“Birth father?!”

Bang!

Balrok did not hold back.

“Please calm down.”

“Does this look like something to stay calm about?!”

Leviathan clicked his tongue lightly as he looked at the cracked wall.

“Getting worked up won’t solve anything.”

For the first time in a long while, all three of the ducal household’s adults had gathered in the large drawing room.

On the table sat a small bundle. Part of it had come loose, revealing an old portrait and, alongside it, equally old baby things—a baby pillow, baby clothes, and the like.

Hmm.

Rosetta let out a short breath and slowly reached out to pick up the little portrait.

A laugh slipped from her.

“Look at this. Even in the middle of all this, she’s unbelievably cute. Our three-year-old Ruby.”

Balrok, who had only been snorting through his nose until now, twitched a brow.

“Let me see... oh, good grief. She’s so tiny.”

Peeking over, he found the face of a young Rubian staring back with a startled expression.

The slightly pursed lips and round eyes.

It was the exact same face she still made when she was caught off guard.

“We need this redrawn much, much bigger! First, we should call in a painter—”

“Father, why not hire several artisans and have it woven into a tapestry instead?”

“Mm. Why is my daughter-in-law so clever?”

“Hehehe.”

As always, the two of them clicked together perfectly and let out matching dark chuckles.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Hm?”

“With this. Its owner.”

Rosetta asked the question.

Leviathan, who had been momentarily lost in thought over how best to cram the baby Rubian portrait into a locket, cleared his throat.

“First, we need to determine whether he really is her birth father. We don’t even know for certain whether these things are genuine.”

The portrait and the baby items could have been fabricated easily enough.

Although...

The portrait did look alarmingly like Rubian.

“Where is that mage now?”

“For now, Leon has arranged quarters outside the estate and is keeping him under watch.”

“Hmph. At least sending that brat Leon to the south turned out to be a good move.”

Leviathan nodded at Balrok’s words.

Leon, who had been inspecting southern Babilon under Leviathan’s orders, had found these things—and the moment he did, he had gone deathly pale and ridden back without sleep for days and nights.

So what do I do...

Leviathan fell into thought.

The items might have been tampered with.

But—

If there’s even the slightest chance they’re real...

He could neither dispose of them recklessly nor dismiss them outright as false.

He might really be someone connected to Ruby.

So he would have to meet him first, then.

That was what he had just begun thinking when Rosetta, who had been gently turning the baby things over in her hands, carefully raised her head.

“You haven’t told Ruby yet, have you? I’m a little worried about how she’ll react if she hears that someone who might be her birth father has appeared.”

“......”

A brief silence fell.

In truth, it was a shared concern for all three of them.

“She might be startled, or she might not want to meet him, so we should probably bring it up carefully—”

That was when it happened.

“Knock knock knock! Everyone!”

A familiar knocking voice rang out.

Bang—the door flew open, and Rubian appeared with her hair pulled tightly up, looking entirely like her usual self.

“I heard the news! Apparently my birth father showed up?”

At that absurdly light tone, Leviathan let out a hollow breath.

“She’s the one not being careful.”

“Oh my.”

“I’m meeting him immediately!”

The bold declaration burst out of her.

Watching Rubian plop down into the seat beside him, Leviathan swallowed a sigh.

Without even realizing it, the tension that had been drawn stiff through his shoulders eased on its own.

“No. First your father will meet him, and if I decide he’s safe, then you can meet him.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Well, because—”

“I’ll just meet him myself. I really want to meet him quickly.”

That drew another brief silence.

“......Little runt. You...”

Balrok buried his face in his fist to hide how hurt he looked. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Rubian, staring blankly at him, immediately waved both hands.

“No! That’s not it! It’s not that I’m getting all wistful because my birth father showed up!”

“Huh?”

“It’s obvious at a glance that he’s some lackey the Mage King sent to grab hold of my weak point. So I need to meet him quickly, figure out his angle, and start planning how to use that against him!”

“Oh-ho?”

“Princess Sebelena told me. She said the Magic Kingdom would start moving soon by targeting my weak point.”

Her blue eyes shone brightly.

Looking at those eyes, so full of certainty, Leviathan suddenly felt uneasy.

“But, Ruby.”

“Hm?”

“......What if he really is your birth father?”

At that, Rubian fell quiet for a moment, then tilted her head. A small crease appeared in the middle of her smooth brow.

“Then, well... I should probably be suitably grateful for the favor of giving birth to me...? And maybe suitably resentful over the favor of abandoning me? Ah. Can the gratitude just be verbal? I don’t have to express it materially, right? That would be a waste.”

At Rubian’s serious tone—serious in its own way—Leviathan blinked slowly.

“That’s all...?”

“......Is there something more I’m supposed to do for him?”

