The old man’s speech sped up.
“Hmph. Stol or Atania, men give up faster than women. And they always pick the method with the highest fatality rate. If I had to guess, nine out of ten male variants killed themselves the moment they realized what they were. That’s why you never find the bodies of ‘male variants.’ If there’s anyone who wants to cut open the belly of a male variant, it’s me!”
The old man slammed a hand on the table and jerked his chin toward the chair across from him.
“Sit. Since you’re here, have some tea.”
“I don’t drink stinking water. I’m from Stol.”
Black Weasel sat down anyway. The old man poured tea from a kettle and set the cup in front of him.
“You’ve got something to say to me, don’t you? In the past you always walked out even when I tried to keep you for tea.”
“You’re sharp as ever.”
“Of course I am. I’m from Atania. Anyway—what did you want?”
“Hm.”
Black Weasel clasped both hands together and opened his mouth.
“It’s about Ash Tree. Do you think it really exists?”
“What…? That’s sudden.”
“Yeah. Just a random thought. It’s probably a fictional creature that only shows up in folklore, right? Even you called it a hypothesis when you explained it.”
Black Weasel remembered the hypothesis in question as clearly as if he had just heard it again.
‘The reason Ash Tree is treated as a fictional existence. First, it doesn’t stand out. Second, trait examiners insist it doesn’t exist. My hypothesis: Ash Tree has the same baseline body temperature as an ordinary newborn. Since the trait can’t be identified from the start, it never stands out.’
‘Because the parents raise the child without knowing the child is Ash Tree, the child’s asexual tendencies that appear around puberty are usually dismissed as personality problems. And the cause of death described in the folklore—judging from the preceding symptoms—is likely a brain hemorrhage or stroke.’
‘In other words, if Ash Tree cannot mate with Spruce, the pressure of the rut overwhelms the body and causes sudden death in the early twenties. But to other people, Ash Tree simply looks like a warrior who died young.’
“Yes, I called it a hypothesis. That doesn’t mean we can conclude Ash Tree doesn’t exist. After all, Stol is biologically mysterious.”
The old man folded his hands and smiled.
“The fact that a single race has persisted across such a vast continent for thousands of years is already absurd. The lack of dialects is just as ridiculous. And the most astonishing thing is that the people of Stol see nothing strange about it. The deeper you dig, the more the scientific assumptions Atanian scholars believed in collapse one after another. But—”
The old man leaned his upper body across the table toward Black Weasel.
“You suddenly ask about Ash Tree. Why? Did you notice someone suspicious?”
“Well… the thought suddenly crossed my mind that our young master might actually be Ash Tree. In every legend, Ash Tree is a genius of combat. If our young master really has that trait, he’d die young from sudden death. It made me uneasy.”
Black Weasel improvised the explanation. Wolf’s face—staring blankly at Silver—rose in his mind. So did the rare sight of Silver behaving strangely gentle toward Wolf.
According to the folklore, Ash Tree can only resolve its rut with Spruce. Spruce collapses helplessly before Ash Tree’s pheromones. The two recognize each other instinctively even before their traits manifest and are drawn together.
The old man’s eyes widened.
“That’s your reason? No, no. You’re hiding something from me.”
The old crone had instincts like a ghost. Black Weasel waved both hands lightly.
“There is something I haven’t told you. My mistress gave birth to three sons, and every single one was identified as Spruce. When the second child was also identified as a variant after the first, rumors spread throughout the tribe. People said the old examiner woman bore a grudge against my master’s family and deliberately falsified the results. There had been plenty of similar cases before.”
“You wondered if your young master was originally Ash Tree, but the examiner thought he was an ordinary infant and deliberately labeled him Spruce…? That’s the suspicion you had?”
“That’s it. Exactly.”
“That old examiner was vicious indeed. But I think there’s a greater chance she told the truth about your young master’s trait. A person might endure something twice, but when it happens three times in a row, they usually explode. Wouldn’t she have tried to protect herself? In that case, the third child really was a variant.”
