Back Home
Softly—softly—
The faint moonlight slipping through the window cast Hera’s face in an even purer white.
She slept deeply, her breathing steady and even. Even now, the sight of her at rest was almost painfully beautiful.
I lowered my gaze from her face to what lay nestled against her.
A little blue lizard, eyes closed, curled snugly in Hera’s arms.
For some reason, the sight irritated me.
Hera had given it the name Mari, but I had no desire to grow attached to the thing.
“I know you’re not asleep.”
No answer came. Silence settled over the room for a long moment.
Just as I was considering whether I would have to wake it myself—
“.....”
Quietly, the lizard opened a pair of blue eyes.
The gaze fixed on me was endlessly still, almost serene.
“Come with me.”
Just as I had expected. This lizard was clearly more than some merely cute little creature.
It was the dead of night, long past the hour when everyone should have been asleep.
Stepping out of the inn, I was greeted by a cool breeze.
“.....”
The blue lizard followed silently behind me, watching without a word.
“I’d like to have a conversation, you know.”
When I met its eyes, the lizard looked back at me with something like mild annoyance.
And then—
With a soft whoosh, blue mana began to wrap around its body.
A fierce wind whipped up around us. A brief moment passed, and when the blue mana finally cleared—
What stood revealed was a mysterious young girl with sky-blue hair and eyes like the depths of the sea.
“...Reason?”
She regarded me with thoroughly bored eyes as she asked the question. It was a completely different look from the one she wore when clinging to Hera.
“So you were a female. Not sure whether I should call that fortunate or not...”
I muttered as I took in her appearance.
Dragons. What exactly were they?
Masters of magic. Beings close to omniscience.
They could supposedly call down natural disasters with magic without even trying, and every scrap of knowledge related to mana was said to be innate from the moment of their birth.
Even a hatchling ought to be capable of something like Polymorph, at least.
“Reason?”
The girl continued to watch me with those same quiet eyes, as if she found dealing with me tiresome and simply wanted me to state my business already. It was almost enough to leave me speechless.
“You put on such an innocent act in front of Hera... yet you’re thoroughly shady, aren’t you?”
“.....”
“Well. I don’t particularly want to drag this conversation out either, so I’ll get to the point.”
“.....”
“Tell me why you’re stuck to Hera.”
At my words, the girl tilted her head and looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“Why. Should I?”
“Well. Depending on your answer...”
I gave her a thin, cold smile as I continued.
“I have to decide whether I’m going to kill you or not.”
“...You...”
The girl’s eyes sank into something icy and still.
At once the mana saturating the air around us began to tremble violently, pressing down on me with crushing weight.
“Heh. Little one. Planning to fight me?”
“.....”
But with a single gesture of my hand, the air returned to normal.
Dragon or not, she was still only a hatchling. She was nowhere near ready to be my opponent.
And no one knew that better than the girl herself.
“This is only if it seems like you might become a threat to Hera, of course.”
I smirked once at the girl, who was glaring at me with furrowed brows, clearly annoyed.
It was the same question that had lingered ever since I first laid eyes on this hatchling.
Why show Hera such goodwill?
A dragon falling for something as trivial as a charm spell? Preposterous.
It would be like a Demon King getting taken down by some random farmer he passed on the road.
There had to be some reason she was following Hera.
I had a feeling I already knew what it was, but still.
“Not going to talk? I’m not exactly the patient type.”
I applied pressure again to the girl who insisted on maintaining her silence.
She stared at me for a long while before finally parting her tightly pressed lips.
“Mom. Soul. Pure white.”
Her speech was still incomplete; she spoke only in bare subjects and fragments.
“What?”
“I. Can see souls. Yours is pitch black.”
She pointed at me as she continued.
“All human souls. Murky. But Mom’s soul is pure white. So I like her.”
She can see the color of souls?
If what she said was true, then the hatchling’s words weren’t entirely without merit.
I myself had never met anyone as pure as Hera. Her soul was probably shining a brilliant white.
And if my own soul had a color, it would be stained blacker than anyone else’s.
Most humans were probably the same.
That was why everyone fell for Hera on instinct, wasn’t it?
So this hatchling had been drawn to Hera’s purity as well?
“Is that all?”
“....”
She couldn’t answer right away, fidgeting and hesitating.
After a long moment of working her mouth, she finally spoke.
“...And... Mom... pretty...”
“......”
The girl flushed with embarrassment, twisting her body as she said it.
A dragon’s instinctive love of beautiful things. It seemed that part was true after all.
Their nests were said to be filled with every kind of glittering jewel.
But more importantly—
“...Why is Hera your mom?”
The way she kept calling Hera “Mom” grated on me.
