Chapter 12: Miss Signo.

It seemed that Yukomis was right, and I was quite tired.

I didn’t wake up until around the end of lunch,
ate a late lunch for a short time, and then just dozed off in bed in a daze until evening.

I had expected that crossing the mountains yesterday would be the hardest part of the day,
but what happened right after that was being kidnapped, kicked in the stomach, lectured by two crazy magicians, and above all…

Thud. The hand holding the soup bowl lost its strength.

The two hands I looked down at were so small and dainty that I couldn’t believe they were mine.

“Being neutered again…”

I muttered gloomy and terrible words, but my voice was like the chirping of a mountain bird.

As Manya had confidently declared, I had returned to being a woman.

In other words, my current body was that of Thermis in her girlhood from my previous life.

I had only lived as a man for exactly a year.

It didn’t take long for me to be thrown back into this cursed body.

Thinking about it that way, the mood I had been trying so hard to hold onto sank.

Becoming a boy and becoming a woman were familiar things to me, but becoming a twelve-year-old girl combined was a completely different feeling.

When I possessed Thermis, it was exactly when she was 18 years old… I was much younger now.

Besides, Thermis before I possessed her was already somewhat trained, even if she was half a wreck.

At least… at least she wasn’t this small, helpless, and slow…

“Squishy… squishy…”

…is what I was going to say.

When I squeezed and released the hand that wasn’t holding the spoon for a moment, the skin stuck and fell off like glutinous rice cake.

Was this really twelve years old? No, didn’t she say that the physical age was the same as ‘Signo Irendel’?

I heard that girls around this age are more mature than boys?

But this… this is too…

“What is this? It’s squishy…”

Didn’t I look younger to anyone who saw me?

I couldn’t be twelve years old, right?

“Damn… it’s too squishy…”

I was just repeating weak words, but inside I wanted to cry.

I had to lift the soup bowl up to my chest to place it on the table.

I had to jump to sit on the chair, and my legs dangling off the ground swung like a powerless swing.

Looking at my own slender legs, I had a thought that had no nutritional value at all.

‘If someone kicks this, it’ll break right away.’

It wasn’t like I was someone who usually had such thoughts while looking at children passing by. It was just… because I thought this was my new body, it was that unreal.

I had never had such a thought even when I first saw Yukomis.

‘No, come to think of it, that’s right. When I first saw Yukomis, she was about this age too.’

Yukomis at twelve years old was a very different feeling from me now.

I remembered how venomous that child was already at that age, the first words I heard from her were, ‘Isn’t this the first time we’re meeting?’

That was… when I thought about it, it wasn’t wrong…

At that time, it felt like I had been hit.

‘Everyone is so touched when I treat them kindly, so I was honestly a little careless.’

So I thought I could reconcile with my younger sister with that kind of feeling. But it wasn’t like that.

Yukomis was a formidable opponent.

She had shoved venom from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, and her face had ‘I’m angry and I hate you’ written all over it.

It seemed that the rift between the sisters was much deeper than I had heard.

But it was also a bit funny to be angry about that when you’re an adult.

Even if she’s a genius, she’s still a child. She’s in the middle of puberty…

I heard that her mother took her to the capital and gave her something similar to early education, which must have been quite difficult for a child of that age. And considering her mother’s personality, I didn’t think she would have taken proper care of Yukomis’s mental state.

Sluuuurp. Because the table was too high, the bowl was close to my head,
so I could easily get the soup into my mouth just by hanging my arm on the table and flicking the end of my wrist.

Anyone who saw me would scold me for being rude, but there was no one here to give me advice.

However, I had to pay special attention to the temperature.

The skin inside a child’s mouth is extremely delicate, so it would be a big problem if I didn’t cool the food much more than I thought.

Even the porridge that came out for lunch… I thought it had cooled down properly, but the moment I put it in my mouth, my entire tongue and the roof of my mouth were burned.

