“Mm. Mmm. Mmm······. M······.”
“······?”
What is that?
I was so surprised that my head momentarily went blank.
Tia was just sitting there, drooling and making strange sounds.
Did she hit her head hard somewhere and become a fool?
I felt a slight worry, but then again, Tia was not the kind of child to get hurt from a bump.
“What are you doing?”
“Mmm? Ah. Mmm. I was practicing pronunciation.”
“Pronunciation? What pronunciation?”
“Tia was pronouncing ‘mm’ as ‘mm’······ I wanted to practice until I could say ‘mm’ properly······.”
“······.”
She didn’t like pronouncing ‘yes’ as ‘mm,’ so she decided to practice until she could say ‘yes.’
I somewhat understood.
I wiped Tia’s mouth corner with a cloth and tidied up her messy hair.
“Why can’t Tia pronounce ‘mm’?”
“That’s because of my short tongue.”
“How do you make your tongue longer?”
“Um. No matter what, it won’t get longer.”
“Meee······!”
Tia suddenly started to pout.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she looked so pitiful that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Why are you laughing!”
“Hehe, sorry. It’s okay. You don’t need to be so anxious. Your tongue will grow slowly as you get bigger.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
That’s a lie.
Most kids with short tongues still have short tongues when they grow up.
Unfortunately, there’s a high likelihood that Tia will still be pronouncing ‘yes’ as ‘mm’ even after she’s grown.
Ah. Imagining Tia taller than me suddenly blurred my vision.
“Mom, are you crying? Are you sad? Should I hug you?”
“Hug me······.”
“Mmm. Come here and hug, Mom.”
I wrapped her in my arms and rubbed my cheek against her small chest.
In the past, I had to bend down a lot to do this, but now I only needed to bend my knees slightly.
That made me feel so sad that tears started to flow.
Imagining a future where Tia grew taller than me was like an apocalypse.
“Mmm, that’s ticklish!”
“······.”
However, seeing how quickly Tia was growing, it seemed she wouldn’t grow as large as I was in adulthood.
That was a bit of good luck.
Tia wouldn’t have to live in a body where she couldn’t see her feet and was uncomfortable running every day, unlike me.
At least in terms of her body, I was glad she inherited more of the dragon’s genes than mine.
Though saying it like this felt a bit strange······.
“Are you calmed down?”
“Yeah, I’m okay now. What I want to say is, there’s no need to stress over one pronunciation issue.”
“Mmm. I don’t feel stressed, but I’m worried that other kids might misunderstand······.”
“What misunderstanding?”
“My friend thought I was pretending to be cute!”
“You’re already cute, though?”
“Exactly! Why would the originally cute Tia pretend to be cute?!”
Tia lamented, bursting with indignation.
She was a hundred percent right.
What benefit would Tia have from pretending to be cute?
She was adorable just as she was.
“That might be a problem. Should I help you practice?”
“Mmm! Ah, no. U······ Mmm······!”
She changed her mind.
I couldn’t let my daughter be misunderstood like that.
If she practiced a lot, she would be able to make the ‘yes’ sound even with her short tongue.
“One more time!”
“Mmm!”
“Yes!”
“Mmm!”
“Ugh, downstairs! It’s so noisy I can’t sleep!”
In the end, Tia only managed to make ‘mm’ sounds and never succeeded, not even once, until dawn.
It’s a secret that I felt a little relieved.
I might have felt upset if she had succeeded.
*
“Mmhuhuh! I’m excited!”
Just like any other day in the morning.
Tia leaned her face out of the carriage window and yelled.
Inside the birdcage Tia was holding, Lara was trembling.
“School will be fun again today!”
Ever since she started going to school, every single day had been enjoyable and entertaining.
Leopard said the school was full of punks who picked fights at any opportunity.
Yet, nobody had bothered Tia so far.
Except for one person.
“That cocky little brat······.”
Prince Nikolai.
Just thinking about him made my teeth grind.
Nikolai had approached her out of nowhere.
Just bumping into him in the hallway, he would call her the daughter of a con artist or sometimes the con artist mother and daughter.
Every time, Tia would thoroughly ignore him, and when she didn’t react, Nikolai’s face would turn bright red.
Nikolai had stubbornly followed her more as time went on.
As if he couldn’t believe she would keep ignoring him.
He had even made unreasonable demands like “Show proper respect for royalty, it’s an order,” but Tia would remain supremely indifferent.
From Nikolai’s perspective, a girl like Tia was new.
Thus, he seemed determined to suppress her spirit and place her under him.
“Aside from him, everything is enjoyable!”
“Get your head inside. It’s dangerous.”
“Mmm······.”
The window slammed shut, and the carriage continued towards St. Sophia School.
As the carriage gradually entered the outskirts, the road became quite deserted.
At that moment, without any warning, a thud sounded, and the carriage jolted.
The coachman hurriedly stopped and got out to check the carriage.
“Hey, Coachman! What’s the matter?”
