"Good morning!" I was greeted by a sunny smile as I approached the gates of the Dracis mansion in the silent company of Judy and Snowy. The princess skipped over to me and gave me a ribcage-creaking bear hug made only marginally more bearable by her unreservedly pressing her squishier bits against me, completely disregarding the fact that the entire household was watching her. I'm not going to lie, the whole 'being greeted by a small crowd in front of the gates during our morning commute' thing gave me a serious case of déja vu, but I ignored the sentiment and just smiled at my unusually eager girlfriend.

"Good morning," I responded to her, then turned to the entire extended family and asked, "Is there a problem?"

Mama and Papa Dracis glanced at each other very meaningfully, but it was the annoying butler standing by their side that eventually spoke up and gave me an answer.

"The young lady told us she had a rather peculiar encounter yesterday," he told me while making honest to goodness air quotes around the world 'peculiar'. "We were curious if you wanted to comment on the events."

I rewarded Sebastian's forthcoming attitude with a curiously raised brow, and after a moment of consideration, I gently separated myself from the girl still hugging my waist and told him, "You mean the guy in the lab coat and the stupid robots, right? Don't worry, I already got them in my palm."

"You do?" Elly blurted out in surprise.

"Yup," I told her with a combination of a wink and a totally charming smile, if I do say myself. She must've appreciated the effort (not that I practiced it in the mirror this morning or anything), as her cheeks actually became a bit flushed, but this time they were more 'rosy' than her usual beet redness. It was a pretty cute reaction, all things considered.

"Are they a threat?" Mama Dracis interrupted in a stern voice, which kind of ruined our moment, but I didn't really blame her.

"Do you want me to be frank?" It was a rhetorical question, but she gave me a pretty intense nod, so I immediately told her, "They probably pose more threat to themselves than to us. For the time being, they can be safely left alone. If they become an actual hazard to any of us, including you, I'll contact you and we can just smash their base at our convenience."

Lady Emese blinked in surprise, then stated, "So they really are in the palm of your hands."

"Would I lie about this?" I responded with a tiny little smirk.

"What about the swordswoman?" she continued her impromptu interrogation right away.

"Oh, I've got her under control too," I told her maybe a smidgen too cheekily, as my silent assistant let out an irritated huff behind me. I continued to ignore her for the time being, and instead I said, "I made contact with her yesterday, and now I'm sure she is not affiliated with the knights. She is more of a nomadic monster slayer ninja or something. I'm still working on the particulars, but the important thing is that I'm keeping her under close surveillance and that she doesn't seem to pose a threat to any of you."

The lady of the household gave me a long, hard look as if she was trying to determine whether she can trust my word, but she eventually let out a long breath and told me, "I see you've been working hard."

"Of course he has!" Papa Dracis suddenly cut in, accompanied by a hearty chuckle. "I told you there's nothing to worry about!"

"I believe you should actually worry a bit more about this young man's motives and capabilities," Sebastian chimed in while pointedly shaking his head.

"Oh Sebastian, don't be so negative!" the Dracis patriarch exclaimed while patting the old butler hard on the back. In fact, he did it so hard that I was pretty sure a normal person would've probably fallen on their face from the impact, but the old butler endured it without moving at all, like an annoying, snooty mountain. "If you cannot trust your own family, then who can you trust!?"

"He is not part of our family yet," Mama Dracis countered with a frown, but her husband completely ignored her and he turned to me instead.

"Speaking of which! Son, when are you coming over for dinner? I had my top men put together one of those fancy-pants website things you proposed, and I want to see what you think about it before we make it live!" He stopped here for a very meaningful pause, and then coyly added, "It's your project after all!"

"Project?"

"What project?"

Elly and her mother both blurted out in surprise at once. Since Abram was too busy chuckling to himself to answer, I decided to do it in his stead.

"After your father complained about how the record company's sales are down, I offered him a business proposal and invested some of my money into an online music distribution service."

"You invested in our business?" Lady Emese inquired with a somewhat dazed expression.

"Yes. It was the majority of my savings, but I think it's better to invest my money rather than to just let it collect dust in my account." Now it was my turn to pause meaningfully here, during which I flashed a confident smile at Papa Dracis and finished with, "And what better place is there to invest in but the family business?"

It was at this point that my self-proclaimed father-in-law stopped chuckling and began straight up hooting with laughter as he walked back to his wife's wheelchair and placed one large hand onto her shoulder.

"I told you, honey! Our daughter has an amazing eye for men! She must have inherited it from you!"

"I don't know about that," Lady Emese grumbled as she pointedly looked the other way, but at the same time she gently placed her own hand on top of her husband's. Why do I have a feeling these two used to be one of those absurdly adorable clumsy couples when they were younger?

Anyhow, I lightly shrugged my shoulders and told Abram, "I'll be busy after school, but I think I should be able to come over tonight."

"Great!" he exclaimed with a toothy grin. "Sebastian? Tell the staff to prepare a feast!"

