Her silver hair swaying, Satella slipped off Subaru’s back and jogged across the street to approach the little girl.
Realizing someone was suddenly standing in front of her, the girl’s head snapped up.
Her eyes brimmed with the color of hope, likely thinking the person she was looking for had finally found her.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m not the person you’re looking for,” Satella said gently, crouching down to her eye level.
Realizing this wasn’t the person she wanted, the girl’s expression pulled a total one-eighty.
The relief that had just surfaced in her eyes instantly morphed into timid fear.
Being separated from her parents was panic-inducing enough; now, being approached by a total stranger only terrified the little girl further.
“What’s wrong?
Where are your mommy and daddy?
Are they not with you?”
Noticing her fear, Satella made her voice even softer than before, but her concern failed to reach the frightened child.
Instead, at Satella’s words, large tears began to well up in the girl’s eyes before overflowing like a broken dam.
“Um, please don’t cry, okay?
Big sister isn’t going to hurt you.”
Despite her attempts to coax the girl out of her shell, the comfort seemed to have the opposite effect, leaving Satella herself completely flustered and at a loss for what to do.
“Right now, in my hand, I hold three perfectly ordinary 50-yen coins.”
—A hand thrust itself out in front of them both.
“Huh?”
Satella looked up to see the boy in the black-and-orange tracksuit standing right beside her.
“Alright, now I’m going to crush them with my bare hands…”
Subaru sandwiched the coins between his palms and began rubbing them vigorously together, making exaggerated “Hnggg!
Haaa!” straining noises.
The little girl and Satella stared unblinkingly at Subaru’s performance.
“And then… huh?
That’s weird!”
Subaru opened his hands.
The three coins previously clamped between his palms had completely vanished.
“Whoa…”
The girl stared at Subaru with wide eyes.
The tears clinging to the corners of her eyes had quietly disappeared, her anxiety over losing her parents temporarily overridden by sheer curiosity.
Subaru gave the girl his most gentle smile and lightly patted her head.
“Look… the missing coins ended up right here.”
His fingers brushed through the girl’s hair, pulling out a small metallic flower twisted entirely out of the coins.
“Wow!”
The girl broke into a smile through her tears, and even Satella’s eyes went wide at the magic trick.
“It’s a gift for you.
This is a solid 150 yen’s worth of craftsmanship, so treasure it, okay?” Subaru placed the little coin-flower into the child’s hands.
Gripping the coin-flower carefully, the little girl nodded emphatically.
“Thank you!”
“I see, so you got separated from your mom?”
Subaru and Satella walked down the street, holding the girl’s hands on either side.
“Don’t worry, it’s gonna be fine, everything’s fine,” Subaru said, squeezing her hand gently to reassure her.
“Leave it to your big bro and sis.
We’ll help you find your mom in no time.”
Luckily, they only had to walk for a short while before finding the lost girl’s mother.
The girl ran toward a middle-aged woman crouching on the ground, who pulled her child into a tight, desperate embrace.
“Thank you both so, so much.”
“No problem at all!”
Subaru kept smiling and waving at the reunited mother and daughter until they were out of sight.
Satella breathed a sigh of relief as well, an unconscious smile spreading across her face.
“Thank goodness.”
“So… back to looking for your stuff?”
“Mhm!”
After the brief interlude of helping the lost girl, Subaru and Satella resumed their search for the stolen item.
“By the way, there’s actually a question I wanted to ask you,” Subaru said.
He stuffed one hand in the pocket of his black-and-orange track jacket and snapped his fingers in front of Satella with the other.
“We seem to have gone way out of our way just now.
Tell me, miss, what exactly did you get out of doing that?”
Subaru was teasing the girl’s bleeding-heart nature.
When Satella had helped Subaru earlier, she had made up all sorts of convoluted excuses, so he was quite looking forward to hearing how she’d justify this one.
“It’s simple!” Satella lifted her chin slightly and crossed her arms.
With neither false bravado nor a guilty conscience, she answered refreshingly, “This way, we can continue our search with a clear conscience… And why did you help out, then?”
Satella looked at Subaru seriously.
“Subaru, you were clearly against me doing that at first.”
“I told you, didn’t I?
‘With great power comes great responsibility’.” The hand Subaru had held out to Satella flashed a peace sign.
“Since I had the power to calm a crying kid down, I had the responsibility to do it.”
“Since I have the power to help a lost kid find her family, by that same logic, I have the responsibility to do it too!”
Satella gave Subaru a look of slight disbelief at his words.
“Subaru, your personality really puts you at a disadvantage, doesn’t it.”
“You’re the last person who gets to say that!” Subaru turned his face away… You massive softie, you’re the one whose personality is the biggest disadvantage, aren’t you?
Right now, they could totally find a temple, shove the enshrined statue aside, and sit Satella right up there on the altar.
It would be a perfect fit.
She’d probably even radiate a golden halo of sheer karmic virtue.
“…You really aren’t a bad kid.”
After a moment of silence, Satella suddenly uttered a line Subaru never thought he’d hear from anyone other than his own parents in this lifetime.
“Wait, wait, wait, why are you treating me like a kid?” Subaru was a bit at a loss for how to respond.
“I’m pretty sure we’re about the same age, right?”
At a glance, Subaru guessed Satella was around seventeen or eighteen.
For the seventeen-year-old Subaru, it was entirely possible he was slightly younger than her… but there was no way he belonged to an entirely different generation of “children” compared to her.
“I don’t think you’re quite right about that,” Satella said.
Her blue-purple eyes seemed to hold a thousand unspoken words, swimming with complex emotions that Subaru couldn’t comprehend.
“Because I’m a half-elf…”
Satella lowered her head, the shadow of her bangs obscuring her eyes.
Her slender hands clasped tightly together, as if trying to grasp onto something that had already slipped away.
Being a half-elf must have caused her a massive amount of hardship… Seeing the girl’s pained expression, Subaru was rendered speechless, lapsing into silence.
No wonder she had reacted so strongly earlier when he mentioned being a half-blood himself.
In that case…
“—I see,” Subaru replied thoughtfully.
Satella’s already clasped hands gripped even tighter, and her entire body gave an imperceptible tremble.
“No wonder you’re so insanely cute!” Subaru nodded with an expression of sudden realization.
“Elves are super cute, after all.”
“Eh?”
Satella blinked in surprise.
She had imagined a thousand different reactions in her head, but Subaru’s was the one she absolutely hadn’t anticipated.
“Is there a problem?”
“It’s not a problem, exactly.” Satella shook her head.
“It’s just, you know, I’m a half-elf.”
Subaru looked directly into those blue-purple eyes.
Earnestly, without a single trace of fake emotion, he told the girl: “I heard you.”
Satella stopped in her tracks, standing rooted to the spot, just staring blankly at the boy.
“Hm?” Subaru also stopped walking, turning back to look at the girl who had fallen behind.
“Why’d you stop?”
“You huge dummy…”
Satella turned her face away and put her back to Subaru.
She simply crouched right there in the middle of the street, burying her hands in her hair and clutching her head.
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