Adi shook Aeli for the fifth time, calling her name. She opened her eyes with a dry wash of her face.

It was the day after Noel had given me a new brooch and left.

When I was having a late breakfast after waking up late, a messenger arrived from the Maison mansion in the capital.

Instead of the former Count and Countess coming to the capital, it was decided that we would go to their territory, so we were told to prepare for departure.

It was unreasonable to leave right away, so we agreed to pack our belongings for a day tomorrow and leave the morning after that.

[When are we going?] [Well, after sleeping twice?] [Ooh…]

I should have expected it when the child looked up at me with sparkling eyes.

[Mommy! I slept twice! Let’s go now!] […]

Those two times didn’t mean taking two naps.

[No wonder she was looking for a blanket right after getting an answer…]

The child, who woke up briefly in the middle to have a snack and went back to take a nap, woke up when the sun was setting and shouted like that.

Aeli, who was flustered, belatedly explained that it meant sleeping for two nights and waking up, but of course, it was inevitable that the child who heard that would be disappointed.

[Mommy, what time is it now?] [Hmm, let’s see… four thirty?] […] […] […Then a little later?] […]

Well. If my eyes aren’t mistaken, it hasn’t been more than four thirty and five seconds, right?

After that, Aeli became a human clock exclusively for the child for about a day and a half.

She answered about thirty times and even begged her to stop, saying that no matter how often she asked, time would pass the same.

Only then did the frequency of her asking decrease a little, but even that went from asking every five minutes to about once every thirty minutes, so it was still tiring.

‘Just when I thought I was getting out of the swamp of question marks!’

Now, instead of making me a clock, it seems she has decided to become a clock herself.

Last night, when she asked what time we were leaving in the morning, I thought about the karma I had suffered for nearly two days due to saying the wrong word, so I even cut her off, saying, ‘When we wake up in the morning and Mommy and Daddy finish preparing.’

But what was the problem again?

‘…Did she think that instead of waiting nicely, if she urged us to finish preparing early, we would leave sooner?’

Meanwhile, today I slept in the guest room instead of the bedroom, but I don’t know how she got here.

If she had used a secret passage, the child would clearly not know the way.

If I think of the standard method, if she had come out of the room and down the stairs, there must have been someone she encountered along the way.

Then, it was obvious that she would have been caught by a servant or a knight standing guard and taken back to the bedroom, so what the heck.

Aeli, who had been thinking for a long time in a half-asleep state, reached out and embraced the child.

I don’t know, let’s just sleep for now.

“Uh, uh-uh? Mommy− no! I don’t want to sleep,”

−That’s my wish.

The child, who had been kneeling on the bed and suddenly laid down, grumbled and told her grievances.

It was understandable since she had struggled to sit up but was caught.

Aeli patted the child’s back and opened her mouth.

“Even if we finish preparing early, we can’t leave before dawn, so let’s sleep a little more, okay…?”

“But−,”

“The carriage is pulled by horses anyway. When the day breaks, the horses will have to run all day too, and if they can’t sleep this much, they might get tired and not be able to run.”

“…”

“Then, Adi will leave early but arrive later?”

“Still…”

“Let’s sleep a little more and wake up. Adi hasn’t slept much either, so she’ll definitely be tired later in the day…”

“…”

Mommy. Mommy? The child was dazed for a while and then belatedly called Aeli desperately.

But if she was going to get up because of that, she would have gotten up long ago.

‘Lutis…’

If he had been in the bedroom, he would have noticed the child’s escape long ago and had plenty of time.

But seeing that there was still no news, he was probably in his office, or in his office, or in his office…

Let’s stop thinking.

I don’t know how long we’ll stay in the Maison territory, but since he won’t be able to handle work while we’re there, it seemed he was doing it in advance.

‘Anyway, we agreed to wake up in the morning and prepare, so don’t move around secretly from the servants early in the morning and see each other after finishing the preparations.’

That’s what Lutis and I had agreed on the night before and I had come up.

If Lutis was working, it was better for me to be with the child.

Well, it seems that Lutis thought that a five-year-old should slowly get used to sleeping alone, so he didn’t particularly tell me to be with the child.

‘She’s five in name, but in reality, it’s only been a few months since we slept together.’

If I say I’ll be with my baby, what can others do about it?

Even if most noble children start sleeping alone around this age, not everyone does, so there wouldn’t be much of a problem if we stayed together a little longer.

Aeli yawned softly and stroked the child’s back.

“…”

The small warmth that finally hugged me back with pouting lips. Isn’t it very lovely?

−To be honest, I had this intention from the moment the child woke me up.

