IWBAACTWITOS Chapter 2

I was about to take a bite of cake topped with plenty of blueberries when I stared intently at Julian. Royna had consumed a lot of energy from crying and fell asleep quickly, allowing me to enjoy snack time quietly and leisurely.

"But Dad, why did you come home so early?"

"I came early because I thought our Tilly might be bored."

At those words, I remembered that my precious nap time had been interrupted earlier and frowned. I glared at him, swallowed the cake in my mouth, and opened my mouth to speak.

"I'm not bored, so go back."

"...Would you prefer if Dad wasn't here?"

"That's not it, but Dad, you'll get fired if you keep this up."

"I wish that would happen."

I had created a setting in the original work where he wanted to escape from his position as Chancellor, so whenever an opportunity arose, he would play hooky, which was quite troublesome.

Where in the world is there a Chancellor who leaves work early saying he needs to play house with his daughter?

"It's okay. His Majesty said today that I could go home early."

'...He's not the type to say that without reason.'

"Why?"

"I lay down in front of His Majesty and begged him to let me go home early."

I knew Julian was the type of person who could actually do such a thing, so I looked at him in shock. When he was little, I had seen him throw tantrums by lying down in front of Roxana a few times.

No matter how handsome he was or how charming he could be, the horrifying spectacle of a fully grown man throwing himself down and rolling around like a toddler having a tantrum on a mart floor was absolutely dreadful to witness. When Julian caught sight of my earnest, penetrating stare, he grew sheepish and quickly backtracked on his statement.

"...No, I didn't actually lie down, I just pleaded."

"Dad, you won't just get fired for that—you'll be arrested for disrespect."

Of course, Julian was someone who wouldn't be arrested even if he got into a fistfight with the emperor.

Because according to the way this world's hierarchy was structured, the emperor and duke occupied equivalent positions of authority.

At my words, Julian chuckled and said as if telling me not to worry.

"It's okay. You know His Majesty is Dad's child... childhood friend. It's just friends fooling around."

"Hmm."

I responded halfheartedly with an indifferent expression. Julian, who would normally have reacted to my indifference somehow, was looking at me with a bitter expression for some reason.

"Tilly."

"Yeah?"

"Our Tilly will live with Dad forever, right?"

At his sudden words, I made a face and stared intently at Julian to understand his intention. He wasn't just asking his daughter random questions out of happiness. There was sadness lingering in his eyes.

"You'll do that for me, right?"

Forever—just as I had experienced, people die someday, so families can't stay together forever. Julian should know that well too, so why was he suddenly asking such a strange question? Unable to understand his intention, I just asked him directly.

"Dad, what's wrong?"

"......"

"Did someone bully Dad? Should I ask Mom to scold them?"

"No, it's not that. I just got worried about what would happen if I couldn't see our Tilly anymore."

When Roxana and Julian came home from work, their time was devoted entirely to me. I usually preferred having Roxana put me to bed, and coincidentally, today's bedtime duty was Roxana's. I lay in bed and chattered to Roxana about what happened during the day.

"So I think Dad is better at being cute than cool after all."

At my conclusion, Roxana nodded as if she agreed. The biggest reason she married Julian was because his face flushed crimson during his confession was so endearingly adorable to her.

Of course, this was backed up by his insane beauty that penetrated everyone's taste.

"Dad is naturally kind of cute."

'Cute enough for the demon knight commander who had zero interest in men to accept his confession.'

Roxana was someone who stayed by the emperor and Julian's side until the end in their long fight to seize real power from the nobles.

When she first met the two, who were still crown prince and young duke, Roxana listened to their plan to change the rotting empire and swore loyalty without hesitation.

In order to seize control of military force—which could arguably be called the most decisive element of power—she clawed her way up to the position of knight commander and, after fierce competition with her elder siblings, inherited the Enfield earldom.

She had constantly looked ahead and run forward, never thinking of marriage, so she decided on a successor among her nephews early on and devoted herself only to her work as knight commander.

And when imperial power stabilized, Julian confessed to Roxana.

Julian had harbored pure feelings for over 10 years since she first swore loyalty, but Roxana had never once seen Julian as a man. She only thought of him as a superior and colleague who, like herself, was obsessed with reforming the country.

The sight of such a person turning bright red and clumsily confessing completely broke down the walls of Roxana's heart.

In technical terms, it was a "gap moe accident." Of course, this was a story only known to me, the author, and Roxana.

"You married Dad because he was cute?"

"Of course cuteness was part of it, but your dad is a really wonderful person."

"Wonderful? Dad?"

"Of course, your dad is so wonderful."

"But Dad is a crybaby and an idiot."

"That's what makes him wonderful. Being a crybaby and an idiot isn't easy."

"......"

"Tilly doesn't understand what I mean yet, right?"

No, I do understand. I swallowed those words and hurriedly changed the subject.

"Dad said something strange today."

"Something strange?"

"He asked if I would live with Dad forever."

"...What does Tilly want to do?"

The candlelight flickered, and Roxana's face, which the light hadn't fully revealed, was momentarily exposed. She too had the same expression as Julian. Sometimes, the people around me looked at me with this expression. However, they had never asked me such a question before.

'Something is definitely going on.'

"Tilly will live with Mom and Dad and Royna forever."

