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

Uriel sat on the veranda and looked out at the three girls in the yard, turning one problem over in his head with genuine focus.

They needed titles.

A Brigade wasn't a real Brigade without titles for its core members. That was just basic organizational theory.

Three people. So — the Big Three.

He approved of this immediately. Three girls, three hair colors: green, red, blue. Clean. Symmetrical. Done.

Then he considered the possibility that his mother might come home with another one someday.

Four: the Four Heavenly Kings.

If it kept going after that —

Five: the Power Rangers.

Seven: the Magnificent Seven.

If they somehow reached eleven —

Then we form a football team, and I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that.

As it turned out, it didn't.

For the next three years, the headcount at the Old Cottage held steady at five. Not one more, not one less. The Power Rangers slot sat permanently empty. The football team remained a hypothetical. The Four Heavenly Kings never saw deployment.

All things considered, fine.

---

Three years. Long enough to matter, short enough to surprise you when they were over.

The Old Cottage had gotten loud. Loud enough that Uriel would sometimes sit in the corridor, listening to the overlapping voices coming from inside, and briefly forget he was supposed to be twelve.

Forget it completely, actually.

He'd asked Galatina once how she felt about having three additional children in the house, whether it wasn't a bit crowded. She'd been brushing Fenria's fur at the time — working through a tangle behind the ears with the practiced ease of someone who'd been doing it for decades — while Fenria sat impossibly still under her hands, meek in a way she wasn't for anyone else.

Galatina had glanced down at her and then back up.

"Crowded where?" she said. "I thinks it's just right this way."

Later, Lumina let something slip while reading, in the same calm tone she’d use to report the weather: "The Witch said we'll all be family eventually. She said not to stand on ceremony." A pause. "She also said you have to treat us well."

"When have I ever not treated you well?"

"Never," Lumina said, perfectly sincere. "That's why she was talking about the future."

Uriel stared at the side of her face and had the distinct feeling that something about that sentence was wrong, but he couldn't locate exactly what.

Mom. What have you been telling them.

Then, one afternoon, he overheard Galatina murmuring to herself by the window — the Old Cottage had always had thin walls — "take this one in, it'll fit Lumina properly," "Fenria's needs reinforcing, she goes through fabric when she runs," and then, after a pause: "...can't have my little Uri's future wife going around dressed poorly, now can I."

Uriel's footsteps stopped in the corridor.

....

Mom. You have been actively collecting daughters-in-law. This whole time. This has been a project.

He eased the door shut and quietly slipped away.

---

The three years moved fast.

Lumina had taken the principles of the Witch Brigade — which Uriel had invented off the top of his head one afternoon to calm down a frightened child — and somewhere along the way decided they were scripture. She stood in the yard with the wind moving through her green hair and delivered them with the solemnity of someone reciting an oath:

"The Brigade holds to three tenets. First: strike down evil, protect the innocent. Second: never raise your power against the weak. Third: follow the guidance of the Witch and the Scribe."

Fenria's ears stood straight up. "Understood!"

Kira listened from the side, expression neutral, and after a moment gave a single small nod.

Uriel sat on the veranda with his chin in his hand.

Lumina. I made those up. I made all of that up. I was telling bedtime stories. How are you delivering them with more conviction than I had writing them.

Fenria's favorite subject, by a wide margin, was applied engineering. Pulleys, levers, water-storage mechanisms — every time he explained something, she'd get that look that said, oh, so you can just do that, and it was always genuine.

"Scribe, can I try building this one?"

"Go ahead. Don't smash your fingers."

"Got it!"

Kira said less, but she heard everything. He’d mention a mechanism in passing, and a few days later she’d show up with a page packed edge to edge in precise handwriting.

"There are things here I don't understand."

"Which parts?"

"...All of it."

He'd take the paper and scan through it. The questions were linked, each one growing from the answer to the last, nested several layers deep.

This kid's mind is genuinely something else.

All three of them, of course, watched Galatina's combat demonstrations with the focused reverence of disciples witnessing a miracle.

"As expected of the Witch —!"

"...The efficiency of that movement far exceeds standard form."

"WAAAH —!"

