Derby Stallion is a famous franchise in Japan.
What do ya know, you learn something new everyday; I thought it was a game made up specifically for this story.
I should've known better than to get excited at the prospect of Rudy developing any interest outside of gaming, porn and anime. He is the trifecta of your average Twitter user.
Chapter 7
It’s official: we are halfway through this slog of a book. 7/11 chapters to be exact. Once I hit chapter 11, I will dump in all the bonus materials so that it’s all in one place. As one can glean from previous chapters, I haven't been impressed with the series often labeled “peak fiction” by the fandom.
I decided to try going outside. After all, Roxy had shown me I could do that, and I wasn’t going to let that go to waste. “Father,” I said, my botanical encyclopedia in one hand, “can I go and play outside?”
I'm still not over the fact that his parents never even took Rudy anywhere outside of the house, not even for festivals or family gatherings. Or ever brought him to their fantasy version of Disney world (you can't convince me there wouldn’t be a wizard who wouldn't just use his magic for making a theme park of some kind. 100% there'd be wizards utilizing automatons and golems for this type of entertainment).
Maybe if Zenith was established to be an overbearing and overprotective mother due to being a first time one, I'd buy it. Unfortunately, we've been given zero indication of this.
Children my age were prone to wandering as soon as you took your eyes off of them. Even if I stayed in the general neighborhood, I didn’t want to worry my parents by slipping away without saying anything.
Uh yeah, that's universal knowledge.
“Hmm? Play outside? Not just out in the yard, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Well, sure. Of course you can.” Paul gave his permission readily enough.
One thing I've come to hate in anime dialogue: Characters repeating phrases the person before them said. It’s stiff and unnatural.
“Come to think of it, we haven’t given you much free time. Here we are, taking up all your time teaching you swordplay and spellcraft, but it’s important for children to play, too.”
YA THINK?! I don't expect author-san to be an expert in child psychology to know how borderline abusive this sounds. Thank God Rudy is just a 40 year old trapped in a 5-year-old body, cause otherwise holy shit.
I thought of Paul as a strict father who was worried too much about his kid’s education, but his line of thinking was actually pretty flexible. I’d half-expected him to demand I spend all day working on
my swordsmanship. It was almost a letdown.
I wonder how long this respect for Paul is gonna last. He's a bit
too nice to Rudy. His mom is just a typical anime mom, so I'm not expecting much from her.
Paul was a man of intuition. “But, hmm… you really want to go out? I used to think you were such a frail boy, but I guess time does fly, huh?”
“You thought I was frail?” This was news to me. I hadn’t ever been sick or anything.
“Because of how you never used to cry.”
“Oh. All right. But if I’m all right now, then it’s no problem, yeah? I’ve grown up to be a healthy and charming boy! Seeeeee?” Ipulled my cheeks and made a funny face.
Maybe if Rudy wasn't a 40 year old in a child’s body I'd find this endearing.
Paul frowned. “It’s the ways in which you aren’t childish that worry me more.”
I half expected him to bring up Rudy hoarding dirty briefs, alas I am disappointed.
”Given the look of disappointment on your face, would it be better to say that you’re hoping I become a more fitting heir to the Greyrat family?” I posited.
Please tell Rudy he's a degenerate who will go live in a monastary for the rest of his life.
“I’m not proud of it, but when I was your age, your old man was a total brat who was always going around chasing skirts.”
“You were a skirt-chaser?” So, they had those in this world, too, huh?
And wait—did he just call himself a brat?
“If you really want to be worthy of the Greyrat family, go out there and bring home a girlfriend,” he said
Whatever respect I had for Paul just went out the window. Why couldn't Rudy have parents that would beat him for hoarding dirty laundry?
Wait—was that the kind of family we were? Wasn’t my dad a knight charged with protecting a frontier town in addition to being a low-ranking noble? Did we have no social standing at all? No, I guess we were just really low-ranking.
I wonder if him being a total pervert has anything to do with the lack of militia in the village.
“Understood,” I said. “Then I’ll be heading off into the village to look for a skirt or two to chase after.”
“Hey now. You need to be nice to girls. And don’t go around bragging just because you can use powerful magic. Real men don’t get strong just to brag about it.”
Paul sounds like a predator now. Like one of those progressive men who turn out to be sex pest types.
That was actually good advice. Man, I wish my brothers from my past life could have heard that.
