Leon sat at the table with Muen settled comfortably on his lap.
Muen lifted her small hand and gently rubbed the bridge of his nose where the door had struck him. She looked up with her large, luminous eyes, her voice a soft, contrite whisper.
"Sorry, Daddy. Muen didn't mean it. Muen didn't expect the door to push Daddy so hard."
She pouted, her lower lip trembling just enough to suggest tears were imminent if he didn't offer immediate forgiveness. "Are you still hurt? Muen will blow on it and it won't hurt anymore~"
Leon's heart softened completely. He smiled and gently wiped a hint of dampness from the corners of her eyes. "It's okay, Muen. Don't worry. Daddy is the one at fault. I should train more so I won't be knocked over by a mere wooden board."
Muen's face instantly brightened, her worry vanishing like mist in sunlight. She laughed and wiped her face with her sleeve. "As long as Daddy's not hurt, it's good!"
Leon affectionately pinched her tiny nose. "Alright, let's forget about it."
He made a turning-page motion with his hand, a physical gesture to match the mental shift. "Let's turn this page over and move on, okay?"
Muen squinted with happiness, her smile radiant. "Okay~ Daddy is the best~." Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek.
Leon was both surprised and deeply touched. Just five minutes earlier, she had been shouting, "Don't touch me, idiot!" Now she was calling him the best and bestowing kisses. He sighed inwardly—dragons, and especially half-dragons, were creatures of profound and rapid change.
"Daddy, what are we doing this afternoon?" Muen asked, her curiosity piqued.
Leon picked up the paper on the table and pointed to the three names he had written. "This afternoon, Daddy will teach you to write these. Sound good?"
Muen's eyes sparkled with excitement. The concept of reading and writing was still new and magical to her. "Yes, yes, Daddy! Teach me quickly!"
"Didn't Mom teach you already?" Leon asked casually as he prepared fresh paper and a stylus.
"Mother said to wait until you woke up and let you teach me, hehe~" Muen answered innocently.
Leon rolled his eyes internally at the transparently lazy excuse. He mentally dubbed her mother 'The Queen of Laziness,' but wisely kept the thought to himself.
Muen moved a small, carved stool right next to his chair and sat down, her posture attentive. Leon first showed her how to hold the stylus properly. She was a quick study, managing a steady grip after only a few attempts.
"Don't press too hard," Leon warned gently. "You might poke through the paper. Slow and steady is the way."
"Mmm," Muen agreed with a serious nod.
He taught her to recognize the shapes of the letters first, tracing them in the air. Then, he moved on to the proper stroke order.
"Is there an order to writing?" Muen asked, her head tilted.
"Yes. Without order, you're just drawing. Rules help your writing look neat and balanced," Leon explained calmly. "If you follow the stroke order, the characters will come out more gracefully."
"Okay~ I got it, Daddy. I'll practice hard!" she declared, her expression bright with determination.
At first, Muen practiced the strokes she found easiest. But with Leon's patient corrections—a gentle nudge of her wrist here, a guiding hand there—and her own innate quickness, she soon produced a recognizable, if wobbly, "Leon Cosmodeous." A surge of paternal pride warmed Leon's chest.
Next, they practiced Rossweise's name. The characters were more complex, but Muen applied herself with redoubled effort—as if a special, inherited strength flowed through her when writing her mother's name. Leon noticed she used significantly more sheets of paper practicing "Rossweise Melkvey" than she had for his own name.
Watching the growing stack of discarded attempts on the table, Leon teased lightly, "You seem to enjoy writing your mom's name a great deal…"
Muen blinked, genuinely puzzled. At her age, she didn't understand concepts like favoritism or jealousy, but she could sense a subtle shift in Leon's tone. While he stepped away to the restroom, Muen quietly fetched more paper and diligently practiced. She rewrote "Leon Cosmodeous" over and over.
When Leon returned, Muen proudly presented him with a stack of eleven sheets. "One, two, three… eleven sheets! Daddy, Muen wrote eleven sheets of your name!"
Leon's heart melted completely. "Oh, my good girl. You're my little cotton jacket—so warm and understanding." He cupped her chubby cheeks and rubbed them affectionately. "You're a thousand times sweeter than your stubborn mommy!" Muen squealed with delight, wriggling in her seat. It seemed to be the first time Daddy had been so openly, playfully affectionate with her.
"Alright, let's practice the last one: your own name. Muen Melkvey," Leon said, pointing to the final line on the paper.
"No, that's not my full name," Muen corrected him with sudden, sober seriousness.
Leon blinked, caught off guard. He had not expected this. Middle names were a common practice among the Empire's nobility, often denoting lineage or honorifics. He hadn't considered that dragons might follow a similar custom.
"What is your full name, then?" he asked.
"M," she began, then grinned triumphantly. "C!"
"C?"
"Yes! Muen C. Melkvey. The 'C' is from Daddy's last name, Cosmodeous." She beamed with pride. "That's what Mother told me."
Leon felt a sudden, complex wave of emotion—surprise, a strange, profound happiness, and a sense of being utterly disarmed. Rossweise had given their daughter a middle initial drawn from his name. That small, deliberate detail made him feel less like a temporary caretaker or a prisoner and more like… a part of the family.
He tried to temper his reaction, to not read too much into the Queen's motivations, but his heart beat a little faster against his ribs. He had assumed his role in this draconic household was provisional, a consequence of spell and circumstance. But Muen carried a piece of his name within her own. It was a quiet, undeniable testament that Rossweise, in her own way, acknowledged his place.
They finished practicing Muen's full name. Her strokes, while still juvenile, were remarkably neat and steady for a child her age.
"Done practicing! Daddy, how does it look?" Muen asked, her expression hopeful.
Leon looked over the collection of papers, at the diligent repetitions of all three names, and felt a wide, genuine smile spread across his face. "Muen, you're amazing. You learned our family's names so quickly and so well."
Muen paused, then shook her head with a little frown. "No, no. If we're a family, then we're missing one."
Leon's smile faltered. His heart gave a single, hard thump.
A family missing one… The memory of her earlier, imperious tone—"Who gave you permission to touch me?"—flashed in his mind. It suddenly made a new, different kind of sense. Muen had been teasing, play-acting, mimicking her mother's sternness. But beneath the performance was a child's simple, earnest desire for completeness.
Leon swallowed, the realization settling deep within him. He felt different than he had just moments before—not just foolishly charmed by a cute child, but fully, irrevocably woven into the fabric of a family that was, quietly and surely, claiming him as its own. The surprise was twofold: first, that he had fallen for them, and second, that he had been so seamlessly accepted in return.
He laughed softly, the sound half for Muen and half for himself. "So it turns out I wasn't just being enchanted from the start… I received a double blessing."
Muen giggled, not fully understanding his words but feeling their warmth, and hugged him tightly. Leon held her close, his mind swirling with the strange, sweet absurdity of his life—a tapestry woven with stern commands, sudden kisses, a stubborn dragon queen, and profound little surprises hidden in the curve of a child's name. He would try, with every fiber of his being, to be worthy of that middle initial, and of the small, unexpected, and fiercely beautiful family that had grown around him.