The little spider was like a child whose secret had been exposed by accident. In the awkward silence that was so unbearable it made you want to dig a hole and hide, she clearly wanted to say something, but the shame stuck in her throat. Her small mouth kept opening and closing like a fish out of water.
'Waaah! What am I supposed to do? I want to die! Please don't suddenly talk to me! With my communication skills, even if you suddenly ask me something like this, I have no idea how to answer! Calm down! Calm down! A time machine! There has to be one somewhere in the world! If I look hard enough, I'll find it! Hurry up and calm down! Calm down!', The little spider stared at him with her mouth hanging open as if she had turned to stone. Inside, she desperately tried to force out a few words to break the suffocating silence.
"C-Calm... down!", she kept shouting to herself, trying to settle herself. But the words slipped out by mistake, leaving Ash confused.
"I've been calm the whole time?"
"Ah... I-I said it out loud?"
"Let's take a deep breath first," Seeing her face completely red and her helpless panic, Ash walked over, gently patted her on the head, and said in a calm voice, "Now breathe out~"
"B-Breathe... out...", The little spider obeyed without thinking, like someone drowning grabbing onto anything they could.
"Breathe out," Ash continued. His voice stayed steady.
"Hoo...", Her breathing became uneven, and her face grew even redder from holding it.
"Keep breathing out. Don't breathe in."
"Hoo... hoo... hoooo!"
Still flustered, the girl believed his nonsense and kept breathing out until her face instantly turned bright red.
Only when she became dizzy did she realize she had almost passed out from breathing out too much. She immediately raised both hands and started pounding on Ash like raindrops while shouting,
"Y-You liar!"
The way she pouted was angry, yet a little childish, making Ash laugh.
"Come on, when did I lie? Tell me, are you calm now?"
"N-No! If anything... I'm even angrier!"
"Then count prime numbers."
"W-What's your trick this time?", Having just fallen for him once, the little spider looked as cautious as a startled rabbit.
Ash simply spread his hands, "Don't be so wary of me. Would I really hurt you?"
"Yes!", For the first time, she answered without hesitation. She didn't stutter at all, and there was still some anger in her voice.
"Now that's just unfair...", He shook his head with an exaggerated look of disappointment, as though he had been wrongly accused, "I already told you, that was training. If I hadn't pushed you a little, would you have grown half a human body by now?"
"..."
She said nothing, but leaned back a little to put some distance between them. Her eyes were still full of doubt.
"Can you stop looking at me like you don't trust me? Forget the little disagreements. At least this part is true, right?"
Ash sighed heavily with an injured expression, as if he had suffered a terrible injustice.
Then, as casually as performing a magic trick, he took an elegant table out of another dimension along with the hot cooked food he had just bought in town.
The smell spread through the air at once, cutting her guard in half.
Even though she was practically drooling, she still didn't let her guard down completely. Like a small animal watching a crafty hunter, she kept staring at Ash carefully, clearly worried there was some trap.
"I brought it for you. I saw you were all alone, so I came to keep you company. But you..."
"Really... you're that nice?", The doubt in her eyes eased a little, though she still wasn't sure.
After all, she had just been tricked. The embarrassment and frustration were still fresh in her mind.
"Put your hand on your heart and think about it. Have I ever really bullied you just for the sake of bullying you? Didn't everything I do end up helping you?"
The little spider lowered her head and carefully thought back over everything that had happened.
After a while, she quietly said, "I... guess not?"
"Of course not! Hurry up and apologize!"
"S-Sorry..."
The truth was, the moment Ash took the food out of another dimension, she had already guessed why he came back.
Thinking about how she had misunderstood him and even attacked him, she felt a little guilty.
Still... while apologizing, the memory of him seeing her in that embarrassing situation came rushing back. As she apologized, she stiffly turned her head aside, unable to meet his eyes.
Ash immediately frowned, "You should look at someone when you apologize. Didn't your family teach you that?"
"Not close."
"I mean your human parents, not the Queen Taratect."
"Not close either."
"Seriously?", Ash stared at her.
