After Knox’s proposal to bring baby to the Creatures Anonymous meeting—
The secret domestic arrangement turned out to be easier to maintain than I had expected.
“My lady, are you awake?”
Each morning when head-maid Mai came to greet me, I would naturally tuck the ball of fluff beneath the blankets and sit up alone.
When I had lunch with Brother Lucas, or when Duke Calypse was added for a three-person dinner, the ball of fluff was left to her own devices in the bedchamber. At first I worried she might try to wander off somewhere, but the baby spent most of her hours asleep.
I’d been worried she might be unwell, so I consulted a book titled The Only Living Creature That Rules Over Nobility: The Cat, and fortunately it confirmed that sleeping a great deal in kittenhood was perfectly normal.
‘The trouble is taking baby to the Creatures Anonymous meeting.’
I groaned inwardly.
‘Knox—but will the duke even allow just the two of us to go out together?’
‘If he won’t, I’ll take only the Creature and go alone.’
‘What if baby doesn’t like Knox?’
‘We’ll put her in a wooden box.’
Knox, despite being a devoted Creature enthusiast, had somewhat limited consideration for living beings in general.
It would reduce the chances of being noticed, certainly—but still, the thought worried me.
‘What if baby is so frightened inside the wooden box that she faints?’
And so the spiral of worries began to grow.
‘Are all the Creatures Anonymous people T-types, just like Knox?’
Good heavens. What if Knox set the terrified baby down in the middle of a table—and the entire group of Creature fanatics crowded around to stare, and dissect, and study her—
At the dark thought, my starfish hands splayed wide open.
“No!”
I cried out without thinking—
“What’s ‘no’?”
Lucas, who had been cheerfully swinging his legs and eating cake, blinked at me.
Oh, no. Snapping back to reality, I fumbled and pointed at the cake.
“This! I wanted to eat this—”
It was the very last slice of strawberry cake.
“Oh…”
Lucas hesitated for just a moment, then, as the older brother who would give anything to his little sister, handed me what remained.
“I’d been saving it especially for my little sister. Go on, eat it!”
Except those eyes of his were trembling like aspen leaves.
“I’m kidding~!”
I giggled and snatched the fork from his hand, holding it out to his lips.
“What kind of joke is that, giving someone a fright like that? Well—thank you all the same.”
Lucas exhaled with relief at last, and accepted the generous bite with a deeply satisfied smile.
As Lucas proceeded to all but lick the plate clean, I arrived at my conclusion.
‘I have to attend the Creatures Anonymous meeting myself.’
I was baby’s guardian. I was the one who would protect her.
To do that, I needed the duke’s permission.
“I heard Knox is going to the royal palace—the palace must be truly, genuinely, dazzlingly magnificent, mustn’t it?”
Another performance. Begun. And smooth it all over. Charm through everything.
Barging into the study without ceremony, I wriggled into the chair across from the duke.
Then: hands cradled under my chin, sparkling eyes deployed at full power.
“……”
Calypse, who had been working through documents, removed his reading glasses at the weight of that gaze and sighed.
“What is it.”
“I want to go. I want to go to the royal palace too.”
“No. It hasn’t been long since the incident at the succession trials. What if something dangerous happens on the way?”
“But Knox will be there?”
“He’s weaker than you.”
“Then I’ll protect myself~”
“No.”
He cut the matter dead, leveled a warning glare with those sharp eyes, then turned sharply back to his documents.
“……”
I stuck out my lower lip.
‘What do I do.’
Charm wasn’t working. His worry was simply greater than my charm.
In that case, in that case—
I pressed my fingers to my temples and clamped my mouth shut.
Think. Use that brain of yours.
And then it came to me.
‘…In that case, would calling him ‘Papa’ work?’
A small memory that had lingered at the edges of my mind.
A murmur breathed almost to himself, barely a whisper.
‘Come to think of it—you call Lucas “Brother,” but you still call me “Mister.”‘
Looking back on it now, the duke had been quietly, subtly jealous.
‘Then what if I call him “Papa” while making my request?’
This was a cheat code. An absolute cheat code.
