In Rolderhelm, the city guards came to the inn where they were staying and spoke to Lucia, asking about Yu and Yurine.

Yu thought that the city guards were investigating the Sigma Tower and that's why they were looking for them. Yu and Yurine were the only ones who came out of the Sigma Tower and only they could tell what happened there that night.

He could run away from the city guards for fear of being found guilty, but doing so would only make him more suspicious. On Lucia's advice, he and Yurine were to go to the police station and give a statement. So the first thing they did after leaving the guild was to go to the police station.

On the way, Yu was thinking more about the other visitor who arrived yesterday than about what was going to happen at the police station. The strange man, his face covered with bandages and asking about Yurine, scared Yu.

Before talking to Yurine about that man, he realized something.

An hour and a half ago, Yurine's face was the same stoic expression she wore most of the time, almost all day long, even though she would get angry and yell when Yu made her angry. Now that expression was gone, Yurine looked as happy as a child should be.

“Uh-huh, I know why you're so happy. You finally realized how wonderful it is to be with me, didn't you?”

“Stop talking nonsense, it has nothing to do with you.”

“You don't have any?”

Yurine scratched her cheek “Maybe there's a little bit.”

Even though he didn't realize it, Yu was proud of himself for his part in it. If he had done it earlier, he would have been even more proud of himself.

“Because we signed up for the adventurers’ guild?”

When they were looking for a way to make money, the subject of adventuring came up, but Yu refused, even though Yurine wanted to do it. He refused because adventuring was dangerous and Yu didn't want to be put in danger. Although his decision made Yurine sad, it was also for Yurine.

Yurine must have been happy that things were finally going her way, even a little bit, if not completely.

“When I was born, my mother was a member of the adventurers' guild in the Capital Mora,” As Yurine walked, she unexpectedly started talking about the past. “I wanted to become a member like my mom, but she didn’t let me.”

As Yu walked, he felt Yurine moving a little closer to him. Yurine kept talking.

“Then she stopped adventuring, but I always wanted to join.”

“An old fancy, huh?” Yu wondered if he had any old fancies of his own. Maybe buying an electric ride on when he was a kid. “I'm sorry. If I'd known that's why you wanted to do it, I would have signed up. I thought being adventurers meant we'd be chasing monsters all the time and putting our lives in danger. That's why I was against it.”

Adventuring in anime has always been like that, Yu was against adventuring because he couldn't think otherwise, so he didn't want to risk their lives.

But when Lucia pointed out that not all adventurers had to fight monsters, and talked about cheap accommodation and food, he was attracted to the adventuring profession.

“Even a human being can make progress. Well done, you should realize your mistake and apologize. From now on, remember that I am a supreme being and make an effort to satisfy me.”

“It would have been better if you had said thank you in a shy way. With your cheeks flushed and a sweet, sweet demeanor.”

“Hmph.”

Yurine puffed out her cheeks, crossed her arms over her stomach and turned her head in a sweet way that signaled she was done. Yu had gotten a sweet reaction, even if it wasn't the one he wanted.

“There's something I want to ask you.”

“I give you permission to ask questions.”

“Do you know a man whose face is wrapped in bandages?”

Yurine's answer would most likely have been no. ‘Man whose face covered in bandages’ would not have been enough to recognize someone, especially if those bandages had appeared after their last meeting.

“Lucia told me that someone like this came asking for you yesterday. Since he used the name Neko, I thought it might be someone you already knew.”

“I wouldn't be friends with such strange people.”

“That's what I thought, although you don't need to be friends to know each other.”

It was not difficult to understand Yurine's character and the choices she would make. It was easy to grasp what she would like and dislike, especially since she was a child, and children don't like strange-looking people.

“Why would someone like that be looking for me?”

“Is she afraid? No.” Yurine was not afraid, she was confident and would not back down from a fight. What she felt was more discomfort than fear.