But Paul was right; power wielded for its own sake was meaningless. And even I was able to understand that, given the terms he’d put it in. “I understand, Father; power should be reserved for when you can make girls see how cool you look.”
Not Rudy being enabled by his predator father.
With that conversation concluded, I tucked my botanical encyclopedia back under one arm, slung the wand I’d received from Roxy at my hip, and headed out. Before I got far, though, I stopped and turned, remembering one last thing. “Oh, by the way, Father, I
think I’ll probably go out like this on occasion, but I promise I’ll always tell someone at home first, and I won’t neglect my daily magic and sword studies either. And I promise to be home before the sun goes down and it gets dark, and I won’t go anywhere dangerous.” I wanted to leave him with some reassurance, after all.
“Ah, yeah. Sure.” For some reason, Paul sounded a little out of it. Look, if you’re giving me permission, just say so.
“Okay then,” I said. “I’m off.”
“Come back safe.”
And then, I left home.
I am convinced that everyone in this world is retarded for not questioning why Rudy, an alleged five year old, talks like he's a middle aged man. That paragraph right there.
I wonder if all the supposed inbreeding that happens in this fantasy world has anything to do with that retardation. We’ll see.
Several days went by. I wasn’t afraid of the outside world anymore. Things were going pretty well. I was even able to exchange greetings with passersby without mumbling my way through.
I've been warned that it gets a lot worse from here. I've got my guard up.
Paul and Roxy’s combined relative fame was more than half of what helped me feel so comfortable. The rest was all thanks to what Roxy had done for me. Which meant, I guess, that Roxy was to thank for the bulk of it.
I’d have to take very good care of those treasured panties.
Disgusting. Imagine the Smell of his room given how long its been sitting in a box for (allegedly).
My main goal in going outside was to go exploring on my own two feet and get the lay of the land. If I knew my way around, then I wouldn’t get lost if I ever got kicked out of my house.
Dunno, with how much of an enabler Paul is so far, I doubt that'll happen anytime soon. Even then, you're a still a kid and I doubt his parents are
that retarded.
I had my encyclopedia, after all, so I wanted to make sure I could tell which plants were edible and which weren’t, which could be used as medicine and which were poisonous. That way, if I ever got kicked out of my house, I wouldn’t need to worry about where I’d get food from.
This sporking is sponsored by the
Redundancy Department of Redundancy.
Roxy had only taught me the basics, but by my understanding, our village grew wheat, vegetables, and the fragrant ingredients of perfumes. The Vatirus flower, used in those perf———
NOBODY GIVES A SHIT, ON WITH THE STORY!
“If I remember right, magic builds up more readily in forests, which makes them more dangerous.” More dangerous because higher concentrations of magic meant a higher likelihood of monsters coming into being, the energies causing sudden mutations in otherwise benign creatures.
Who is supposed to be speaking here? Adding dialogue in the middle of exposition doesn't make it any less exposition. At least give him a friend to sperg out to. GOD!
There's at least three more paragraphs of pointless exposition, so we’ll skip straight to the fantasy racism.
“We don’t need no demons in our village!”
Finally, some conflict in this world showing itself. It only took 7 out 11 chapters to happen.
At the sound of that voice, painful memories came flooding back. I remembered my time in high school, and what had led to my becoming a shut-in. I remembered the nightmares about being called “Pencil Dick.”
“How can I make this about myself?”
These voices reminded me so very much of the voices that had called me by that terrible nickname. These were the voices of someone who used the numbers on their side to torment somebody beneath them.
“Get the hell out of here!”
“Take this!”
“Ha, nice! Direct hit, man!”
I saw a field, muddy from the other day’s rain. Three boys with their bodies all caked in mud were hurling mud at another boy who was walking along.
“Ten points if you can nail him in the head!”
“Hngh!”
“I got him! Didja see that?! Right in the head!”
All of this fantasy racism and not a single slur uttered. I give this world building a 0/10 for a lack of realism. You'd think the vaguely European people of this world would have a word that carries the same power that the N-word does. See? It’s so powerful that I'm selective of when I’ll say it.
“Is that his demon treasure?!”
“I bet it’s something he stole!”
“If you can bullseye that, it’s worth a hundred points!”
“Let’s get that treasure!”
Give me some racial slurs so I can insult the non human characters correctly!
I broke into a run, heading for the boy. Along the way, I used my magic to form a ball of mud, and the instant I was in firing range, I hurled it with all my might.
