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

Lumina stood frozen on the spot.

Uriel blinked, let his gaze slide off her face, and drifted it sideways instead.

Tian stood between Kira and Fenria, still half a head taller than either of them.

Her posture was loose but completely steady. One hand rested on Fenria's head, which was still mashed against her front, ears poking through her fingers and flicking now and then. The other hand hovered above Kira's scalp, palm wrapped in a soft, faintly golden glow.

The light spread across the skin. The swelling that had been there a moment ago flattened, visibly, in real time, until the whole area sat smooth again. Even the redness around it faded back to normal skin tone.

Clean. Efficient. The whole thing took maybe a few seconds.

The control and output behind that healing spell looked exactly like something a Hero would pull off.

Though Tian was also the one who gave Kira that bump in the first place.

Uriel swallowed the deeply inappropriate comment threatening to escape and pulled his attention back to Lumina, whose focus had snapped back into place.

"So…"

He adjusted his tone, working to keep it sounding natural rather than like he'd just spent several seconds completely checked out.

"What are you three doing here?"

As he said it, his eyes drifted, just for a beat, toward the scattered black-coated bodies below, still sprawled across the path.

They're not with that group. Right?

Shouldn't be.

Probably.

Lumina straightened instantly. Her spine locked into place, shoulders pulled back, chin perfectly level. The brief, almost-human moment of being stunned vanished entirely, replaced by the immaculate posture of a subordinate reporting to a commander.

"Yes. My apologies — I should have reported in sooner."

The tone carried genuine, weighted regret, the kind you'd use apologizing for an actual professional failure. The kind of person who genuinely believed that failing to report to the Scribe promptly was, on its own, a serious lapse.

Uriel nodded, doing his best impression of someone completely unbothered.

Reported in.

Lumina drew a breath, her chest rising more visibly than usual, her voice clearer as a result. For a brief moment Uriel registered, again, just how much she'd grown.

"After parting ways with you and Lady Witch, we've spent the time living by the Brigade's creed — training ourselves across different regions."

…Wait.

Uriel's brow twitched, barely perceptibly.

She's starting from that far back?

He couldn't decide whether to cut in and ask her to fast-forward.

Maybe this part of the story can't be skipped.

And the bigger question — had she genuinely taken every piece of nonsense he'd improvised as a kid completely at face value and kept it word-for-word for three years? Or was she simply playing along in front of Galatina, maintaining the bit, keeping the Scribe character alive out of respect for him?

He couldn't tell. Honestly, he was leaning toward her just playing along.

Uriel decided to sit tight and listen.

"After we left," Lumina continued, her tone level and formal, like reading from an official report, "our first test of strength was driving off a dragon."

"…?"

Uriel's eyes went wide for exactly one beat before an iron grip on his own expression yanked them back to neutral. A thin breath of air escaped through his lips.

"The dragon's territory had been expanding. The Adventurers' Guild had a standing request out for it. After evaluating the situation, we determined a kill wasn't necessary — we drove it off into unpopulated territory instead."

"The fire breath was actually insane," Fenria said, lifting her head out of Tian's chest, ears flicking. "I went straight for its neck and bit down, and it whipped its tail so hard it cracked an entire section of cliff face! Rocks were just raining down everywhere."

She was getting visibly worked up, throwing a few punches into the air to illustrate.

"I was on its back," Kira jumped in without missing a beat. Her eyes were lit up the same way, her grin stretched at least three times wider than usual. Her fingers traced a circle in the air on instinct. "The scales were this big — no, bigger than that."

"And I drew its attention from the front," Lumina finished, expression unmoved, gently pushing Kira's still-gesturing hand back down. "Took about four hours to drive it off."

All three finished in unison, then turned to look at Tian.

In perfect unison. Like they'd rehearsed it.

She looked up, smiled wide, and nodded.

"Amazing. You all did so well."

At that, Kira and Fenria both straightened at once. Fenria's tail lifted half an inch, her ears standing even taller. Kira's expression twisted, the corner of her mouth fighting a losing battle against a full grin. Even Lumina — already standing at attention — let her shoulders ease by some small fraction, like she'd been carrying something heavy for a long time and had finally been given permission to set it down.

Uriel took in the whole account.

A dragon.

The three of them.

…Okay.

Mom and I actually ran into a dragon too, once. She punched it once and it left.

He cast back through a memory from middle school, but it hadn't occurred to him until just now that it might have been the same dragon.

He nodded, signaling that he'd taken it all in. Approved.

Lumina cleared her throat and kept going.

"After that, we traveled from place to place. We came across a number of people who needed help along the way. Some of them expressed a wish to travel with us —"

She trailed off mid-sentence. Her fingers curled slightly inside her coat pocket, gripping the fabric from the inside.

"But without your and the Witch's explicit approval, we didn't feel we had the right to formally induct them into the Brigade."

"So…"

"We established a separate brigade for them — the Magical Girl Brigade. It currently has several dozen members."

