Reincarnated Without a Cheat, I Adopted the Former Hero as My Mom

Uriel held his expression perfectly steady.

He could feel his ears burning.

She was quiet, a faint crease forming between her brows, like someone trying to process a math problem that was slightly above grade level.

Okay. She's not any more keen on dying than she was five minutes ago. That counts.

He shifted his gaze to the puddle on the floor. His brain immediately started screaming at him.

Did I just call myself an 'adorable little prize' to a stranger? Did that actually happen? Out loud?

Confirmed. That happened. You said it with your whole chest. Am I going to be remembered as that weird kid?

He lowered his hands and pretended to study the pattern of the ripples.

The thing was — a line like that was a single-use item. Shock value, gone. She needed something with weight to it, something she could actually hold onto. Otherwise this whole performance would dissolve the moment he walked away, and the scary beautiful monster lady would go right back to where she'd been an hour ago. He needed a hook. Something that said: there's something left unfinished, and you have to stick around to see it through.

He cycled through three approaches. Rejected all three.

A fourth one surfaced.

He rejected it on the spot.

Absolutely not. That line has a grease radius of ten meters, that line is so slick I could feel it through my skull just thinking it — and for reference, I went seven years in my last life without a single normal conversation with anyone of the opposite gender —

Goddess, can we just skip straight to the next reincarnation. Please.

His toes curled against the floorboard without him meaning to.

He knew how this went. Logic didn't work. In his last life, there had been a friend — always laughing, always fine, and then one day not fine, and then gone. The guy had heard every reasonable argument for staying. None of them had held. What actually worked wasn't an argument. It was a hook. Something concrete. A single small task left unfinished.

He opened his mouth.

Wait—

The emergency recall signal from his brain was still in transit when his body, operating entirely on its own initiative, delivered the second shot without permission, without hesitation, and without any detectable sense of self-preservation:

"You could keep me. Like, as my mom."

The words left his mouth.

And then there was only rain. The rain filled the silence.

Uriel stared at the puddle in front of him and watched a raindrop fall into it, spread, and disappear. Then another. Then another.

What the hell am I saying?!

Begging a terrifyingly beautiful woman to adopt me?! That is objectively ten times more humiliating than the 'cute prize' thing!

He dug his fingernail into the gap between two floorboards. It didn't catch — his nails were too short — and the only result was a faint sting at the tip of his finger. He needed it. He needed something physical, a signal, otherwise he genuinely wasn't sure what his face might be doing right now.

Is this body’s hardware overriding my software?! Is the 'I want a mommy' subroutine hardwired into a five-year-old’s brain?!

He stole a glance sideways. Immediately relocated his gaze to the floor. He stared very hard at a specific crack in the wood.

Smite me now, Goddess. Please.

Fine. Okay. The point landed. That's what matters. A thing she can only collect if she's still here — that's better than nothing. That's the hook. We're going with that. We're fine. Everything is fine.

She had been watching him the whole time.

From the moment he'd pulled that stunt, her gaze hadn't left him.

Uriel tilted his head up and met her eyes. He didn't look away. He didn't keep talking. He just stood there and let her look.

The rain continued, steady and unhurried, striking the old wall, striking the ground, striking the air between the two of them, washing everything down to something clean.

Maybe it was the sheer absurdity of his awards ceremony. Maybe it was something else. But something cracked open in those eyes. The focus pulled back in, slowly, and landed — clearly, fully — on his face.

She spoke.

Her voice was rough. Like something that hadn't been used in a while. Or like something that had been pushed down very deep a long time ago and hadn't fully found its way back up.

"...Okay."

The stone that had been suspended in Uriel's chest dropped quietly to the floor.

"But," she added, her voice soft, something in it starting — slowly, tentatively, but unmistakably — to come back to life, "can you wait a little while? I have something I need to take care of first."

She pressed a hand to the wall and stood.