Galatina would turn around afterward, eyes curved into a smile. "Everyone did well — did you all follow along?"

Uriel stood to the side, expression normal.

I am watching my mother receive worship from three children and she thinks they're complimenting her cooking.

---

One evening he asked her directly: "Mom, do you know what game we're playing? Do you actually know?"

She was mending a small shirt, silver hair loose against her ear.

"Playing a game," she said. "Little Uri tells stories. They follow the rules from the stories. Isn't that right?"

"...That's how you see it."

"What else would it be?" She looked up, perfectly at ease. "Children have their own world. I doesn't need to understand all of it." She paused. "They're all good children, though."

"Yeah."

"Little Uri is a good child too."

"...Mom. I'm twelve."

"Mm. Good child."

Uriel decided to stop talking. Good child, then.

---

It was later that year — twelve years old, an ordinary afternoon — when Lumina found him.

"Scribe."

Uriel didn't look up from his notes. "Go ahead."

"I have a question." She sat across from him the way she always did, expression serious. "A Witch is called a Witch because she has become one."

What kind of question is that.

Uriel blinked. "...Yes."

"So what is she called before she becomes one?"

He frowned.

Where did this come from.

"Apprentice Witch?" Lumina offered herself. "Our current state, strictly speaking — training incomplete, tenets not yet put into practice — we can't properly be called Witches yet. So I wanted to know if this stage has an official designation."

Uriel scratched his head.

A word floated up from somewhere in his memory.

"Magical Girl," he said. "That's the term."

Lumina went still for a moment.

Then she said it quietly to herself, testing it.

"...Magical Girl."

"Right."

"That name." Her voice carried a faint, unmistakable excitement. "It's very good."

She stood up and left.

Random question, but sure. They're all young girls anyway. Magical Girl is fine.

---

One month later. A normal morning.

Breakfast finished, Galatina was clearing dishes, Uriel was looking back through his old notes. Nothing unusual.

Then Lumina walked in.

Fenria and Kira came in behind her.

All three of them were dressed for travel. Packs strapped clean and tight.

Uriel looked up.

"..."

"Scribe." Lumina stood where she was. Her expression was the same as always — but something had settled in her eyes. "We've come to say goodbye."

"Goodbye," Uriel said, not following. "To go where?"

"The Brigade's first tenet: strike down evil, protect the innocent." She said it the way she said everything she'd memorized — not reciting, exactly, more like reading off something carved into the inside of her chest. "A Witch cannot stay in one place forever."

He started to feel the shape of this.

Then Lumina spoke again.

"Scribe." Something in her voice had been measured out very carefully. "There's something I've always wanted to ask."

"Go ahead."

"You and the Witch," she said, and paused, "are both so capable."

"...Yeah."

"Then why," she looked at him directly, "haven't you gone out to practice the Brigade's tenets yourselves?"

Uriel took that question directly to the chest.

Oh no. Three years of storytelling and I completely forgot to patch this plothole.

Fenria's ears had come fully upright. She was watching him with absolute seriousness. Kira hadn't moved, but her eyes were on him.

All three of them, waiting.

He sat with it for a moment. Considered and discarded several answers.

Then he sighed.

"Because there is something here," he said, "that is very dangerous."

Lumina looked slightly startled.

"The Witch cannot leave," he continued. "If she did, things would become... irreversible."

The yard went quiet.

Uriel let his gaze drift — just barely, just for a moment — in Galatina's direction, and then pulled it back. Face neutral throughout.

Lumina caught the movement. She followed it, looked toward Galatina, and was silent for a moment.

"...I see," she said, and her voice had gained some weight. "I understand."

Fenria's tail went still. It drooped. Her ears dropped slightly. "...Scribe, you and the Witch, you're both..."

"It's nothing," Uriel cut her off. "We've long since made our peace with it. No need for that expression."

Kira said nothing. She moved her eyes away to look at something else.

....Ah. They think Mom would cause trouble if she went out unsupervised. They've interpreted it that way. Good.

He looked at the three earnest faces and, convinced they'd landed on the same conclusion as him, decided not to correct any of it.

Fine. Let it stand.

They'd been here three years. They were leaving with a dignified reason. That was courtesy enough. He had no reason to go pulling that particular thread.

