That evening.

“Waaahhh.”

The unfamiliar sound of crying filled the entire drawing room.

What do I do?

My eyes darted around.

It had been an unbelievable day.

As if meeting the second was not enough, we had even been attacked by the Mage King.

Once the Emperor understood the situation, he declared Arcadia an enemy, and message birds carrying that news flew out all at once toward each allied nation.

The Academy was nearly half destroyed.

Even after something as enormous as two magical beasts appearing in the middle of the capital, thankfully, they said there were no seriously injured victims.

From what I heard, the Zebbert knights and the Imperial Palace knights the Fourth Prince had brought with him had played a huge part in that...

Since I was the only one who knew what had happened inside the Rare Books Archive anyway, the true reason the Mage King had invaded here would never become known.

Naturally, all camp events had been canceled.

The Academy had gone on an indefinite break until the buildings were restored.

It really was... unbelievable.

As soon as I returned to the townhouse, I received a brief examination from a physician. After that, I sat in the drawing room with the adults.

Up to that point, it had been fine enough.

“Waaah.”

“Um...”

Fidgeting my fingers, I looked up at Father, who was wiping my cheeks with a warm damp cloth. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

“What... what do I do?”

“Good question. I have no idea either.”

A troubled look settled in his neat eyes.

“Oh, Rose. Stop crying already. Why are you sobbing so pitifully...”

Grandpa finally stepped in when he could not bear it anymore.

That was the problem.

Mother had been crying with her face buried in the table for quite a while now.

It had started the moment the physician declared there was nothing wrong with me.

In the end, after Father finished wiping all the dust from my face, he was the one who spoke.

“Rosetta.”

As though she had been waiting for that, Mother jerked her head up. Her face was a mess of tears and snot...

“I thought my heart was going to stop! I retired from active duty ages ago, so I’m not used to being shocked like this anymore! Do you understand that or not?”

“I do. I understand very well. Please stop crying. This is all my fault.”

“Why are you apologizing so readily again...”

Waaahhh.

Father let out a long sigh and rubbed Mother’s shoulder.

The moment I saw fresh tears threatening to pour out of her blue eyes again, I hurried over.

“M-Mom. Why are you crying...? I’m not hurt...”

I spoke while lightly touching her slender arm, and Rosetta sniffled as she stared at me.

“Ruby...”

She turned toward me. Her long arms stretched out.

“...Come here.”

Thinking she was about to hug me, I stepped a little closer, but instead she suddenly grabbed my shoulders.

“You... you need to be scolded by your mother.”

“What?”

All of a sudden?

While I stood there too flustered to do anything, Mother gripped me tightly and smacked my backside with weak little pats.

“You had Grandpa near the lake. Your father was in the building nearby.”

Pat. Pat.

Her tears fell along with her words.

“There were professors around too, and knights...”

“...”

“So why didn’t you run there...?”

Eventually, her hand lost all strength and dropped.

“Why did you run the other way when a bad man was chasing you...? Why...?”

Rosetta muttered with a pained face, then pulled me into a fierce embrace. My shoulder was soaked in no time.

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt, but I truly thought I was going to lose you...”

“...”

“I thought I was going to lose my daughter again...”

For some reason, those words made tears sting my own eyes too.

It seemed Mother had been far more frightened than I had imagined.

My lips moved helplessly. I did not know what to say, so I simply hugged her back.

“I-I’m sorry...”

The moment I apologized in a small voice, Mother quickly pulled away and shook her head.

“No, don’t apologize. I’m sorry. I should have gotten there faster.”

“No. I’m sorryyy...”

“Nooo... I’m even sorrier...”

Waaahhh.

In the end, it became a sea of tears all over again.

Mother and I clung to each other, sobbing as we competed over who should apologize.

“...It’s definitely a tearful scene.”

Watching us, Father cleared his throat.

“So why is it kind of funny...?”

“Well, there certainly are a lot of tears.”

Grandpa awkwardly scratched his chin too.

That went on for a while.

Then came a knock, and the door carefully opened.

“Your Grace, oh my.”

Butler Adolf, stepping into the drawing room, startled at the sight of Mother and me sitting there like matching blowfish.

Father was in the middle of pouring tea for us and trying to bring down our swelling.

“What is it?”

“Young Master Liam and Young Master Boyd have finished their examinations and gone upstairs. Neither of them has even a scratch.”

“Thank goodness.”

“They said they wanted to come to the drawing room, but I barely managed to stop them.”

“They must have been frightened too, so feed them something first, have them wash up, and then tell them to come down.”

“Yes, and... His Majesty the Emperor is summoning you. He says there is an urgent matter that must be discussed.”

Father let out another long sigh.

It was the expression of someone who had been expecting this.

“All right. Prepare for it.”

As he rose to his feet, my hand caught his sleeve by reflex.

It was the faintest little tug, but Father noticed it at once and looked at me.

“Father, when you come back...”

I brought up the words I had not been able to finish at the Academy.

“When you come back, I have something to say. Something I couldn’t say earlier...”

I had said what I wanted to say.