“You don't have to worry, I'm not going to give my daughter away. Well, maybe that's what you should be worried about.”

“I am neither your daughter nor a commodity to be bought and sold.”

“Wow, that was hurtful.”

She had taken a casual remark and stabbed Yu in the heart again. He lost count of the number of times his heart had been broken.

“Should I tell her my guess?”

Yu thought it was Sharley and he had a clue about it. He wanted to tell Yurine about his guess, but he hesitated because of because of what she just said.

“If Sharley is alive, will she leave me and go to him?”

He was afraid of being alone. He didn't want to be abandoned.

“I thought it might be Sharley, the one who came yesterday.” He interjected, watching Yurine's reaction carefully. The girl raised his head and stared at Yu. “Lucia said the person who came had blue eyes. Her relatives at the Wizarding Academy had the same eye color, so maybe Sharley has blue eyes too...”

“It was,” Yurine lowered her head.

Neither of them said anything else. Yu was afraid to talk about Sharley and Yurine was silent.

“At the police station,” he interjected, changing the subject. They had to plan what they were going to say before they were questioned at the police station. “If nothing surprising happens, I don't think they'll lock us up right away, they'll probably just question us. I hope so.”

Things were not supposed to go badly unless they were thrown into the dungeon by a man they didn't know, but who had authority, and there was no evidence against them.

Apart from going to jail, there was another punishment that would interfere with their work, and that was being out of the city. If that happened, they would not be able to fulfill their mission. Either way, they had to get out of there without any punishment and they had to prepare their testimony well.

“They can cross-examine us to see if our statements are contradictory. We have to prepare what we are going to say in advance.”

“I see.”

“Smart girl.”

The fact that Yurine's intelligence level was higher than that of a three-year-old made things easier. Indeed, if she were the same as a three-year-old, his tasks would have been more difficult than now.

“I say let's be honest and tell it like it is, but don't refer to yourself as a fairy, refer to yourself as half human. And if they ask, tell them that your mother adopted you, not created you.”

"Why?"

“I don't want them to know.”

Yu had a little paranoia that someone who discovered Yurine's identity would want to steal her. That's why he wanted to hide the fact that she was a fairy.

“Let's tell it like it is, what we know, but I'm not sure if we should talk about Rie being a witch, her political position and her ties to academia.”

Would Maron Martin's attitude towards them change if they said they had ties to the Wizarding Academy? What would they do if the Academy was likely to be indicted and the second headmaster got angry, or Salerey was arrested by the state before they could question him?

Outside the academy, the fact that she was a witch or a political figure from the Mora as the Cardinal of Virgo could also have been a problem, and it would have been an international problem beyond the case of Yu and Yurine.

“Or, if they insist, you can tell them that too, but if they don't ask, don't tell them. When asked who your mother was, say that she was an adventurer and that you don't know why you went to Sigma Tower either.”

Just two months, and if they lasted two more months, then they would no longer be in Rolderhelm, and even if they were called a criminal, it wouldn't matter.

“Also, I don't think you will go to jail because you are a child, but unlike you, I can go to death row. Please don't say strange things about me.”

He didn't know if there were children's reformatories in the Second World, but even if there were, Yurine's situation was different from the children in those homes, Yurine was involved against her will with an adult. If someone was found guilty, it would be Yu.

“I don't think it's convincing.”

“Did you say something?”

Yu couldn't hear what Yurine was saying because she was mumbling.

“We are going to the tower, but the only person who knows why we are going there is not here right now, and two clowns are attacking us in that tower. Do you think it's a believable story?” Yurine made a good point.

“Not really, but it's the only story we can tell.”

They could make something up, but that would not be healthy. If they made up a story instead of telling a story they both knew, they might say different things when they were interrogated and that would attract attention.

“Always say you don't know what you don't know, don't say the assassins are coming for Rie, and if they ask where I come from, say İlonya.”

“Why?”

