ALICE LEYWIN

Arthur was the most adorable baby. Some mothers are besotted with their babies even if they’re homely, but that wasn’t the case with me.

No.

Arthur had a scruffy little patch of glowing auburn hair, playful eyes that seemed to radiate blue light, and his gaze at times was almost… intelligent. But I wasn’t besotted. I planned to be a strict and just mother. I knew I couldn’t rely on my husband to teach little Art any common sense. For God’s sake, he’d tried to teach my baby how to fight when he could barely crawl.

I knew the little rascal would turn out just like his father if I let him. When he started crawling, I was so proud I was on the verge of tears, but I didn’t know how much of a handful he’d be as he became more mobile.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him for a single moment before he’d crawl into the study room. It was very strange. We made sure to buy him lots of stuffed animals and wooden toys to play with, but he always ended up going to the study room. In that, at least, he was the direct opposite of his father—Reynolds shied away from texts longer than the weekly newspaper.

My son seemed interested in a lot of things. I couldn’t get enough of seeing his head, so disproportionate to his little body, turning left and right while trying to take in everything around him. Seeing how excited Art got when we went out to town, I began doing the shopping every other day instead of twice a week.

No, I was not besotted with him. It was just for his education regarding the outside world and for fresh food in the house. Nothing more than that.

He was particularly intrigued by his father’s practicing. Reynolds had been a competent adventurer back in the day—he was a B-class adventurer by the age of twenty-eight, which was a pretty fast climb. To keep from sending eager but ignorant adolescents to their deaths, the Adventurers Guild, where I worked as a medic-in-training, required applicants to pass a test before acquiring their E-class rank—the lowest. As for the higher ranks, I’d only seen a couple of A-class adventurers in my years of working there, and I had never seen an S-class adventurer, though I assumed they did exist.

Working at the Adventurers Guild—or what we just called the Guild Hall—back then in Valden, I got to see too many eager teens. Once I was assigned to proctor a basic practical exam, where the examinee had to simply demonstrate fundamental competency in mana manipulation, but before the test even began, the kid fell straight onto his back because the sword he was carrying was too heavy for him! At least they were ambitious, but I was always surprised they didn’t float away from having their overly-inflated egos get to their heads.

Reynolds seemed like just another airhead back then. The moment he saw me in the Guild Hall, his jaw literally dropped. He just stood there until the guy in line behind him elbowed him to hurry up, then he managed to mumble, “H-hi… can I trade in th-the stuff for the mission?” I just giggled as he turned beet red from embarrassment.

He finally managed to gather up the courage to ask me out for dinner, and we hit it off from there. Even after five years of being together, I still smiled when I saw his droopy, blue, puppy-eyes looking at me.

Art somehow wound up with the best traits from each of us, making him that much more adorable. You should have seen him when I changed his diapers. For some reason, he’d start turning red in his cheeks every time and cover his face with his tiny little fingers. I didn’t think babies that age could get embarrassed, but that was what it seemed like.

But one of the best moments of all had to be when he said his first word: ‘mama.’

He said ‘mama’ first!

I told him to say it again and again, just to make sure I didn’t hear wrong, and Reynolds sulked for the entire day because Art said ‘mama’ before ‘dada.’

I put on a stern face and reprimanded Reynolds for being so childish, but I secretly relished the fact that I had won.

I was so content in those months, with my son close by me wherever I went. Together, we would frequently watch through the window as his father practiced after dinner. I was glad Reynolds had given up being an adventurer and taken the post as a town guard instead. Being an adventurer might have brought in more money, but not knowing when or if my husband would come home was not worth any amount of extra money. Especially after what had happened on our last quest together.

Little Art never got sick, but I often found him sitting motionless with his eyes closed. At first, I thought he might be having trouble relieving himself, but that didn’t seem to be the case. It was strange, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d thought babies that age were supposed to be energetic and flighty, but he seemed to expend most of his energy escaping to the study room, only to sit there, perfectly still—almost as if he was meditating.

I worried at first, but although it happened a couple of times a day, it only lasted for a few minutes, and Art always seemed strangely happy afterward. The way he held his arms up and looked up at me made me just want to gobble him up.

Ahem. But I was not besotted.