"Really."
Her voice was barely above a whisper, yet it was perfectly clear in the quiet room.
"..."
'What do I do? I think I stepped on a landmine.'
Her unexpected answer made him suddenly feel like a terrible person for scolding her earlier.
To ease the awkward mood, he silently took out a chair from another dimension, sat down, cleared his throat, and said,
"Anyway... let's eat."
"O-Okay..."
'See? You said something wrong too! Why aren't you apologizing to me? That's not fair! But I'm different from you! I'm kind, so I won't hold it against you! You should hurry up and thank me!', While complaining endlessly in her head to make herself feel better, the little spider quietly lay beside him and started eating.
Actually, she wasn't as unwilling as she pretended to be.
The fact that Ash had come back to find her with food made her genuinely happy.
If that painfully embarrassing moment hadn't happened earlier, she might even have hummed a cheerful tune in front of him.
Of course, if it had been anyone else, she would never have felt that way, much less started humming.
After all... ever since shortly after she hatched, they had been together the whole time.
It felt as though time had flown by, but when she counted it carefully, more than a year had already passed.
During the quiet dinner, although things felt awkward at first, the atmosphere gradually returned to normal as both of the little spider's heads happily stuffed themselves with food.
While chatting casually, Ash also learned more about her past.
She had gone to school, but in reality she had lived almost like a shut-in.
She never spoke to anyone at school. Once she got home, she went online and played games. Her meals were either instant noodles or frozen food, with convenience store lunch boxes once in a while.
She couldn't remember much about her childhood. She only remembered that both of her parents worked, came home late, and even then rarely saw each other, only doing basic chores on their own.
They lived under the same roof like strangers, to the point that she couldn't even remember what her parents looked like... which was unbelievable in its own way.
As for whether they would be sad after she died... she personally didn't think so. The only thing they might miss was the money she earned from stock trading.
She often made a little money from stocks and used it as rent for them. Other than that, they were distant to an unbelievable degree... Maybe that kind of life was why she had grown so tired of talking to people.
In this life, the person she had talked to the most was still Ash... and that was only counting the time after they were actually able to communicate.
After listening to her story, Ash quietly looked at the blood-red sunset after dinner and rested with his eyes half closed.
After a while, he slowly shifted over and lay down beside her.
The movement came naturally, as if they had done this countless times before. He leaned lightly against the spider head and habitually reached out to stroke the side of her spider body.
As though thinking out loud, he said, "Your life before was really... Well, from now on, I'll teach you some common sense about society."
His voice sounded warm in the evening light.
But the little spider looked at him as though she had just heard the most unbelievable thing in the world.
'Are you serious? You? Teach me? Can someone like you really raise a decent person? To begin with, you don't even seem like a normal person yourself!', She had been finding the rubbing on her stomach a little ticklish, but after hearing that, the look she gave him became very strange.
"Don't look at me like that! I actually know a thing or two about raising kids!"
"Like what?"
"You mean what kind of experience?"
"What happened to the children you taught?"
"..."
Her curious gaze left him silent for a long while.
Finally, he looked up at the sky and awkwardly changed the subject, "The weather's nice today. It probably won't rain tomorrow."
"..."
'So he really can't answer! I knew it! You never looked like a proper adult anyway! And you still want to teach me?', If the little spider weren't so socially anxious, she definitely would have laughed at him.
Instead, she only gave him a look of disgust, let out a long sigh, rested her head on her own spider back, and stopped talking.
For a while, the two quietly watched night fall together. The mood was hard to describe.
Then, once it was completely dark, Ash used Spatial Transfer and brought the little spider with him to an inn inside the city.
Her body was far too large to fit on a bed, so she could only lie on the floor while watching Ash comfortably stretch out on the bed with obvious envy.
'Still, no matter what, this is much better than sleeping outside, hehe!'
The little spider happily swayed a little in the warm room while watching Ash continue reading with great interest.
A faint smile appeared on her usually expressionless face without her noticing.
———
The next day, everyone happily prepared to leave the city.