Whap!
“What the hell?!” I hit the kid who looked like their leader, a conspicuously large fellow, right in the face. “Gah, it got in my eyes!”
His buddies all turned their attention to me at once.
“Who the heck’re you?”
“This ain’t got nothing to do with you! Stay out of it!”
“What are you, an ally of the demons or something?” Guess people like this were the same in every world.
“I’m no ally to the demons,” I said. “I’m an ally to the weak.” I gave them a haughty sneer.
And then all the bystanders stopped what they were doing and clapped.
The other boys steeled themselves, drawing themselves up as if they were in the right. “Don’t you try to act tough!” one of them snapped.
“Hey, he’s that one knight’s kid!”
“Hah! He’s just a baby!”
Uh-oh. They’d figured out who I was.
“You sure the son of a knight should be doing this sort of thing, huh?”
“See, I told ya that knight was on the demons’ side!”
“C’mon, let’s get the others!”
They talk like as if Paul lynches demons while wearing a white hooded cloak.
Of course, Rudy wins the fight by throwing mudcakes and waterballs at the bullies.
“And we’re gonna let everyone know the knight’s kid is a demon-lover!”
We are
this close to having racial slurs, Author-San.
They tried to make it sound like they hadn’t lost—that they’d just decided to stop. With that, the little punks headed off for the other end of the field. I’d done it! For the very first time in my life, I’d beaten the bullies!
Its because you're a wizard in this world.
For now, I needed to check on the kid they’d been throwing mud at. I turned to him and asked,
“Hey, are you all right? Are your things okay?”
Whoa…
The boy was so pretty it was hard to think we were around the same age. He had rather long eyelashes for someone so young, with a dainty little nose, thin lips, and a somewhat pointed jawline. His skin was porcelain white, and his features combined to give him the look of a startled rabbit, in addition to a sense of unspeakable beauty.
The poor kid has already been bullied, now you need to subject him to your pedophilia on top of that?
Man, if only Paul had been the prettier sort. Maybe I’d have a face like that.
Paul confirmed to be a Balldo.
No, Paul wasn’t bad-looking. And Zenith looked really good.
What you're telling me is that Zenith has really low standards.
The boy turned his timid gaze back to me. “Y-yeah, I’m…I’m okay.”
He made me want to protect and care for him, as if he were some small animal. If you were a lady who was into shota stuff, he’d have your panties soaked on the spot—er, well, if you could get past the way he was all caked in mud.
Author-San did not need to make me lose my lunch, yet he actively chose to write that down.
There was only one thing for me to do. “Here, why don’t you set that down over there and kneel by the irrigation ditch,” I said.
“Huh? Whuh?” The boy blinked in confusion even as he began to do as I said. Guess he was the sort of kid who did what he was told. If he were the defiant sort, he would have fought back against those bullies earlier.
RUN, RUN AS FAR AS YOU CAN FROM THE PEDO WHILST THERE’S TIME!
He crawled over to the irrigation ditch, hunched on all fours ashe peered into the water. If you were a guy who was into shota stuff, you’d currently have a definite th——
And THIS is the localized version that the fandom bitched about being
too censoring for their tastes?! I'm not posting the rest of that sentence because I'm at my fucking limit for how much I can take.
The weird emphasis on the shoulders creeps me out knowing that's a fetish in Japan.
In doing so, I could finally see his pointed, elf-like ears, as well as the emerald green hair he sported. I immediately remembered something Roxy had told me.
“If you ever see someone with emerald-green hair, make sure you don’t go anywhere near them.”
Hm? Wait, hold on. That wasn’t quite right. I think it was…
“If you ever see someone with emerald-green hair and what looks like a red jewel set in their forehead, make sure you don’t go anywhere near them.”
“I trusted one and they stole my TV in the dead of the night.”-Roxy
To make a long story short, the kid is being bullied for being a green haired elf that gets mistaken for TV-Thiefs of this world.
Rudy resolves to exploit the elf’s insecurities. No, seriously.
Besides, I prefer a girl who’s a little unsure of herself as opposed to one who’s brimming with confidence. This could work. It was like how pretty girls kept ugly ones nearby so everyone would notice how pretty they were, but in reverse.
There is no context I could present any of this in that puts Rudy in a good light. At a minimum, exploitive.
