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Noche was born in a small town near Forligen.

Her mother was a felician with the same black fur as Noche—a young woman from the Great Forest in the southeastern part of the continent. Perhaps because of her fur, which was considered an ill omen, she could no longer stay in her hometown; she was a heroic woman who crossed the Dragon Mountains Belt while pregnant.

She managed to escape and gave birth to her daughter in a corner of the town where she settled. From then on, she put her hunting skills to good use, raising Noche while making a living as an adventurer.

However, the contempt and discrimination toward beastfolk in the western part of the continent were severe; being refused service at shops was a daily occurrence.

Even when they were overcharged, she considered herself lucky just to be sold anything at all.

Because it was a rural area, the small adventurers’ guild was deeply entangled with local power brokers, yet the rules prevented them from being driven out. Her plight was so dire that even that place—where she was treated blatantly poorly—became a source of solace.

She did not break. She always laughed cheerfully, detested dishonesty, and taught her daughter to live righteously.

Even the people who had treated her harshly at first began to form bonds with her as they spent more time together. It probably helped that, aside from her fur, she had delicate, well-proportioned features and was a beautiful woman with a slender, supple build.

But, even a mother like that never once showed Noche to her fellow adventurers.

As if hiding her daughter, they moved from one hideout to another, living in the slums.

Unlike herself—who was strong enough to escape—she knew full well how her young daughter, a target of persecution by both beastfolk and commonfolk alike, would be treated in a town of commonfolk…

She simply wasn’t so foolish as to be unable to imagine it.

“Listen, Noche. Never do anything that would make you unable to hold your head high, nya. There’s such a thing as honor in this world, nya.”

Her mother, usually gentle, would fly into a terrible rage whenever Noche committed a misdeed.

“Lacking honor will turn people away from you, nya. But those who live by their honor will invite good people to you, nya.”

That was her golden rule—an absolute principle she had imposed on herself in a life that could by no means be called fortunate.

“Got it, nya? No matter how hard or painful it gets, no matter how much you want to give up, do your best to live righteously, nya. The path you carve out by living that way will help you someday.”

Theft, violence… all the acts of preying on the weak that were commonplace in the slums. Everyone else was doing it as a matter of course, so why was she the only one getting scolded?

Though she resented it, Noche obeyed those words.

Because, to Noche, her mother was her whole world.

■■■■■

Her mother died two years before she met Alice and Sufi.

She had laughed it off as a “blunder,” but her body had been slowly being eaten away by poison.

The cause was her beauty—which made her appear youthful to ordinary people. The men of the town had laced her drink with poison, intending to assault her while she was weakened.

So she killed them—slitting every single one of their throats.

However, the poison used was a troublesome substance. For ordinary people, it merely caused temporary numbness, but for beastfolk without the proper antibodies, it was fatal unless an antidote was administered.

An antidote was impossible to find in such a small town. Even if there had been any in stock, having killed the townspeople, she would only have been hunted down as a murderer.

She left town with Noche. Walking aimlessly, they eventually arrived at a small hut near another town.

After bringing her daughter that far, she finally ran out of strength. Her last words were “Live righteously”—a phrase she had repeated like a mantra.

Left behind, Noche cried for a while, then buried her mother’s body in the ground. It took her several days to do so with her small frame.

As she tried to enter the town, starving, someone threw a stone at her.

She managed to squeeze through a crack in the wall and made her way into the slums, but unable to endure the daily persecution, she fled to a cluster of ruins where monsters lurked—a place no one dared to approach.

Day after day, she lived hating the commonfolk and cursing the gods and the world for failing to save either her or her mother.

Noche met a lepician girl who, like her, had just lost her parents, and they began living together.

The girl was a year older than Noche and remarkably knowledgeable for her age. When Noche asked her, she learned why she was being persecuted and why her mother had to be treated so cruelly.

Once she learned the truth, Noche even came to curse her own hair color—the very one her mother had once praised as being as beautiful as the night sky.

As her frustration grew day by day, the lepician she lived with brought home new children.

Twins—wolfen with fur as white as snow, so beautiful it was obvious even when they were dirty.

She was consumed by jealousy; she even considered beating them mercilessly—even though they were younger than her—and chasing them away.

If her mother’s last words hadn’t stopped her, if she hadn’t been talked out of it… instead of tucking a blanket around her younger sister wolf as she slept peacefully, she might have torn off her fur and left indelible claw marks on her face.

And so began Noche’s days of patience.