“Eueueuk… this is spicy. I think there’s a lot of pepper in it.”

Even the groan that came out of me was extremely childlike.

No, more than that. It’s not like I’m playing around. It’s just pepper, but she says it’s spicy.

I chuckled.

The dining room of the ‘Three Lamps Inn’ was deserted.

…To correct that, it wasn’t deserted, there was no one.

Except for me, who was using this wide space alone, there was only the chef, who was glancing at me with an awkward smile, and one female waitress.

When our eyes met for a moment, the chef hurriedly bowed his head.

He must be thinking that I’m a high-ranking person too, because I’m with Yukomis.

Since there were no other guests, there was no reason for the employee to uncomfortably stay here.

Wiggle wiggle. When I waved my hands back and forth, they quickly noticed what I meant and left the dining room.

I heard that the magician’s tower that Yukomis went to was a mess,
and since Manya and Katie had been kicked out, the only ‘place worth staying’ for Yukomis was this inn.

‘Yukomis said that there are too many eyes watching, so she can’t stay in an inn or something?’
When Karat heard this question, he gave a very clear answer.

‘I rented the entire inn.’

‘Hikk!’

‘Ah, no, what? What did you say?’
It was a clear, but crazy answer.

The entire inn? What did you do?

‘What about the people who were staying there?’

‘I gave them a settlement… that is, extra money, and chased them all out.’

‘In the middle of the night??? Are you really crazy???”

‘Please don’t misunderstand. Lady Yukomis is not usually someone who spends money like this.’

‘Yeah, right!’
If she had, I would have known by now.
I had never heard or seen her buying luxury goods or anything like that.

‘It’s just… this situation is a bit, well. It’s a very unexpected situation, so.’
Karat expressed ‘two mayors ran away, and I, the disciple who was brought from the Irendel family, was kidnapped, and my gender changed’ very ambiguously.

‘But the way you’re talking… What’s with that? You weren’t originally like this…’

‘It’s because my tongue got burned while eating lunch!’

‘Ah, ah…’

Karat widened his mouth as if he had gained some enlightenment.

‘Ahahaha. Ah. That’s what it was. And I was…’

‘No, what are you thinking now? Are you thinking that I’m acting cute because I’m a girl now?’

‘To be honest, yes. So I thought you were doing pretty well…’

‘Hey!!! Lie even if it’s a lie!!!’

…What a stupid knight.

It was a day when I missed Thermis’s authority, which could have immediately cut off that guy’s job.

…Come to think of it, I’m still Thermis now.

Anyway, well, that was the reason why there was no one in the dining room, and also why all the furniture and environment were made without considering children at all.

‘And it’s also the reason why this soup is so spicy and has so much volume…’

They probably just gave me the regular amount without thinking. But since I had a habitual aversion to leaving food behind, I forced myself to scrape it all up to the bottom.

And I realized that I didn’t have anything to do now.

As I was sitting at the table and having profound thoughts about what I should do in the future,

Karat, who had disappeared, opened the dining room door and reappeared.

“Signo-sama.”
He called me loudly…
What?

“What did you just call me?”

“Signo-sama.”

“…Are you kidding me?”

“Should I have called you Irendel-sama?”
Ah.

“Or are you provoking me? You’re very skilled at it.”
Karat awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

“Huh? No. I’m just, uh…”

An awkward silence hung in the air.

“I thought about it carefully, but anyway, right now you’ve become the Irendel family’s young lady…?, so, in my own way…”

“I’m serious, if you call me ‘-sama’ one more time, I’m going to run away.”

“…Eueum.”

“And you’ll know how hard it’ll be to find me if I really run away.”

“…Alright. But with that body, you’ll only be able to go as far as the front door.”

“That’s also provocation.”

Anyway, Karat said that Yukomis was calling me.

She said she needed to check my overall body condition, so she told me to come to the private room.

