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Chapter 45
“……”
They were brothers, but how could their personalities be so different? Then again, if I looked closely, there was a touch of that sly playfulness my uncle had.
I pouted my lips.
“Because you’re my dad! I’m calling you Dad, not Mister.”
Dad froze.
“You…”
“Oh? It moved!”
Just then, the little fox opened its eyes.
Wow, oh my gosh.
They were the most beautiful golden eyes.
“Yip…?”
The baby fox looked utterly confused. It glanced around, trying to stand up.
“This one looks like it’s about to collapse.”
“Dad! Why’d you push it down?”
“I just touched it.”
At Dad’s light touch, the fox plopped back over.
“Oh, no. Even if I healed you, you don’t have any strength left.”
Hadn’t it been unconscious for days already?
And when I first diagnosed it, wasn’t it poisoned by anesthetics too?
It was a bit strange. Did my diagnostic ability actually work on animals too?
I’d never tried it, so I wasn’t sure.
But I’d never heard of anyone in a healer’s family being able to diagnose or treat animals.
Unless… it’s not just an animal? But it looks too much like a baby fox for that.
Though, it did have three tails.
The fox whimpered, trying desperately to get up. I reached out my hand.
When I carefully placed my hand on its head, the fox flinched.
So I only stroked it lightly with my fingertips.
“I won’t hurt you. Were you scared?”
Minutes passed. I felt its trembling gradually ease.
The baby fox hesitated, then sniffed my hand. A moment later, it licked me.
Oh my god! So cute…!
I had Dad bring the food I’d prepared—peas and corn. Just in case, I’d also brought some milk.
“You must be hungry, right? Eat.”
“…Looks like I’m your servant now.”
Dad sounded displeased, but thankfully the fox ate heartily. Its belly became adorably round and chubby.
So cute…
Since it’ll be with us for a while, should I give it a name?
The fox didn’t seem afraid of me anymore. After sniffing me a few more times, it yipped happily and rubbed its body all over me.
Though it still seemed wary of Dad.
Well, to be fair, he was a huge man with a completely stoic face—of course the fox would be intimidated.
“Your name will be… Raon.”
Since it was a fox from the Eastern Continent, it should have an Eastern-style name.
“It means ‘joy.’ Since your homeland is probably the East, I’ll give you this name.”
I gently stroked the fox. It especially liked having its ears touched.
“Yip! Yip!”
“…It yips like a puppy. Or maybe not quite the same?”
I hugged the fluffy fox against my chest and smiled.
“I’ll definitely send you home someday.”
After eating a bit more and running around the room, the baby fox soon collapsed asleep, clearly exhausted.
“Its stamina is so weak…”
“Just like you.”
“Eek.”
Unfair! Of course a three-year-old has weak stamina. Well… weaker than most kids my age, sure, but still!
“Dad, you better take good care of Raon while I’m gone.”
Dad smiled faintly, almost imperceptibly.
A little while later,
I moved into another room.
Dad’s house had five rooms in total.
One was his. Another was the one I slept in. A third was locked.
I asked Dad why it was locked, but he said he couldn’t remember.
The fourth was now the fox’s room.
That left one more…
As I opened the door, the scent of herbs filled the air. It was used as a drying room.
The medicinal ingredients Dad and I had bought were stored here.
Strangely, the room was clearly designed for that purpose.
Special shelves made just for herbs. A shaded spot with no direct sunlight. Excellent ventilation.
A room built specifically for healers and apothecaries.
Dad would never have used it himself. Naturally, Mother came to mind.
Her name was Arin, right?
That’s what Dad had called her.
What was her family name? I only knew her appearance, nothing else. I’d have to look into that later.
Avoiding the drying herbs, I walked forward.
“There it is.”
Before me sat something wrapped in cloth. I tugged the covering away.
A barred cage appeared, and from inside, a creature stirred awake.
“Hello. We meet again today.”