Since we all know of his preferences for little girls, it makes it worse.
“Oh, that’s right. I haven’t gotten your name yet. I’m Rudeus.”
“I…I’m Sylph—” His voice was so quiet that it was hard to make out the second part. Sylph, huh?
“That’s a nice name. Just like a spirit of the wind.”
At that, Sylph’s face turned red, and he nodded. “Yeah.”
I forgot to mention it earlier, but what is it with anime and excessive blushing?
Sylph’s father was a very attractive man. He had pointed ears and blond hair that almost glittered, and he was slender without lacking muscle definition. Certainly, he lived up to the name of half- elf, having inherited the best parts of both elf and human.
He stood guard at a watchtower on the edge of the forest, a bow in one hand. “Father,” Sylph called. “I’ve brought your lunch.”
“Ah, thank you, Phi, as always. Did you get bullied again today?”
“I’m okay. Someone helped me out.”
Sylph turned to look my way, and I bowed slightly.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Rudeus Greyrat.”
“Greyrat? As in Paul Greyrat?”
“Yes, sir. He’s my father.”
If only Slyph’s father knew what malevolence lurks within Rudy…
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of you! My, what a polite boy you are. Oh, you’ll have to forgive me. I’m Laws. I typically hunt in these forests.”
What the fuck kind of name is
Laws? That's like naming a Japanese coded character
Kawaii or some shit like that.
Sorry, moving on.
“I know how my kid must look, but it’s just something from further back in our ancestry,” Laws said. “I do hope you’ll be friends with each other.”
“Of course, sir. And even if Sylph was a Superd, it wouldn’t change my attitude one bit. I stake my father’s honor on it.”
Laws let out a sound of astonishment. “Those are impressive words for a boy your age,” he said. “I’m kind of jealous that Paul has such a bright kid.”
“Being good at things as a child doesn’t mean that person will keep being good at things as an adult,” I said. “You don’t need to be jealous now when there’s still time for Sylph to grow up.” I figured I should put in a nice word.
“Heh. Now I see what Paul was talking about.”
“What did my father say?”
“That talking to you makes one feel like an underqualified parent.”
You know when grifters make a point to criticize woke media for having characters exist just to praise the protagonist?
This is exactly how it feels reading this entire exchange.
While we were talking, I felt a tug at the hem of my shirt. I looked, and Sylph was clutching it, his head cast down. I guessed a grown-up conversation like this was boring for children.
“Mr. Laws,” I asked, “can the two of us go play for a bit?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Just don’t get too close to the forest.”
Well, that went without saying. I felt like there should have been more ground rules than that.
I guess it’s “good” that Rudy randomly remembered that he's supposed to be a kid.
“Yeah,” I said, “Until recently I never really left the house myself. But anyway, what did you want to play?”
Sylph wrung his hands together and gazed up at me. We were roughly the same height, but because he kept himself hunched over, he had to look up at me. “So, um, how come you keep changing the way you talk?”
“Hm? Oh! Depending on who you’re talking to, it’s rude not to speak properly. You need to show deference to your elders.”
“Def-er-ence?”
“Like the way I was speaking to your father before.”
Sylph out here asking the important questions that no adult in this world is. Slyph is officially a few IQ points higher than all of the adults in this world combined.
“More importantly,” Sylph said, “could you teach me that thing you did earlier?”
“What thing?”
Sylph’s eyes glimmered to life. He postured and waved his hands as he explained: “Like when you made warm water go all sploosh from your hands, and when you made that nice warm wind like whoosh.”
“Ah, yes. That.” The magic I’d used to clear away the mud.
“Is it difficult?”
“It’s difficult, but with training, anyone can do it. Probably.”
So we’re going to be treated to multiple pages of them talking and going through more tutorial modes. Fantastic! Looking forward to it. R/sarcasm
So Rudy plays with Slyph and then heads home.
When I got back home, Paul was furious. He stood imposingly in the entryway, hands set on his hips in an expression of his anger. I immediately tried to think of what I’d done wrong.
Please tell me he's caught on to the whole reincarnation nonsense and wants his real child back.
The first thing that came to mind was that he’d discovered the precious panties that I’d secreted away.
That’s… a good reason to beat your child, actually.
“Father, I’m home,” I said.
“Do you know why I’m upset?”
No. Spell it out so a kid can understand. Oh wait.