Because of the fatigue accumulated in my body and the large gap between the stairs, I was almost crawling up to the upper floor, so Karat suggested, ‘Should I carry you on my back?’,

but that would only increase the damage to my already broken pride.

When I opened Yukomis’s door, I saw a room that had become a mess even though it had only been half a day since we had stayed there.

“…I’m here.”

“Come in.”
Yukomis replied without looking at me.
Her handwriting, which she was frantically scribbling on paper at a crazy speed, was unreadable.

“Even if it’s the best guest room, if you use it so messily, the employees won’t like it.”

“Who says that? They’ll consider it an honor to serve me.”
Of course, her expression was that she didn’t think so even in her dreams.
After saying that, she stopped writing for a moment and turned the page of the book.
Flutter flutter. Rustle.
It was a terrifying speed, but I had no doubt that she had completely understood and turned every page.

“Did you really resht properly?”

“What?”

“Did. You. Really. Resh. Properly?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t look like it at all. Yukomis looked more haggard and tired than when I saw her briefly in the morning.
A dark circle had grown large under her already fierce eyes, almost like a corpse, and her hair was messed up.
This was a more serious state than I had thought.

“I’ve organized your condition.”

Yukomis went straight to the point.

“Yes.”

“I’ll make this clear first.”

“…Yes.”

“You’ve become a woman.”

“Wow, amazing.”

“It’s not just that your appearance has changed roughly, but you’ve become a body that meets all the academic definitions of ‘woman,’ you know.”

“Excuse me, I’m sorry, but could you tell me a shtory I don’t know yet…”

“And you’re about nine years old right now.”

“……Ah. Yes… what?”

What?

“Hey????? What did you shay???”

“Keep your voice down. It’s noisy.”

Yukomis, who was holding her temples as if her head was ringing, made a terrible face.

“You shaod I was twelve years old??? You shayd Manya only changed my shex???”

“She did.”

Yukomis sighed deeply, closing her eyes.

“To explain quickly, your body is quite unstable.”

“Unshtable?”

“In other words, Manya used mana to almost recreate your entire body. I’ve never seen such a daring magic. The flow of mana that she infused into your body is flowing unstably, and if you interfere with it even a little, your body will change drastically.”

“Eueum…”

“If you’ve read Kohl’s Advanced Mana Dynamics, you’ll understand, but an object infused with mana can change its shape like a semi-fluid using the Etri-Kies formula. But originally, this only applies to inorganic substances with limited materials.”

Of course, she didn’t seem to think that I would have read it at all.

“Manya used this formula and added a magic she developed independently to modify the entire human body, which is organic matter. You don’t know the story of the paper, but she thought that if you could infuse mana into a living thing to heal wounds, you could also ‘transform’ it, not just recover it. This is related to my major too. So…”

“I understhand what you’re shaying. Manya’s magic made me like pottery before firing, ish that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Squishy, very squishy.”

“Squishy…”

Yukomis brought her index finger to her lips.

“Squishy, huh… That’s right. That expression is perfect. You’re in a state where your body is very susceptible to the influence of external mana. Even though you’ve become this body, you understand quickly.”

“But what does that have to do with me being nine years old?”

“I’ll be honest. Right after I found you, I flowed my mana slightly into your body to quickly diagnose your condition. I also needed to treat the scratches you got in the basement. It was just a little bit… but the effect was dramatic. You, who looked about twelve years old, immediately began to regress.”

“…No,”

“You were twelve years old in the morning, ten years old around lunchtime, and now, at night, you’re about nine years old. It stopped at nine years old as I expected. Didn’t you notice?”

“Not at all.”

“It wasn’t intentional, but this is how it turned out. At least what I learned from this is that your body has become very sensitive and dangerous to mana. More than that…”
Yukomis turned her head towards me for the first time.

“Why have you been talking like that since a while ago? Have you awakened to the heart of a girl or something?”

“It’s jusht that my mouth got burned!!! Why are you talking the shame way as Karat!!!”

