This child was not his daughter.
“So... what exactly is this?”
“A life-form Your Grace is expected to raise. In other words, a daughter.”
At his aide's explanation, Diego pressed a hand to his forehead.
Only yesterday evening he had returned after wiping out a band of pirates. It was his first time home in six months.
And then he woke up this morning to find that he had somehow acquired a daughter.
He stared at the little thing looking back at him with wide, round eyes.
How was he supposed to describe it?
A baby crab.
A baby starfish...?
“A baby sea squirt?”
The child puffed out her cheeks as if she disliked that description.
The fact that a child her age even understood what a sea squirt was should have been surprising enough, but what truly caught him off guard were those soft, fluffy cheeks.
Why do they look like they're about to burst?
There was even something delicious-looking smeared across one of them.
“Butter? Did you rub butter on her so she'd be easier to eat?”
“Your Grace, you're making the child cry! You're already terrifying enough as it is!”
His adjutant, Kamin, hurriedly covered the child's ears.
But judging by the way she scrunched up her tiny nose, she had already heard everything.
For someone so small, she was remarkably expressive about what she liked and disliked.
It was oddly amusing.
“You couldn't have picked her up off the street.”
“Of course not.”
“Then?”
“She was chosen by the Ancestor Whale. Please accept her. She's considered the most promising Resonator of her generation.”
Diego frowned.
The child, who had been staring at him, immediately copied his expression.
Absurd.
He turned toward Kamin instead.
As if adding one final push, Kamin quietly said,
“They say she's far more intelligent than children her age.”
“Hah.”
“According to her instructor, a Bijou site has already appeared. She's definitely an Awakened One.”
A Bijou.
The unmistakable sign of an Awakened.
But in his entire life, Diego had never heard of a four-year-old already developing one.
Even if that part were true—
“Why me? Wouldn't my eldest sister be a better choice? She doesn't have any children.”
He already had two sons.
And he had once had a youngest daughter as well.
It was no secret that seven years ago he had lost both his wife and daughter in an unprecedented storm.
Nor was it any secret that afterward he had gone half-mad, hunting pirates across the seas and destroying every den he could find.
“Ahem. The family head sent a message.”
The child's expression brightened slightly, as though she sensed he was refusing.
Wait. Brightened?
What kind of child became happy when the man who was supposed to become her father said he didn't want her?
And there was something else.
She hadn't cried.
She had simply sat there calmly, as if strange and uncomfortable situations like this were completely normal.
That wasn't the behavior of a child.
No—a tiny little toddler shouldn't react that way.
An uncomfortable feeling settled in his chest.
He felt as though he had done something cruel to her despite her having done nothing wrong.
And of all things, she has pink hair. Just like my daughter might have looked.
Still, this child could never be his lost daughter.
“The family head said, and I quote: 'That reckless fourth son of mine might finally start acting like a human being if he gets another daughter!'”
Half-listening to Kamin's words, Diego sighed.
No.
This child was not his daughter.
If his real daughter had survived, she would have been nine years old by now.
Wow. He's huge.
That was the very first thing I thought when I saw the scary mister.
Huge.
Really huge.
Ridiculously huge.
And then another thought followed.
He's really handsome.
Being called a lumpy sea squirt had hurt my feelings a little...
I had almost cried.
Almost.
But I endured it.
Because!
Because!
I was the class president.
Ahem.
Even though I had been carried away without anyone bothering to wipe the butter off my cheek, I was still the proud president of Carrot Class at the public Bloop-Bloop Daycare.
Stay strong. There must have been some kind of mistake.
I even knew difficult words like mistake.
I didn't just read baby picture books.
I read real books.
The word came from a book called Mommy and Baby Bake Yum-Yum Cookies!
Why had I read that book?
Because all the children in Carrot Class were expected to become kitchen maids or servants someday.
It was called preparing for the future.
And honestly, I had no complaints about that future at all.
Public Bloop-Bloop Daycare was a place that fed and raised children whose parents had been killed during pirate raids.
It even helped us find jobs when we grew up.
Ever since the strange moment I first became self-aware, I had been able to understand language. I was much smarter than other children my age.
So naturally, I asked questions.
I also carefully chose the nicer-looking adult instead of the handsome scary one.
“Mister, can I not become a cook anymore?”
“Eh? Once you become a young lady, servants will do those things for you.”
BOOM.
That had been my dream!
My teacher from Carrot Class was my favorite person in the whole world.
She wore that tall chef's hat.
I wanted one too someday.
I wanted to explain all this, but although my thoughts were surprisingly mature, speaking properly was still difficult.
For some reason, my body was even smaller than most children my age.
I was the smallest in Carrot Class.
Shortest.
Lightest.
Tiny hands.
Tiny feet.
People often mistook me for a two- or three-year-old.
Even though I was already four!
“So then, little one.”
Just as I was falling into a serious crisis about my future—
Out of sheer courtesy, Diego asked:
“What's your name?”
“Chuuu...”
“Chu?”
The child shook her fluffy cotton-candy-pink hair and sighed dramatically, as if he were the one being difficult.
Then she repeated herself.
“Nooo. Chuuu. Chu! Uu!”
“Shu, then.”
There was no way someone's name was actually Chuuu.
Through perfectly rational reasoning, Diego reached his conclusion.
The child puffed out her plump cheeks in protest, but he ignored her.
Though admittedly...
He kind of wanted to poke those cheeks and see what happened.
“Tiny little thing. You're like an angry baby crab.”
The girl's crystal-clear eyes trembled dramatically.
As if another invisible BOOM had struck her.
Once again, his chest felt strangely uncomfortable.
He thought it was a perfectly reasonable comparison.
Why was she reacting like that?
His sons would have laughed.
Glancing at his adjutant, who was clicking his tongue nearby, Diego scowled.
A bachelor. And he thinks he knows children better than I do.
“How old are you?”
“Fo'.”
“Four? And you still can't speak properly.”
He thought back to the monstrous children of his family.
His sons had been riding dolphins by age four.
Or sprinting across the ocean's surface.
One of them had even stolen a mermaid's scale and run off with it.
The resulting diplomatic disaster had caused endless headaches.
Compared to them, the little creature before him seemed utterly ordinary.
“I wasn't sent a child to eat, so what exactly am I supposed to do with you?”
His gaze fell to the badge pinned to her chest.
A bright sunflower-shaped name tag.
Written across it in large letters was:
Class President.
As befitting a class president, the child immediately began advertising her qualifications.
“I has things I good at.”
“Hmm? Such as?”
“I bake cookies.”
“And?”
“And... I eat cookies very good too. Dat's why I'm all chubby.”
“Useless. I don't eat sweets. I hate them.”
“Then...?”
“I eat children who don't listen.”
BOOOOM.
The fourth boom.
It was so funny that Diego almost laughed.
He awkwardly touched the corner of his mouth.
How long had it been since he'd laughed?
He couldn't even remember.
Yet somehow, this ridiculous little thing nearly made it happen.
His expression quickly hardened again.
“Prepare her. I'm sending her back.”
“Yesh...”
“Answer properly.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Apparently his senile father was in the mood for a heartfelt exchange of fists.
Grinding his teeth, Diego made up his mind.
The child wasn't at fault.
But bringing him a girl who reminded him of his daughter—
That he couldn't forgive.
And yet, moments later, Diego experienced something for the first time in his thirty-seven years of life.
He was rejected to his face.
Before he could even refuse to accept her as his daughter, the child beat him to it.
“I not become scary mister's daughter. I bake cookies.”
The audacious little brat.
For the first time all day, Diego's pride took a direct hit.