"Alright," he said. "The Brigade's third tenet — do you remember it?"

Lumina looked up.

"Follow the guidance of the Witch and the Scribe," she said, not missing a syllable. "I remember."

"Good." Uriel kept his expression level. "Then consider this the Scribe's final piece of guidance."

He looked at all three of them and said the last thing he needed to say:

"If you run into something you can't handle out there — don't push through it. Run first. Striking down evil comes second. Staying alive comes first. Is that understood?"

"Understood —!" Fenria answered immediately.

"...Understood," Lumina said, quieter.

Kira nodded.

"Good." Uriel turned and walked a few steps toward the veranda, keeping it casual. "Have the Witch see you off. Don't just stand there."

Fenria turned to Galatina, tail low but still moving. "We're heading out!"

"Oh," Galatina set down her bowl, wiped her hands, and walked over. "You're going?"

"Yes!"

"Eat properly." She bent down and rested her hand on Fenria's ears, then on Lumina's head, then on Kira's. "Take care of yourselves on the road."

Kira kept her head down and said nothing. Her eyes had gone red.

"Witch," Lumina said — her voice softer than usual, in a way she didn't often allow. "We'll come back."

"Good," Galatina said, smiling. "Go on, then."

Uriel watched the scene from the veranda. It looked exactly like a mother sending children off to school at the gate.

The three of them walked out through the yard.

He watched their backs grow smaller. Lumina at the front, Fenria beside her, Kira trailing — and then Kira glanced back.

Their eyes met for a moment.

She looked away and kept walking.

....

Uriel thought it over.

They'd figured it out. Of course they had. The stories had gotten too elaborate, the lore too detailed, too far outside anything a "game" would need. Some of it had stopped making sense as fiction years ago.

They'd known he was making it all up. They'd probably known for a while. They'd just never embarrassed him by saying so — and today they'd finally found a dignified reason to go live their own lives.

Not only did they never call me out as a fraud to my face — before they left.

Good kids. Really genuinely good kids.

He let out a breath. Looked at the open sky. He sent them off in his heart, feeling exactly like an old father watching his daughters leave the nest.

Go on, then. Fly higher than this.

Galatina had been quiet beside him the whole time. It was only once the three figures had disappeared from view that she seemed to come back to herself — a faint, wondering look on her face.

"...They grew up, didn't they?"

"Right," Uriel said. "You can't hold onto them."

They really did get taller.

"Mm," she echoed softly, and sighed — just slightly, the sound carrying a faint note of something wistful. "I thought they'd want to stay and play a little longer."

"Think of it as letting them go off to play," he said.

He felt, with some certainty, like someone's father.

"Ahh—" Galatina sighed again, with genuine feeling. "Those were three daughters-in-law, little Uri."

"...?"

"And they just walked out the door." She pressed a hand to her chest. "My heart hurts."

"Mom," Uriel said, taking a long breath, "do you understand the difference between daughters and daughters-in-law—"

"Whether they're little Uri's sisters or his wives, they're all my good children."

"Then why specifically wives."

Galatina tilted her head, with the air of someone explaining something perfectly reasonable. "I thought little Uri would prefer wives to sisters. Did little Uri want them to be both?"

"..."

Uriel gave up, let it out, said the thing he'd been thinking for three years:

"Mom. Is there actually a word for what you are, or did you invent it yourself?"

"Mm? Invent what?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

Uriel turned away and exhaled.

"You're blushing," she said.

"I'm not."

"You definitely are." Galatina smiled, reached over, and pinched his cheek. "And being stubborn about it."

"..."

He removed her hand. Turned and walked back inside.

I give up. There is no winning. There is only exhaustion.

"Mom. We need to go over the shopping list for next week."

"Oh, yes—" she followed him in, voice light, the whole departure already turned over to the next page. "Little Uri, what do you want most? I will get extra—"

"Whatever."

"There's no 'whatever' about it—"

"What. Ever."

Down the corridor of the Old Cottage, two figures — one taller, one following — voices trailing back and forth all the way to the door.

The yard went quiet behind them.

On the ground, faint footprints in the dirt, the kind small feet make when they run.