The first thing that caught his eye was her hair, dyed pitch-black.

“Hngh. The little thing who used to be my spitting image has gone and turned into Leviathan’s twin instead......”

The first time he saw it, he had felt so wronged he could hardly stand it.

“What do you mean, move? Move aside! I’m dyeing my hair too! I took pride in the fact that it was the same color as my baby girl’s!”

“Waaah, Grandpa, you’re white-haired! I’m silver-haired!”

“What’s the difference?”

“It is different! Anyway, it is!”

Rubian had shouted that and bolted far away. Just remembering it made a chuckle escape him.

“Pretty thing.”

His precious thing.

And a child like that had seen a battlefield?

Sure, she might have grown up a little rough in Iosia, but even so, that was ridiculous.

With a deeply satisfied look on his face, he took in his granddaughter, whom he was seeing again after ten days.

I wish we could have met sooner.

If they had, this old man would have taken care of every hard, painful thing for her.

Well, he could do it from now on.

He was going to have much more time with this little darling from here on out.

Has she grown a little?

Balrok lightly brushed a hand over Rubian’s round forehead. At once, her brows scrunched.

“Mmm. Tickly....... Beard attack...... forbidden.......”

“Whoops. Almost woke you.”

He hurriedly pulled his hand back and rose to his feet.

He had seen her face. That was enough.

All the tangled thoughts that had been blooming inside him felt strangely, suddenly sorted out.

Right. What was there to agonize over?

Well, when that Leviathan brat gets here tomorrow, I’ll just ask him.

Surely it was nothing serious.

Surely.

Balrok was tiptoeing back through the corridor toward the townhouse when his steps came to an abrupt stop.

“......Huh?”

It was because he spotted a figure standing in the middle of the vast townhouse hallway like a ghost.

“When did you get here? And what are you doing here?”

The man had not even taken off his disguise yet.

Leviathan turned his head slowly.

“Ah. You’re still awake.”

In the dark of night, half his face lay in shadow, making it difficult to read his expression.

“Yeah. I’m asking what you’re doing out here.”

“I was just about to go in.”

“Ah, right. Good timing, then. Come talk with me a minute.”

Balrok beckoned at Leviathan.

But Leviathan gave a faint shake of his head.

“My apologies, but I’m rather tired, so another time......”

“......?”

What did I just hear?

Balrok dug a thick finger into his ear.

“Tiiired?”

The corners of his mouth stretched as far as they could go.

Wasn’t that the freshest, most creative thing he had heard all year?

“......You do seem to forget this from time to time, but I am human too.”

Leviathan answered flatly.

“Ah, is that so? I know now.”

“So, if you’ll excuse me.”

Step. Step.

The sound of footsteps retreated.

Balrok stared after him for a moment, then roughly raked a hand through the back of his hair.

Tch, should I say it or not?

“It’s about Ruby.”

But in the end, he lost to the face of the granddaughter he had just seen.

And it was something he ought to discuss with Leviathan too.

Because Leviathan was Rubian’s father.

The smooth, unbroken rhythm of his son’s stride halted as though it had been a lie.

“What is it? Have you, well, found any new traces in Iosia or something like that?”

“......Why ask that all of a sudden?”

Slowly, the black shadow turned around.

As if by magic, the air around them changed in an instant.

“You are asking me that?”

Only then did Balrok realize it.

Leviathan was in a very, very bad mood right now.

He had seemed calm, so Balrok had missed it, but he was no different from a man standing on the edge of explosion.

“Father.”

Leviathan took one step closer.

“I asked why you were asking that.”

Look at that.

He was being way too polite.

This is bad.

Balrok hesitated one last time, then decided to just tell the truth. It was not as though he knew how to circle around a subject elegantly in the first place.

“No, it’s just that Liam said something strange!”

“Something strange?”

“He asked whether our little runt had ever experienced a battlefield with Khalid, or whatever!”

“......”

A dreadful silence descended all around them.

“Liam...... said that.”

It was Leviathan’s murmur that finally broke it.

“Yeah.”

“......”

“It’s nothing serious, right? Right?”

Balrok pressed. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Leviathan stared into empty air for a long time before finally lifting his head.

“Yes.”

The answer was crisp.

He looked at Balrok and smiled faintly.

“So stop worrying about useless things and get some sleep first.”

