「.... That is still deception. Something you said you loathed. 」, Elrhain muttered carefully.

「I detest half-hearted self-justified deception without care for the subsequent consequences. I would rather shut up than speak lies someone can see through in minutes after calming down with a cup of fruit pulp.

I-I’m confused. I know I am muddled right now, but what else should I do? You were the one who said you were terrified of our family finding out about our transmigration. I am too.

You know, I was so relieved when you didn’t just gloss over the origin of our otherworldly knowledge. But imagine my shock when you tried to ad-lib away the second most crucial step, before confirming whether or not we are in the green! No, you thought just a few one-line two-paragraph white lies were sufficient. They! Are! Not! Dhionne are not that stupid. You are the stupid one!」

As she spoke, Agwyn grew more and more furious. Soon, she was flailing her arms up in the air agitatedly while Elrhain had to cover her mouth, urging her to keep it quiet.

But the girl would have none of it. She let out her frustrations like the floods that plagued the Aenraad river.

「You always do that!」 She screamed, 「You dream up how to solve the healthcare, education, food, and other technological issues of Earthloch. You draft cosmic plans that even the most naïve ideologist would faint after seeing.

But you fucking, always, without a sliver of self-preservation, forget to mind the details. Why do you think Sarah could screw you over back then? Why did you think you could actually ever monopolise a huge technological black box like the Single-Core Hydro Annihilator without splitting the pie? Who do you think had to sacrifice all their braincells to clean up your mess?

When you invest in up-and-coming firms and businesses and ideas in the Collective, you had an enormous team of analysts and planners in your institution. All you had to do was give out a general direction, and your thousands of employees and tens of supercomputers, and even the latest quantum computer, the Alpha Logic, which perished with us, would do your bidding.

But we don’t have a team of smart-arse university graduates, nor a godlike artificial intelligence here. And your enemies, those who suspect us, you, and want to take you away from me, won’t get dumber because of that.

When you think up know-hows and concepts like the academia, hospitals, alcohol distillation, rotational farming, steel forging, spatial-dynamics and calculus for your civilisation-building agendas, did you ever once give a second thought to this paltry lifeline that you call an ‘excuse’ you so perfectly handwaved?

Who is left but me to agonise on keeping your butt clean in this life? When we can’t even tell the whole fucking truth to our birth mothers? Great, now you can dream up the first banana peeler for all I care to make the folks' lives more comfortable.

Don’t you worry. Your thankless girlfriend will take care of all the stuff you are too embarrassed about, too fart-brained to even give a lick. You can just go and ruminate on more essential questions. Like the meaning of life, free will, existence and all that other bull-crap you feed Vesiphis and Ysbail.」

Elrhain froze, jaws gaping wide at the sight of this new but familiar Agwyn. She was the spitting image of that time when Miramarja said she would marry her first boyfriend.

And just like then, she was merciless in her words and cruel in her gaze. The shame she so readily highlighted almost threatened to make Elrhain squeal in agony.

But she had also changed. She was volatile, like an unstable element that combusted with a single wrong touch. She was confused, as if her soul did not know how to handle the raw emotions of her young body.

Elrhain inhaled deeply.

How could he have not thought things through from Agwyn’s perspective all this while, and only agonised about what he saw, heard, or felt? If he did, maybe Agwyn would have had peace of mind and…

But the self-blame could wait for later.

Agwyn, she did not stop. She was in a frenzy. But Elrhain realised, she had to stop!

Even as she tenderly caressed his forehead with that dark smile, kissed his cheeks with her baby lips, and constricted him into a death-like embrace with her pudgy arms.

「But at the end of the day, that’s fine. Lies, deceit, love for our family. It’s all secondary. I only really care about what mommy thinks, because you care about what mommy thinks. Really, they are all secondary to what really matters.

You. You are the only one that matters. Your interest is king. What you want to do is what I want. Since you care about what our family thinks of us, I will make sure that you, us, and they live in harmony.

Even if your actions are that of an irresponsible hypocrite. Like when you say you care about all this, but you act the opposite as if you actually don’t care at all, I will make up for your shortcomings. I will never let you meet a Naomi, Sarah, or the moles in the Collective that betrayed us, giving the three other nations the position of the Gigantomachy.

In our previous life, I pestered you till the very end. I made you adopt Miramarja with me. I forced you to devote in my life more than you ever really wanted. You created an entire company that revitalised the nuclear-wasted areas because I was too weak to do so myself. You handed the project over to me like a Taffy candy to a whining little girl without batting an eyelid.

You bet your thousands of billions of credits on Gigantomachy because I had ties with the government. Then you died because of that selfishness of mine. So, in this life, do what you want. In this life, I will be your angel like you were mine in our last. Go build a kingdom, raise a civilisation, and-mmmmmph」

「I get it.」 Elrhain suddenly squeezed Agwyn’s cheeks with his palms, placing his forehead on hers with enough force to knock an average toddler out.

「Y-You do?」

「Yes.」 He said. His tone serene, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. 「I feel your resolve, Annie. Aww, God, I am so lucky. Never in my life did I think I would get an angel after dying. 」

「R-Really?」

Elrhain nodded, his eyes glazed over. 「Yes. But I have always been grateful. No way am I going to let my angel suffer without doing anything.」

「W-What?」 Agwyn looked bewildered, but the heat in her face did not leave. She was about to speak up again, but Elrhain did not let her.

「It’s fine. Really. Just like you, everything I do is for your own good. So, 」 Elrhain paused, then looked her deep into the eyes, 「So just go on a bloody vacation, you deranged shrew! Cause you really, bloody damn need one!」

Before Agwyn could comprehend what was going on, Elrhain took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs, “CYRA! ANNIE SAYS SHE FORGOT HOW THE BIG GUY LOOKED LIKE BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T SEEN HIM FOR SO LONG!!”