Somewhere off in the distance, the wind knocked a window loose against its frame — a single wooden thud, then carried off again. The rooftop felt even quieter by comparison.

Uriel rubbed at the bridge of his nose, guilt creeping up his spine.

His thumb dragged back and forth a couple of times until the skin there went faintly red.

He said nothing.

Several dozen people.

That entire embarrassing setup I improvised on the spot — Lumina, please tell me you made all of this up just to mess with me.

He glanced at her, hoping to catch some trace of a prank successfully landed on her face.

There wasn't one. Lumina hadn't even noticed his reaction. She kept going.

"After that, we returned to the cottage at the foot of the mountain."

"You and Lady Witch were both gone."

Uriel's guilt deepened and his gaze slid further away.

That's because we'd left for school.

"To find you, we started investigating. Asked around in every direction we could think of. There wasn't much to go on —"

She pressed her lips together briefly.

"The last lead we found pointed us toward the Royal Capital. That was the only direction we had."

Further off, the clock tower's bell struck once, a single dull note that dissolved back into silence.

Then Lumina's expression shifted.

The composed, report-reading steadiness she'd been holding dropped away all at once. Her eyes lit up, the words coming faster now, an excitement in her voice she clearly wasn't bothering to contain anymore.

"After we arrived in the capital, following the trail we'd picked up from your path, we found traces of the Curse Cult operating here!"

Her voice climbed.

"This has to be a trail you left for us on purpose, Scribe — to bring us to the capital so we could regroup with you, isn't it!"

"Everything that's happening right now — this is all part of your plan too, isn't it!"

Uriel had run out of nose to rub.

His hand moved up to cover his mouth instead, and his eyes started drifting on their own, completely outside his control.

Left edge of the roof. A loose roof tile, slightly cracked. He found himself studying it for an unreasonably long time.

He shifted his gaze to the wide stretch of sky. A few clouds drifted lazily along the horizon, completely indifferent to the weight of his own childhood delusions. He studied them with intense, fabricated interest.

Then to a blurry rooftop silhouette in the distance. He stared at it for two full seconds, praying a meteor would strike it—or him.

A plan.

I don't have a plan. I just wanted to help Mom stay hidden by blending into the crowd. I have no idea what the Curse Cult even is.

Eventually his gaze came back. Landed on Lumina.

She stood there, expression calm, waiting for his answer.

Something about the trust in her eyes made it genuinely hard to breathe.

Uriel nodded, slowly.

"…Right."

He lowered the hand from his mouth, working hard to keep his voice from wavering or floating.

"All part of the plan."

Lumina's shoulders dropped visibly, the tight excitement from a moment ago easing into something more settled.

Beside her, Fenria's tail picked back up, swinging in wider arcs than before, tracing loop after loop through the air.

Kira let out a soft, half-formed sound of pure feeling, lips moving around a few words too quiet to catch. Her gaze had already snapped back to Tian like she'd never looked away at all.

Only Tian still looked completely lost — lost, but radiating absolute confidence that Little Uri had this handled.

Uriel finally let his hand fall away from his mouth. He gave the end of the pencil a quiet squeeze. It felt cold. His palm had gone slightly damp.

Then Lumina tilted her head.

"Actually, Scribe."

"There's something I've always wanted to ask."

Uriel looked at her.

Her expression was calm and earnest — nothing in it that read as a trap. Which, somehow, made him more uneasy, not less.

"You told us, back then, that the two of you couldn't leave because there was something dangerous you needed to keep suppressed."

"So—"

"Why did you and Lady Witch leave?"

For a moment, even the wind seemed to stop.

Fenria's ears snapped fully forward. Her head turned away from Tian's chest, cheek still resting against the fabric, but her eyes had already moved to Uriel.

Kira's gaze drifted slowly the same direction. The eager glow she'd had while staring at Tian hadn't fully faded, but something else had settled underneath it now.

Three pairs of eyes, all landing on Uriel at once.

He felt each one.

…

Of all the things to remember.

That dangerous thing was Galatina herself — a previous-generation Hero the history books have already marked as dead. Obviously she couldn't just walk around in public. How was I supposed to know this airhead would insist on coming to school with me to play chaperone.

He turned his head, sending a silent SOS in Tian's direction.

Tian happened to already be looking at him.

Their eyes met for a full second.

In that second, Uriel poured everything he had into trying to transmit, telepathically, the following message:

I'm out of moves, Mom. How do we explain this.

Tian received the transmission.

She gazed back at him. Her eyes shone with burning conviction. And then, she gave him a firm, deeply encouraging nod.

She clearly had absolutely zero comprehension of the current crisis.

Translated, that nod meant exactly one thing:

You're doing great, sweetie. I believe in Little Uri!

…

No backup coming.

Great.

Uriel turned back around.

Three pairs of eyes were still waiting.

He held his expression steady.

And in his head, there was exactly one thought left, echoing on a loop.

How do I answer this.