When I deliberately changed to third person and emphasized the word "forever," Roxana's low laughter echoed.

"Our Tilly sometimes seems to know how to make herself look cute."

'When you're a four-year-old with an adult's mental age, this level of cunning is natural, Miss Roxana.'

Still, since Roxana's expression had brightened considerably, it was worth the embarrassment of using third-person cuteness.

"Why? Can't we live together forever?"

"Not forever, but we'll live together for quite a long time."

"But why did Dad suddenly say that?"

“A little prince from a neighboring kingdom has to live apart from his father, the king of that neighboring land, for a very long time.”

"......"

"So Dad probably thought of our Tilly."

Roxana also had a similar expression to Julian. However, at the mention of a prince from a neighboring country, I couldn't comfort her even though I knew she was sad. The prince from the neighboring country was both the villain and male protagonist of this novel. I looked up at the ceiling and remembered that this was around the time he would come to the empire.

'The male protagonist...'

I was lost in thought while rocking Royna's cradle.

The three families that protect the world from evil spirits.

The Aser Imperial Family of Protection, the Sellis Royal Family of Purification, and the Remetio Ducal Family of Healing.

Well, I had given them all rather impressive-sounding names, but when you stripped it down to basics, it was just your standard *tank-DPS-healer party composition.

The children of this generation who would awaken their abilities and become the last guardians.

'Male protagonist' Layan Sellis. 'Female protagonist' Royna Remetio. 'Second male lead' Aigis Aser.

I'm originally famous for creating protagonists with tragic backgrounds.

The female protagonist and second male lead of this novel were characters who rarely had unfortunate childhoods. Even if you looked at it upside down, you could tell how much Julian and Roxana love their children as parents, and how good an environment Royna and I are growing up in.

However, the male protagonist, Layan, was different.

Layan's mother, the former Queen of Sellis, died shortly after giving birth to him. The King of Sellis soon took a second queen, and that queen gave birth to a prince a year ago.

Due to his stepmother wanting to make her own son the crown prince, Layan, who had just turned five, had been threatened with his life in the royal palace for over a year.

Of course, the King of Sellis, the male protagonist's father, wasn't unaware of this fact.

However, members of the three families blessed with supernatural abilities were predominantly raised to be almost painfully virtuous and selfless individuals. Therefore, they weren't suited to be rulers. Consequently, appropriate families or individuals under them, rather than the family heads, held real power, and the heads of the three families with abilities mostly wore nominal crowns.

The problem was that the queen's family, which currently held real power in the Sellis royal family, was incompetent yet greedy.

The Aser Empire had also experienced such things when Julian and the emperor were young. Unable to bear watching the country rot, the two directly entered politics and overturned everything, even getting their hands dirty with unsavory work, but those two were very exceptional cases.

However, the King of Sellis was a typical person from the three families.

He knew the queen was tormenting Layan, but he had neither the power to get involved in the power struggle nor was he the type of person who would choose a successor between the two young princes and let one of them die.

All he could do was create an appropriate excuse to protect the still-young male protagonist from assassination threats and request help from the other two families.

Eventually, Layan would be sent to the empire under the pretext of studying abroad, and thus grow up with Asu, deepening their bond.

The time they grew up together was at most about a year.

The only happy year in the male protagonist's unfortunate childhood.

You need to know the sweetness of happiness for the male protagonist's misfortune to feel more painful, and I set it up that way for the bond between the male protagonist and the second male lead.

Although the outcome was already decided, Julian, who had the choice, seemed to have many concerns. Considering the relationship between the three families, it would be difficult to refuse, but he didn't know what disadvantages there might be if he took in the prince.

"Waaah?"

When I sighed, Royna waved her hand toward me and babbled.

I wiped Royna's drool again. To think this drooling baby would also go to war someday. I felt strangely uncomfortable.

Even though I was the one who set it up that way.

'I should go eat a snack.'

As I tried to take my hand away from Royna, she grabbed my hand firmly.

"Abweh!"

"......"

"Awu, wah!"

Every time I tried to pull my hand away, Royna would cry out in babbling that she couldn't understand, as if throwing a tantrum.

"The young miss seems to not want to be separated from her sister."

"No way."

"It's true. From what I've observed for several days, the young miss definitely loves you very much."

"Ung!"

Seeing Royna laugh as if agreeing with the nanny's words, a smile naturally appeared on my lips. Seeing this, the nanny went to a corner and hurriedly caught her breath.

"What's wrong, Nanny?"

"It's nothing, young miss. My heart suddenly started hurting."

'Gap moe accident indeed.'

I clicked my tongue in my mind and watched the nanny who didn't know what to do with happiness.

In the story, Royna's nanny appeared only occasionally, so there wasn't much detailed description. I just wrote that she was kind and cared for children very much, but that was natural for the nanny of a beloved female protagonist.

I can say with certainty that I had never once imagined such a flustered nanny.

*Translator Note: 

Aser Imperial Family (Protection) = TankSellis Royal Family (Purification) = DPS/Damage dealerRemetio Ducal Family (Healing) = Healer

She’s being somewhat self-deprecating, saying that despite giving these families grand, impressive names and abilities, when you get down to it, she just created a basic RPG party setup that any gamer would recognize. It's a meta-commentary on how fantasy worldbuilding often follows familiar gaming tropes.