"What?"
The woman's expression darkened. "Did they bully you?"
Because of her daughter's special—
It wasn't that the woman was overreacting.
Her daughter really had suffered some unpleasant treatment.
Fortunately, it had only been verbal.
But for a child, that was enough to bring her to tears.
As her mother, she naturally felt terribly sorry for her.
Whenever the girl asked her in a choked voice why it had happened, she had to put great effort into holding back her own tears.
"Dummy."
"You ended up on top right away."
"You landed on the ground."
"Wow!"
"You must've been really scared."
"My hat fell off."
"How did he pick it up?"
"Wasn't he really amazing?"
She had thought it had fallen below the cliff...
"...At the time, he didn't know it was that child's hat. He simply picked it up and stuffed it into his clothes."
"When we saw the hat fall off the cliff, we left."
After all, if someone fell from the bed below, they could have suffered a sprain or even broken a bone.
The man blinked.
So she hadn't remembered her hat at all.
Finding her parents—and her hat—seemed to bring the child's voice back to full strength.
"Next time you see them, tell Dad. Dad will teach them a lesson for you."
"They picked it up but wouldn't give it back to me..."
The man reminded the child, who was only grinning foolishly.
He had thought the child hadn't found her hat beneath that rock...
"No."
What a terrifying thought.
But to be able to say she was completely unhurt was truly incredible.
"It was on a branch growing out of the cliff face."
His child was slowly growing up.
After all, that hat was