"Let's play!"
A bright, energetic girl came charging in while
She was the youngest child in the orphanage, a girl whose ears came to slight points.
Running up behind her—as if chasing after her—came the oldest boy in the orphanage.
More than the green-skinned boy who had been tackled to the ground, with his back slamming hard against the floor, Ariel found the boy running toward them far more harrowing to watch.
The reason was plain from looking at the boy's eyes.
His eyes were dark and clouded, his pupils unfocused.
The boy had lost his sight completely due to
"Hey, Natalie! You'll hurt someone if you go running around like that!"
The blind boy pulled the pointed-eared girl Natalie off of the green-skinned boy.
"You'd get hurt too if you ran, Kura."
Ariel gently admonished the blind boy Kura, who was rather hypocritical to be scolding someone else for reckless running.
"I'm fine. Even without my eyes, there are things I can see."
Ariel didn't quite understand what Kura meant by those words, but despite being unable to see, Kura often acted as though he could.
"Still, be careful."
"Yeah. But more importantly, keep an eye on this one."
Kura grabbed Natalie by the scruff of her neck, hauled her to her feet, and rapped his fist on top of her head.
"Ow ow ow!"
"You're the one who hurt someone, so of course it hurts. Now apologize to Gob."
"Mmm!"
"Don't just groan. When you do something wrong, you apologize.
"Mmm…"
"I-it's fine! Really. You don't have to apologize. I just got a little startled, that's all. It didn't really hurt."
Unable to stand watching Natalie get scolded, the victim—the green-skinned boy Gob—came to her defense.
Natalie's face instantly brightened at this lifeline, but Kura wouldn't have it.
"No good. Natalie isn't forgiven until she apologizes properly."
Overwhelmed by Kura's absolute refusal to yield, Natalie reluctantly muttered, "I'm sorry."
But Kura showed no mercy.
"You're not saying that to me. If you're apologizing, then apologize to Gob. And that kind of half-hearted apology won't cut it. Come on, say it again properly—'I'm sorry.'"
Prompted by Kura, Natalie turned back toward Gob.
"I'm sorry."
"It's… it's okay."
Gob forgave her immediately, seeing how contrite she looked.
Watching this, Kura smiled.
"Good job. And I'm sorry for hitting you, too."
Kura ruffled Natalie's head.
Right on the spot where he had just rapped his fist.
"It's okay!"
As if her previous subdued demeanor had been a lie, Natalie's face lit up.
"Let's go, Gob, let's go that way!"
She grabbed Gob's hand and dragged him off.
As they left, Gob glanced back at Ariel with concern, but Ariel gestured for him to go along with it.
Ariel and Kura watched as Natalie and Gob ran off together.
"Don't run or you'll trip!"
No sooner had Kura shouted that than Natalie tripped, taking Gob down with her.
"There you go. Called it."
"Shouldn't we go help them?"
"Gob's with her, so it'll be fine."
Even so, it didn't look particularly fine to Ariel.
Natalie had fallen and burst into tears, while Gob stood there looking helpless.
But then again, if this was just another everyday scene, then perhaps "not fine" was simply how things always were, and that in itself was fine.
As if to prove it, Gob began clumsily trying to comfort the sobbing Natalie.
With Ariel and Kura watching over them, Gob managed to soothe Natalie and get her to stop crying.
After that, without running this time, the two of them joined the circle of other children at play.
"Aren't you going to join them, Kura?"
"I'm past the age for running around like that."
Kura shrugged, though by any normal standard he was still very much a child.
He might be the oldest in the orphanage, but he was still a child in the prime of play.
Ariel realized that Kura was staying by her side because he had noticed she was alone.
Ariel was the weakest child in the orphanage.
She had improved considerably since the days when she couldn't even get out of bed—she could walk around a little now if she took it slow—but running around was out of the question.
Reading a book in the shade of a tree was about all she could do.
That was precisely why Ariel was almost always accompanied by a member of the orphanage staff, or by Sariel, who watched over her.
Sariel, at this moment, was surrounded by boys and girls and being playfully mobbed by them.
Kura was filling in as her stand-in.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"Just as you have to apologize when you do something wrong, you also have to put your gratitude into words and tell people, right?"
Ariel answered Kura's feigned ignorance without naming who she meant, simply saying what she had learned.
"You were a little like Sariel just now, Kura."
At Ariel's words, Kura scratched his head, looking embarrassed.
What Ariel didn't know was that the way he had lectured Natalie was borrowed straight from Sariel.
Sariel was not one for expressive emotions, yet she was enormously popular with the orphanage children.
That was only natural—she had taken the place of parents for children who had none, caring for them with genuine warmth.
Through Sariel's warmth, Ariel had been quietly recovering her ability to feel, bit by bit, like a normal human being.
The boys and girls who had been treated as laboratory specimens laughed and played like ordinary children within their small, enclosed world.
"What… what did you just say?"
Gülie's voice trembled.
The one he addressed looked back at him with eyes devoid of warmth, as though gazing at something trivial.
"I said I would cull humanity."
On that day, the dragon race bared its fangs against mankind.