Dragons didn’t even have parents to begin with.
But the hatchling only looked at me with wide, round eyes, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Mom is. Mom?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Dragons don’t have anything like that.”
“Mom tamed me. So she’s Mom.”
“....”
I stared at the girl with an incredulous expression.
There was simply no getting through to her.
Did this lizard genuinely believe she had been tamed by Hera?
.....Maybe it’s better if she thinks of her as a mother.
At least she wouldn’t harbor the kind of feelings one holds for a lover toward a mother.
On second thought, it was preferable that she regarded Hera as a parent rather than becoming enchanted and yearning for her the way everyone else did.
“Business... done?”
The look in the girl’s eyes as she watched me held nothing but the desperate desire to hurry back to Hera’s side as soon as possible.
I let out a deep sigh and spoke to the hatchling.
“Stay in that form from now on. And get rid of the wings.”
She looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“Why?”
“If word gets out that you’re a dragon, there’ll be chaos everywhere. That would put Hera in a very difficult position.”
At the mention of Hera being troubled, the girl’s eyes went wide with alarm.
Then she gave a firm little nod of her small head.
“Okay. Got it.”
Seeing how much she cared about Hera, it seemed the things I had been worried about wouldn’t come to pass after all.
If anything, she would stick close to Hera’s side and protect her.
I had realized it when that damned succubus kidnapped Hera.
I couldn’t protect her alone.
But with a dragon... I could rest a little easier.
As long as what she wanted was nothing more than a parent-and-child relationship, I didn’t mind.
If what she had wanted was Hera’s body, I never would have allowed it.
The only one who gets to hold Hera... has to be me alone.
In that case, there was no real need to worry.
“....”
“Wh-Who... huh? ...Mari?! Mari?”
“Yeah! Mom! It’s Mari!”
“W-Wow... so you can... Polymorph... B-But why am I your mom...?”
“...Mom... don’t like it...?”
“Hhk?! M-My heart...”
“I... want a mom... sniffle...”
“Ugh... a-alright... I’ll be your mom...”
“Mom! Yay!”
“Y-Yeah... Mom likes Mari too.”
“Love you, Mom... I love you!”
.....No need to worry, right?
For some reason, an uneasy feeling began to creep over me.
When I woke up that morning, I couldn’t help but be startled.
A girl I had never seen before was fast asleep, clinging tightly in my arms.
But it didn’t take long to realize the girl’s true identity was Mari.
According to Athena, if Mari went around in her true form it would cause all sorts of problems, so it would be better for her to stay in human form most of the time.
Problems would be inevitable, yeah...
A human who had tamed a dragon—a legendary being.
If even a rumor got out, people would come swarming from every direction, causing chaos.
In the worst case, we could even end up marked by the Demon King.
If that happened, not only I but Mari herself would be in danger.
Thinking about it that way, staying Polymorphed really did seem like the right call.
“Love you, Mom!”
Mari rubbed her face against my leg, beaming up at me with a bright smile.
Sometimes these displays of affection felt a little overwhelming.
And “Mom,” of all things. It was a title I had never experienced anywhere before.
I had never even been in a relationship, so of course I had no experience raising a child.
And yet I had accepted her as my daughter.
Ordinarily I would have refused.
But I understood all too well the heart of a child craving a parent’s love, so I took her in.
I had once desperately wanted my own parents’ love, after all.
Even though they had abandoned me and left me to live a lonely life, I still had memories of the rare times they looked at me kindly—memories that had made me truly happy.
Maybe that was why I clung so hard to the idea of family now.
...I should be good to Mari...
She wasn’t my real daughter, of course, but I didn’t want her to go through the same bitter experiences I had.
I had no experience raising a child, but... if I just looked after her with care and love, wouldn’t that be enough?
And with a daughter this adorable, it didn’t seem like such a bad thing at all.
“...Ready, Hera?”
Athena, who had been staring at Mari with a suspicious expression for quite some time, finally let out a sigh and spoke to me.
We were getting ready to return to the mansion.
Not that there was much to prepare—just packing the few belongings we had.
“Yeah...”
When I answered, Athena crooked a finger at me, beckoning me into her arms.
As Mari and I—still glued firmly to my leg—approached her, golden mana slowly began to envelop us.
A short while later, Athena snapped her fingers with a sharp click, and a dazzling white light flared before my eyes.
I closed them against the brilliance for a moment. When I opened them again, a completely different landscape filled my vision.
A landscape all too familiar.
“We’re here, Hera.”
“...Yeah... we are...”
All too familiar. And yet a place I hadn’t particularly wanted to return to.
And just like that, I found myself back at Athena’s mansion once more.