And strangely enough, Dad doesn’t seem to be in a very good mood...

As we walked down the corridor, I snuck a glance up at his composed face.

Did something happen on that business trip after all?

I thought it over carefully, but nothing specific came to mind. In the first place, I didn’t even really know what kind of trip it had been.

We headed to a lounge on the upper floor of the building with the banquet hall.

Since the presentation went on for quite a long time, it seemed each family had been given its own room.

Thunk.

The moment the large door shut, it felt like we had stepped into an entirely different world from the noisy banquet hall.

The room was full of nothing but stillness and silence.

Dad is... different somehow from usual.

I sat quietly on the sofa, watching him light the lamp.

When I talk to him, he seems the same as always.

But when he stayed silent like this, there was something strange about him, a sense of wrongness I couldn’t quite place.

Was I imagining it?

“Ah, right. I bought you a gift on the way back.”

Dad sat down right beside me after brightening the room a little.

“Huh? A gift?”

“Chubby macarons.”

“Chubby macarons? Really?”

“You know them?”

My eyes widened a little.

Because I had heard about them from Sortie, who knew every famous dessert place by heart.

“Yeah! They’re supposed to be really famous!”

“...So it wasn’t completely wrong, then.”

“What do you mean? More importantly, where are they?”

“Over there, near Father’s outer coat...”

Dad pointed toward the inner room attached to one side of the suite. It was a small dressing room.

I jumped to my feet.

“I’ll get them!”

“No, Father will—”

“I stomped all over your feet! You should rest a little!”

Something this small, at least!

I ran into the dressing room at once. Sure enough, I spotted a large jacket that had to be Dad’s.

It had been hung up on a hanger, but maybe it had slipped, because a big box was lying underneath it.

Pink wrapping. Tied with a blue ribbon.

My dessert experience was short, but even I could tell.

That was a chubby macaron box!

I hurried over and grabbed the jacket. With all its ornaments hanging off it, it was heavier than I expected.

“Hng. Is it because you’re built like a whole mountain? Why is even your coat so big and heavyaaah...”

In the end, ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) I gave the jacket a hard yank—

and maybe that was the problem.

Something flew out of the jacket pocket.

And then—

Crash!

“...Huh?”

Along with that sharp shattering sound, something familiar broke into pieces.

*****

Leviathan swallowed a sigh and buried his face in both hands.

His hands were trembling faintly.

Calm down. Don’t let it show.

Rubian was a sharp child.

He did not want to make her shrink into herself over his own worries, the way she had in the carriage last time.

Besides, today was the day of the child’s presentation, the first time he had seen her in ten days.

She’s enjoying herself so much.

There were mountains of things he wanted to ask, but he scraped together every last shred of patience he had.

Ask after it’s over.

At least after Ruby’s presentation ended. Then. Slowly, one thing at a time.

Yes. There may still be some mistake. Her appearance is still different, and her age...

He recalled the features of the runaway mage he had repeated to himself like a prayer.

Red eyes. A mage around ten years old with powerful magic.

Before, that had been the strongest proof preventing him from drawing an equal sign between Rubian and the runaway mage.

Was sex really the only thing Ruby hid?

The moment that sentence crossed his mind, everything overturned.

“...Damn it.”

Leviathan clenched his teeth. The inside of him had already burned black and turned to ash, and now that ash filled him with a choking reek.

Don’t let it show.

It may not be true.

If I talk to Rubian, I may get a different answer.

That threadbare possibility alone was barely keeping him sane.

It felt as if he were standing face-to-face with a black storm looming in the distance.

Then—

Crash!

At the sound of something breaking messily, Leviathan shot to his feet.

He ran straight into the dressing room.

“Ruby!”

“Uh... Dad, sorry...”

In the middle of the little dressing room,

Rubian was sitting on the floor, looking up at him with an awkward expression.

The moment he saw the scattered clear shards of glass all around her, his heart plummeted.

“Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”

“I-I’m okay, but... this... the glass bottle...”

Rubian pointed at the floor, rambling in a slightly confused voice.

Leviathan hurriedly lifted the child and set her down somewhere free of glass.

Even the carefully stacked macaron boxes had collapsed, apparently. Their ribbons had come loose, the contents had spilled out, and the entire area was a complete mess.

“You’re not hurt anywhere? No cuts?”

“N-no. I just pulled your jacket too hard... I... I had no idea there was... a glass bottle in there...”

Her muttering trailed on as Rubian kept glancing at the broken glass on the floor.

A glass bottle with a blue ribbon tied to it.

It was the item that had helped Leviathan during the war.

He had forgotten it was still tucked into his inner pocket.

“Sorry...”

Rubian apologized hesitantly.

“Don’t apologize. As long as you’re not hurt, that’s all that matters.”

“O-okay. But this glass bottle...”

“It was mine. It’s fine.”

Leviathan roughly gathered the glass shards together with his foot and straightened the area around them.

It was a thing he had strangely never been able to throw away with his own hands.

But now that it had come to this, he felt so little about it that he could hardly understand why he had clung to it in the first place.

Rather, the thought that he had nearly let Rubian get hurt because he had kept such a pointless object there made his blood run cold.

But... where did the ribbon tied to it go?

The blue ribbon that had been wrapped around the glass bottle.

When he looked around, he saw a tangle of ribbons scattered around Rubian’s feet.

They were mixed in with the ribbons from the macaron boxes.

“Ruby, the blue ribbon under there...”

Leviathan cut himself off mid-sentence.

She won’t understand what I mean if I say it like that.

Just as he was about to correct himself—

“Oh, this one?”

Rubian picked up the exact blue ribbon that had been tied to the glass bottle and held it out to him.

There was not a moment’s hesitation in the movement.

As if...

“......”

As if she were picking up a ribbon she recognized.

As if she were a child who had known from the start that this ribbon had been wrapped around the shattered glass bottle.

Of course, she could have seen the ribbon at the moment the bottle broke.

But still... that ribbon...

Eeeeeee—

A ringing started in his ears.

He could not say a word.

“Dad...?”

Rubian took a step closer, puzzled by Leviathan’s silence—

when suddenly—

Pa-paaah!

A short trumpet call rang out from outside the window, followed by a professor’s bright voice.

“All right, we’ll begin the final tea party now! Camp participants, please gather in the garden by the lake!”

“Gasp. I have to go!”

The child spun around at once.

“Dad, sorry I broke the glass bottle. I’ll call one of the maids for you, so change your shoes and come quickly!”

He stared blankly at her retreating back as she hurried out.

Left alone, Leviathan looked down at the pitiful ribbon remaining in his hand.

There had been a reason he was about to correct himself.

The ribbons from the macaron boxes scattered around Rubian were blue as well.

“What is this? Goodness. There are bloodstains on the ribbon...”

“It must have gotten splattered with a lot of blood.”

An ordinary child would never have been able to pick up a bloodstained ribbon so easily from among so many blue ones.

“...Rubian.”

His fist clenched hard.

“How... how does this...” 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

In the end, he had no choice but to sink to his knees.

“...look blue to you?”

A ribbon stained with blood.

It had long since lost its original blue, and was now dyed a dark purplish red.

His head bowed helplessly. Before the reality laid bare in front of him, a pained groan escaped him.

The storm crashing down on him was vast, overwhelming, and cruel enough to change everything in his world.

Rubian had been in that war.

My child.

In the middle of that hell.

Helping me in secret.