"...And then, now here I am, living a happy and satisfactory life, surprisingly."

Dad ended his flashback narration with those words, and for a short moment, I thought that he was boasting his achievements.

However, after knowing his back story and all, I thought he deserved to be proud of what he managed to gain this day. He earned everything, and to me, he deserved them.

"A... Ah, thank you so much for sharing me your story, U-u-uncle...!!" Iris bashfully replied as she nodded gratefully. I could tell that she was looking at Dad with eyes of admiration.

...Which reminds me that it all began with the revelation of Iris being an illegitimate child... Also, the fact that Dad was actually an illegitimate child shocked me!

No wonder that I didn't feel any air of nobility whenever I saw Firis' pictures. There were only a few of them, too. No wonder I didn't feel like she was familiar... If she were a noble and the legal wife of the previous Duke Hartmann, my past self should have met her at least...

I should have noticed if only I thought things more, but I didn't even bother.

Now that I think about it, was I too scared that I might make things get complicated?

...Nah, it was probably since it wouldn't be natural for a little kid like me to poke my nose in these kinds of things.

I couldn't help but glance at Firis' one and only photograph that was displayed in the room along with our family pictures. There, she was wearing a simple dress and was smiling in a garden. Her figure looked to be thin and on a closer look, she looked a bit pale. Was this taken when her disease had already progressed?

Still, she was beautiful in that picture.

Not noble and elegant, but simple and lovely.

Perhaps noticing how I was so fixated on a picture, the others seemed to set their gazes towards the same picture, and...

"Is that her photograph?" Carbuncle approached the small photograph and took it along with its frame.

Currently, Firis' photograph became our focus. Nobody uttered their comments, including me. Perhaps we all had the same thought in our mind after hearing Dad's story.

This person was the one that made Dad the way he was now.

Without her, Alt-nii and I might not be here on this very day.

"...She didn't even know her own background?" Carbuncle was the one who broke the silence.

"No... She also stated it explicitly in the letter she wrote me," Dad answered.

Letter from Firis.

In the end, Dad discovered the things that Firis left behind for him.

He didn't really explain the full details, but in short, everything went well after he met King Titus.

"Oh? Based on your descriptions of her, I think your dragon bloodline might have come from her, after all. Yep, it totally matches the description of that frail water dragon's species," Carbuncle concluded after assessing Firis' photograph.

"Though it isn't necessary for them to have blue hair and eyes, it still adds to my conclusion. Then... good affinity with water magic, frail body that ends up developing the incurable illness... Unknown age..."

"I don't understand!" Alt-nii's words cut Carbuncle's sentence off.

"What is it, Tair?"

"If Dad's Mom is really a dragon, why didn't she just use her amazing power to live peacefully? To settle everything? And dragons are supposed to be strong, right? What's with that illness?"

"Well, this frail water dragon is unique, I told ya. They require to grow up in a very pure and clean environment, or they might end up... yes, developing that illness or having shorter age than the rest of us. I heard that she didn't grow up in a good environment, so that must be why," Carbuncle shook her head as if to say, 'it was so unfortunate.'

Dad bitterly smiled, but his gaze seemed to say that he finally understood why Firis caught that kind of strange illness.

"As for why she didn't use her superior power to live freely... or peacefully, well... maybe she just didn't know that she could do that?" Carbuncle tilted her head.

"But she knew she could use water magic, right?" Alt-nii asked.

"U-uhm...," I timidly tried to enter into their conversation. Luckily, they noticed my small voice and quieted down to let me speak.

"I read this story before, but it might explain her situation... It was about an eagle's egg that fell into a hen's nest and hatched along with the hen's children. The eagle child was raised along with the chickens, acted like them, and believed that he was also a chicken. He looked at the eagles flying so high up in the sky and only wished he could do that, too, not realizing that he actually could. His siblings all said that they were just chickens, so it was as if they were dreaming to go to the sun. ...Eventually, the eagle child died without the experience of flying in the sky as an eagle he was—he believed that he was a chicken all his life."

I finished retelling the whole story that I read... when I was Reinst, actually, but it didn't matter as it was also a story for children.

When I closed that book, I felt somehow sad that the eagle child missed his opportunity because he didn't know the truth.

Now that I think about it, it's weird that nobody told him he looked different and that he looked more like an eagle than a chicken, but oh well. As long as we got the moral of the story.

"Maybe... Lyra's story held some truth. Firis might not know how to properly use her magic to its maximum power," Dad gently patted my head as if he was proud of me—I was only retelling a story, though.

It was nothing deserving of praise nor pat, but... hehe, I won't reject it!

"Firis only used her water magic for survival so far... she never thought of using it to fight, and eventually, she tried to use her water magic to entertain me...," Dad added.

"Also, perhaps her magic power also weakened as her body deteriorated within time," Carbuncle chimed in as well.

"That's unfortunate...," Alt-nii was being a bit sulky.

Indeed, it was unfortunate. But... if things didn't go the way they were, the current "present" won't be like this, I think.

The past forged the present, and the present will decide the future.

Changing one thing will lead to greater changes in the future.