I left the Dracis family to their impromptu dinner preparations and said my goodbyes, following which our little group turned around and happily continued on our merry way to school… for about half a minute, until the princess unsubtly tugged on my sleeve.

"Hey, Leo? Why's Judy mad at you?" she inquired with all the innocence of a baby driving a pick-up truck through a china shop.

"What makes you think she is mad at me?" I asked back without giving anything away yet.

"She looks like it," she answered seriously. "She also doesn't talk to you. Did you do something to make her angry?"

"Maybe?" I replied a little sheepishly as I theatrically scratched the back of my neck.

"Not maybe, definitely," Judy, walking a couple of paces ahead of us with Snowy, finally spoke up without looking our way, her voice about as icy as it was the day before. "Why don't you tell her what happened yesterday?"

"I might as well," I told her with a cheery grin, even though she couldn't see it. "Listen, princess, I actually found the base of the guys who attacked you yesterday on the way home."

"Don't forget to mention that you got severely injured in the process," my assistant chimed in again while still looking the other way.

"You were?" Elly's voice rose a pitch in alarm as she looked me over and took note of the scuffs on my face.

"Yes, but not severely," I objected. "They are just scrapes. I'll have Angie cast a healing spell on me and I'll be as good as new."

"Oh, that's good," the princess deflated with a sigh of relief. "But then why is she angry with you?"

"It's because of the next part," Judy fumed, urging me to continue.

"Right. After that, I made contact with the huntress we talked about before."

"And?" Judy prompted me.

"And I resolved our differences," I responded.

"And then?" Judy prompted me, again.

I let out an exasperated sigh and finally admitted, "And then I agreed to hunt the stray Chimera with her," in a morose voice.

"And that is why I'm mad," my dear assistant concluded before she glanced over to Elly and added, "And you should be too."

"Why? You don't want him to hunt the Chimera?" she asked back, genuinely confused, before she looked at me. "Is it going to be dangerous? Do you need help?"

"That's not the problem," Judy grumbled as she finally slowed down and fell in line next to the two of us, and then she grabbed the princess and told her, "The Chief arranged to have clandestine meetings with the hunter woman from now on."

"Wouldn't just the fact that I told you about it mean that they are not clandestine?" I asked while showing off my slowly advancing mastery of raising only a single incredulous eyebrow.

"Hush Chief, I'm incriminating you," Judy retorted with a hint of impatience in her voice.

"I noticed, that's why I'm interrupting you."

She finally looked at me, and when I told her I wasn't going to budge on the issue by wiggling my brows a bit more, she ultimately relented and told Elly, "Fine. The Chief is having non-clandestine dates with the hunter woman from now on."

"They are not dates either," I protested once again.

"A man and a woman setting an appointment for going into town together. What do you call that?"

"By our recently developed standards, that would be an 'outing', but in this particular case, it's closer to a hunting trip," I told her straight away.

"You're just playing with words now," my assistant huffed before she turned to my other girlfriend. "What do you think? It's a date, no matter how we look at it."

"Don't answer your own question," I chided her, but in the meantime, Elly actually put some thought into her reply.

"Are you attracted to her?" she leveled the question at me, and I immediately shook my head.

"No. There is a slight chance that she is interested in me, but I mainly find her annoying and want her gone. That's why I try to help her hunt down the Chimera, so she would go away."

"And you're not going to do anything… um… lewd with her, right?" she asked the next question, this time a little more hesitantly.

"Definitely not," I told her forcefully. "Even we haven't done any lewding, why would I even think about doing it with someone else?"

"That's still not a word," Judy whispered beside us, but she was summarily ignored by the dragon girl in our midst.

"It's okay then," Elly stated with a relieved smile.

"It's okay?" my assistant repeated after her with an extra wooden voice.

"Yes," she gave a huge nod and explained, "Leo already promised that he is not interested in anyone else, and he is not physically attracted to her either. I trust his words, so I'm certain he won't cheat on us."

I gave the beaming blonde girl a surprised look, and after I overcame it I turned to the other girl and told her, "You see, Judy? Elly actually trusts me. Why can't you do the same?"

"Because…" she began to answer, but her words, probably due to the crossfire of our gazes, got lost somewhere along the way and they came out as a heavy sigh instead.

I decided to capitalize on the moment, hence I carefully pulled Elly away so that I could wedge myself between the two of them and I grabbed hold of Judy's hand.

"Come on Dormouse. I already told you I don't care about other girls. We are going to hunt some Chimera spawn, and once we are done, she'll be out of our collective hair for good. There's absolutely nothing romantic or adulterous in our arrangement. Please stop being jealous for no reason and just give me the benefit of the doubt already."

"That's right," Elly unexpectedly backed me up. "You have to trust your partner. Mother always said that a stable relationship is built upon mutual trust, so you have to trust your partner even if he is a good-for-nothing oaf who cannot read the mood even if it killed him!"

"Wait a sec, she actually said that?" I muttered in surprise, and she responded with a huge nod.