The old man’s guess matched the truth. What had the examiner woman shouted in her final moment?
‘Believe me! This time it’s real! I’m not lying! That child is a monster!’
“Anyway, that’s a strange coincidence.”
The old man picked up a book from his desk and flipped through the pages.
“As a matter of fact, just last night I was going through the folklore materials on Ash Tree and happened to notice something. And now today you come asking about Ash Tree?”
“…What?”
Black Weasel lifted his head. The old man snapped the book shut and met the assassin’s eyes.
“There’s one physical description that appears in every single legend about Ash Tree without exception. ‘Skin as flawless as pure snow.’”
“Flawless… skin? Skin?”
Black Weasel repeated the words, then stopped. His mind cleared in an instant.
Wolf’s body—the one that had startled Black Weasel and Silver at the hot spring. For a person from Stol, that body had been strangely… unusual.
That bastard! He really was Ash Tree!
“You understand what that means now, don’t you?”
The old man grinned.
“Your young master is absolutely not Ash Tree. That should ease your mind. Though now that I’ve heard the story, I’m curious… Did that examiner woman die peacefully?”
“No.”
“That was a stupid question on my part. Well then, anything else you want to ask?”
“No. I’m leaving.”
Black Weasel slammed the door and stepped out into the corridor. In the yard outside the window, children were running around and playing. A middle-aged woman walking toward him from the opposite direction with a large basket of bread smiled at Black Weasel. She was the nanny he had come to recognize from his frequent visits to this orphanage, as well as Erem’s first assistant.
Dian Erem, director of the orphanage, was an Atanian physician who had devoted thirty years to the study of human variants. Anyone who knew the field also knew that Erem was the developer of <Tulu>. Distributed quietly underground for the past thirteen years, Tulu was a revolutionary drug that controlled the rut of human variants. But the old physician had not been satisfied with that achievement. Now Erem dreamed of an even greater leap—one that medicine itself could not yet reach.
Black Weasel walked on, forcing down his excitement. Ash Tree.
‘According to one legend, a Spruce who drinks the blood of Ash Tree loses the rut afterward.’
Director Erem had once said that.
‘It doesn’t disappear completely. The body still reacts strongly to the individual who provided the blood. Even then, only if the two are close to each other. In the legend, when the partner died in war, the Spruce lived out the rest of life normally.’
‘In Atania there’s a folk remedy—quietly widespread—where a weak old person drinks the blood of a healthy youth. It’s a stupid superstition, but surprisingly many clinical testimonies claim it actually works. Ash Tree and Spruce are opposites, right? Like a frail old person and a healthy young one.’
‘By the same logic, your young master’s problem can be solved if you simply find an Ash Tree. It won’t require much blood. In the legend, the Spruce merely sucked a little blood from a wounded finger of the Ash Tree. At most, perhaps a teaspoon.’
‘Of course it’s only folklore, so the exact dosage might be different. In an extreme case, it might take an entire bathtub.’
A deep smile spread across Black Weasel’s lips.
Ha!
That insolent attendant—the idiot who wagged his tail whenever he saw Silver—was actually the one and only antidote.
Wolf! Good thing I didn’t kill you!
* * *
Silver returned from hunting only after the sun had set. That evening the boys tore into the roasted fox and devoured every last scrap of meat. When Wolf asked why he had come back so late, Silver explained that the area around the cliffs had nothing but rock, and reaching a forest where animals roamed took quite a while. As a result, they ended up with plenty of time to practice climbing the cave walls.
The next day, while Silver had gone out hunting, Wolf spoke to the Red Eagle Prince.
“Your Highness. I still don’t know exactly what kind of guy Silver is, but boys always isolate the one who whines all the time. So let’s not make faces like sick old men trembling because we might die tomorrow. Let’s just fool around like usual and pull childish pranks.”
“You mean we should lure Silver into approaching us? All right. I’ll try.”