The Harvest Mouse Exits the Fairytale Together with Cinderella

Round eyes, glistening like marbles, sparkled as a wide mouth stretched open, revealing a pink, jelly-like tongue that popped out.
Huff, huff—

A smiling Samoyed, the very image of an angel.
It was an overwhelmingly adorable sight, but Elodie only recoiled further, clinging desperately to Zeno’s leg.
She felt the blood drain from her body.

Beastfolk could communicate across species, so, of course, she understood what it was saying.
But that didn’t change the fact that it looked like it wanted to eat her!
“Wow, you really do look terrified.”

“……”
“If you’re this scared of Dogren, how are you supposed to survive in House Valkyrisen…?”
No, it was only Dogren that she was afraid of.

This was unfair.
In front of knights, she was the one who appeared in an elegant uniform, assigning them secret missions and leading them to success.
And yet now, she was being treated like this… like something insignificant.

Zeno looked down at her, his concern unusually genuine.
“Hey, just go away already.”
“Whimper…”

He didn’t tease Elodie any further and simply ordered Dogren to leave.
Somehow, that made the whole situation feel even heavier.
Cassian, who had tripped while running away from the dog, had laughed mockingly, saying how pathetic she looked.

But now Zeno, of all people, wasn’t even trying to make fun of her—meaning she must have looked truly miserable.
“If Dogren’s presence is enough to make you react like this, then wouldn’t you faint the moment you meet Catlix?”
Catlix?
There’s a cat butler in this estate?

Just imagining the possibility of sharing space with a cat sent shivers down her spine, her entire body stiffening.
“Well, if you get too scared, you can always run straight to me. I’m strong, so I might make an exception and protect you.”
“……”

Hearing something like that… was infuriating.
Elodie shot up from her seat.
Then, from her arms, she pulled out the Holy Hammer, its white glow shimmering.

“What’s that toy supposed to be?”
Elodie swung the hammer with a bang.
A mouse hole appeared in the wall.

Zeno’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull as he stared, his mouth hanging open in shock.
“T-this, no… What the…?”
He turned his gaze back and forth between the gaping hole in the wall and Elodie, who stood there with an adorably tiny hammer in her hand, smiling brightly.

Lifting the hammer as if she were about to swing again, Elodie took a step toward Zeno.
“Come h're. (Come here.)”
“Y-you’re insane! Stay back!”

“Good boy, I’ll go easy on you. (Be good, and I’ll be gentle.)”
“AAAHH!”
…Alright, that was enough teasing.

Giggling, Elodie transformed into a harvest mouse and disappeared into the hole.
Realizing far too late that he had been toyed with, Zeno shouted, “Hey!”—but the mouse hole had already sealed itself shut in an instant.
***

“Inferno! Inferno!”
[Young Mistress, how could you come so late when I told you I would teach you personally? If you start slacking off already, how do you expect to master all the books here in this lifetime?]
No, I was planning on coming sooner, but I’ve been ridiculously busy.

Elodie half-listened to the fire spirit’s nagging, letting it in one ear and out the other.
“Hey, do you think prosopagnosia can be cured? Is there a book here that has a treatment for it?”
[Hmm, I don’t think so.]

The fire flickered wildly, as if it were shaking its head.
This translation is the intellectual property of .
Elodie had always thought prosopagnosia was an incurable condition, but… could it be that even the divine powers of the Ratson lineage couldn’t fix it?

Just as her expression started to fall with disappointment—
[But that’s not because it can’t be cured. It’s probably just because there was never any need to write it down.]
“Of course!”

See? I knew it!
[It depends on the cause, but if it was triggered by external trauma—like a head injury—you should be able to fix it, Young Mistress.]
There were conditions attached, though.

Elodie pulled out the book the fire spirit was pointing to, "All About Trauma Treatment."
[But unlike regular injuries, treating the head is different. The patient’s own will is crucial.]
“For example?”