"Yes, word for word!" the princess declared rather proudly for some reason. "She also told me that for skirt chasers, it is best to give them boundless trust no matter the situation until the point they would feel too guilty to even look at other women, let alone marry them using their family's stupid customs for justification."

"Wow," I exhaled with a mix of awe and dread. "Your mother is a formidable woman."

"Women have to be formidable themselves to hold onto a formidable man," she told me with that smug little smirk of hers.

"You see, Judy? You should follow Elly's mother's example and trust me."

My dear assistant turned to me with conflicted eyes, but at last she squeezed my hand and said, "No flirting during the dates."

"They are not dates, and no, I won't be flirting at all. I won't even buy her a snack this time."

"This time?" Elly suddenly cut in, her brows already in a surprised frown. "You bought her snacks?"

"Yeah. It was to distract her so that I could get away from her when I first met her."

"Oh, I see," she muttered in relief. Hey, weren't you the one who said you would trust me no matter what? Why do you sound like you doubted me right away?

"You are only going to track the Chimera," Judy wrestled my attention back by making another statement.

"Yes. No dilly-dallying around the city, just tracking some monsters. All business, no fun whatsoever."

"And you are going to stay safe."

"Yes, perfectly. I'll let the creepy woman and her stupid crazy sword do all the dirty work, and I'll stay completely out of the fighting. Scout's honor."

It was blindingly obvious that Judy wasn't one hundred percent satisfied with my heartfelt promises, but after a long moment of silence she actually sidled closer to me and even entwined her arm with mine.

"Fine," she said with just a tiny hint of sulking still infused in her voice. "I decided I'll trust you one last time."

"You say that like I've ever betrayed your trust before…"

"You told me you would be careful, and yet you came back home covered in blood," she retorted, and I couldn't help but conspicuously glance away.

"Um… Yeah. I really should've thought that through before I entered the room like that. I'm sorry for scaring you guys… but on the other hand, I wasn't actually hurt, so does it actually count?"

"Yes, it does," Judy stressed while squeezing my hand even harder.

"Okay, then I'll make sure not to get bloodied and come back home looking like a horror show either."

"You better," she still grumbled, but I had a hunch that we were over the roughest part of our quarrel. I momentarily considered using the opportunity to tease her a little, but then my attention was quite literally grabbed by the princess taking hold of my free arm.

"Today I have the right side," she declared with a smile, which actually made me wonder. Did they even ration out who would grab which of my arms? Wasn't that going a little too far?

I didn't really have the opportunity to ponder that either though, as once she noticed we were huddled together, Snowy also slowed her pace and let us catch up to her.

"Is everything all right now?" she timidly asked as she looked over us.

"Did you go ahead to give us some space to talk?" I ventured an educated guess, and she nodded without hesitation.

"I shouldn't have?"

"No, you did good," I reassured her with my brotherliest smile. "Remind me to give you a head pat once my hands aren't occupied."

"Y-You don't have to…" she protested, though a little feebly, prompting me to turn my single-eyebrow-raising technique on her.

"You don't like it?"

"It's not that… it's just embarrassing…" she muttered while refusing to meet my eyes.

I let out a merry little chuckle and told her, "Okay, then you will get a private head pat for being such a good little sister."

"You are spoiling her," Judy told me in a flat, almost disinterested voice that told me she was probably picking a fight just to get my attention.

"I told you, little sisters exist to be spoiled," I responded to her in the company of an irreverent smirk. "You should know, you are probably giving her more head pats than I do."

"Should I give it a try too?" the princess wondered aloud with an uncertain expression, bringing our developing rapport to a screeching halt. When she noticed we were giving her blank looks, she hastily clarified, "I mean, she is going to be my sister-in-law soon, right? If Judy is already petting her all the time, shouldn't I do it too? Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair."

"So you want to pet my sister?"

"Yes," she confirmed.

"… Weren't you the one who repeatedly tried to tackle her and chase her away just a few months ago?" I teased her, and my draconic girlfriend's face immediately flushed in a familiar shade of crimson.

"That was a long time ago, and it doesn't matter! We are family now, so the situation is completely different!"

"We are technically not a family yet," Judy objected using a familiar set of words, probably out of habit.

"But we're almost, and that makes building skinship even more important."

"Kinship," I corrected her.

"That too," she nodded without getting a clue. I let out a shallow breath and addressed my sister.

"What do you say?"

"Uuuu…" Snowy hesitated at first, but after looking eye to eye with Elly for a few seconds, she ultimately said, "I… I think it's going be really awkward, but I don't mind."

"Good!" the princess declared with gusto and she immediately tried to reach out for my sister's head, but she skillfully dodged her hand and immediately backpedaled.

"N-Not in public!" she cried out, but as she did so, my overly enthusiastic draconic girlfriend let go of me and chased after her.

I stifled my chuckles and, along with my other girlfriend muttering something along the lines of 'So noisy so early in the morning', I continued onwards towards yet another day that promised to be just as eventful as the day before, but with one crucial difference: this time, I was prepared for... well, maybe not anything, but close enough.