You! Don’t Press that Button! - Chap 114

It hurts…

My head throbbed as if I’d hit it hard against something. Ugh, letting out a small groan, I tried to raise my arm to touch my head, but it felt strangely short and stubby.

What’s this? What happened…?

My eyes trembled from the pain. When I finally managed to lift my eyelids that felt heavy as water-soaked cotton, I saw an unfamiliar room. Narrowing my eyes to focus my blurry vision, familiar stripes came into view.

Ah, a birdcage. I was trapped in the thing I hated most.

“Cheep…”

Looking down, I saw fluffy chest feathers. Why am I in bird form? As I tried to think about what happened before losing consciousness, my throbbing head interfered with my neural processes. I pressed my head against the cold bars to ease the pain and traced back my memories.

I definitely… yes, a servant had come to my room. I’d been sleeping heavily from exhaustion when I woke to find a servant standing beside my bed.

In the dark room, he just stood there looking down at me without even turning on the lights. Maybe it was the deep shadows on his face, but there was something eerily sinister about him.

At first, I thought he’d come to clean the room. When our eyes met but he didn’t say anything, I couldn’t stand the strange atmosphere and spoke first.

‘What brings you…’

The drowsiness that had possessed my body vanished in the blink of an eye. A strange tension flickered uneasily at my feet. As I carefully asked while only raising my upper body, the servant spoke with his usual stammer:

‘Th-that time… when I delivered the letter, I, I should have given this too…’

He slightly bowed his head and carefully pulled something out from inside his clothes, holding it out to me.

‘This is…?’

It was the bracelet I’d seen among the scattered clothes when I bumped into him in the corridor. Though it looked worn, the gem set in the center still gleamed brilliantly. I tilted my head at the bracelet resting in the servant’s palm.

‘Why this?’

‘L-Lord Lairas gave it to me to deliver together, but I forgot… haha.’

Strangely, the world seemed to flow in slow motion. Lairas gave this to me? The moment doubt arose, the servant’s awkward laugh wrapped me in a sense of dissonance.

There’s no way Lairas gave this. I definitely saw this bracelet when I collided with the servant at the corner, and that was before I sent the letter to Lairas.

In other words, this servant before me was definitely lying.

A chilling sensation quickly climbed up from my toes. I instinctively realized I couldn’t let the servant know I’d noticed something was wrong until someone came.

While pretending to look at the servant’s face, I slightly shifted my gaze to check the firmly closed door. After making him lower his guard, I needed to get out through there.

I raised the corners of my lips, feigning calm. As I carefully lowered my legs to the floor and pretended to reach for the bracelet, I spoke as if suddenly remembering something:

‘Ah, come to think of it… I wanted to ask something about the letter you delivered then, would that be alright?’

‘What? Y-yes, of course.’

The servant answered with an awkward bow.

Hoping someone would notice something was wrong and come quickly, I approached the bedside table. As I bent over and rummaged around as if looking for something, a shadow silently approached until it was right beside me.

The human-shaped shadow slowly closed the distance between us until I felt it pressing against my back. My hand that had been searching the drawer had already stopped.

Though the warning lights in my head screamed not to turn around now, I couldn’t help but look. Because I could see something like a long club gripped in the shadow’s hand.

Gasping as I turned my head back, I found the servant with a large blunt weapon raised high above his head. His face was filled with malice I’d never seen before.

‘Now, this is the end.’

The situation flowed like slow motion. My body, frozen in fear, wouldn’t move as I wanted. The weapon rapidly descending toward my head burned itself into my eyes. No.

‘A-ah!’

A dull pain shot through my shoulder. Just before the weapon hit my head, survival instinct surged up and filled my body with courage. I planted my hands on the floor and rolled, squeezing my eyes shut.

‘Hng, ugh… it hurts.’

Feels like my bone’s broken. My shoulder that had taken the full force of the club’s blow twitched slightly. Something was wrong – my trembling arm wouldn’t respond to my attempts to use it.

Panting heavily, I lifted my head. The servant’s face showed no trace of guilt. Rather, it held a strange pleasure. His twitching lips like a broken doll and heavily distorted eyes drove me into panic.

‘Kar, Karhan…’

Though I needed to cry out for help immediately, no sound came out, as if a fist was lodged in my throat. I crawled backward on my trembling body, but the servant’s large hand gripped my ankle tightly and pulled me down.

‘Urgh!’

The fear of possibly dying froze my heart. I clawed at the floor with my good arm, but was helplessly dragged back.