“Whoa. I think a screw came loose from a wheel. I need to fix this quickly······.”
Straightening up, the coachman looked across the street and spotted a general store.
It was a fairly large store that also sold tools.
It felt lucky that the carriage broke down right in front of such a store.
If he just got the tools, the repairs would only take five minutes.
It seemed like they might avoid being late.
“I’ll need to buy some repair tools from that store. Can you wait here for a bit?”
“I want to go with you!”
“Well, alright then.”
“Be good, stay put, Lara!”
“Ah······.”
A big store.
It was a fascinating place, unlike the market.
Unable to contain her excitement, Tia rushed after the coachman.
As the coachman and Tia crossed the street and entered the shop.
Some suspicious men walking down the street approached the carriage, suddenly opening the door.
Then, one by one, they climbed into the carriage and slammed the door shut.
“I didn’t expect the little girl to leave her seat.”
“Guess there’s no helping it. When they return, we’ll just have to kill both.”
“That coachman is unlucky.”
As they pulled down their hoods, long red horns protruded.
Moreover, their dark complexions revealed their origins from the demon realm.
Assassins loyal to the Demon King.
They had been hastily dispatched to the human realm to assassinate the first-year student Tiamat enrolled in St. Sophia.
“She looks like an ordinary child.”
“True. Why are they ordering her death?”
“There must be a deeper reason. If they say it, we do it.”
“That’s true.”
The assassins unemotionally searched the corners of the carriage and rummaged through Tia’s backpack.
Consequences like Tia burning them with her appearance as the Devil King’s only daughter or her incredible strength that could lead to unpredictable variables had nothing to do with them.
They were simply given orders, so they would kill.
That’s all there was to it.
“What’s this?”
“Not sure. Is it a doll?”
“Locking a doll in a cage? How weird.”
“······.”
Only then did they discover the birdcage sitting on the floor of the carriage and lifted it up.
Lara held her breath desperately, trying not to move.
Originally, she could have easily taken care of these demons, but thanks to Tia, her magical usage was completely restricted, and now she could do nothing.
She could only remain stiff and pretend to be a strange doll shining with light.
Fortunately, the assassins soon lost interest in Lara and set the cage back down.
“When we return, we’ll quickly kill both and run away.”
The assassins quietly drew their swords and sat still, waiting.
However, one particularly curious one kept rummaging through the backpack.
Just as I was about to speak up after being annoyed by the noise of rummaging.
“Stop that already-”
“Wait! W-Why is this here······.”
“What now?”
The assassin’s face turned pale as he pulled out a metallic token with trembling hands.
The other assassins gathered around to confirm it, and they had to suspect their own eyes.
“Honorary Medal?!”
The honorary medal of the former Demon King’s army.
It was awarded only to a select few warriors who had achieved great feats during the Great Demon War.
Though the Demon King had died and the Demon King’s army disbanded, this medal still remained a significant honor among demons.
To touch someone with an honorary medal meant turning all demons in the demon realm into your enemies.
“Why does the assassination target have the Demon King’s honorary medal?”
“Uh, did she steal it? That would make sense, right?”
“But what if it’s not? What if there’s a big demon behind the child we were supposed to kill?”
“It’s an assassination order from the elders! Are you saying the elders were wrong?”
“It could have been a mistake!”
At that moment, chaos erupted among the assassins.
An honorary medal from the Demon King’s army.
Finding something they had never seen in their lifetime on the assassination target was quite shocking.
After a long argument, the assassins finally reached a conclusion.
“Operation cancelled. First, we must contact the elders and inform them that the assassination target possesses the honorary medal. After that, we will await new orders.”
“I agree.”
“There’s no other choice.”
They could not proceed with the operation like this.
The assassins quickly exited the carriage.
Fortunately, they hadn’t been discovered by the assassination target.
Just as they let out a sigh of relief and entered the alley.
“Did you enjoy the carriage ride?”
Thud.
At the moment the heavy footfalls echoed, the assassins froze in place.
An intense killing aura surrounded them.
The nobleman standing before them expressed his anger in a gentle tone.
Though he looked human, the aura he exuded was anything but human.
It was easy to identify the identity of this nobleman.
“Why didn’t you watch until the end? What were you so shocked about that you came running out······.”
“I’m, I’m sorry!”
The assassins immediately bowed their heads.
Being caught trying to kill a child under the protection of Dragania and fleeing was the worst possible outcome.
There was no worse situation than this.
The assassins lowered their postures and observed the situation.
“If you had attacked me directly, I wouldn’t have been this angry. I even forgave a human who nearly killed me last time.”
“I-I’m so sorry!”
“Enough. No need for excuses. Tell the horned old men that if something like today happens again, I will personally come for them.”
“······!”
He’s letting us go.
The expressions of the assassins brightened at once.
However, the moment the nobleman threw off his white gloves and drew a black blade from his fingertips, despair enveloped them once more.
“If you have a way to deliver it from hell, then do so.”
That day, three unidentified demon male corpses were delivered to the institution’s morgue.
