I've finally turned 4 years old.

I can finally say that.. not much has changed!

My living situation is still the same, by being involved with helping out the family take care of our beasts on a daily basis. 

If there's anything new added to the routine though, it's that I am now good enough to take care of Dran by myself for a short period of time.

With Dran old enough to be weaned, Aunt Mary no longer has to come over to our place to breastfeed him, since the baby can now fully convert into fully drinking beast's milk and eating baby food. 

In her stead, Nessa comes over about every 2 days to learn about the type of beasts we're raising. It's a part of her lesson, so that she doesn't mistake it for the wild ones during her hunt.

And wherever Vanessa's visits, Kev tags along.

Alkev is the daughter of the farmer head of the main village. She's shy, even more than I am, and is very much attached to Nessa to the hip. I'm not quite sure how their friendship came to be, considering that the two live on the opposite end from the village, but it's pretty cute seeing the two of them assuming the leader-follower roles whenever I see them come over.

And aside from those two, Julian still comes over to play every day. He's probably the one who came over the most often out of Lily's three friends (that I know of).

"Where's Lily?" The kid announced as he came into the house without a knock. 

"Out harvesting eggs with father." I answered from the rocking chair, being jolted awake from my sleepiness from surprise. 

When I checked on Dran who was leaning into my stomach and saw that he's still sleeping peacefully, I sighed in relief. "Probably won't be back until another hour."

And yes, now I can speak pretty much clearly without lisps. Thank god, finally.

"Ahhh…" Julian groans with a dejected expression. Then, with a really reluctant look, he asked again. "Can I wait here..?"

I merely stared back at him.

Even though it doesn't match my age, my cold weapon, the thousand-yard stare, still works really well against people I don't get along with.  

Even Julian physically recoils back against the doorframe and hissed from the impact. "I- I'm sorry for waking you up okay?! I didn't mean to!"

I kept staring.

After a few more seconds of Julian fidgeting under my state, I finally felt it was enough, and quells down my anger from being woken up so rudely. "Fine, but be quiet."

Julian then steps inside and sits on the empty chair on the other end. There's a baby sleeping, and we still don't get along that well, so neither of us tried to start a conversation.

Speaking of, I can't believe that I have siblings now. I was an only child before, so babysitting didn't come as naturally as I wanted it to. Most of my confidence these days came from watching how Lily and father did it and copying them.

I don't remember where I've heard this from in my past life, but apparently, they say if you make a child help 'raising' and 'parenting' their younger siblings, it'll mess up their psyche or something. 

Despite the backward era that we're living in right now, our father is fortunately not the kind of person who makes their eldest daughter nurse the younger ones. On the contrary, he did everything from house chores to feeding the baby in the middle of the night by himself without complaining. I almost felt like I've been thrust back into modern times, seeing him struggling so much with being a single father.

However, unlike me, Lily saw this and decided on doing all the beast rearing herself, something that she knew Father cannot do without shivering in fear— and even took care of Dran so he can get some sleep in when it's not so busy, especially in the mornings.

Of course, the old man didn't agree with it in the beginning, but Lily is a lot more stubborn than he gave her credit for, so there was a tension growing between them that even I can feel amidst all of my memory-headache.

And that's why, I owe my thanks to the persistent(Julian) kids for coming over so often and taking Lili out to play. By doing this, they helped her and father get out of the stressful tension by having them spend time apart to ponder about it.

Father still doesn't agree with Lily taking care of the beasts by herself, but nowadays, he allowed Lily to at least manage the normal animals. He also let me look after Dran whenever I asked for it without looking remorseful. 

As for the Gazts? It can't be helped because Bibi, the leader, only bonded to me. Sometimes, they won't even let anyone else take a step closer when the herd is in a bad mood. This is especially about father, that for some reason, they really like to bully to vent out their aggression. 

Thus, despite his good conscience and Lily's objections, the task of taking care of them mainly has to be done by me.

At least father apologized for it in his own way by getting me an extra portion of food every time I had to let them out to graze. And my services are, sadly, can be very easily and cheaply bought by well cooked home-made cuisines.

"Hey tiny, are you awake?"  

"Ya." I hummed. There's no way I can get back to sleep when a guest is in the house.

Minutes passed by, the silence thickened once more, with only a few sleeping baby babbles in between to fill the space.

"Hey tiny."

"What is it." I huffed impatiently. 

My rough questioning is greeted with silence again. Seriously, what is happening right now?! Why is the air suddenly so tense?!! 

"Well.." The boy paused, I- "

"We're home!!!"

Lily's voice resounds far beyond the doorway. The girl herself soon followed suit, peering inside from the doorway. She smiled while her chest heaves up and down like she's out of breath. "Oh, Jules is here! What are you doing?"

"Ah- I was waiting for you, actually." The boy stood up from his seat and stretched. "Kev asked me to ask if you can make it to her birthday? Also, Nessa can't come today 'cause she hit her head on a tree again."

"Oh, really?!" Lily gasped in shock, covering her mouth. "Is she okay? This is the second time this month..."

Father chose this time to interrupt, taking the sleeping baby from my lap on one arm and me on another. "Why don't you visit her, hun? There's only house chores left to do here, Julian is probably here to fetch you right?"

"Um.." Lily glances at Julian, then up, her eyes unsure. 

"Come on, let's go, the babies need their nap time!" Julian stage whispered while tugging at Lily's sleeves. "Have a great day, sir! See ya, tiny."

With no choice, Lily walked out of the door after Julian, trailing behind him. And the house falls into quiet peace once more as father carries us to bed.

While our father may yet to notice, I immediately knew that something was wrong. There's definitely some awkwardness between the two that was never there before, not to mention, Julian seems like he wanted to say and aborted when Lily appears.

Did something happen between them?

Dad plopped me gently on the bed, rubbing my head, his preferred weapon to make us fall asleep quickly. "There there, sleep tight sweetheart…" 

Even I'm not spared, as all the tension immediately float away and left my body without a single energy to lean on.

"Yawn…"

Ah whatever, I'll have a nap first and think about this when I wake up later.

__________

The next day, I found out from Nessa that it was apparently not that serious.

Basically, Julian found out after all this time, that Lily wasn't the one who cooks the food he ate for lunch.

Then Julian said something that he shouldn't have, they fought a bit, but then made up after visiting Nessa's house. Now, everything is back to good again.

Hmm.

In conclusion, I shouldn't think too much about it. Being a kid sure is tough....