alexia was currently wearing, but there wasn’t any alcoholic scent on it. Thank goodness.

“Spirit-sama, please feel free to play together with Alexia.”

After saying that, the maid took out a wooden ring from the basket hanging from her arm. It was a dog toy bigger than the palm of her hand.

Just as I wondered how it was supposed to be used-

“Here it goes!”

She rolled it forcefully on the ground, and the dog chased after it.

The wooden ring that the maid had sent rolling jumped up every time it hit the small rocks on the lawn as it went further and further away.

“Yaaay!”

I followed my instincts and happily chased after it.

The smooth castle corridors made it so that if I fell down, I’d end up rolling with incredible momentum, but outside the ground was uneven, so playing here was fun.

Biting onto the ring that fell down after losing its momentum, I shook my tail and returned to the maid.

The maid smiled and said, “Good job” before once again sending the ring rolling.

“Yaaay!”

Panting, I ran after the ring and bit it, panting again as I returned to the maid and had her praise me.

The third time around, Kugalg also joined in on chasing down the ring. The two of us competed as we scrambled for the ring.

Although Kugalg was the first one to bite onto the ring, I jumped at Kugalg and tackled him onto the ground before stealing the ring.

I tried to return to the maid as fast as I could, but this time Kugalg jumped at me after getting back up.

The two of us rolled around in a chaotic mess, and before I knew it we had completely forgotten about the wooden ring, the game having switched to pro-wrestling.

Kugalg mounted me, and while keeping in mind that I should hold back a little, I used my hind legs to give him several consecutive kicks.

Feeling like I had forgotten something, I suddenly whirled around and saw Alexia elegantly sitting at the maids’ feet watching us.

[Onee-sama* is as energetic as always. I will be watching from here, so please have fun.]

*T/N: You probably already know this, but [Onee-sama] = [Elder Sister]. I know that I often translate it into English to localise the term, but I’ll keep it in here so that y’all know how elegant and refined Alexia is.

She had such a gaze.

“……”

My face stiffened as I stopped wrestling. It was embarrassing for me to get all excited on my own despite the fact that a kid younger than me wasn’t playing.

Kugalg followed my lead and started to groom himself.

While it was a little late to realise this, I started to get embarrassed at the fact that I was just wearing a necklace and was otherwise completely naked while Alexia was wearing clothes.

That being said, I’d be even more embarrassed if I had been wearing that silly sheep costume instead.

I wonder where my stylish shawl went.

Alexia trotted over and picked up the wooden ring that had fallen on the ground and tried to give it to me.

[Onee-sama, if you like this then I will give it to you. I have plenty of such things after all.]

-she seemed to be saying.

It’s fine, it’s fine. I’d feel bad taking that, and my pride as a three-year-old won’t let me make my one-and-a-half-year-old little sister-like figure share her toys.

If I asked the One-Eyed Knight and the knights at the Northern Fort, then they’d probably be able to cut down a tree and make one themselves.

As I declined Alexia’s offer, another dog appeared on the lawn, bringing along another two maids.

It was a Jack Russell-like dog, with a white body that had tawny markings on it. His name was Truder. He was a grandpa doggie that would be nineteen years old this year.

He might’ve been purposely groomed to look that way, but the fuzzy fur around his mouth actually looked like a beard.

Truder was a slightly stubborn grandpa that didn’t like to wear clothes, thus he didn’t wear anything other than a collar with a small jewel on it.

In the past he apparently used to go hunting with the King to help him chase prey, and even now his majestic air had not disappeared.

Although his legs trembled, and he walked as slow as a turtle, I was a little scared of Truder.

It was because he was incredibly harsh towards those who broke the rules of the dog world. In my head, Truder was designated as a dog that you mustn’t defy.

Alexia didn’t get nervous even when she saw Truder—since she usually behaved well, she hadn’t ever had him rage at her—but the faces of both Kugalg and I stiffened.

I had received disciplinary education when I previously unknowingly sat down on Truder’s favourite cushion, while Kugalg had been rebuked after having a cheeky attitude with him once.

Upon seeing Truder slowly come this way, we flusteredly started to run in the opposite direction.

“See you later, Alexia!”

I ran out of the courtyard with Kugalg and once again entered the castle.

After that we searched inside the castle for the Prince’s whereabouts. On the way, we came across staircases a number of times, but it wasn’t scary as long as I didn’t have to go down them, so we simply climbed up and up.

And then, after about 30 minutes of wandering aimlessly, the One-Eyed Knight came to find us.

“Mil, there you are.”

“Ah, One-Eyed Knight.”

“It’s about time you return to the room. The Commander’s calling for you.”

Commander-san is?

Kugalg and I followed after the One-Eyed Knight, heading back to the lavish room that we had been in before.

For every set of stairs that we had climbed up earlier, we now had to descend. But, with the One-Eyed Knight here to carry me down, it was an easy win.

“You know, earlier, I fell down the stairs.”

I did not forget to report to have him sympathise with me. Since I had to go through such a painful experience, I wanted just as much care in return.

“Did you get injured?”

The One-Eyed Knight said in a worried manner, and I replied weakly in return.

“I dunno. My leg hurts…….but also doesn’t hurt.”

While still being held by the One-Eyed Knight, I lifted up my left leg like I did when I would use it to scratch my head.

The One-Eyed Knight supported me with one hand and used the other to lightly squeeze that leg to check it.

However, no matter where he touched, I didn’t feel any pain.

“It doesn’t seem to hurt. There also aren’t any fractures either, so you should be okay.”

After confirming my reaction, the One-Eyed Knight gave that clear assertion.

I obediently put my lifted left leg back underneath my body.

Let’s not tell anyone else that I fell down the stairs.