“That stupid human was from another world,” is exactly what Yurine would have said. "If you say that, they won't believe it and we'll be suspicious. Say; he said he came from İlonya, I don't know anything else. Also I don't want to involve too many people in the Rie affair."

“Got it.”

“Gosh, you're so obedient today.”

“Shut up,” Yurine replied in a split second.

***

“Hello there,” he said as he entered the police station.

“Who is this?”

“Yu Valarfin, some city guards called me yesterday. I didn't know about it today because I wasn't in the city, and the owner of the inn where I was staying told me to go to the police station and show myself.”

“Just a minute,” said the officer sitting at the desk at the entrance. He left his desk for thirty seconds, went into a room, and when he came back he said, “This way,” and led them into the room he had just entered.

It was an office and the sign above the door said Floy Erier. The man who greeted them inside was dressed in a blue uniform and wore a shield pin with three stars on his chest.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The man inside the office came up to them and said, “Commissar Floy Erier,” and held out his hand.

“Yu Valarfin.”

Floy had done something Yu didn't like at all, squeezing Yu's hand too hard and pulling it towards him as they shook hands. He could have shaken him back, but the fact that he was the commissar spoiled it.

“And the little lady's name was Yurine?”

Yurine did not answer, either because she did not want to talk to him or because she did not accept her name.

“Yes, she's a bit shy with strangers.”

“My little boy is like that, you can't get two words out of his mouth.”

“I don't care about your son.”

Floy Erier was a man in his forties. His blond hair was beginning to gray and his wrinkled eyes showed that he sometimes lacked sleep.

“Here you go,” he said, inviting them to sit in the chairs in front of his desk, and he took his own seat.

“She looks a little old for a three-year-old.”

He had started on a troubling topic. Apart from sword fairies, what races stayed the same forever? He didn't think the magical boy excuse would work this time.

Still, he had an excuse to save the situation.

“I didn't want her to go to an orphanage, so I decided to adopt him, but since the marriage age in Rolderhelm is fifteen and I was nineteen, I thought that if we registered her real age, I wouldn't be able to adopt her. If we had said nine, I would have had the child when I was ten, which would have been absurd, so we registered her as three.”

He couldn't do such a thing in the First World. You couldn't register a ten year old as three years old, but here the civil registration system had just started and luckily they had come across a clerk who was a bit irresponsible. So by calling her a magical girl, they managed to make Yurine look like she was three years old, which she was really.

“Child benefit lasts until the age of fourteen, now you will receive it for longer than usual. Don't you think this is defrauding the state?”

“I don't know.” He never thought they would be shot at this point. He never thought it would be a crime because he knew Yurine was really three years old.

“Why did you have to adopt Yurine?”

“As I said, if I hadn't, he would have been given to an orphanage. It was obvious that he was not going to have an easy life there.”

“I don't think it should be allowed and it should be criminalized, but since the system is new, you found a loophole.”

Yu had nothing to say, the man was right.

“What does Yurine think about this situation? Does she accept Yu Valarfin as her father?”

“No,” Yurine replied coldly.

“No?” Floy repeated Yurine.

“No?” Yu repeated Floy.

Did Floy start to think Yu was holding her against her will? Yu wished he had told her to say yes to that question before they came here.

“But it's fine, it's fine.”

“So that's how it is.”

Floy would talk to Yurine about it later, it wasn't hard for Yu to understand.

“We've been looking for you for the last few days.”

“We were out of capital for a few days, that's why you couldn't find us.”

“Sigma Tower. The day of the fire, people saw you in a terrible state. There were soot marks on you, indicating that you had come out of the fire, and there were also reports of blood on you. I wonder what happened there.” Floy took a notebook out of his drawer to take notes. “May I take you outside, Mr. Valarfin. I'll speak to Yurine first. Do you have a problem with?”

“No, I don't.”

Here, too, he would have preferred not to be separated from Yurine, but that was not a question he could answer by saying there was a problem.

