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Come evening, it was time for dinner. Being mentally tired, I enjoyed the dinner Finia made and then had fun doing silly chatter with Cortina and others. I was trying to get back on track towards looking stoic, but I let myself have at least this much fun.

“And so, she eavesdropped on my conversation and went to defeat the Mountain Serpent.”
“Oh dear! As always, you can never be careful with Lady Nicole around.”
“No, Michelle was the one who proposed it. It wasn’t by my initiative.”
“There you go putting the blame on others again. And girls you went and actually defeated it. I can’t even get angry despite wanting to.”
“That also sounds like what Lady Nicole would do. She always pushes on with her recklessness.”

Even Finia was trying to roll her eyes so I gave up. I lied down on the table with a groan and sipped the milk mixed with honey that was my usual routine before bed.

“Not you too, Finia. Cortina already yelled at me enough.”
“Lady Nicole, that’s not what I mean, you know? If that reached Lord Lyell’s ea—”

Just as Finia started to say it, someone started knocking on the door. And with it, came an almost grieving yell.

“NICOOOOOOLEE!?”

Of course, I knew who that voice was. I’ve heard it plenty of times in my past life, or even in this. Needless to say, it was Lyell’s.

“Finia, haven’t you heard of a proverb, ‘speak of the devil’?”
“But Lord Lyell comes once every three days… It’s about time for him to come, right?”

Lyell and Maria last visited exactly three days ago, the night before the excursion. As she said, it wasn’t weird for him to intrude on us now, but what about this timing?

As it was burdening Maria, their visits through teleportation had decreased compared to before. But they still did it every two or three days. They were both quite devoted, showing themselves about three times a week.

That was just how loved I was. However, while a normal child would be happy about it, I was quite conflicted about it given who I was.

The reason behind their frequency decreasing was also linked to the fact the teleporting destination was set up at Maxwell’s house. Teleportation magic wasn’t something that should be displayed too openly, so they decided to set it there. In other words, every time they leaped here, they would be intruding on Maxwell.

Thus, the two opened the door with their duplicate key and barged in. Their faces were dyed red from worry and anger.

“Welcome, Dad, Mom.”
“Welcome, Lord Lyell, Lady Maria.”
“Hey, at least wait for the house owner to open the door.”

The three of us greeted them in three different ways. No, well, Cortina’s wasn’t exactly a greeting. At any rate, I realized why the two—particularly Maria—were angry. I could guess that the details about the Mountain Serpent had reached their ears. Now, it was critical for me to shift the point of their anger away from me.

“Nicole, on your knees.”
“Huh? What?”
“On. Your. Knees.”
“…Okay.”

And yet, I failed at it right away. I obeyed Maria’s angry command without even managing to say an excuse. She was scary once she became like that. Way scarier than Lyell could ever be.

If you talked back to her, she’d look at you as if she was looking at the filth. That was during my past life, though.

“I heard you defeated the Mountain Serpent.”
“Yes.”
“Just you kids.”
“Kabby was with us too.”
“That doesn’t count.”

So even Maria calls Kabby “that”, huh? What a poor fellow.

“Don’t go and do something so dangerous! Do you know how worried I was!?”
“But I had a good enough chance of victory. It was Cortina’s plan, so there was no chance for an unlikely event…”
“Hey, don’t drag me into it!”

She was looking at the situation with a smug face, but when her name got called out she started panicking. She was well aware of how scary Maria could be. She probably didn’t want to become a side victim of our quarrel.

But when we die, we die together, Cortina. You are at fault for leaking that plan to me.

“I’ll deal with Cortina later, physically.”
“PHYSICALLY?”
“Mentally too.”
“I GET BOTH!?”

She raised a hopeless shriek. But Maria ignored her and continued her sermon. Instead, her saddened voice started to gradually change. Well, this is hard.

“Listen, Nicole. I think we did something bad to you. The reason your body is weak is due to not raising you with my milk.”
“It was me who was not drinking it…”

Right, back then I was feeling reserved to suck on Maria’s breasts, so I was on a half hunger strike. That influenced my growth and manifested as my weak constitution. But that was something I did out of my own will, and not something Maria should be blamed for.

“Even if that was the case, I should have forcibly made you drink it, I still think of it all the time. But you were so cute I couldn’t make myself do it. But because of that, you gained a very weak constitution.”
“As I said, you aren’t—”
“Fortunately, your body started to become stronger as you aged. But that was all thanks to your own efforts and not ours.”
“But still—”
“Nicole. I failed once, so let me say this much. If I had to compare, your body is like a tattered carriage. But pulling it is the strongest warhorse.”

Maria started explaining by comparing my body to a carriage.

Body like that of a tattered carriage. The strongest warhorse referred to my training with Lyell. If I put my body under such excess power, it would eventually break down.

As she said, there was always the possibility of me breaking my body due to having power inappropriate for a child.

“That’s why, please, stop being so reckless at least until you’ve grown some more.”
“O-Okay…”

As Maria pleaded to me with tears welling up in her eyes, I could do nothing but reply with that. I was quite forgetful about it, however, while this body belonged to me, it also belonged to Maria’s daughter. In a way, it wasn’t just my own body.

Being as reckless as I was in my previous life brought her extreme worry – I was made fully aware of that fact.