Unlike the baby fox I’d just met for the first time this life, this one was familiar.
It was the masterless divine beast that Black Captain had once luckily obtained.
A snow-white baby snake.
The only thing different from an ordinary snake was the horn sprouting from its head.
Hissss. It eyed me warily, and I grinned.
You looked at me just like that, even when you were dying.
Still, before it fully closed its eyes, we had managed to become friends. It had only been three days, but still…
This creature was called a Dokgaksa.
A venom-horned serpent born of nature—a type of divine beast.
Later records I’d found said it was extremely rare.
If its master was a healer or apothecary, they would gain incredible talent not just in creating remedies but also in brewing poisons.
The serpent itself could manipulate plants, making it exceptional at storing and managing herbs.
Where on earth did such a treasure come from?
I ought to thank Black Captain for this one.
Of course, I still had to be recognized as its master.
I held out what I’d brought.
“Hungry?”
I’d heard divine beasts didn’t often feel hunger, but just in case, I’d brought some fresh fruit.
They supposedly only ate fruit.
Though I’d stared at it for days, this was my first time actually reaching out my hand.
“Oh, but if I just hold it out, it won’t come, huh….”
Should I open the cage?
I was still thinking when—
Slither.
To my surprise, the baby snake drew closer. And then, an all-too-familiar voice cut in.
“What are you doing there?”
I couldn’t even pull my hand back. I shouted instead:
“Ahhh! Don’t step on the herbs!”
“I’m not.”
Dad’s feet were floating lightly above the ground.
Oh. That worked too?
Dad landed softly and gave me a look.
“First a fox, now a snake? So you were planning to turn the house into a menagerie.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
I didn’t know if the fox was a divine beast, but having too many would only drain my energy. One Dokgaksa was more than enough for me.
“I’m taming it. You remember, right?”
“I remember. You dragged me into some alley insisting we buy it. I thought you were planning to boil it for soup…”
“Ahhh! Don’t say that! It can hear you!”
It could understand us! What a cruel father…!
We had bought the Dokgaksa from a shabby back alley, just like Black Captain had described.
‘Eh, just take it for that price. It’s poisonous, can’t be eaten, and since it’s a mutant, nobody’ll buy it anyway.’
The animal seller clearly hadn’t known its true value.
Well, only prestigious families even knew about creatures like this.
“Sorry about that, Snake.”
“…Apologize properly!”
As I demanded, Dad obediently apologized to the baby snake. He seemed more relaxed than he had been with the fox.
“Taming a masterless divine beast won’t be easy.”
“I know it’s really hard, but I still have to try… Huh?”
Yeah, it was notoriously difficult.
Records said the Dokgaksa was one of the hardest divine beasts to tame. Some people had taken ten years.
Honestly, if Black Captain hadn’t tossed the dying snake aside in frustration and if I hadn’t picked it up…
I never would have gotten involved with it. And it never would have opened its heart to me in those three brief days we spent together before it died.
But now…
—Peep?
The snake tilted its head curiously at my finger. Then, astonishingly, it slithered right up onto my palm.
So cute… so very cute…!
Its scales were cool against my skin.
“Dad, do divine beasts all make sounds like this?”
I asked, still in disbelief.
“Usually.”
“…Really?”
In the original story, the heroine’s divine beast chirped like a bird.
“If it’s in the perfect form of an animal, it makes that animal’s cry. But there’s no such thing as a horned snake in this world.”
“Right…”
The baby snake climbed higher, winding up around my wrist like a bracelet.
“Amazing. It chose to climb onto your hand right away?”
I didn’t even have time to marvel. I was frozen stiff, only blinking my eyes.
What… is this?
Then, faintly, I heard a tiny voice in my ear.
—Bond.
It wasn’t my imagination.
But the feeling was strange.
Almost like a newborn baby, instead of crying “waaah,” had looked up and said:
“Hello, Mother?”