***

“Tell me, what happened that night?”

Floy started the interrogation with Yurine. Yurine thought they were going to take them into an interrogation room, but he took Yu out of the office and started questioning Yurine as if it was a casual conversation.

It was the third time he had been separated from Yu since they met. The first time was when Yu left him in a park and went to the team offices for some fraudulent business, and the second time was when Yu went to an uncanny place with Marino Swann.

She felt strange when he wasn't there because she was used to him. Without Yu, she was lonely, her heart pounding as her heart fluttered with stress.

“My mother, I and her apprentice entered an underground tunnel through the sewers. We were heading towards the Sigma Tower but a monster attacked us. We escaped from the monster and went into a cave, and my mother collapsed the ceiling to stop the monster. Of course, she didn't know that there was a road above that ceiling, and when the road collapsed, above the road...” She had never referred to Yu by name, and now she refrained from mentioning him by name. “He... He fell down.”

“I don't understand, explain more clearly.” Yurine's explanation raised more questions. “By that, do you mean Yu Valarfin?”

Yurine nodded her head in agreement.

“Who are your mother and her apprentice?”

“My mother's name is Rie, we were adventurers in Mora, then we came here and she took an apprentice.”

“Who is her apprentice?”

Yu had told him not to mention the Wizarding Academy, but the only way to talk about it without mentioning Sharley's name was to mention the academy. The reason he didn't want to use her name was because he didn't like her.

“The nephew of the headmaster of the Wizarding Academy was his apprentice.” After she said it, she regretted not taking Yu's word for it.

“Wizarding Academy?”

“My mother came here from Mora to the Wizarding Academy, and I came with her, and then the headmaster gave her his nephew as an apprentice.”

“Why?”

“To gain status in the academy, you have to train apprentices.”

“I'm not asking that, why did your mother come to the academy?”

“To be stronger.”

Her mother had told her that someone was after her and that she wanted to defeat him. She didn't say it directly to Yurine, she overheard her talking to someone else, but she knew that she had come to the academy to defeat that person.

“Is there nothing else? Why did she want to be stronger?”

“None of your business.” Yu would definitely be angry with Yurine if he heard that answer, but Yurine was not going to treat a stranger who tried to touch her mother's secrets with respect.

“Why would Headmaster Bishory give his nephew as an apprentice to a newcomer he didn't know? Did they know each other before?”

“They met through the Bishory family in Mora.”

Yurine was also present in this part of the story. The Bishory family was a house under the Vermilia family, supporters of the Virgo Cathedral, and Duke Vermilia was instrumental in Rie meeting them.

“How did you know the Bishory family?”

“Well, it's mother's thing,” Yurine thought. “That's none of your business either.”

“Let's get to the point, then.” Floy was clearly annoyed by Yurine's answers. Yurine was not afraid of his anger, he was clearly not a mage, and the mana in his body was not high enough to give him an edge in swordplay.

Yurine had the power to tear Floy apart in a few seconds if she lost her patience. If Floy had realized this, he would have been careful not to anger Yurine.

“Why were you going to Sigma Tower? Why the sewers?”

“My mother wanted to get something there and we had to go there secretly. I don't know what she wanted to buy or why we had to go undercover.” She was honest in this part, she didn't know what her mother went there for.

“Try to remember, maybe you know something.”

“I don't know,” Yurine pressed.

“And you were attacked by a monster?”

“Yes.”

“And your mother collapsed the ceiling of the cave.”

“Yes.”

“A powerful wizard, then.”

“Of course,” she said, puffing out her chest, proud of her mother.

“The collapsed road and the corpse of the hunting gorilla are in the records, but the ground to the road is quite high, how did Yu Valarfin survive that fall?”

“I don't know.”

How Yu survived that fall was still a mystery. Perhaps it was a trick of fate that he survived that fall, just as it was fate that he was on the road at that moment.

“Then what happened?”

