The Youngest Hides a Lot

Ruby turned five.

“I hate you!”

At the loud shout from the playroom, Leviathan hurried over. A moment later, a piercing wail followed.

“WAAAAAH!”

“Miss Sortie!”

He had been speaking with the count in Count Camelan’s drawing room. The maid spoke, looking troubled.

“Oh dear, the Princess must be in a bad mood. They were playing so nicely, but then she suddenly pushed Miss Sortie....”

“Waaaah!”

“Don’t cry, Titi.”

Count Camelan picked up Sortie, who was crying as if her heart would break.

“Ruby, you... Why did you do that?”

Leviathan let out a short sigh and lowered himself to meet the child’s eyes.

She had seemed a little shy, but he had been relieved because she appeared to be getting along with little Sortie.

For some reason, the child was now huffing with her lips thrust out like a duck’s bill.

“No matter how angry you are, you can’t push a friend. Apologize and say you’re sorry.”

“No! I hate Titi...!”

“What? You....”

He was at a loss for words.

She was mischievous, but for the most part, she was a gentle child. He had almost never seen her throw such a stubborn fit.

“Count, I’m sorry, but please give us the room for a moment.”

Leviathan decided to be a little firm.

Once he was alone with Ruby, he put a little strength into his brow.

“You’re not going to apologize? What do you think you’re doing?”

“N-no.... Titi is stupid. She’s a crybaby...!”

“Look at Dad. What exactly upset you so much? You have to tell me properly for me to know. And is it all right to push a friend who’s even younger than you?”

When Dad’s voice turned stern, the child who had been jutting out her lips bowed her head.

Drop, drop. Wet marks spread across the carpet.

The child was crying silently, her brows scrunched tight. Leviathan wanted so badly to pick her up at once and comfort her, but he held himself back.

Then Ruby, swallowing her tears, muttered.

“But Dad is nice....”

She was so upset that every phrase came broken by hiccuping breaths.

“What?”

“Dad is nice, but whenever Titi sees Dad, she only cries!”

...Hm?

“You’re not even a ghost! I hate it! I hate it! Our Dad isn’t scary.... Ruby likes Dad so, so much.... It hurts my feelings.... Waaaaaah. I’m upset....”

In the end, she burst into sobs.

Watching Ruby’s tears roll down her cheeks as she blew a snot bubble, Leviathan let out a hollow laugh.

Where had she even learned the phrase “hurt my feelings”?

At the same time, he remembered the way Sortie had cried almost as if she were fainting the first time she saw Leviathan.

He had passed it off by stepping away as he always did, but apparently it had stayed in the child’s heart all this time.

“I’m losing my mind.”

How was he supposed to scold her like this...?

He swept a hand through his hair and laughed helplessly.

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Waaah.”

“All right, when you think about it, this was Dad’s fault. I understand, so stop crying.”

In the end, Leviathan pulled Ruby into his arms and soothed her.

“But you still can’t push a friend like that. Next time Dad will, um....”

“Wha?”

“I’ll wear a teddy-bear outfit or something, so don’t do that again. Understood?”

Leviathan said it confidently, with no idea what the actual problem was. Ruby, clever child that she was, wrinkled her brow a little, but nodded for now.

“Okaaay....”

“Then you’ll apologize to the young lady now, won’t you?”

Ruby rubbed her eyes with the back of her small hand and whispered.

“Yes. I was wrong.”

He smiled faintly and rose from his seat. He meant to give some water to the child, who had grown warm from crying.

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

“Do you hate Ruby? Because I cried? Because I pushed Titi?”

Leviathan brushed the hair back from the child’s forehead.

“Ruby, do you hate Dad when Dad gets angry?”

“Yeah!”

Instant answer.

“Because I don’t like scary things! It’s scary when Dad makes his eyebrows go like this. When you tell me to eat bell peppers.... And, um. Also, when you tell me to eat bell peppers!”

“Ah.”

“But.... I like you again really fast! It takes... about ten seconds?”

Leviathan raised his brows at the two hands spread wide open.

He poured water from one side of the tea table and held it to her mouth. She drank busily, gulping it down like a baby bird.

“Ten whole seconds. That’s the longest, scariest time in the world, isn’t it?”

“Oh. Really? Then I’ll try to make it shorter....”

He laughed again.

Perhaps because she had cried so hard, the child’s eyelids were already drooping heavily. As he patted her back, Ruby rubbed her sleepy eyes.

He wiped the water from the tip of her chin and kissed the round crown of her head.

“Ruby, Dad loves you without even the slightest gap.”

Every day, every hour, every minute, every second. If that second could be split, then more densely than even that.

Without wasting a single bit.

In every moment that exists.

I’ll love you.

Even if we....

End up a little out of step.

“I love you, my daughter. My....”

Plink.

The water that had clung to his fingertips fell to the floor.

“My one and only....”

Only then did he understand what he should compare the child to. Not a weapon. Not even food.

“...jewel.”

My one and only jewel, Ruby.

“I’m sorry....”

Leviathan sank to the floor with the child in his arms.

And he held on his tongue once more the name he had called hundreds, thousands of times.

“Dad is sorry, Ruby....”

But he knew that was not the child’s true name.

Just as this memory was not real.

Because he had never given his daughter a name.

“Name? I gave it to myself because I hated being called ‘the seventh’!”

“Rubian....”

“Dad, why are you crying?”

The child, who had been just about to fall asleep, startled and felt over Leviathan’s face.