Since long before I went up to the guest room, she had made a tearful face asking why we weren’t sleeping together today.

In the end, Aeli was able to get a comfortable sleep until the sun rose dimly.

[This is the timeline separator]

And again in the morning.

Aeli looked down at the child standing imposingly in front of her and asked.

“So… what did you say?”

“I came to get you.”

“…”

…In that state?

Aeli was at a loss for words at the colorful top and bottom with splendid patterns all over them.

The clothes themselves were just a bit too flashy, not strange. There would be children who suit such clothes, so it’s not a big problem.

If only it suited the child, she could have definitely let it slide.

Although she resembles Lutis and already shows signs of growing into a face that would look decent in anything, isn’t that a bit too much?

The face and the clothes were so assertive that it was burdensome.

“Then, that− pillow and blanket?”

“These are for sleeping in the carriage!”

Moreover, she dragged a large pillow and blanket, presumably from the bedroom, and smiled proudly.

‘…Yeah. It’s better to sleep than to get motion sickness. That’s true, but−.’

If she put those in the carriage, it was obvious that she would have to squeeze into a corner, let alone lie down.

It’s a blanket that covered a bed large enough for three people to sleep with plenty of room to spare.

She seemed to have worked hard to drag it, but with her short body, it was difficult to move the blanket completely.

Seeing the bedding covered in dust and dirty, Aeli blinked her eyes quickly and thought.

‘Who on earth turned a blind eye to all of that?’

For aristocratic servants− especially maids, aesthetic sense is fundamental.

Since their job is to choose clothes, accessories, shoes, and attend to them, there’s no way they would have pushed her to wear such a thing.

Likewise, if they had heard the child say she would sleep in the carriage, they would have packed a blanket or cloak and loaded it into the carriage instead of a duvet.

It doesn’t make sense from the fact that she carried and brought it here herself.

In short, the scene unfolding before her eyes was purely the child’s own creation.

“Even if she’s young, she’s a noble child, so… when a child throws a tantrum, they don’t have the authority to dissuade her to the end, so it makes sense…”

“…?”

When she muttered softly, the child tilted her head.

Aeli, who had been on the verge of fainting from surprise three times, from dawn to morning and until now, was engulfed in the illusion that she was already exhausted.

No, in fact, it didn’t seem to be an illusion.

‘Even coming up here from the bedroom at that dawn. When I saw her in the morning, she was climbing the wall with magic.’

Although she had predicted that she wouldn’t have used a secret passage.

Aeli, who recalled almost fainting on the spot while watching the child go back down to the bedroom in the morning, let out a deep sigh.

In addition to the camouflage magic that is often used when hiding− which is not what chameleons do, she cast a magic that reduces weight on herself and went out the window to climb the wall.

In the case of camouflage magic, it is not continuously applied, so it has to be recast every time the location is moved− and the weight-reducing magic is usually used on objects, not people.

Even if it’s a method I’ve never heard of or seen before, this was too dangerous.

‘I urgently stopped her from trying to climb down the wall again and scolded her, I really…’

I think I spent nearly an hour explaining why she shouldn’t do that again.

It means that she climbed the wall when she came up to the guest room at dawn, just as she showed me, so it was sheer luck that nothing happened.

If something had gone wrong, what would have happened? Aeli sighed at her heart that still seemed to be pounding.

‘Since it was dark at night and a completely unexpected method, even the knights standing guard outside must not have seen it.’

If someone had discovered her and screamed, she might have stumbled at the surprise. So in this case, it was actually fortunate that no one knew.

−But apart from that, the fact that I couldn’t do my job properly remains unchanged.

I must tell Lutis about this separately.

Aeli gritted her teeth and asked the child.

“Adi. But why are you wearing those clothes? You usually wore what the maids gave you.”

“Be- because we’re going to see Grandma and Grandpa. So I have to wear pretty clothes.”

“…Huh?”

“There’s no one to choose pretty clothes, so to look good and pretty…”

In other words, she wanted to look pretty in the eyes of her grandmother and grandfather, so she chose what looked best to her and wore it.

To a young child’s eye, what’s pretty is usually flashy and eye-catching, so the flow of how she came to choose those clothes was roughly understandable.

Aeli, who had a lot of thoughts for a while, rolled her eyes.

If it were the parents I know, they would love and adore the child even if she came covered in mud from playing, without the need to dress up.

‘Did Adi think that she looked unpleasant to them because she threw a tantrum…?’

Thinking that way, it became awkward to point out that bizarre attire again.

Aeli scratched her cheek at the overwhelming perplexity.

…What should I do?