Rubian looked genuinely bewildered.

“No, well. Not exactly.”

Leviathan answered that, and then suddenly laughed.

Because he realized the one who had been tense all this time was not Rubian, but himself.

“Oh, right. Dad, look at this. It’s a herbal jelly I made this time that’s good for insomnia...”

Rubian began rummaging around and pulling out the things she had been carrying in her arms this whole time.

The old bundle Leon had brought was pushed aside automatically.

Right.

There was no reason to treat this as something grave.

No matter what anyone says, Rubian is my daughter.

Rubian was right.

If he was fake, then they could use him as bait to drag the Magic Kingdom out.

And if he was real, then they could just mix together an appropriate amount of thanks and curses and send him on his way.

“Our Ruby.”

Rosetta seemed to have arrived at much the same conclusion. She tidied the bundle aside without ceremony and opened both arms.

“Come here. Our Ruby belongs to her mother forever.”

“Whoa. Been a while.”

She hugged Rubian tightly.

“She belongs to her grandpa too.”

Balrok did exactly the same.

Leviathan, who had been a beat slower in noticing what was happening because he was still thinking, rose belatedly to his feet.

“Dad...”

“Tsk. It’s full.”

Shoo, shoo.

“......”

Look at that.

There really were times when a birth father was more annoying than anything else.

Leviathan glared with all his might at his own father, who was devoting every scrap of energy he had to shutting him out.

“So anyway, everyone.”

Buried under Rosetta and Balrok, Rubian stuck out her head and flashed a grin.

Her gentle eyes curved, and one corner of her small mouth twitched before drawing into a slender arc.

All three of them knew.

When the youngest smiled like a little troublemaker like that, she often followed it with the most unexpected plan imaginable.

*****

“So I think we should pretend to be properly fooled by that mage.”

I said to my family.

“What do you mean by that?”

“To be honest, this spy is someone we can deal with very easily. Because...”

“Princess Sebelena’s potion.”

Father finished the sentence for me. I nodded and went on.

“If we use that potion that determines whether there’s a blood relationship, the truth will come out easily enough. But she said it takes a little time to prepare the real potion.”

Before coming to the drawing room, I had already exchanged notes with Sebelena through Khalid’s squirrel.

“So you want to keep him close and monitor him while the real potion is being prepared.”

“Right. We could just force him into something like an underground dungeon, but...”

The faces of the fourth, the second, and the Mage King passed through my mind one after another.

The more we resisted, the more we tried to avoid them, the more the ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) enemy kept finding unexpected ways to get close.

So this time, since we had a rough idea of their plan—

Wouldn’t it be better to turn that plan against them?

“And besides, even if we get rid of this spy, the next spy will just come.”

Unless we caught the one at the top.

Right now, you could say the Mage King has already cast a fishing line toward me.

I knew the thing swaying in front of me was fake bait.

So I intended to make full use of that bait and follow it all the way back to the fisherman hiding behind it.

“Hmmm, our little runt has grown both smarter and braver! I get the gist of it! But what exactly are you planning to do?”

“Hee. Everyone, get ready to receive a guest!”

I flashed my family a playful grin.

Coming out of that memory, I smiled lightly as I felt the wind brush my cheeks.

Birth father.

Even if I were looking at it while diving off a cliff, it’s obvious he’s a spy the Mage King sent.

He was probably meant to target my weak point.

It seemed they had decided that using the rest of my family as targets had too high a barrier to entry, so they had settled on this as bait that might draw me out instead.

You picked the wrong address, old man.

The only people I loved were this family of mine.

Not some total stranger whose name and face I didn’t even know, just because we happened to share blood.

Though if Sebelena hadn’t been here, I might have wavered a little.

It wasn’t as though I had never wondered about my birth parents. I probably would have been at least a little shaken.

Thanks to the princess, though, that curiosity had vanished completely.

And if she hadn’t warned me about the Magic Kingdom’s movements, I probably wouldn’t have been this certain right away that he was a spy.

Well, I can’t completely rule out the possibility that he really is my birth father.

The things the man had brought really were mine.

When something has been used for a very long time, magic clings to it like a scent.

That was especially true of items used in infancy, before a child could control magic at all.

The Mage King may have handed over things I used in the palace when I was little.

Or he may have recruited my real birth father in the first place.

Of course, I had no memories of my early childhood, so I didn’t recognize any of those items.

Still, from here on out, I could just find out.

“Hmmm.”

Whether he was my birth father or not.

To be hoooonest, it wasn’t that I wasn’t curious at all.

Feeling the cold air against both cheeks, I tipped my head back sharply.

“What do you think?”

Those deep gray-blue eyes slid down toward me.

The thick forearm stretched out behind me swung once, broad and easy.