“My mom's apprentice was injured and he wanted to come with us because that idiot had nowhere to go and probably wanted to flirt with my mother.”

“Why?”

“Because he had nowhere to go and probably wanted to flirt with my mother.”

She answered by repeating what she said. She knew from Yu's story that he had nowhere else to go, so joining their group was more of a necessity than a choice.

“That idiot carried the apprentice and we drilled a hole under the Sigma Tower and went into the tower. We left the apprentice in the tunnel, and I never saw him after that, I don't know what happened. We were going upstairs to get what my mother wanted, and then we started smelling fire, and then we were intercepted by two assassins.”

Floy might have thought she was telling a story of pure fiction. The pressure in Yurine's heart was growing, even though she knew what she was telling him was true.

“I don't know why the assassins were there. My mother killed one of them and then another one killed my mother.”

She had been thinking all the way how to tell this part of the story and, unexpectedly, the words simply came out.

“It was because I knew I would see her again,” she tried to comfort herself. She felt guilty for having expressed her mother's death so simply.

“That idiot and I were trapped inside the tower, it was on fire upstairs and downstairs and we had nowhere to go. When the remaining assassin came to kill us, he killed him and we escaped from the tower by jumping out the window. Then people saw us going to the inn, and that's the story.”

At first it was questionable whether Yu was strong enough to kill someone. Yurine was also surprised that he could kill someone, and before she could get over that surprise, he had killed someone else.

Jumping out the window might not have been convincing to Floy either. Before he could ask another question, Yurine formed a gust of wind around her hand that took the shape of a tornado. Their hair briefly blew up with the papers on the table.

“I can do wind magic, I used my magic to slow the fall and we landed safely.”

“You're a wizard, of course...” Seeing magic made the story more believable in Floy's eyes. Magic was not a subject that ordinary people were familiar with, and that obscurity made the stories more believable.

“Is there anything else?”

“No, that's all,” Yurine told me almost everything she knew.

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

After writing Yurine's full statement, Floy closed the notebook, putting a bracket between the pages.

“Yu Valarfin, what do you know about him?”

“We met less than a month ago, I don't know much.”

“And yet you let him take you as his daughter?”

“No one is taking me, don't make things up. He's helping me achieve my goal. If, if...” she didn't want to talk about this part either. “If he hadn't taken me as his daughter, I wouldn't be able to go out like this and achieve my goal.”

“Why is he helping you, what is your purpose?”

“That's none of your business either.”

***

After Yurine came out, it was Yu's turn to be interrogated, so Yu walked in and sat down on the same chair where Yurine was sitting. It was warm because someone had sat before him.

“Where are you from?”

“İlonya.” He lied easily. He chose İlonya because he knew a ship had come from İlonya the night the Sigma Tower burned.

“Where?”

“Seussu,” he said. Meanwhile, he hoped Floy didn't turn out to be from İlonya.

He had heard of Seussu from a merchant who had stayed at Lucia's inn in the early days of the Second World. It was a town famous for its sausage.

“Why did you come here from there?”

“To start a new life.”

“I know that İlonya is a good country too, maybe the best after Rolderhelm. Couldn't you make a life there?”

“I'm nineteen years old, at that age it was normal for me to dream of leaving home like any teenager.”

There is hardly a young man who has not thought about leaving home and going away in his youth. It was not surprising that Yu Valarfin also thought about such things.

“You are very well dressed, and you are staying in a good inn. How did you get the money to buy all this?”

“After I escaped from Sigma Tower, I sold an item I brought from İlonya.”

“Tell me how you met Yurine.”

“The night I came here I was walking on the road to find a place to stay. The road collapsed and I fell into a cave. There I met Rie and Yurine.”

“How did you survive that fall?”

“I guess the world doesn't want me to die yet.”

He had died from Rie's spell after the fall, but he didn't know why he hadn't died when he fell. The only explanation was luck.

“And then?”

