Volume 1 - Top-Tier Character Ayanokōji-kun [DISCONTINUED] [READ THE REVISION]

Chapter 9 - Fabricating Falsities

Poppol, the boy, grew up in an enormous forest.

It was inhabited by many different species—giant bats, humans, elves, chimeras and many more.

Many grotesque creatures lived in the forest.

But they did not engage in needless conflict—for they all shared the same language.

All these different species had their own place, their own home.

Every single one of them belonged somewhere.

What about Poppol?

He was raised by a human father and an elf mother. Just another individual living on the island.

Is what you would normally think—however, friendships, let alone couples, across different species were rare and looked down upon.

A taboo, so to say.

Poppol and his family had to live on the fringes of forest society. They were not accepted into any human or elf village.

...

One day, Poppol returned from playing in the river to find his home, the straw hut he had been living in his entire life, destroyed.

Stained with blood it was.

Poppol couldn't believe his eyes. He desperately tried to search for his parents, but to no avail.

He only found his mother's slender finger that had so often ruffled his hair lying on the floor.

There was nothing left of his human father.

Poppol silently wept for three nights.

Then he realized something—the same could happen to him.

The food chain of the forest was an inescapable law. 

While Poppol himself had grown up hunting lizards and grilling fish over the fire, he was far too weak to be considered an actual threat in the eyes of everyone else on the island.

Poppol was left alone in the world. The last people that cared about him vanished.

He only had one choice—to move on or give up.

With no family anymore, Poppol chose the first option and set out.

He wanted to find new friends, new companions that would help him survive.

But his origins hindered any chance of that ever happening.

Wherever he went, whatever village, they all shunned him.

Why?

Because he was an anomaly. An irregularity.

A half-human half-elf child.

He was considered to be too "elven" for the human villages. He was considered to be too "human" for the elven villages.