The younger sister, with her unique personality and inability to read the room, and the cheeky older sister, always trying to one-up her.

The days filled with mounting frustration and jealousy began to change little by little when the twin sisters realized they hadn’t really been paying any attention to Noche’s fur color at all.

While she was arguing with a human child who was mocking her coat, she nearly burst out laughing when she heard the child say they didn’t even know what the color meant in the first place.

From what Filia had said, it felt like common knowledge among beastfolk, and even commonfolk often shunned her, calling it the color of a monster that brought misfortune.

Maybe even her mother’s death was…

The laid-back little wolf sister scoffed at that thought.

“What, just a superstition then.”

The little wolf sister claimed—whether it’s true or not—that she held an alchemist’s license. Even Noche knew that brilliant scholars were respected throughout the country.

Those slum children and adventurers couldn’t even read or write. And yet the alchemist—far superior to the commonfolk who had looked down on her—laughed off their words.

Noche began to acknowledge the twins—just a little bit.

Even so, despair never went away. No matter how righteously she lived, injustice and misfortune come with malice.

Even when she was starving, she never resorted to theft, and never used violence except in self-defense.

And no matter how much she disliked them, she never abandoned the two youngest.

As a result, she found herself caught up in a life-or-death game of tag with adventurers.

The reason she didn’t abandon the twins back then, and the reason she volunteered to be the decoy, wasn’t because she was following my mother’s last wishes.

It was because she was already exhausted.

When she realized this was the result of living righteously—no matter how painful or difficult it was—she gave up and threw her life away.

All that remained in her heart was the stubborn determination to honor her mother’s last wishes until the very end—and a desire to look cool.

What Noche hadn’t counted on was that there were two others besides her who were just as stubborn and desperate to look cool.

The older wolf sister, ready to sacrifice her life without hesitation to protect her younger sister. And the younger wolf sister, insisting she’d rather die together than let her older sister die for her escape.

She envied them, and it stung a little.

It was when they were retrieving a strange artifact at a peculiar ruin they’d found, and were attacked by a monster before they could even finish their conversation.

Terrified of death, Noche almost wet herself and started wailing. She even thought she didn’t want to die, how pathetic.

But she survived. Thanks to the power of some mysterious tool, the monster was defeated, and they managed to make it back alive.

Invited by the twins, Noche ended up joining them on their journey.

The reason was simple and clear: they didn’t deny the word “friend” that she’d blurted out on impulse back then. That’s all.

“That’s how I set out on a journey with them, nya.”

In the middle of a snowfield where powdery snow swirled, Noche sat back-to-back with her mother and finished recounting everything that had happened so far.

“I see. That must have been tough, nya.”

The reply, delivered in a distinctive felician accent, was her mother’s voice—one that had been fading from her memory.

“Noche, are you happy now, nya?”
“Well, I don’t know, nya.”

A clueless younger wolf, a sassy older wolf, and Filia as the one and only reliable companion. As the self-proclaimed leader, this situation seemed to be giving her a headache.

“But it’s fun, nya.”

Whether they’re sassy or clueless, the twin wolves’ carefree demeanor is refreshing. Filia, who thinks things through, is easy to get along with.

At first, she’d been nothing but anxious about how things would turn out on this journey with the four of them, but now she even found it comfortable and enjoyable.

“Mom.”
“Hm.”
“I guess, you weren’t wrong after all, nya.”
“I see.”

If Noche had kept stealing and stayed stuck in the slums, she probably never would have crossed paths with the twins. If she’d abandoned them just to save her own skin, their bond would have been severed.

Now she spent her evenings gathered around the table with good-natured friends, playing unfamiliar games that the younger wolf sister dragged out of the warehouse.

The supplies and mysterious tools she acquired were convenient and useful. Still, to Noche, those things were just a bonus.

Friends who would dive into dangerous places with her—friends she could trust with her life.

That was something she’d grasped after sticking to her resolve to honor her mother’s last wish, no matter how painful or difficult it was.

“So, I’m off now, nya. My friends are waiting for me, nya”
“Alright, do your best, nya.”

As Noche stood up, the horizon of the snowy plain in her field of vision had turned into a blue sky dotted with clouds.

The snow had already stopped.

“Mom… I’m off now, nya.”
“You’ll be fine now, nya. Get along well with your friends, nya!”

Noche raised her hand briefly and started walking without looking back.

“Nya!”

With just that one word, she replied cheerfully. There was no longer any hesitation in her step.