“Since I had just arrived in Rolderhelm, I had nowhere to go and no one I knew. So I decided to move in with Rie. Rie is Yurine's mother, by the way.” Yu told Floy again, even though he knew who she was from Yurine. “Because I had nowhere to go, I didn't know anywhere.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I thought Rie was beautiful, and then there's this.”

Every person who has watched anime has dreamed at least once of finding a beautiful waifu and embarking on a story with her in the categories of adventure and romance. Yu was one of them.

“What happened next?”

“Rie and I went through a secret passage and came to the bottom of where the Sigma Tower is located. Rie made a hole and we entered the tower's storage room. Meanwhile, we had Sharley, Rie's injured apprentice, who was unconscious, and I was carrying him because he was unconscious. I left him in the tunnel to come back and get him later.”

“Do you know who Sharley is?”

He didn't want to involve the Wizarding Academy, but he would have to in order to answer this question.

“Sharley von Bishory was Salery von Bishory's nephew.” Floy nodded for him to continue. “We were going up to the upper floors of the tower, I don't know why we were going, I don't know what happened there, I was just following Rie. When I started to smell something burning on the stairs, I told Rie, but they said they didn't smell anything. When I insisted, we were confronted by two assassins.”

“Who were these assassins?”

“They were named Sorrow and Joy, wearing clown costumes.”

“Sorrow and Joy?!” Yu nodded, confirming Floy. “And you killed one of them?”

“Sorrow.”

“Do you know who they are?”

Yu shook his head from side to side and said he didn't know.

“How did you do that?”

“When Rie killed Joy, Sorrow killed Rie. I took Yurine and tried to escape but there was nowhere to run, Sorrow trapped us and tried to kill us. I hit him in the balls for my life, and when I did, I managed to get the scythe out of his hand and killed him without wasting any time. As I said, there was nowhere to escape, so we had to jump down from the tower. I don't know how many floors we were on, but we were high up, Yurine slowed our fall with her wind magic and we escaped.”

The interrogation was less stressful than he thought it would be, he answered all the questions quickly.

“I know you can't use magic around them.”

“We realized that, but when Joy died, whatever was preventing Yurine from using magic was removed and she was able to cast her spell.”

It would be useful if Yu had their spell blocking feature. Of course, if it works against his will, it would be more of a hindrance than a support, as it would prevent Yurine from casting spells.

“Why did you adopt Yurine after that, why did you stay with her?”

“I couldn't leave a little girl alone.”

“That can't be all.”

“I have a disease, I don't want to say what my disease is.” Actually, he could say he had two disease. One was the epilepsy that had been haunting him for a while, and he thought Yurine's healing magic was working. The other was the blessings he received from Rie. Yurine had said that if he didn't do a healing spell, the blessings would hurt him. “It's not curable, at least there is no cure that I know of. Yurine keeps me from suffering from these diseases and I help Yurine find out who sent those assassins there.”

“Do you know why those assassins are there?”

“No,” he said, hoping Yurine hadn't said anything about it.

“Have you found anything so far?”

“Uh, no. We went there to see if the people at the Wizarding Academy knew anything, but we came back empty-handed.”

Floy stopped writing Yu's statement. “There's nothing else, is there?”

“There is something that is not relevant.”

“What is it?”

The man with the bandage was scaring him and he had to talk about him. Maybe they could get help.

“Yesterday I heard that a man with his face covered in bandages came looking for Yurine, except for the guards. Yurine says she doesn't know anyone like that. Honestly, this makes me uneasy. Can't anything be done about it?”

Yu could not think of any measures that could be taken. There was no protection order for a matter where there were few arguments, and even if there had been, it would have made Yu's job harder because of his illegal actions.

But he talked about a case of hope.

“Where did he come from?”

“At the inn where we're staying. He came in the afternoon.”

“We will investigate.”

Floy said they could leave after jotting down Yu's last words on another piece of paper.