As usual, Ash carried Sophia out through the city gate first, then used Spatial Transfer to bring the little spider outside the gate.
While the little spider walked ahead, controlling spider silk to make Sophia run hard for training, Ariel quietly slipped over to Ash like a curious kitten.
Tilting her head, she stared at him without blinking, as though trying to read something from his face.
"What? Why do you keep staring at me?", Feeling uncomfortable under her gaze, Ash reached out, placed a hand on Ariel's head, and forcibly turned her face away.
"I was just wondering... You don't actually have some weird thing for spiders, do you?", Ariel turned her head right back and continued staring at him.
"You can accuse me of liking girls or older women, but calling me a spider lover is getting a little personal, don't you think?"
Ash asked with a dark expression, feeling like he had just been slandered for no reason.
"But Shiro is a spider," Ariel insisted.
"I'm just kind enough not to leave someone I know all alone. That's all. There's nothing weird about it. I'm simply concerned about her. You're imagining things."
Ash looked helplessly at the energetic girl before saying bluntly, "And you. You're three thousand years old, not a thirty-year-old kid. What exactly are you thinking about every day?"
"Because~ you keep touching her butt and her stomach," Ariel said with a sly smile.
"Let me make this clear. I'm touching the spider. Besides those places, I've patted her head too. And think about it. Other than her abdomen, what part of a spider is actually soft?"
Ash tried to defend himself. At least he thought everything he did was perfectly normal.
Ariel still looked unconvinced.
"Couldn't you just... not touch her?"
"Touch is the best way to communicate feelings. And by the way, I'm a respectable person, so stop ruining my reputation with weird questions."
"You're respectable?", Ariel looked at him with obvious doubt.
"You can question my preferences, but don't call me indecent."
"So I can question your preferences? Isn't that basically the same thing?"
"The difference is huge!"
Although Ash felt he had been suspected for no reason and had done his best to explain himself, he was sure the girl walking ahead with her hands behind her back, hopping as she didn't believe a word.
If he chased after her to argue, those strange rumors would probably only spread further, so he gave up.
His eyes shifted, and he suddenly sat down on the little spider's huge body.
As the human half immediately turned around in panic, he slid down along her back until he reached behind her.
"W-What?"
The strange situation made her entire body freeze. Even her spider body stopped moving completely.
Ash simply placed both hands on her shoulders and nodded to himself.
"Looking at it this way, it's kind of like riding a horse with a girl."
'W-What are you talking about? I'm not a horse! And who sits on a girl's neck? Even if I do have two necks! Isn't this super weird? Get down already!', The little spider frantically shook her head, causing her spider body to sway violently as she desperately tried to throw Ash off.
But Ash simply wrapped an arm around the girl's slim waist in front of him, easily keeping himself in place.
Then he grinned, "You used to climb onto my back all the time."
"I-It's different!"
His expression made her both annoyed and amused as she forced the words out, blushing while turning back to protest.
If she had been completely human, maybe this would have seemed normal.
But the body underneath was also her body.
'You're sitting on my neck? What is this supposed to be! I'm going to roll over! I really am! If you end up underneath me, don't blame me!', The little spider stared at Ash without saying a word, trying to threaten him in silence.
But... it really was a completely silent threat.
Even after knowing her for so long, Ash still had no idea what she was thinking.
Like someone completely carefree, he simply ignored her unspoken protest with a smile and even pinched her cheek.
She got mad, actually mad for a moment.
But just like always, she couldn't get a single angry word out before Ash had already finished teasing her.
Watching this from the side, Ariel's expression toward Ash became even stranger.
Even Sophia, who was running ahead, looked at Ash oddly.
For some reason, she started running even harder, as though competing with something.
Ash decisively ignored all those strange looks.
He had no interest in getting dragged into bizarre misunderstandings or endless questioning.
As far as he was concerned, everything he was doing was completely normal and perfectly reasonable. They just didn't understand.
After all, wasn't it only natural to tease the spider he had raised himself?
Was that wrong?
Was it even illegal?