So now it was time to say what I needed to say.

“...”

“To Grandpa and Mother too.”

My heart pounded.

The secret had already been exposed, but even so, I wanted to bring it to an end in my own voice.

Working up courage was, no matter what, still a frightening thing, so I was stiff with tension.

“Adolf.”

Father wrapped an arm gently around my shoulders as he spoke.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Tell His Majesty I will see him tomorrow.”

“But he said it was urgent...”

Then Father leaned back into the drawing room chair.

“Hearing this is more urgent. And more important.”

Sensing the atmosphere, Butler Adolf bowed deeply.

“I will deliver the message.”

“Clear the area. Let no one in.”

“Yes.”

Click. The door shut.

“Well then...”

“...”

“Shall we talk?”

Father said it, and I clenched my fists and nodded.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

Truthfully, I was so nervous I wanted to run away.

I wanted to do what I had always done before—hide behind a wall and just wave my finger, telling everyone to look somewhere else.

But I decided to be brave.

This time, I would walk forward on my own.

“This...”

My hand moved very slowly toward the hem of my top. I had already dispelled all the magic that had hidden me, and on my lower back—

“...”

—the mark of the Magic Kingdom stood out clearly.

“Oh my God...”

Rosetta clapped a hand over her mouth and held back tears. Father went silent in a way that was frightening enough to make the veins stand out on his forehead, and Grandpa froze stiff with his eyes wide.

My mark, which I had wanted to hide.

My past, which I had wanted to conceal.

But now I knew that covering things up and hiding them was not the answer to everything.

A wound had to be exposed before it could be healed. Saying that something hurt, saying that something was frightening, asking for help—that too was courage.

After coming here, I had grown.

Slowly, little by little. But surely.

And I wanted to show them that it was not only my body that had grown.

“Father, Mother, Grandpa...”

“...”

“I-I’m ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ from the Magic Kingdom.”

To my precious family—

“But I hated that... so I ran away from there, and came all the way here...”

It was the beginning of a long story.

*****

The three adults of the ducal house kept watch over the sleeping child.

“...”

None of them could bring themself to speak first.

In a small but steady voice, Rubian had told them that she was in fact a mage, that she had fled the Kingdom, met Leviathan in Iosia, and come all the way here.

That she had hidden everything, even her sex, in order to avoid being tracked.

“Because if they found out I was a mage, they would drag me back to the Kingdom... I was... the Mage King’s seventh.”

It was devastating.

But they had listened calmly without showing it.

Rubian had seemed a little frightened, yet she had told the whole story without giving up.

And then, with a face that looked slightly relieved, she had drifted off to sleep in exhaustion. So much had happened that it was as if every last bit of strength had simply left her, and she had fallen unconscious into sleep.

The child had done the child’s part.

Now accepting it was the adults’ part.

“For something like this to have happened...”

Balrok let out a short groan and covered his forehead.

Even Rosetta, though she had prepared herself for the story, had gone rigid and could not say a word.

Only Leviathan sat there, endlessly stroking Rubian’s sleeping hair.

“Nothing changes.”

The slightly hoarse voice drifted out.

“No matter what past Rubian has, nothing changes.”

That child had come running into his arms one day out of nowhere.

He had decided to protect her a very long time ago.

“That’s right. Of course it doesn’t.”

Balrok growled the words.

“Rubian is a child of our house. Absolutely... no one will lay a hand on her.”

Rosetta nodded in agreement.

“But she was only ten... She was on that battlefield...”

Balrok let out a painful groan and slammed his forehead against his fist again and again.

“...She was so small.”

When he had first seen Rubian with those bright, clear eyes—

the child had looked no more than six or seven at most.

“And all of that was because of those mage bastards.”

The thought turned his stomach.

Once again, the grotesque shape of that terrible mark rose in all their minds.

Balrok ground his teeth, eyes blazing. Rosetta quietly wiped away her tears. Leviathan said nothing.

“My son.”

The broad back keeping vigil by the child’s bedside looked strangely fragile tonight.

Balrok let out a deep sigh and rested a hand on Leviathan’s shoulder.

“You need to keep yourself together. This is where it begins. You need to steel yourself to protect this one from those damned mage bastards from now on.”

“Yes. I will.”

The answer came in a low voice. Then, after a moment—

“But Father...”

As if it were a lie, Leviathan’s head dropped.

Plop.

Thick stains fell onto the sheet.

“I was there on that battlefield...”

Rubian, whom he had first met in that border village, Iosia.

That small, precarious, shabby child.

He realized that image would follow him for a very long time.

The past of the child he had failed to protect with his own hands... like a ghost, it would haunt him for years.

“If I had resisted the Kingdom to the very end, if I had protested, if I had argued harder...”

“...”

“Rubian might not have been there...”

And I regret that so terribly.

A ragged sob thick with blood and pus seemed to seep out of him.

Watching him, Balrok and Rosetta could no longer hold back the emotion surging up inside them either.

What had they done wrong?

A quiet sob, one they could never bear to let the child hear, lingered in the room for a long time before fading away.