The Harvest Mouse Exits the Fairytale Together with Cinderella - Chapter 7
Sera suddenly made an unbelievable remark, causing Elodie to forget her sadness.
Werebeasts could transform into animals and exhibit animal traits.
However, they ultimately belonged to the human race.
‘Am I a werebeast?’
…Am I human?
Through tear-blurred vision, Sera was stroking Elodie’s hair.
…Hair?
Elodie urgently grasped her own hair with hands resembling autumn leaves.
“Ouch!”
“Oh my, you’re hurt. You need to be careful.”
It hurts! Look at this tangled mess of hair!
If it were fur, it shouldn’t grow beyond a certain length!
Elodie touched her cheek.
Instead of short, dense fur, she felt the soft, velvety skin characteristic of a human baby.
Absentmindedly looking down, she saw short, chubby fingers and round, small nails.
What’s going on here?
“Bwut I-I’m notta wewebeas.”
Ack, her tongue isn’t moving well.
Elodie, who could speak for the first time since birth, made a groaning sound due to the constantly crumpling pronunciation.
It seemed awkward because of the unfamiliar structure of the human oral cavity and language, like a foreigner pronouncing a foreign language for the first time.
“Well, why do you think that?”
“I nebuh become a hooman befowe…!’
Since her very birth, she had not transformed into a human, not even once.
How could she be a werebeast?
Werebeasts possessed animal traits and the ability to transform into animals, but they were still humans.
It wasn’t that they couldn’t return to being humans while maintaining the form of an animal.
This was strange.
Of course, there were suspicious circumstances.
A harvest mouse’s maximum lifespan is two years, yet Elodie lived for over fifteen years, while also possessing intelligence indistinguishable from a human.
Still, the essence of a werebeast was human.
Since she had never been in human form even once, she couldn’t help but think she was just an unusually long-lived and exceptionally intelligent special mouse!
“But Elodie, while werebeasts can transform into animals, animals cannot transform into humans.”
“Bwut thwis is… ”
“You’re a werebeast. If you thought you were a mouse until now, isn’t there some other reason?”
Sera drove the point home.
“Bwut, thwis is faiwy godmothew’s magic, ish’n it… ”
“The fairy grandmother’s magic?”
Yeah, isn’t this like the fairy grandmother’s magic?
Like Cinderella’s glass slipper.
Something that disappears when the clock strikes twelve.
Something that coolly chewed on the earl’s nose.
Something that rescued Sera instead of putting her in danger.
And also, becoming a werebeast.
Because it’s too perfect.
Such dreamlike things can’t be real.
“It’s… It’s fake.”
An incredibly sweet fantasy.
Elodie, who mumbled like that, began to sob quietly.
“Ish, ish all gowing to dishappeaw soon…”
As if unable to endure the sorrow.
‘To disappear like a fake.’
Upon hearing those words, Sera’s face crumpled with a forlorn expression.
Only then did she understand the meaning of saying she had been a mouse all her life.
Born as a human, possessing human intelligence, yet living as a mouse…
How much had this tiny child, small enough to fit into her palm, endured in this cruel world?
She couldn’t even begin to imagine.
No, even imagining it was terrifying.
Just surviving in one’s right mind was a miracle in itself.
Sera held Elodie tightly without saying a word.
She shared her warm body temperature.
Until all of this felt real.
***
Elodie finally admitted it.
That she was a werebeast.
And that she ‘truly’ returned to 15 years in the past.
‘I lived my whole life not knowing and almost died as a mouse.’
How was that even possible?
‘Could it be related to the fact that I have no memories from when I was younger?’
Elodie’s first memory was of the Bluewood Mansion.
She existed as a mouse from the moment she became conscious, grew up among mice, and learned and mastered survival skills from mice.
So, in fact, she didn’t know her exact age.
Assuming she lived at least as long as the 15 years she remembered, she could only speculate.
If there was a reason she couldn’t transform into a human until now, it might be due to the ‘unremembered reasons’ from before.
