Chapter 64: Arc 4 Ch. 19: The Heroine’s Secret, Part III

Of all the reasons I’d ever wanted to be a fox girl, I never would have imagined one of them would be this.

The sweet, fruity scent of Alice’s perfume potion lingered in the air like a sensory trail I could follow. When I ran too far off course, the smell grew fainter, then stronger again when I got back on track.

Even with my sharper vision, the light illuminating the forested mountain ahead of me grew dimmer by the minute. The approaching sunset painted everything in a foreboding red. This terrain was all fairly new to me, but I realized Alice had been traveling around here with Freya for a few days now. She was probably in pretty good shape after carrying around her filled rucksack, too…

I had a good idea where the young witch had run off to even before I found her.

After what felt like an hour of chasing her scent, I recognized the edge of that clearing the two of us had gone to last night. It was the same grassy patch surrounded by a ring of trees where I’d taught her the Recall spell—and where I’d… maybe taught her some lewder things…

After Titania’s warning, I had half-expected to find Alice engaged in heated combat with one of those wolf-lizard monsters. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find her kneeling on the ground in good condition—at least physically.

With her tear-stained eyes, I was about to find out how she was faring emotionally…

Alice didn’t react when I walked up to her. After finally catching my breath, I sat down next to her.

What should I say? If I told her to come back to our camp with me for safety, would she just run away again?

“You could have just teleported back here,” I said. “You didn’t already forget the spell I taught you, right?”

Her frown didn’t budge, and she wouldn’t look me in the eyes either.

“I wasn’t sure what to say,” I sighed. “I was just trying to be funny, or something…”

Alice pulled a bulging bag out of her rucksack and offered it to me.

“You want this, don’t you?” she said with a harsh voice. “Here. It’s full of the seeds you need. Just take it.”

Yeah, she’s still super pissed…

I gently put a hand over hers. “I really did trust that with you. Whenever you’re ready, I just want to hear what’s going on.”

Alice was either too upset to Recall back here, or she had wanted me to follow her. Either way, it took a minute before she finally spoke up again.

“I don’t even know where to begin…”

Just like Titania had thought, Alice first arrived in Gadea about a month ago, just two weeks before I did. In her first few days, Alice tried joining a party with Outworlder adventurers at different newbie guilds in the capital. The problem was that no one else was from Gyr—the world Alice came from that also had magic and alchemy, as she quickly explained. Practically everyone she met in each guild was either from this world or Earth. All the other Outworlders already had the expectation everyone else was from Earth, and the ones who believed her couldn’t relate to her… like she really was an incomprehensible outsider.

The last insult came when an adventurer from Earth accused Alice of being a native of this world who was just role-playing as an Outworlder for fun. By the time Alice had signed up at The Roach and Rat newbie guild as a solo adventurer and met Titania, she’d already assumed that identity for herself.

“They thought I was crazy!” Alice cried, a fresh set of tears welling up in her eyes. “Beryl, tell me? What was I supposed to do? It just… made more sense to everyone if I was a girl from this world who recently came to the city. Right?”

I put an arm around her and held her close. Alice was never really trying to deceive anyone. All this time, she just wanted to fit in!

I wanted to put all the blame on Titania for making me doubt Alice so much, but it was more than that. In hindsight now, all my suspicions about her felt silly. Alice couldn’t have possibly made it back to the capital on her own, stealing those expensive herb seeds to sell for herself. The first day I met her, Alice told me she wanted to study at the Magic Academy… with me! There was no way a girl like her would want to do that all on her own!

“Do you think I’m crazy too?” she asked me.

I hugged her a little closer. “You’re not crazy, Alice. But…”

She bit her lip. “‘But?’”

I took a deep breath. “But you’re definitely a weirdo!”

“Wh-What?! Beryl!”

With both hands on her shoulders, I stared into her indigo eyes. “I’ve never met anyone crazier about herbs, plants and potions than you. Hell, the first days we met, you nearly drove me crazy more times than I can count! And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because… I’m a weirdo too.”

“Huh? Beryl, what are you talking about?”

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I had to brace myself for this. “You might hate me for saying this now, but there’s something I haven’t told you either. Actually, the truth is… I came to this world in a new body. In my previous life, I was a guy.”

Alice wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “I know.”

“…Wait, really? Really?! I mean, I know we had some awkward moments, but was it that obvious?”

She fidgeted. “It’s because of my Divine Gift I chose before I came here. It’s called Psychic Empathy.”

Oh, of course she would have her own Gift like that…

“Hang on, did you say ‘psychic?’ Are you serious? Does that mean you’ve been reading my mind this whole time?!”

“It’s not like that!” she cried. “It only shows me what kind of emotions people are feeling, and stuff like that. Don’t you see? That’s why I knew I could trust you! That’s why… well, it doesn’t matter because I can’t anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Alice shivered. “I can’t tell what you’re feeling anymore. Ever since yesterday. I never thought it would scare me this much…”

“Yesterday? What happened then?”

Let me think… We went to this clearing together, but before that I learned fire magic from Viela, and before that—oh!

“That morning, I ‘leveled-up’ my own Divine Gift with soul magic,” I said. “It’s because I have better anti-magic protection over my whole body, isn’t it?”

Alice nodded, her cheeks red with embarrassment.

“I’m still not sure how I feel about this ‘Empathy’ thing,” I said with a shrug. “You never really tried to use that against us though, just the opposite, right? I was wondering how you always seemed to know what people were feeling and how to help them. Well, if you really want to know what I’m feeling now, you can always just ask! I might not tell you, but you can still ask! …That’s not what you really wanted to hear, is it? Hey, I’m trying right now!”

For the first time in a while, I finally caught Alice smiling—for just a moment.

“Is that really all your Gift can do?” I had to ask. “I mean, I can see how that could be useful in some situations…”

“I can always tell when people are lying or have ulterior motives,” Alice said. “Maybe that sounds ironic right now… Anyways, there’s another thing. When someone’s speaking a language I don’t understand but they’re bilingual, I can tell what they’re saying! I can get the general idea, at least…”

She could understand foreign languages without knowing the words? Crap, that was one of the reasons Titania got the misunderstanding that Alice was from Earth! We had a lot of clearing up to do later…

“Alice, are you still worried about something?”

She finally put her own arms around me.

“I’ve been worried about this for a long time,” she said. “Beryl, I… I want to stay with you. But ever since I came here, I’ve had people tell me that I’m different. Even earlier today Freya said the same thing. It scares me, because I am different.”

That’s what was bothering her all along…

After a minute, I knew what to say. “I never thought about this before, but it turns out we’re all from another world. You, me, Titania, Viela and Freya… Everyone in our party is a little different. Or a lot different. So who cares? I never thought someone would want to stay in this crazy world until I heard Titania say that. And even Freya chose this world, for her and her cubs. That’s made me think… at least for a little while, maybe we can make this world our home, too.”

I gently brushed Alice’s hair aside and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Beryl…!”

All at once, her emotions came bursting out in a hot flood of tears. Alice wrapped her arms around me, sobbing into my chest.

I held her a little tighter, gently stroking her hair and letting Alice bury her head into my breasts. I could feel my heart beating faster and my fox tail wagging behind me, swishing back and forth on the grass. That was one emotion I couldn’t hide from her as a fox girl, and that was alright with me. It had never felt so good to be able to comfort her this way.

I wished we could have stayed like this forever.

I wished…

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