“I don’t.” First, I had to play dumb. I didn’t want to bring unnecessary trouble upon myself in the event my prized possession hadn’t been discovered.
“Mr. Eto’s wife came by earlier and told me that you punched their boy, Somal.”
The naming conventions of this world are throwing me off.
Who the heck were Mr. Eto and Somal? The names didn’t ring a bell, so I had to think. I hadn’t had much interaction with the townsfolk beyond basic introductions. I’d given them my name and gotten theirs in return, but I couldn’t recall whether or not there had been an “Eto” among them.
Wait. Hold on. “Was this today?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The only people I’d run into today were Sylph, Laws, and those three punks. Was Somal one of those three boys, then? “I didn’t punch him. All I did was throw some mud at him.”
“Do you remember what it was I told you earlier?”
“That men don’t get strong just to brag about it?”
“That’s right.”
Aha. Now I got it. Come to think of it, that kid had said
something about how he was gonna let everyone know I was a demon-lover. I don’t know how that turned into him lying about me punching him, but either way, he was determined to badmouth me.
“I’m not sure what you heard, Father, but—”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Paul snapped. “When you’ve done
something wrong, the first thing you do is apologize!” Whatever lie this kid had told, my dad had clearly bought it. Crap. At this point, even if I told the truth about me saving Sylph from those bullies, it’d just sound like an outright lie.
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!
Why aren’t you saying anything?” Paul demanded.
“Because if I do, you’re just going to yell at me not to make excuses.”
Paul’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Before a kid can even say anything, you yell at them and make them apologize. Everything is so quick and easy with you adults. Must be nice.”
“Rudy!”
Whap! A hot jolt of pain shot through my cheek.
He hit me.
If this were any other kid, I'd be horrified. Considering this is Rudy, I'm fine with pedos getting smacked around for all the degenerate shit from earlier.
“Father, I have always put in the utmost effort to be a good son. Not once have I ever talked back to you or Mother, and I’ve always done my very best to do whatever you both tell me.”
“That…that has nothing to do with this!” It didn’t look as though Paul had intended to strike me. There was a distinct look of consternation in his eyes.
YOU STORE DIRTY UNDERWEAR IN YOUR ROOM!
Whatever. That was good for me. “Yes, it does. I’ve always done my best to keep your mind at ease and to get you to trust me, Father. You didn’t listen to a word I said, and not only did you take the word of someone I don’t know and yell at me, you even raised your hand to me.”
Let’s face it, Paul was looking for any excuse to beat his kid at this point.
“But this Somal kid got hurt…”
Hurt? That was news to me. Had I done that to him? If I had, maybe he was using it to sell his story. Well, too bad. I was justified in what I’d done. Assuming this whole thing about his being hurt wasn’t just some dumb lie anyway.
“Even if it does wind up that it’s my fault he got hurt, I’m not going to apologize for it,” I said. “I didn’t go against anything you taught me, and I’m proud of what I did.”
“Wait, hold on. What happened?”
Oh, now he was suddenly curious? Hey, it was his own fault for deciding he wouldn’t listen to me. “What happened about not wanting to hear excuses?”
Paul’s face twisted into a frown. It seemed I was close now.
“Please don’t worry, Father. The next time I see three people going after someone who won’t fight back, I’ll ignore it. In fact, I’ll jump in so that it’s four on one. I’ll make sure that everyone around knows that the Greyrats take pride in bullying and ganging up on the
weak. But once I grow up and leave home, I’ll never use the Greyrat name again. I’ll be too ashamed to let anyone know I belonged to a family so horrid they ignored actual violence and accepted verbal abuse.”
And then everybody clapped, again.
Relieved, I explained the details of the situation as objectively as I could. I was making my way up the hill when I heard voices. There were three boys in an empty field pelting mud at another boy walking along the road. I hit them with mud once or twice until they backed down, and then they left while badmouthing me. Then, I used magic to clean the mud off the one boy, and we played together.
“So, yeah,” I said, “if I’m going to apologize, this Somal kid needs to apologize to Sylph first. When you’re hurt physically, you’ll heal soon enough, but emotional hurt doesn’t go away so quickly.”
I’ll give credit where it is due, so far this is the only scene in this entire book that has any sort of maturity to it, with a message that readers can walk away with if nothing else.
It is also nice to see some actual flaws from Paul being treated like, ya know,
flaws. Which are not enables by Author-San.
