Chapter 8: The Brigade Keeps Growing
The blue-haired girl stayed.
The reason was simple: when Uriel asked where her parents were, and where she lived, she answered both questions with a single word.
"Nowhere."
He had doubts. Between his mother's personality and the image he'd built for himself, there was no way he could throw her out in front of Lumina. The boomerang from three years ago had finally come back and smacked him in the face.
---
The days at the old house moved fast. Uriel had started to suspect it was because something new happened every day, which left no room for time to drag.
The mornings always started the same way: he'd open his eyes, and there would already be something cooking.
Today it was mushrooms.
He walked into the kitchen and made a quiet note of approval.
Galatina stood at the stove, apron tied with her usual exactness, silver hair pulled back with a cloth strip, working a wooden spoon through something that smelled considerably better than anything he could have made. She turned when she heard him.
"Good morning, little Uri."
She smiled at him, warm enough to make the room feel like spring.
"Morning, Mom."
Uriel settled onto a stool, propped his elbow on the table's edge, and yawned.
Fenria was already at her post.
Both tufted ears stood fully upright. Her eyes were locked onto the pot with the focused intensity of someone waiting for a sniper's shot. Her tail swept back and forth so fast it was almost a blur.
"It smells SO GOOD —"
"It's not ready." Lumina walked past carrying a teacup, not looking up. "Sit down."
"...Okay."
Fenria deflated for approximately one second. The tail did not slow.
In the far corner, the blue-haired girl sat at the table with her hands folded in front of her, still and quiet as a decorative object.
She didn't have a name yet.
"What do I call you?" Uriel asked, keeping his voice casual.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were calm — no hostility, no particular warmth either.
"Nothing."
"...Nothing?"
"No one has ever given me one."
She said it plainly, with the detached ease of someone reporting a fact about a stranger.
Uriel was quiet for a moment.
Then a name came to him, and it seemed right.
"Kira."
She said nothing.
"It means 'to shine' in a — " Uriel touched the back of his neck, improvising, "— certain ancient dialect."
"It's yours now," he said. "Starting today."
The girl — Kira, now — studied him for a moment. Then she dropped her gaze and gave a single small nod.
Nothing else.
He wasn't entirely sure she'd accepted it. She just hadn't rejected it. But she never pushed it away after that. Called by it, she responded. So probably yes. Probably.
---
Mornings at the old house meant training.
Galatina's curriculum had range. It had begun with aether sensitivity and basic channeling theory, but over time had expanded to include unarmed self-defense, and then — at Uriel's strong recommendation — cooking and basic mending, filed officially under life skills.
His stated reason: a mage who couldn't take care of herself wouldn't last long out there.
His actual reason: he was not going to keep watching his mother carry every household task alone. The three girls were going to learn to contribute. This was non-negotiable.
"Alright, ten minutes' rest." Galatina clapped her hands lightly. She had just run a full sparring drill against all three girls simultaneously and somehow emerged with not a single strand of silver hair out of place. "Everyone worked hard today."
She bent down and rested her hand on Lumina's head first.
"Lumina — your casting speed has improved a lot."
The green-haired girl glanced downward, the tips of her ears going very faintly pink.
"...Thank you for the praise."
Then Fenria.
"Fenria — excellent force control today."
"Heheh!"
Both ears snapped upright. The tail frequency doubled.
Then Kira.
"Kira — your observation was precise."
Kira said nothing, same as always, and kept her head low.
Then it was Uriel's turn.
Galatina's hand came to rest on top of his head.
"Little Uri." Her voice was warm. "Good work today, as always."
"Witch." The resignation in his tone was genuine. "I'm older than them. You don't have to group me in with the praise rotation."
"You're all my children," she said. "Of course I praise you all together."
...
There was no response to that.
Uriel chose to pretend he hadn't heard it.
He liked to think of himself as the brains of the operation—the responsible older brother managing the chaos. Yet somehow, he was absolutely certain he was the one being babied. He'd stopped trying to resolve the contradiction.
---
There was one thing that had been sitting in the back of his mind for weeks. A small, persistent splinter.
Kira's eyes.
She watched Galatina too much. Had been doing it since the day she arrived.
Not the way a child looked at someone impressive. This was something more focused, more deliberate — the kind of attention that had a purpose behind it.
Galatina cooking: Kira watching.
Galatina explaining aether theory? Kira watched.
Galatina sitting under the eave doing absolutely nothing? Still watching.
Uriel buried the concern and tried to leave it alone. Trying not to think about it only made him think about it more at night.
One evening, under the pretext of looking at stars, he sat alone in the corridor and turned the question over again.
Kira had been found in the forest. No name. No origin. Quiet in a way that felt chosen rather than natural. Cautious with direct eye contact. The kind of person who had either been through something significant, or —
— or had arrived here with a specific purpose.
He thought about the early years. The times he'd asked his mother what she'd actually been doing, that day before he arrived.
The answer was always the same: That's a story for grown-ups. I'll tell you when you're older.
She said it gently every time. But that gentleness was like cotton packed around a door — soft, yielding, completely impassable. He'd never gotten through.
So he didn't know. He knew she was the hero. Everything else was blank.