She didn’t even pretend to listen to my protest and quickly turned her face back to the desk.

For some reason, she seemed to be trying her best to avoid my gaze from the moment I first entered the room.
And every time she said something, her tired face twitched slightly, as if she was enduring and listening to my words.
Well, I guess she could be like that.

Since a boy’s spirit is in a girl’s face, it must be awkward and unpleasant to deal with in many ways.

Besides, that girl’s face is Thermis’s, and that ‘Thermis’ wasn’t on very good terms with Yukomis…

‘That’s right. I’m in a patient-like state right now, so she’s forcibly enduring it for me. Good job, Yukomis. You’ve become a little bit of an adult.’
But something was a little strange.

“…No, then it’s all your fault that I became an adukt in the firsht place!!! The reashon why my roof of my mouth got burned by that lukewarm porridge is because I wasn’t twelve anymore and was about nine…!”

“Be quiet. My head hurts. Why is it my fault that you burned your mouth?”

“Keueuk…!”

Looking at Yukomis’s haggard and tired face, I couldn’t bring myself to get any angrier.

Right. Anyway, she’s working so hard for me right now. She did her best. It wasn’t intentional.

I’m in a position where I can’t get angry.

“Is there a way to turn me back to normal?”

“No.”

“No…?”

“To be precise, there is no way ‘until I catch the caster, Manya, and ask her’. The macroscopic design of this magic will also be with her, and only she knows the detailed design specifications that can only be applied to your body. As someone who is not the caster, I can’t know how much of what mana to adjust.”

“Aren’t you a genius, Yukomis-nim? You can’t defeat mere Manya’s magic…”

“A way? Actually, there is a way. But to find it out, I have no choice but to use your body as a test subject and demonstrate how it will change if I control the mana one by one. You know what that means, right?”
…It was a creepy sound.

“You got three years younger just because I flowed a little mana into your body to heal your wounds. You were very lucky. But if I experiment like that haphazardly, there’s no guarantee that you won’t die.”

“…In other words, to find out how I can get back to normal… I have to catch Manya and bring her here.”

“That’s right.”

Yukomis nodded.

“Still, don’t worry too much about getting younger. Thanks to flowing mana once, I’ve figured out the mechanism of action for getting three years younger. You’ll be back to your twelve-year-old self in a few days.”

“Oh?”

She was holding a piece of paper that she had been writing on towards my face without turning her head.

“Look. This is how it will be.”

It was like a prescription written by a very successful doctor.

Even if she said ‘look’ so confidently, I couldn’t understand such quickly scrawled handwriting at all.

Still… the fact that there was a way to get back to my original body was a very encouraging fact.

It wasn’t like I had become a permanent nine-year-old,

and if I just caught Manya, if I just caught her somehow, I could make her undo this f*cking magic or whatever it was.

Maybe it was because the past few days had been a series of bad things happening one after another, but even this much was very hopeful.

“Then… I’ve heard all the circumstances, so I’ll go back now. It looks like you need to resht quickli, Yukomis-nim…”

After hearing the somewhat reassuring story, a yawn came out regardless of my will.

In fact, I had already been holding back a lot of sleepiness since before I entered this room.

Maybe it’s because I have a child’s body, but I seem to get sleepy quickly even if the time is a little late.

“There’s still one thing left.”

“What is it?”

At my question, she suddenly made a face that looked particularly unpleasant and hesitant.
Her haggard and gaunt face was so strongly distorted that it seemed like she was suddenly imagining killing someone.

“Th…th…that’s…”

However, in contrast to her distorted expression, her voice was that of someone who was very regretful and worried.
To be honest, it didn’t sound like Yukomis’s voice at all.

“Pro…pro… promotion…”

“?”
She stammered over one word for a long time.
This was also unlike Yukomis, who would blurt out anything.
After doing that for a while, she finally took a deep breath and said, closing her eyes as if she had resolved herself to something.

“Promotion… is left.”