He looked at that clear child’s face with a heart crushed to pieces.

There was a face he knew, and did not know.

Five-year-old Rubian....

There was no way he could know her.

Rubian learning to walk. There was no way he could know her.

Rubian lying in a cradle and fussing. Rubian opening her eyes just after being born.

There was no way he could know her.

“So this was it....”

The time I missed.

My lingering regret. My weak darkness.

“Dad is sorry he couldn’t do this for you, Ruby....”

Plink.

He heard a water droplet fall. From somewhere, soft, warm magic blew in like wind.

The truth was, he knew.

That he had to go back. That this was not his reality.

But. But....

Here, he could accomplish everything he had vowed to do.

He wanted to be the first to teach her the names of spring flowers in full bloom.

In summer, he wanted to swim together with her in the beautiful southern sea. In autumn, he wanted to gather dry fallen leaves with her, make bookmarks or things like that, and laugh over nothing in particular. And what else was there? Winter....

Yes, in winter, he had thought he would carve her a sled himself. Though he did not know whether she would grow into a child who liked sleds.

And since the north was bitterly cold, he would have clothes made for her from the finest fur. To do that, he would need to hunt from time to time, diligently....

“Ah....”

Before Leviathan knew it, he was alone.

There was no warm estate, no sunlight, no scenery, no child.

He was simply lying facedown alone in an empty space.

Sorrow rushed in like darkness.

That was what it meant to lose a child. It meant all the days he had naturally expected would never come.

Only promises he would never be able to keep remained, stranded in the empty space. Pain had never existed as a period, but as a tie linking every moment of his time.

What, exactly, had been stolen from me?

When the dream ended, reality came crashing in like a wave.

< You will be stolen from by me again, and lose forever. >

Just like the Mage King’s letter....

Was what had been helplessly stolen from me eighteen years ago truly—

Rubian?

Please.

Say it isn’t true.

“Please!”

He screamed into the darkness.

All kinds of memories tangled together.

Memories from the human-demon war.

The corpses of hideous dark creatures and soldiers. Black blood flowing in rivers, acrid smoke. A dark red sky. Screams that seemed to tear his ears apart. A brutal cold against his skin—or heat.

Because you were stolen from me....

Had that put you in that hell?

Under the suffocating weight of truth, he wanted instead to flee back into illusion.

That was when it happened.

Dad! Daaad!

At the voice calling him desperately, Leviathan lifted his head.

Go away! Move!

“Ru...bian?”

He blinked in surprise.

Now that he thought of it, there had been a warm blue energy wrapped around him for some time.

In other words, a gentle power pulling him out of the illusion....

Dad! I’m here!

The moment he realized it, the scene whipped around and changed.

It was the border village of Iosia.

A battlefield where dead dark creatures and fallen soldiers lay scattered everywhere.

The child was in the middle of that bleak hell, searching through corpses’ pockets.

Her raggedly cut silver hair and filthy, raglike clothes struck him like an arrow.

This memory, too, was one of his weak regrets.

Feeling as if his heart were being torn apart, Leviathan called to the child. When he handed her jerky and brushed the dust from her hair, blue eyes looked up at him.

“Mister. Is the war really over?”

Leviathan silently looked down at the child.

“Yes. It’s over.”

And then he added, somehow feeling as if his throat would close.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t come sooner.”

Dad should have come to find you.

I made you come find Dad again.

The child clutched his clothes desperately, as if she meant to follow him. Looking at that small, thin hand, he could not hold back any longer and pulled Rubian hard into his arms.

It was probably a false memory created by illusion magic....

But he was grateful instead.

Because if he could only return to this moment.

He had always regretted that he should have held Rubian like this.

He stroked his little daughter’s hair, faded white, and kissed her thin cheeks again and again.

“It must have been hard, coming to meet Dad.”

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry....

At that moment, the child wriggling in his arms smiled sweetly.

No.

It wasn’t Dad’s fault.

A blue wind blew.

With that soft, warm breeze, the surrounding scenery began to be pushed away one piece at a time. Corpses, dark creatures, the ruined village, the dark sky, the foul smells....

Where the dregs of the past vanished, only brilliant, beautiful magic swirled. The magic drove away Leviathan’s darkness and surged strongly into him, filling every corner of him as if purifying him.

The child in his arms had, before he knew it, grown tall enough to reach his chest.

Ah. I see.

He understood.

This was a painful memory of his, but at the same time—

It was also the memory of where everything had begun.

And....

Rubian is showing me this illusion to call me.

To tell him to come back.

To tell him not to lose his way.

Looking back, he had taught Rubian the names of spring flowers.

He had splashed around with her in the southern sea, happily together. In autumn, they had stepped on fallen leaves together, and every winter, he had watched with joy as the child rode the sled he carved for her.

Let’s go back.

He lifted his crouched body. Though he was already standing, it felt that way.

Dad. I came to get you!

Rubian, who had grown to his chest before he knew it, smiled. freēwēbnovel.com

Leviathan looked down at his hand.

In the hand that had been empty, a sword to protect what was precious had appeared.

Let’s go back.

So it would not be stolen again.

So he could protect it.

To his damn reality, where there were times he broke down before a painful past, but where there was also love wrapped around him in a weight equal to that pain.

Leviathan slowly raised his arm and swung the sword. There was no hesitation in the movement that tore through the illusion imprisoning him.

“You waited, didn’t you, Ruby?”