Too bad it’s hidden under layers of degeneracy and pages of exposition to get there.
Paul’s shoulders drooped despondently. “You’re right. I had this all wrong. I’m sorry.”
When I saw that, I recalled what Laws had told me earlier:
“Talking to you makes one feel like an underqualified parent.” Had Paul’s attempt at scolding me been him trying to show more of his paternal side?
If all convos that Rudy had would become relevant again within the same chapter, we’d have a better story. This is the second instance of this happening (with Roxy’s conversation about demons earlier).
“Yeah. I’ll do that,” Paul said self-deprecatingly. The man was clearly in poor spirits.
Had I gone too far? I mean, losing an argument to your five-year-old son? That’d take the wind out of my sails for sure. I supposed he was a bit young to be a father.
“By the way, Father, how old are you?”
“Hm? I’m twenty-four.”
“Isee.” So, he would have been nineteen when he got married and had me? I didn’t know the average age for marriage in this world, but with things like monsters and war and such being an everyday occurrence, that sounded pretty appropriate.
Uh huh..
A man more than a decade my junior had gotten married, had a kid, and was now struggling with how to raise him. Given my thirty- four-year-history of indolent joblessness, you wouldn’t think I’d be able to outdo him at much of anything.
34 years with nothing to show for it. Sit your ass down.
“Father, could I bring Sylph over to play sometime?”
“Hm? Oh, of course.”
Satisfied with that response, I headed into the house with my father. I was glad he didn’t hold any prejudice against demons.
If all dialogue was like this (showing character traits), this would be a better read… and we wouldn't be here.
The POV switches over to Paul because Author-San needed to give us both sides of the conflict, I guess.
My son was angry. The boy had never been one to display much overt emotion, but here he was, silently fuming. How did it come to this?
It started that afternoon, when Mrs. Eto came by our house, furious. She brought along her son Somal, considered one of the neighborhood brats. There was a blue bruise around one of his eyes. As a swordsman who’d seen my fair share of battle, I knew right away that he’d taken a punch. His mother’s story was long and rambling, but the gist was that my boy had punched hers. When I heard that, I was inwardly relieved. Ordinarily, I might have assumed my son had been playing outside, caught sight of Somal and his buddies playing, and tried to join them. But my boy wasn’t like other kids; he was already a Water Saint magician at his age. He’d probably said something high-and- mighty, the other kids had fired back, and then they’d all gotten into a fight. My boy was pretty clever and mature for his age, but he was still a kid, after all.
Mrs. Eto continued to get red in the face and then went pale as she tried to make this out to be a major bust-up, when it was just a quarrel among children in the end. And just by looking, you could tell that her son’s injury wasn’t even going to leave a mark. I’d scold my boy, and that would be the end of it. Children were bound to get into scuffles that turned to blows at some point, but Rudeus was far more powerful than other children. Not only had he been the disciple of the young Water Saint, Roxy, I’d been training him since he was three. Any fight he got into was sure to be one-sided. Things had gone okay this time, but if he ever got too hot- headed, he might wind up overdoing it. A smart kid like Rudeus ought to be able to deal with someone like Somal without throwing a punch. I needed to teach him that punching someone was a rash thing to do, and he needed to give it more thought before resorting to it.
This reads like an R/AITA ragebait post.
When I was young, my father did the same thing to me so many times, never listening to my side of things and always blaming me for not being a perfect son. Each time it happened, I felt so miserable and helpless. Well, whatever lesson I’d been trying to teach here, I’d failed. Ugh. But Rudeus didn’t blame me for it. He even consoled me in the end. He was a good kid. Almost too good. Was I even really his father? No—Zenith wasn’t the type to have an affair, and besides,
there was no father good enough to produce a child like him. Man, I never expected my seed would bear such strong fruit.
Ever consider that it may have come from Zenith? Then again, we don't know much about her from either Rudy or Paul at this point so of course it's not considered.
More than pride, though, what I felt was an ache in my gut.
“Father, could I bring Sylph over to play sometime?”
“Hm? Oh, of course.”
For now, I could at least be happy that my son had made his first friend.
He really has no clue regarding the truth about Rudy’s past and shows no suspicions. Shame.
That's the end of that chapter.
On one hand, there's finally some actual, meaningful conflict in this story despite already being halfway into it. On the other hand, I feel like we’re all going to be put on a watchlist for this.
Until next time, take care of yourselves.