A small voice inside me was loudly declaring that the very first time I ever called him ‘Papa’ should not be for something this self-serving—
‘This is for protecting baby.’
I squeezed my eyes shut and made up my mind.
Father. Your golden-seed daughter—just this once, for a greater cause, will become a daughter wreathed in flames. Forgive this unworthy child.
“Little one.”
It was then.
As if bothered that I was still planted in the chair, Calypse’s gaze lifted from his documents and found me.
“You’re still here?”
“……”
“I understand wanting to see the palace. But the concern—”
“…Papa.”
I breathed it barely above a whisper—the size of an ant.
Calypse stilled. He flinched. And then, with eyes widened beyond all reason, he stared at me as though he could not trust what he had just heard.
‘Hm. Saying “Papa”—it’s more embarrassing than I expected.’
“Aisha.”
After a beat of wordlessness, he called my name. But I had gone oddly bashful, and I just turned my fingers over and over in my lap.
“Aisha. What did you just call me?”
“Pa… pa.”
“Pardon?”
He had clearly heard. He asked again anyway.
“I didn’t catch that. Say it once more.”
And as he asked, the corner of his mouth began to rise.
“…I said Papa.”
I mumbled the answer and dropped my head entirely. Calypse’s lips—which had been fighting a losing battle against themselves—surrendered.
“Aisha.”
“……”
“Did you call me Papa because you want to go to the royal palace?”
Father. Must you embarrass me quite this thoroughly?
Are you really not satisfied until you have turned me into a thoroughly disloyal daughter of flame?
There was so much I wanted to say—but in reality all I could manage was to pucker my lips out like a duck and nod.
“Yes.”
I answered quietly, then scraped together what little courage I had and carefully looked up at Calypse.
And.
Calypse was smiling.
With his white teeth showing. Openly.
“A real daughter would…”
He couldn’t finish the sentence and gave a small, quiet shake of his head. Then he propped his chin in his hand and regarded me, lips curling at the edges.
And then he gave his answer—easy and immediate.
“All right. You can go with Knox when he leaves.”
“…Huh?”
I had assumed he was smiling only to tease me.
The reversal was so unexpected that my eyes slowly grew wide.
“But I’m sending an enormous escort of knights, so absolutely no going off on your own. I’ll also give Knox strict instructions—to watch you for twenty-four hours without pause.”
“Oh! Y-yes!”
“I’ll send word ahead to the royal household, so when you arrive at the palace, you must be on your very best behavior. Understood?”
“Yes!”
“But.”
The words had been flowing so smoothly, and I had been beaming and practically shouting with joy—
That ‘but’ hit like a warning bell.
My expression stiffened. Calypse, who had been studying me intently, smiled a meaningful smile and tapped his own cheek with one finger.
“A kiss.”
Good Lord.
As expected of Duke Calypse Krost. He never made a deal that did not benefit him.
I asked warily.
“Wasn’t ‘Papa’ enough?”
“A parent’s love is infinite.”
Calypse gave a faint smile and returned his eyes to his paperwork.
The message was clear: if I didn’t like it, I could forget the palace and everything else entirely.
‘Oh, fine. No help for it.’
We shall remove the ‘flames’ from ‘daughter of flames.’ From this day forward, call me Shim Cheong—the most dutiful daughter who ever lived.
Squirm—
I climbed up onto the chair, hunched forward awkwardly, and stretched out my lips to press a brief kiss to Calypse’s cheek.
“Done?”
I asked with a distinctly unenthusiastic expression. Calypse swallowed the smile threatening to overtake his face, and nodded.
“Go to the palace.”
“Yes! Oh yeah!”
A short while later.
“Knox! I did it! Papa gave his permission! I can now legally go to the royal palace!”
I trotted over to Knox and threw up a triumphant V-sign with both fingers.
At my words, Knox—who was not typically given to reactions—had his eyes widen noticeably.
“Lady Aisha.”
“Yes?”
“Did you just say ‘Papa’?”
“……?”
Oh.
The question caught me off-guard. I suddenly realized I had referred to Calypse as ‘Papa’ without even thinking about it.
Oh no.
Now—now we were truly family.
* * *