And isekai logic, if he was being honest with himself, had very specific things to say about mysterious children who appear without warning and attach themselves to the protagonist's household.
Spy. Assassin. Avenger. Some kind of cursed vessel—
Okay. Stop. He pinched himself. This isn't a story. This is real life.
Real life is frequently more absurd than stories, but still.
He looked at the closed window across the corridor.
Keep watching.
He observed for an entire month.
His findings: Kira did not steal anything. She did not move around at night. She had no contact with unknown parties. She approached every training session and lesson with a seriousness that sat several years above her apparent age. She voluntarily swept the floors.
The only suspicious behavior, by any metric, was the staring.
Which — possibly — was not actually a security threat.
Uriel began to wonder if he'd been catastrophizing.
---
Then came the morning that settled it.
Training finished. The usual round of praise. Rest announced.
The three girls dispersed. Lumina went for her book. Fenria had already smelled the water pitcher from across the yard and was heading for it at speed. Kira quietly pushed the door open and went back to her room.
Uriel stood in place for two seconds.
His detective instincts, regrettably, won out over his better judgment.
He followed, soft-footed.
Kira's door was resting against the frame, not latched. Uriel stopped outside it, held his breath, and eased it open by a centimeter.
And saw:
Kira, face-down in her blanket, rolling back and forth across the bed.
"—the Witch's speed today was just — just — a normal mage couldn't even track the movement, let alone respond, but she did it, and she had that expression the whole time, what does that expression mean —"
The words came out fast. Dangerously fast. Uriel's internal transcription service nearly fell behind.
"Is it because she’s so powerful she doesn’t even need to show hostility?! Or is that just her natural aura?! And the way she looks when she cooks at home—why is her back so incredibly cool?! Guheeehh...!"
She made a sound that did not correspond to any known written language.
Then she rolled over and writhed inside her blanket like a very ecstatic caterpillar.
Uriel remained perfectly still in the doorway.
....
Oh no.
She's a delusional closet-otaku.
He began, very gently, to pull the door back closed.
The figure on the bed rolled over.
Their eyes met.
Time stopped.
Neither of them breathed. Time itself seemed to stall.
Kira's eyes were now roughly twice their normal size, her blanket violently yanked up to cover everything below her nose. The silence was deafening.
"...I didn't see anything," Uriel said, quietly. "I'll come get you when dinner's ready."
He closed the door.
He stood in the corridor and took a long, measured breath.
Okay.
Just a socially awkward, delusion-prone fangirl with an intense fixation on my mom. Good to know. These exist in this world, apparently. Noted.
A laugh escaped before he could stop it. He turned to head back—
"Wait."
The door opened behind him.
Uriel looked back.
Kira stood in the doorway. She was still holding the blanket. Her expression had shifted — not entirely recovered, but working at something like composure — except her eyes were a little red.
"...Earlier." She paused. "I'm sorry." Another pause, choosing words carefully. "That wasn't — it wasn't something weird. It was just — just —"
Her pace was completely different now. Slow enough that each word seemed carefully chosen before it left her mouth.
"I just think she's incredible."
"And very kind."
"I've never seen an adult like that before."
Her eyes dimmed slightly.
"I don't know how to say it properly, so I just... have to do it somewhere private." She looked at him steadily. "Please don't make me leave."
"I know," Uriel said. Flat. Uncomplicated. "It's fine."
"..."
"Better than I was expecting, honestly."
He turned and walked away.
---
Kira stood in the doorway for a long time after he'd gone.
Better than I was expecting.
She turned the sentence over a few times.
What was the normal response to what he'd walked in on? Confusion. Disgust. A careful, deliberate widening of the distance between you and the strange girl with the blanket. That was how it usually went.
What he'd actually said was: better than I was expecting.
Which meant he'd already noticed. Before today, he had already been watching — and hadn't changed, hadn't pulled away, hadn't—
Had quietly pulled the door back closed.
"..."
She kept her eyes on his retreating back for a long time.
She was bad at talking. Not because she had nothing to say — it was always the opposite, everything jamming at once in the back of her throat until none of it could get through. But some things, she decided, could be understood without being said.
---
A few days later. Dinnertime.
Uriel went down the corridor to call everyone in.
Lumina answered her knock. Fenria had already smelled the food and let herself out.
He got to Kira's room last.
He was still a step away from the door when he heard it through the wood.
Same speed. Same density.
"...The way Mom adjusted the pressure on the head-pat today — it was lighter than yesterday — was that because I was slow in that one sequence? Or is she calibrating? She's paying that much attention? She's always paying that much attention—"
Uriel stopped walking.
Hang on.
Mom. That's me.
"...and the Scribe — he blocked the attack coming from my left today, the timing was exact — he already knew that was my weak side, he's been watching this whole time, he sees things and just doesn't say —"
....
"— so cool, seriously — that complete silence while he's clearly ten steps ahead — what even is that—"
Uriel stood outside the door.
Three seconds.
He knocked.
"Dinner."
A very distinct, very sudden intake of breath from inside.
"...Understood."
He stayed where he was, hands in his pockets.
His face was doing something he couldn't quite control.
....
So that's how it is.
Mom. I think I may have accidentally caused another situation.