***

Cyra took only a few seconds to get up from her bed and rush to their side with worry laden eyes. But that was more than enough time for Agwyn to grapple Elrhain down on the fluffy sheets and start thrashing him in a frenzy.

The boy, on the other hand, didn’t look hurt at all. The bite marks and scratches only served to make him look irresistibly egotistical as he pulled Agwyn’s hair, and the girl looked as if she could not stand the sight of his grinning mug.

Cyra separated them while fumbling in confusion, coddling them both to tell her what was wrong. But they remained silent, only Agwyn pouting with a Hmph!

And thus, the first official cold war in the two’s relationship in this world had at last started. And no one had any idea how to stop it.

The war didn’t halt the pampering, though. Despite the pouting, sulking, and crying when no one else was there, Agwyn was still as inseparable from Elrhain. Albeit silent, she seemed to cling onto him even tighter, which made the situation even more perplexing.

Bromwyn, who had heard the word of his daughter apparently forgetting his face, rushed back from a gheist wave subjugation in less than a day while howling all the way.

The goofy giant had tears in his eyes as he held the tiny Agwyn in his gigantic palms, even replacing Cyra as their night-time guardian. The man sang and danced and did all sorts of antics to hog all of Agwyn’s attention. Enough so that even his wife and Eluned starting looking at him with naked hostility.

But as the clan chieftain, Bromwyn was not one to be fazed by womenfolk in desperate times.

“Here, lookie here, my princess.” Said Bromwyn as he dangled up a crystalline bone curved into a Kolexen-like shape, just out of Agwyn’s reach. “Behold! We have a mean Kaloxen leader that wants to run away from the herd. Clop clop clop! Oh no! Whatever shall Earthloch do? At this rate, all Kaloxen will escape.”

Bromwyn dramatically gasped. Elrhain rolled his eyes.

The giant man then took out another ruby-red bone carving, “But fear not! For we have Alleigh, the mighty red Pengyte! Rawr!”

At first, the girl was adamant, silent in her dissent at both Elrhain and the clan. She did not want to play along with what the little boy had planned, nor give even a glance at the adults’ silly frolics.

Eluned’s gentle lullabies, Cyra’s doltish raspberries, Dofnald’s cool head pats, Thundham’s tall tales and Lilian’s so interesting displays of magic were totally ineffective.

… for the first few days.

Alas, though Agwyn’s mind was unwilling, her toddler body could not possibly look away from all of Bromwyn’s fun antics for long. Because initially, the Agwyn of this world turned out to be a girl who would get distracted by a butterfly for hours on end!

“Hihihi! Again, go again!” Agwyn clapped, bouncing up and down.

Bromwyn had the idea to play as Alleigh himself today.

It was a Jackpot!

Being the smart chieftain that he was, he got on all fours and took the two kids on a horsy ride all over the mountain. After one exhilarating round of what felt like a roller coaster ride on the peaks of the Alps, Agwyn, who was picked up from Bromwyn’s back by Cyra, reached her arms in the big man’s direction and kept pleading with a pinkish face.

Elrhain, who heaved his guts out on the side, suspected if Agwyn’s enthusiasm was truly out of enjoyment of the ride or pleasure at seeing him suffer.

But his complaints fell on deaf ears.

The love and care did not stop there. Every one of their close family showered Agwyn and Elrhain with snuggles like there was no tomorrow. Delves down in the caves, gheist rides on flying Gurumba’s, and even a lake tour on a magical wooden canoe with all their cousins.

And Bromwyn was there with them, regardless of sun, rain or moon. It looked like this episode had really spooked the hulking man.

No matter the reason, a cute dumpling daughter forgetting her father’s face was the biggest, cruellest punishment a man of Bromwyn’s intellect could ever face.

So, he, and everyone else, practically worshipped Agwyn like an idol so that she would forget no family member’s face ever again.

Elrhain could see that everyone had been on tiptoes after Agwyn and he revealed strange knowledge. Immediately after, everyone realised something was wrong with Agwyn’s mental state. They took the issue as seriously more than they did manna-riogh collapses and gheistrums outbreaks.

As if for many days, making the little girl happy was their sole goal for living. And although Elrhain hated to admit it, they succeeded with flying colours.

Not soon after, Agwyn was back to her usual self, giggling at frogs doing cart flips in the mountain streams.

…. at least with other people. Even Siani and Ysbail, whom she didn’t seem to like much, were all chummy with her during the daily cultivation classes.

She was only mean to Elrhain. No sharing fishes, fruits, or glittering insect shells. She kept constricting him like a python while asleep, and definitely no smooches in public.

The adults didn’t know what to do regarding their fight, even though they successfully uplifted Agwyn’s mood.

This was the first serious quarrel the two kids had. Judging by the few shamans, mages, and that one Naeman witch that had visited the two to do some cryptic magic and spooky wizardry, the adults might even have thought that their fight had to do with the strange tether in their souls and not a real baby squabble.

But then, one day, after what had felt like a decade of ignoring each other, the little girl spoke at last with an unwilling grimace.

“Hmph. I was prepared to sacrifice so much for you. But not only do you not thank me, but you made fun of me in front of mommy and daddy! You take my resolve as a joke.”

Elrhain resisted the urge to tsk in exasperation. The girl had finally called for a truce, and hostile facial gestures would do him no good here.

“… and let you turn our relationship into an unhealthy co-dependency like our previous lives?” But he still had to correct her mistake. “Annie, aren’t you the one contradicting yourself here?”

“What do you mean?” Agwyn ignored Ysbail’s shouts from afar as she turned around on the tree stump stool to face him.