Chapter Text
My godfather is even more depressed than usual. And when I ask him about it, he flashes me one of his brightest smiles yet.
Which is all the proof I need, really.
“…Do I really smile more the more upset I get?”
“Only when you’re trying to hide it,” I console him, patting his shoulder. “And if you can still try to hide it, that means no one’s dying.” Then, as an afterthought, “--yet.”
“…That’s not very comforting.” But he laughs anyway, looking a little lighter already. The truth is, we haven’t gotten into too many life-or-death situations these past few years, and definitely fewer mental-breakdown-existentialistic-crisis moments, mostly just physical-harm-almost-inciting-another-world-war kind of things.
…I don’t know if I should be upset or pleased that bodily harm and diplomatic conflicts are now part of my daily norm.
Anyway, I digress. What I meant to say is that there’s less reason for Lord Weller to mope these days, so I figured it had to be one of two things—no, one of two people.
I choose the likelier one.
“Julie?”
The second son’s shoulders sag. “She won’t call me Papa anymore.”
Considering how long it took him to get her to call him that in the first place, no wonder he’s feeling a bit messed up.
“She started calling you Mother again?” There was that time someone tried to explain to her that the mother in the family is usually the gentler, more passive one – a statement that got the poor man targeted by both Wolf and Anissina—and unfortunately Julie was in a rather impressionable age then. The idea stuck with her for years.
“No.” Conrad shakes his head, looking as though he wishes that were the case. “She’s calling me by my name.”
“Like, ‘Hey, Conrad!’?” I blink a little, trying to imagine my goddaughter—godsister? niece? these things are getting out of hand—addressing her father by name. Even after all these years, after (finally) coming to understand my country and my people as well as a good king should, I still can’t shake off some of the traditional Japanese values I was raised with. Not that I want to, of course. I still have to report home at least once every week, even if a week there might equal to a month here.
Sometimes I feel almost guilty. I have no right to control the flow of time on both sides as I see fit, just because I can.
“Worse than that,” Conrad sighs deeply, snapping me out of my thoughts. “She calls me Lord Weller.”
I actually wince at that. “Ouch.”
It’s obvious to everyone that Conrad desperately wants to get closer to his fiancé and daughter, just as obvious as how keen they are on staying away. Josak I understand—he told me about the way being married ‘changes you’, and men can smell the difference a mile away, even if you don’t wear the ring or anything, so it could drastically affect his job and his disguise and maybe even his life…
Even though I know he’s probably exaggerating a good half of all that, by the time he started describing in vivid detail what some hoodlums might do to a married crossdresser, all I could do was nod and swear to never nag him about it again.
He’s tough to pin down, that Gurrier. And Conrad knew that from the start.
But Julie…
“I thought she’s being really nice to you these days?”
“She’s nice to everyone.” Conrad buries his face inside one large hand. “And especially nice to me.”
Ah, I know how that feels. Like when Shinri was all formal with me, and I had to make weird faces at him for an entire night before I had to verbally convince him that I liked casualness. Serious words and a solemn expression had worked infinitely better than all that visual stimulation crap they were talking about in the parenting book Mom got me. And the kid was two at the time.
“Maybe she acts distant because she respects you?” I venture.
“She respects everyone else, too. And she still calls Wolf and Gwen uncle, just--”
I fidget a little guiltily. Guess I shouldn’t mention that she once told me she will always think of them as her uncles because they’re her godfather’s husband and brother-in-law respectively. Though maybe he caught on during that month or so back in elementary school when she addressed him as ‘Uncle Conrad’.
As confusing and hurtful as that was, it doesn’t hold a candle to what’s happening now.
I grasp Conrad’s arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry, all little girls start drifting away from their daddies at a certain age. Why, I think I was about her age when my Dad started complaining that I’m distancing myself from him with tears in his eyes… Maybe it applies to little boys too?”
His gaze is wistful and slightly accusing. “But you didn’t have that problem with Greta, and the other two are still all over you.”
“Uh…” I want to say that’s because Wolfram has done a great job teaching our kids discipline, but that would suggest that he and Gurrier are abject failures at parenting. “You know what, I’ll ask her. Sometimes these things just need a fresh perspective, or at least a different listening ear.”
After all, we’ve all had those things we can tell everyone –friends, siblings, and in Gwen’s case, the kitty he just met on the road—except for our parents. All three of Madam Cheri’s kids understand that better than anyone else.
Conrad shudders a little, maybe remembering exactly which matters he could never his mother with, then he gives me a weak but grateful smile. “Guess I’ll be bothering you then.”
“Leave it to me!”
…I said with such confidence, but now that I’ve accepted the mission I’ve no idea how to actually go about it.
