“Daddy let’s go to sleep!”
I’m in the study sorting some documents, when suddenly Ririi bursts in holding my pillow tightly in her arms.
I look at the clock, and it’s eight in the evening. I’m not the least bit drowsy… But I can’t say no to Ririi either.
“What about taking a bath before going to sleep?”
“Ah, yes! Let’s go together!”
She throws down the pillow and runs out of the study.
Hey, put the pillow back in the bedroom.
“…Geez…”
I raise my head from a document, pick up the pillow, and follow Ririi.
◆
It’s been a year since I bought Ririi.
Honestly, I only bought her because I thought ‘hey it’s a high elf’. I didn’t have any big ambitions like using her to make money or making use of her power to do something big or anything like that. I can do those things by myself.
And it wasn’t because I felt sorry for her because she was a slave, or anything stupid like that. I left four others where she was. Whatever happened to them? They could be dead, and that wouldn’t bother me one bit.
I’m not a good person. Living in a town of bad people like Zenith should be proof enough of that.
So basically, I bought Ririi on the spur of the moment. I saw a legendary high elf in front of me, and figured I’d get her.
What I mean by all this, is that I didn’t think about anything that would come with it.
Please join me in reminiscing about some of the trouble I had back then.
◆
Suffice to say, I couldn’t have her wait on me. Even I’d feel sorry for her.
I don’t care about what happens to total strangers, but it’s a different thing when it’s related to me. That’s my moral compass. I know one person can’t bring happiness to the whole world.
And so, I tentatively decided to make her my daughter.
I did but… That was when I realized she didn’t have a name. She has a name now, Ririi, but that came later. I thought about just giving her any random name… But I couldn’t think of anything.
Eysen, Josephine, Montblanc… I tried saying all sorts of names, but none of them sounded right.
…But then, I got a flash of inspiration. A perfect idea popped into my head.
Her name would be the first word she said.
And so, I decided to teach her words. Back then, Ririi couldn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth, much less read or write. Humans and elves use the same language, but judging by how Ririi didn’t say any words at all, I assumed she was a slave from the moment she was born.
Elves are smarter than humans, and should learn speech much quicker, but…
I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to fix her dead heart first.
A strange man suddenly showed up in front of her and told her he was going to be her new father, and she wasn’t scared at all, or even reacted negatively to it. That’s not a normal reaction for a little girl.
I was going to have to help her become a normal girl.
Of course, now I know she really did get her humanity back. Or I guess I should say elfness. In any case, she became a normal girl.
I thought about raising her to be a cold-blooded assassin when she regained her emotions, but there was a slight miscalculation there. My plan to have her follow in my footsteps became screwed up along the way.
I’m looking back and trying to figure out when it happened.
Let’s start by saying that I had no experience raising kids, and I never learned in the capital how to turn a slave back into a proper person either.
I was still twenty eight, and all I could do was break things and kill. At most, I would save one person or two along the way by chance.
I honestly wasn’t confident at all that I would be able to fix Ririi.
“…Ah, hum… I’m… Your… Father… Okay?”
“…”
I pointed to me when I said ‘I’m’ and to her when I said ‘your’. Ririi countered this perfect communication of mine with the perfect response, called ignoring.
“Hey?”
I waved my hand in front of her, but she didn’t respond to anything. She just looked at nothing with a blank look on her face.
“…What do I do…”
My plan to raise a successor hit a snag right after it started. I think it would actually be better if she completely rejected me instead.
“Ahh… Fine. We’ll start getting along soon enough. For now, you need a bath. You really stink.”
It should surprise no one, but Ririi smelled really bad when I first brought her home. At that rate, she was going to make the whole place smell bad.
I took off my clothes and ripped off the rag she had around her body. Surprisingly enough, there weren’t any visible wounds on her delicate body.
I took her by the hand straight to the bathroom, used water magic and fire magic to very quickly fill the bathtub with hot water, and sat Ririi on a stool. I went around to her back, and was faced with that long, light blue hair. I knew right away it wouldn’t be easy to clean.
“Here it goes. It’s going to be hot.”
I scooped up a bucket of hot water from the bathtub, and poured it all on Ririi. I did that again and again.”
“Hahaha.”
Her long hair clung to her and made her look like a weird monster. I couldn’t help but laugh at that sight.
“Now I’m going to start scrubbing.”
A girl’s hair should be treated with care, but that sure didn’t apply to Ririi’s. It had loads of trash, and what I guessed was dust stuck to it. I lathered it up with soap using both hands, and scrubbed her hair hard.
I don’t know if that was her first time having her body washed with soap, or if some of it got in her eyes, but she closed them. Thinking back, that was the first time I saw her react to anything.
It took me a long, long time to finish washing her hair, and then I moved on to her body.
It was my first time washing a girl’s body, but I wasn’t really bothered by it. I can say I was pretty used to women’s bodies already.
Her differently shaped ears were kind of a challenge, but it didn’t take me too long to finish washing her body.
“In you go.”
After washing down the soap monster that Ririi turned into, I put her in the bathtub.
Ririi was as emotionless as always, as she experienced what was most likely her first time in a bathtub.
I did clean her with soap, but she looked a bit shiny.
I then cleaned myself quickly, and dove into the bathtub. It was a little cramped with two people inside, even though one of them was a child, but it wasn’t too bad.
Ririi was facing me, but she was clearly not looking at me. I doubt she was looking at anything.
“Well, I hope the two of us can get along.”
I said while patting her head. Probably a bit too rough, but it was hard for me to know because of how unresponsive Ririi was.
Patting her small head gave me this feeling of ‘yeah, kids sure are cute’. I never really got that whole idea of parents giving up their lives to save their kids, but I felt like I understood it a little bit at that moment.
I picked her up and got out of the bathtub, dried our bodies with wind magic, dressed her… Or at least I was going to dress her, but then I realized I had no clothes for her.
I didn’t want my effort to clean her to go to waste by putting that rag back on her either, but I didn’t have any clothes for a little girl lying around.
Zenith had proper clothing stores, but none of them would be open at that hour. It was dark outside, and anyone running an honest business in Zenith knew to close up shop early.
“Now what… I can’t just let her stay naked.”
It wasn’t like that would be that much of an issue inside the house. And I had no intention of taking her outside either.
Still… You know?
It reeked of crime. I guess buying a slave is a crime in itself, but not in Zenith.
“…Let’s just wrap you in cloth I guess.”
I went over to the shelf and picked a cloth I figured would do the trick, and wrapped it around her waist. I don’t even remember why I bought that in the first place, but it fit her perfectly. It was enough to go around her three times, and covered her from the chest to the knees.
I still couldn’t say she was really wearing something, but it sure was better than the rag she was wearing before.
“…That’ll do for now… I’m tired…”
I was feeling a sort of pleasant exhaustion, probably because I had never done something like that before.
“I haven’t eaten yet but… Let’s just go to sleep for today.”
I picked Ririi up in my arms and took her to the bedroom. Ririi was small, so we could sleep without her falling over despite it being a bed for one.
“From now on you’re going to sleep on this soft thing.”
I moved my pillow over to her side a little, and placed her small head on it. After making sure her head wouldn’t slip off, I closed my eyes.
And that concluded my first day with her.
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Thanks for the chapter. This is pretty interesting XD
Btw, I think her name is “Lily”
It probably should be, but I chose Ririi because there’s a thing with “r’s” later.