Uriel tilted his head back to watch her rise. She was tall — taller than he'd expected. Her golden hair slid back with the movement, and the soaked ends swept a thin arc of water through the air beside her.

Her golden eyes were no longer empty. The focus had returned. There was something in them now that he hadn't had time to fully read yet.

"I need to take care of something," she said. "I'll come back for you a little later. I'll come get you."

"...When?" Uriel asked.

She paused, visibly caught off guard by the question. She thought about it.

"Tomorrow."

"Okay." He nodded, pressing the promise flat inside him so it wouldn't slip. "I'll be here."

She held his gaze for a moment. Something in her expression — complex and strangely weightless at the same time — he couldn't quite name it.

She reached up and lifted the worn blanket from her shoulders. Then she settled it over him — carefully, completely, tucking it around his small frame. It was far too large for him. He nearly vanished inside it, and it was heavier than it looked. Like something that had been carried by the world for a long time had quietly transferred itself onto him instead.

She turned and walked toward the far end of the courtyard.

A few steps out, her golden hair drifted behind her in the rain. She didn't look back.

Uriel stood there and watched her go. He reached out with [Observer], one last quiet sweep in her direction.

The bottomless Aether around her had changed — quieter, maybe, or heavier. He couldn't say which. Only that it wasn't the same as before.

He folded the blanket and set it back where he'd found it. Then he sat down by the window.

Old Nanny dragged him to dinner. He ate two bites. By the time he came back, the rain had stopped.

The setting sun broke through the clouds and turned every puddle in the courtyard to scattered gold.

He thought of the word she'd left behind.

Tomorrow.

She'll come back.

He issued one final ruling in the internal tribunal: the 'cute prize' line. Permanently decommissioned. Effective immediately. Under no circumstances was it to be deployed again.

Night arrived on schedule. He sat in the window with his heels tapping their idle rhythm against the wall.

The same rhythm as the afternoon. Exactly the same.

---

Galatina stepped through the orphanage gate and turned the corner at the end of the street, disappearing into the alley. She walked without hurry. Her boots struck the cobblestones in a slow, even beat.

Then the child's voice surfaced again.

I'm having fun. Are you?

Her steps slowed. Then stopped entirely, somewhere in the dark of the alley.

She turned the line over in her mind. Once. Again. Each time, something that had been sitting at the bottom of her chest for a very long time shifted slightly upward.

Only a little. But that little was real.

She held onto that feeling and left it alone. She had something to do next, and she needed the space.

She knew where they were.

She'd felt them the moment she stepped inside the orphanage. Seven clusters of Aether, dormant and waiting. Waiting for her to come back out.

This wasn't the first time.

The first time had been at the river crossing. She'd only just left the Church. Three men on the other side of the road, walking toward her. She recognized one — the eldest son of a knight family. His eyes were desperate, and in the desperation there was fear, and wrapped inside the fear there was a guilt with nowhere to go.

They didn't say a word. They rushed her together, and still couldn't catch her.

Later, she found out the truth. The higher-ups in the human realm had taken his father hostage, using his life to force the son to cooperate.

After a while, she stopped asking. Because every time she did, the answer was the same. Father. Son. Husband. Not one of them came willingly.

So she ran.

Not because she couldn't fight — she could win blindfolded, and everyone standing across from her knew it.

The problem was that she couldn't bring herself to do it. Every person who came at her had someone waiting for them to come home. If she fought, those people were finished.

So she ran. And hid. And ran again. And after enough of that, you end up curled in the rain against a crumbling wall, staring at nothing.

But tonight was different.

Tonight, she had someone waiting for her to come back.

She stood in the alley and turned the pebble over in her hand — though the stone had long since been launched into a puddle, and what she was turning over was only the memory of its weight.

She started walking again. Toward the city gate. Toward the mountain road.

Somewhere along the way, the corner of her mouth moved.

Just slightly.

She had thought of something.