Finding Julie is the easy part. Whenever she’s not out with Yozak on mission, she hangs around the stables and the training ground here in Covenant Castle. Though, as my goddaughter and my predecessor’s granddaughter, she’s more or less half a princess herself, she steadfastly refuses to admit that herself, and doesn’t answer to ‘Your Highness’ either.
She’s only here as an apprentice soldier, she says solemnly to everyone who tries. So after some more confusion everyone came to an agreement and her title is now ‘Miss Julie’, nothing more, nothing less.
In other words, she’s a really down-to-earth girl who wants nothing to do with her noble bloodline, much to her father’s chagrin.
“Godfather!” As usual she’s working up a storm with her sword in the field, her face lighting up into a classic Weller smile when she sees me. She’s fifteen now, turning sixteen next year, but though her features look more and more like her mother with every passing day, her mannerism is exactly like her father’s.
Unfortunately, the two of them are the only ones who don’t notice it. What was the saying again? You can’t see the mountain because you’re standing on the mountain? Something like that.
“Hey, Jules.” I give her a brief but tight embrace, marveling at how much she’s grown. When I was fifteen, I won the lottery prize consisting of phenomenal cosmic powers and an entire foreign country to run. And though she looks smaller than I was, she’s still considerably matured compared to Mazoku children of the same age.
We were worried that she might be scorned for that, just like her father was when he physically grew up faster than even his older brother as a child*, but the unlikely solution to that problem came in the form of her cousin, my son. I’d long since stopped trying to figure out what’s going on with Shinri’s soul, because whatever it is, he’s still first and foremost my kid, and nothing else matters, really. That’s why I don’t question why his body grows almost pace to pace with his half-Mazoku cousin, making the difference between him and his younger sister look like a lot more than just three years.
Ahh, but he looks so big now too… Should I start brushing off that tea set Murata gave me? In no time at all I’ll be sipping tea on a futon and lamenting how fast time flies, like a proper old man.
Even though I will always be 67 years younger than my husband and at least a century younger than basically everyone else.
“Did you come here to practice with me?” Julie asks eagerly. She’s inherited her father and grandfather’s talent for swordfighting. Put that together with her mother’s uncanny ability to adapt, and we got ourselves a real survivalist. As in, you can toss her into any forest for a few months and come back to find her even more toned and fit than when you left her.
Thankfully she hadn’t inherited her mother’s muscles, though.
“I’m no match for you,” I admit honestly, then sensing a chance, I continue hastily with, “Why don’t you ask your dad? He should be free today.”
Something else she didn’t get from Gurrier—acting skills. Her gaze wanders away from mine. “I wouldn’t want to burden Lord Weller with something as trivial as a child’s whims.”
So it’s true. “He’s your dad, that’s what dads do. If he heard you say that, he’d be really hurt, y’know?”
“Well, he shouldn’t be. A soldier can’t let such small matters get to him.”
Ouch again. But I really don’t get it-- why is this girl so harsh when it comes to her father?
“Julie… Did someone say something to you?”
If I weren’t so upset for Conrad’s sake, I’d probably think something along the lines of, ‘Phew, thank goodness for naturally bad actors’.
“N-nothing.”
“Julie…” Maybe I could throw her one of those epic lines emperors get to use in those periodic dramas –‘lying to your king is a capital offense, off with your head!’—but knowing my goddaughter, she might just take it seriously. So I use my other weapon instead.
“…Okay, okay, I’ll tell, stop looking at me like that!”
I was wrong, the puppy-dog look works on kids that act like geezers too, and not just actual geezers*!
For a long while she tries to find the words, and I exercise my well-trained patience. Eventually she takes a deep breath, saying in a voice almost too small to hear, “When I call him Papa, or Father… people will know.”
“Know what?”
“That I’m his daughter.”
“Well, that’s because you are—”
“His illegitimate daughter.”
…Now, who taught her that word? Come on, don’t be shy, stand out here and admit it!
“No one actually said it to my face.” She senses my growing agitation and hurries to calm me down. “Really, Godfather, they’re all nice people, who won’t judge me for something I can’t control. But--” She bites her lip. “—They’ll judge him.”
Ah. So that’s why.
“The people here understand, of course, but strangers… visitors and guests… they talk. I don’t blame them, they’re just curious. But then they form an opinion of him before they even meet him and know what kind of man he really is, which isn’t true or fair, and all because of me...”
“And what kind of man is he?”
I cup her face in my hands, thumbing away the tears in the corners of her eyes.
“H-he’s…”
“He’s your father, and you can’t hide that no matter what you try to call him.”
Then I step aside, and let Conrad do the rest.
Watching them from afar now, I chuckle to myself. The two of them are really too similar. Both too kind, too gentle for their own good.
No wonder Yozak has both of them wrapped around his little finger.