Unuttered Denial [Part 2]
” ” “Y-Yesss?” ” “
The three siblings rushed to the garden where their mother was.
“What is the meaning of this?!”
What Melsa was pointing at were the tailless whip scorpions that Emma had recently obtained. It seemed like she had happened to run into them right when they were having a battle formation drill under Koumei’s instructions.
The cats kept a slight distance from Melsa as they focused on grooming themselves while feigning ignorance. Meanwhile, the tailless whip scorpions who had suddenly lost their commanders could only stand motionless in a fluster.
“Mother? Are you asking… about this?”
Emma, who decided to play innocent, was looking in the wrong direction unnaturally.
“Look over here, Emma. Look me in the eye. Emma, I wonder why did the tailless whip scorpions turn gi-gan-tic? What have you done? They are already bigger than Violet, aren’t they?!”
The tailless whip scorpions, who were only around five cm that day, had somehow grown ten times larger in the last few days. Some had even reached almost one meter in size.
“Maybe… we accidentally fed them… the silkworm’s feed?”
The main reason why jobs at House Stuart were not popular with the slum girls was that the job involved taking care of numerous insects. Emma had a diverse variety of insects, and accordingly, the same number of food needed to be prepared. The siblings had been so occupied with researching Over recently that they often left the insects’ care to the slum children.
Perhaps the children had inadvertently fed the tailless whip scorpions the feed used for silkworm gigantification. When the siblings realized the mistake, it was already after the tailless whip scorpions had grown huge.
“Emma, what are you going to do now that they have turned this big?!”
Melsa, who praised Emma when she succeeded in making the silkworms larger, was left speechless instead when it came to the numerous tailless whip scorpions.
Silkworm larvae were still okay for Melsa. Violet, too, was one insect, so she barely forgave Emma.
But the gigantification of tailless whip scorpions… With their form that could plunge the noble young ladies in the academy into an abyss of fear, these fellows looked impactful and were large in number to boot.
“Well, um… Mother… bigger… means tenfold the cuteness(?), yeah?”
“…Hoho, so?”
‘Mother’s gaze is scary. When Mother looks like this, Nii-sama and William definitely won’t help me. If I say it isn’t my fault, or keep going against her here, her impending wrath might even call down a smoldering thunder. I at least know that much from experience.
Uh-huh. If it has come to this, I can only try to gloss it over nicely.’ thought Emma as she gulped.
“S-So… um, t-that… uh… W-Well, just look at the tailless whip scorpion-chans’ splendid… uh… pincers!!! I’m sure, I’m sure they can cut Over into pieces!”
The tailless whip scorpions, who were feeling down in remorse while listening to the mother and daughter’s conversation, all looked at Emma at once the moment she said that.
As if they could understand the Kingdom language, they started shaking their pedipalps in a fluster, saying, “No way, no way, no way. That’s impossible!!!”
—Hey, these are not pincers, but whips.
We are not pincher bugs, but tailless whip scorpions.
“If every living thing were of the same size, insects would be the strongest of all… was what I remember, having read in a certain manga!!”
—What’s up with that baseless, absurd reason?!!! No way, no way, no way, we can’t. The tailless whip scorpions denied what Emma said even more desperately.
Although we look like this… we are just introverts who don’t bite and prick people! We are not poisonous!
Um, we… are basically harmless folks… who just like to shut ourselves at home.
“Just look at this eagerness! Mother!!! I’m confident these children can pull it off!”
*DU-DUUN!* Emma made a display of the huge tailless whip scorpions to Melsa.
The insects who had been shaking their arms while shouting, “No way, no way, no way,” suddenly stiffened. They had a bad feeling that their raised shaking arms were taken the wrong way, and what Emma conveyed to Melsa was completely different from their intention.
♠♠♠
To not get scolded, Emma would use any excuse she had to make her getaway.
To not get scolded, Emma was ready to turn lies into truth.
Emma had already begun to think about the combination of the feed that would make these tailless whip scorpions’ arms into super Over cutters that even surpassed the sharpness of Imperial Japan’s national treasure of a katana.
It’s not a matter of it being possible or impossible.
‘Cause I will make it happen.
Everything Emma did with that resolve was to avoid getting scolded.
♠♠♠
Author’s words: Why of course the tailless whip scorpions would turn huge.