---

The seven of them had been waiting on the mountain road outside the city for a while now.

Since she'd gone into the orphanage, actually. They'd been waiting as the light bled out of the sky, waiting as the night settled fully into place, waiting as the mountain wind snapped at their torches until the flames crackled and spat. By now they were exchanging glances — one man to the next, no one wanting to be first to speak.

Every one of them was carrying the same thought: the name Holy Sword Maiden, and the long and deeply uncomfortable list of incidents that followed it. They had also all heard she never finished off someone who'd been given no choice in the matter.

Nobody wanted to be here.

Not one of them had come because they hated her, or because she'd wronged them. It was simply how things were.

Then someone saw it.

Off to the side of the road, in a flat clearing: a stone marker, freshly set. And planted before it, a sword.

The Holy Sword.

Seven pairs of eyes locked onto that blade in complete silence.

Then they tracked sideways, to the ground beside the marker.

Galatina was lying there.

Flat on her back. Hands folded neatly over her stomach. Eyes shut. Her entire body was rigid as a plank, projecting an air that managed to be simultaneously solemn and profoundly unconvincing.

The seven of them studied this scene from left to right, from right to left, and then from top to bottom.

One man spoke, very quietly, like he was worried about disturbing something:

"...Is she. Dead?"

Another stepped forward two paces, squinting.

"I... can't tell."

"Should someone poke her?"

"You poke her."

"Why me—"

"You're closest—"

"Being closest doesn't mean I'm the one who should poke her, those are completely unrelated—"

A third man cut in, voice low, maintaining his professionalism through what appeared to be significant personal effort:

"The sword is there. The marker is there. She is there." He said it one word at a time. "This is... isn't this..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

Ten full seconds of silence.

Then the "deceased" moved.

She did not get up. Instead, without opening her eyes, without unfolding her hands, maintaining her expression of absolute funerary serenity — moving on nothing but the millimeter-by-millimeter cooperation of her heels and shoulder blades — she began to slide.

Smoothly. Horizontally. At a perfectly constant velocity.

The Holy Sword Maiden, legendary terror of the continent, was inching across the ground like a surfboard that had developed strong opinions about the direction of travel.

Seven grown men stood holding torches and watched in total silence.

In the final second before she disappeared into the brush at the roadside, the grass emitted three words, completely flat:

"I am dead."

The bushes rustled once. Then were still.

Pursuer Number One stared at the brush for a long time.

Then he looked at the stone marker. Then at the sword planted before it. Then at his companions. He spoke with the tone of a man who has arrived at a conclusion and intends to stand behind it:

"She's dead."

Everyone looked at him.

"The sword is here. The marker is here. The body was here. And we all heard the… uh… divine revelation… confirming it.." He paused. "All seven of us witnessed it personally."

Pursuer Number Two hesitated.

"But she just—"

"The corpse," Number One said, with absolute conviction, "was carried off by ants."

Number Two closed his mouth. He considered this. Slowly, he nodded.

The remaining five followed, each at their own pace.

Number One cast one final glance at the quiet brush, clasped his hands behind his back, and said:

"We report back."

The torchlight swayed down the mountain road, growing smaller, growing dimmer, and finally folding into the dark.

The road went quiet again. Only wind, and the occasional cricket.

The brush moved.

Galatina climbed out, dusted the grass and dirt from her clothes, and straightened up. She glanced at the old stone marker — well. Fine. Let it be her grave, then. Whatever name had been carved there had long since worn away, so it wasn't like she was displacing anyone. The sword could stay too. She didn't need it anymore. From here on, that name and that blade could both remain on this mountain.

She turned and walked down toward the city.

Her pace was unhurried. But step by step, it quickened. By the time she reached the base of the mountain, she noticed that her heartbeat was different from a few minutes ago.

Faster. And not just from the exertion.

It was simply because, somewhere down there in the dark, a child was waiting for her to come back.

Without quite meaning to, her steps quickened.