‘Why, why are you doing this…’

I managed to ask while rolling my stiff tongue. The servant looked down at me with a face completely unsuited to the situation, full of joy. As if planning to answer my question, he bent his legs to meet my eye level. Then he showed me the bracelet in his hand and said:

‘Once I hand you over, I’ll be free.’

As he finished speaking, with a click, what I assumed was a large bracelet was fastened to my ankle. The moment the cold metal touched my skin, all the energy flowing through my body vanished against my will, and my vision began to change.

‘Peep!’

What? What’s happening?

The servant’s huge hand reached toward me, now suddenly shrunk to the size of a fist. Thinking I might really be done for if that hand caught me, I flapped my wings desperately.

Ouch!

The pain naturally shifted to my wing when I transformed into bird form. But perhaps because it combined with the wing on my back, it hurt less than when I was human. I endured it and flapped my wings to hover in the air. Just a little more, just a little more. The window right above was open about a hand’s width. If I could fly through that gap and escape outside, I might survive.

‘Peep…!’

A glimmer of hope flickered before my eyes. Just as I put strength into my beak and flapped my wings to take flight—

With a thud, I lost consciousness.

Thinking calmly now, everything came back in detail. Why did that servant do this to me? Did I do something terrible to him? Whether from the pain or the fear still lingering in my body, my beak trembled.

I’m scared…

I blinked repeatedly and looked around. For a kidnapping, it was an extremely luxurious space. Of course, to me trapped in a birdcage, the luxurious room might as well have been a picture of rice cake.

Where was Karhan? Did he know I was gone? Would he come looking for me this time too?

I stuffed various thoughts into my head to prevent fear from consuming me. As I curled up quietly in the corner of the cage, the firmly closed doorknob slowly began to turn.

I stretched out my neck and opened my eyes wide. Had that servant returned? Thinking I should be as docile as possible this time since I never wanted to feel that pain again.

As I gulped, the door opened to reveal familiar red hair.

“Peep…?”

Asdion…?

The person who entered wasn’t the servant but Asdion. Good heavens. Someone I couldn’t find while searching all over town appeared so simply before me. If I could take him back to Asmil now, I could get the blood.

“Pee-yap! Peep!”

Asdion! Asmil is looking for you!

I flapped my uninjured wing. Swaying my body back and forth, I approached right up to the bars and raised my head high to look at Asdion. His predatory yellow eyes looked down at me.

“Peep! Peeep!”

Let’s go together!

Though a stinging pain shot up from my knee, I repeatedly lifted and lowered my bottom to strongly express my opinion. But perhaps bird form couldn’t communicate, as Asdion just stared at me silently.

“Peep…”

I wanted to change to human form out of frustration, but strangely, I couldn’t transform at will. I definitely changed to bird form after putting on the bracelet… or shackle. Sitting down and stretching out my leg, I examined my slightly protruding foot to find the shackle the servant had attached still there. Was this preventing my transformation?

The shackle that had been loose around my human ankle had transformed to fit snugly around my thin bird leg. This object seemed to have the same magic as the ring Ruzel had tried to give Karhan.

No matter how I shook my leg around, it wouldn’t come off. I thought about curling up into a ball and gnawing at it with my beak, but couldn’t reach because of my plump chest and belly. As I narrowed my eyes to glare at it, Asdion’s indifferent voice came from above:

“I don’t understand what’s so great about such an idiot.”

“Peep…?”

Is he talking about me?I raised my head and looked around just in case, but only Asdion and I were in this room. He was talking about me.

“Peep peep.”

Even so, having someone openly call me an idiot to my face left a small scratch on my heart.You’re a bird too!As I clacked my beak together in dissatisfaction, Asdion brought a chair in front of me and slumped down weakly.

“That shackle is the one I used to wear.”

This shackle…?Why would he wear a shackle that forces you into bird form? It’s not exactly decorative.Seeming to notice my confusion, Asdion spoke while frowning painfully:

“I was an auction house slave.”

He interlocked his fingers and leaned his upper body toward the table I was on.

“Master saved me from a place without a single ray of light. I still can’t forget that moment. Wherever he goes, miracles happen and the world changes.”

I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or to himself. I could only clearly see his yellow eyes trembling slightly unstably.

As Asdion lowered his head, deep shadows fell across his face. Only his yellow eyes gleamed ferociously in his darkness-consumed face.

“I fear and love Master… but I’m of no particular interest to him.”

But if I devour you, won’t that attention turn to me?Asdion muttered the last words quietly.