“What, just now...... did you just smile at me?”

What the hell is wrong with this bastard?

Even under Balrok’s deeply suspicious stare, Leviathan said nothing more and turned away.

And at that moment, thunk.

As if it were a lie, the sword slipped from his hand.

“......Leviathan? You.......”

“Ah.”

His large body bent without fuss, picked the fallen sword up off the floor, and turned his back again as if nothing had happened.

“Get some rest.”

“That bastard, seriously.......”

Balrok drew his brows together hard.

He had taught Leviathan the sword for decades.

His son, yes, but a monstrous one all the same.

He could swear on it: not once, not even by mistake, had he ever seen Leviathan drop a real sword after the day he first received one from him.

Losing hold of one’s sword was no different from disgrace to a knight.

“What in the world...... happened out there?”

The mutter slipped out bitterly.

He had thought seeing Rubian would finally let him breathe again.

Apparently, his sleepless night was not over after all.

*****

Delcan Ruins. Mage King. Currently in seclusion. No notable movement expected for the time being.

Allen’s letter was concise.

An ordinary status report. The end.

If not for the tiny scribble crammed into the corner of the little piece of paper.

Hey, you little punk. I almost got caught by Duke Zebbert and died.

The moment he read that, Leviathan knew something had gone wrong.

Why didn’t you tell me the Duke was coming? But whatever, I got to see the princess’s face too, so it’s fine~

The tone was every bit as glib as the man looked.

Leviathan sat alone in his bedroom, crushing the letter in his hand.

The only mercenary brat who could report my movements......

He could not even remember how he had made it back to the capital.

...is Khalid.

“That our little runt had ever experienced a battlefield with Khalid!”

That mercenary bastard was working on Khalid’s orders.

Then who was the “princess” the letter referred to?

Anyone bold enough to monitor the Mage King’s movements would either be his enemy...... or someone running from him.

His grip tightened hard. Blue veins stood out across the back of the hand clutching the armrest.

If that’s true......

He shut his eyes in misery.

Then the runaway mage......

Please. Someone stop this thought.

“Daddy, Daddy! Hide me!”

A memory from long ago.

Sometimes, while he was in his office wrestling with paperwork, the child would burst the door open with a bang.

“What is it?”

“My brothers are chasing me!”

And then she would wriggle under his legs.

The cheeks glowing ruby-red beneath the desk had been so adorable he could hardly bear it.

And those tiny hands that had patted at his legs, saying she would massage them to repay him for hiding her.

Hide-and-seek.......

The word struck him now with a completely different weight than it ever had before.

The disordered memories flipped past like rough pages riffling beneath a hand.

The page they stopped on was a memory from Ipsen.

“Ah, it was this.”

Rosetta, who had been lounging in the bedroom, suddenly sat upright.

The place her gaze fell was, of all things, a tapestry hanging on the wall.

One embroidered with a map of the continent.

“It looked like this.......”

“What did?”

“The shadow I saw on Rubian’s back at the hot spring yesterday. It looked just like those branches.”

Rosetta smiled coldly.

“But for it to be the Magic Kingdom’s crest. Tch. I feel sorry to Rubian.”

“......Do you ever see things wrong?”

“Oh, come on. It’s {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} not like I’m all-powerful.”

“......Is that so.”

Words he had treated as unimportant.

The scattered pieces, each one lying apart from the others, began one by one to take on meaning, settle into place, and complete the whole.

Why had Rubian hidden that she was a girl?

That question was the beginning again.

What if it wasn’t simply because she was afraid of being abandoned.......

What if there had been a different reason, something more complicated?

“Your Grace, this time as well, we found no traces at all in Iosia.”

If that was why they had found no record of Rubian anywhere in Iosia......

“Daddy, Daddy! Hide me!”

If she had hidden herself in his shadow because she was trying to escape someone’s grasp...... and if, in the end, that child......

Rubian......

If she was a mage of the Magic Kingdom.

“Ah.......”

A short groan escaped Leviathan as he bent over.

The way she had looked to the sun to tell the time.

The things she muttered in her nightmares.

The child’s face as she had run toward him during the fourth’s explosion.

“Mister.”

What Rubian had hidden......

“The war is over?”

Had it really been only her sex?

He realized then that he could no longer be certain of anything about that question.