[If they don’t really care whether they get better or not, if they don’t believe it’s possible, if they don’t want to be cured, if they think it’s too much trouble…]
…Every single thing it said felt like a direct jab at Eisen.
But—

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
Elodie had no doubts about it.
* * *

“Brother, just hypothetically speaking, if—if, by some chance.”
“If I’m gone, please take care of my wife and Cassian.”
“Come on, you don’t have to say something so ominous. But… you’re right. No one knows what could happen.”

The County of Abernity was peaceful.
He and his younger brother lived completely different lives. One of them stood at the frontlines of war, constantly drenched in blood and flesh. The other ruled over a land of golden prosperity, safe and untroubled.
One was called the Lord of the Bountiful Golden Lands.

The other was known as a bloodthirsty warmonger, a fiend on the battlefield.
Their titles could not be more different.
Eisen found it absurd.

If we’re talking common sense—who do you think will die first, you or me?
When he had asked that, his brother had only given him an awkward laugh.
“But honestly, I can’t even imagine you dying, Brother.”

His younger brother, the Count of Abernity, always had a habit of smiling sheepishly.
Just like that man who appeared years later, claiming to be Cassian.
Eisen remembered scolding the Count for always leaving his clothes in disarray.

“My son takes after me too much—it worries me. He’s too careless. He needs to be more put-together than I was.”
Had Eisen told him to focus on fixing himself first?
He recalled Cassian calling him "Uncle" while approaching, a loose button hanging from his shirt.

It was clear he had tried to appear neat. His clothes were ironed—albeit awkwardly—but the stray hairs sticking out at the back of his head were proof that he hadn’t even bothered brushing them.
It was a plausible thought.
If Cassian had been picked up and raised by peasants, completely untrained, he would probably have ended up looking exactly like this.

Eisen pulled out an old, crumpled piece of paper.
A portrait of his family from his younger days.
It had long since lost its meaning, collecting dust. But during wartime, he had looked at it so often that it had worn out at the edges.

"Does he look like us?"
But he couldn’t tell.
“Grandpa.”

Eisen looked down at the child who had suddenly popped up.
He couldn’t see the little one’s face, but beyond his mahogany desk, a pair of ears twitched, making their presence impossible to ignore.
“You treat my office like your own room now.”

“Lemme see. (Let me see.)”
Elodie reached out her hand without hesitation.
Eisen chuckled softly and let the portrait fall into her palm.

“Grandpa handsome. (Grandpa’s really handsome.)”
“Does that even matter?”
No, really. It wasn’t just a throwaway comment—he had been shockingly handsome.

There was a rawness to the way his features were drawn, striking and powerful. If the god of war had ever descended to this earth, wouldn’t he have looked like this?
Of course, it was only natural for a handsome young man to grow into a handsome old man.
Even now, remnants of that face remained.

But the passage of time was merciless.
“Why’d ya turn out like this… (Why’d you end up like this…?)”
“Try getting old yourself.”

His response was indifferent, without the slightest hint of regret.
Aging was loss.
It meant losing what you once had.

No matter how tightly you tried to hold on, everything slipped away between your fingers.
Clinging to it, obsessing over it—doing so would only make you pathetic. In the end, the only choice was to let go.
Eisen was an old man who understood, better than anyone, how to avoid becoming pathetic.

He had always been that way.
"I was once an old mouse too."
Elodie thought back to that version of herself.

Her fur had thinned, her joints ached, her body lacked strength. Eating was difficult, digestion was even worse.
But the cruelest part of it all…
Was the gradual erosion of memory.

Living among humans as a mere harvest mouse, she had been unable to communicate with anyone except the Fairy Godmother.
Not even with Sera.
They had shared a deep bond, but they had never truly spoken.

So all she had left were the memories locked in her own mind.
And when those began to fade too…
It was—

Indescribably painful.
She had been old before. That was why she understood.
She understood just how remarkable Eisen was—to accept loss so naturally, to erase the glories of his past without hesitation.

It even made her feel a kind of respect.
That was why he lived his life with such completeness.
But—

Elodie didn’t want Eisen to empty himself any further.
She didn’t want him to give up.
Even if the radiant light of his youth had dimmed, even if those days had faded into the past—

She wanted him to hold onto the warmth still left in his life.
Because who in the world would dare call that pathetic?