The next day, at the guild.
Early that morning, Gildarts's booming voice echoed wildly through the guild hall as though he had a built-in loudspeaker.
He carried Cana on his shoulder, parading her around.
"Natsu! Look! My daughter!"
"Gray! Put your clothes back on! Don't sully my daughter's eyes!"
"Guild Master! This is my daughter, Cana! Isn't she beautiful? That's our family's excellent genes at work! Hahaha!" He showed her off to everyone he could catch, and the guild members were starting to get tired of his bragging.
"Put me down! This is so embarrassing!" Cana blushed, unable to stand her father's grandstanding. She covered her little face with both hands, trying to shut out all the teasing looks around her.
"Don't be shy, Cana." Gildarts was so excited that he completely missed his daughter's increasingly impatient expression.
"I said let me go, you stupid old man!" Cana finally lost patience and punched Gildarts, then jumped down from his shoulder.
Gildarts toppled to the floor with the blow, looking utterly wronged. "Cana?"
"Stop being so clingy!"
After snapping that in embarrassment, Cana herself froze for a moment.
Until yesterday, she had needed to rehearse the word "Dad" eight hundred times in her head before daring to say it. Today, she could already swing a fist at him. She pressed her lips together to hide her rising smile, then turned and stomped over to Blanc, leaving Gildarts to clown around by himself.
Blanc watched the scene with a grin.
The emotional knot that had tormented her yesterday had turned into this overnight. Originally, this mess would have dragged on for several more years, until Cana had nowhere left to turn before she could resolve it. This was so much better-done in a single day.
When Cana came over, he smiled and said, "See? I told you. A daughter doesn't need to earn the right to see her father. Gildarts turned into a doting dad in an instant."
Cana shot Blanc an exasperated look, then smiled again. "That ridiculous dad of mine. Who goes around announcing it to everyone like that?"
Cana paused, then gave him a sincere smile. "And thank you. Without your encouragement, I don't know how much longer I'd have agonized over it before daring to tell him. Now that it's out in the open, I feel so much lighter."
"What are you thanking me for? We're friends."
Meanwhile, Gildarts had been showing off to Macao and the others. When he turned to look for his daughter, he discovered that Cana had somehow ended up chatting happily with Blanc, the two standing rather close together.
Gildarts's laughter caught in his throat, and his gaze instantly sharpened.
Finding his daughter was the greatest joy imaginable. But some brat of uncertain intentions turning up beside her? That was the end of the world.
"I never would've guessed Cana was your daughter," Macao remarked beside him, holding a glass of liquor.
"I knew it. Cana was always thinking about you, but you never seemed all that close when you met. Something always felt off. So that was it," Wakaba added with a nod.
"Hey, Macao." Gildarts never took his eyes off them. "I haven't been around the guild much these past few years, so I don't really know the younger generation all that well."
"Is that kid Blanc close to Cana?" Gildarts asked, staring at Blanc with an odd expression.
Macao and Wakaba exchanged a look that said it all-the show was about to begin.
"Sure, they're close. They've been guildmates for years." Macao leisurely took a drink. "Oh, right. A while back, those two were practically inseparable."
"That was when Blanc asked Cana to teach him Card Magic, wasn't it?" Wakaba added with a grin. "They really were together every single day back then."
Inseparable? Together every day? Gildarts's brain automatically filtered out everything else, leaving only the words most likely to set him off.
A vein instantly bulged at his temple.
An inexplicable chill ran down Blanc's back. Following his instincts, he turned around and saw that Gildarts had put away the goofy grin he wore around everyone else. His weathered face now bore an intensely conflicted, almost twisted expression.
Gildarts strode over with heavy steps.
"Blanc." Gildarts stopped in front of him, his tall frame casting a shadow.
"What is it, Gildarts?" Blanc raised an eyebrow, slightly puzzled.
Suddenly, Gildarts reached out with a thick hand and slapped Blanc hard on the shoulder. The force made him stumble.
"Thanks for what you did yesterday." Gildarts spoke in a low voice, his eyes shining with deeply sincere gratitude. "If it weren't for you, who knows how many more years my daughter and I would've missed out on? I won't forget what you've done for us."
Blanc rubbed his aching shoulder and smiled helplessly. "It was nothing, old man. You're making too much of it. As long as Cana's happy."
Before he had finished speaking, something changed in Gildarts's eyes.
The gratitude vanished in an instant, replaced by suspicion, irritation, and a hint of the hostility one might show a thief. He narrowed his eyes slightly and tilted his head, radiating such a grim aura that he looked like a mob boss coming to collect a debt.
"But... you little brat." Gildarts leaned closer to Blanc and threatened him through gritted teeth, his voice low. "I've noticed. Aren't you... getting a little too close to my Cana?"
"Huh?" Blanc froze.
"I'm warning you!" Gildarts grabbed Blanc by the collar, veins bulging at his temples.
"Cana only just came back to me! If you dare make a move on my precious daughter, if you dare steal her away from me... I don't care if you're a Fairy Tail guildmate! I'll punch you clear to the horizon! Do you understand?!"
Faced with the full force of this father's resentment, Blanc didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He raised both hands in surrender, utterly speechless inside. What on earth is he talking about?
"Hey! Gildarts! What are you doing?!"
A clear, furious roar rang out behind him.
Cana finally ran over, unable to take any more. She yanked Gildarts's hand off Blanc's collar and planted herself in front of Blanc like a hen protecting her chick, glaring at her father. "Stop making a fool of yourself! Blanc is my good friend! If you keep this up, I'll never speak to you again!"
"Never speak to me?!"
For Gildarts, a newly minted doting father, those words struck like a thunderbolt. He turned to stone all over again, then crumbled into dust, crouching on the floor and trembling as he bit the hem of his clothes, staring at Blanc with eyes full of resentment and jealousy.
"Cana, trust your dad. It's my intuition," he wailed. "One look at this kid tells me he's the type who tricks girls. Don't let him fool you!"
"Hey, hey, old man, I can't let that slide. I'm an upstanding young man. How did I suddenly become a scumbag?" Blanc clutched his chest, looking deeply wronged.
"Whoa... Gildarts's resentment is practically turning into a black cloud."
At a nearby table, Gray stood with his arms crossed, eyeing Gildarts as he crouched in the corner radiating misery. He couldn't help shivering.
"So this is the legendary terminal stage of daughter obsession. What an ugly sight," Erza said beside him, mercilessly rubbing salt in the wound with a deadpan expression.
"Aye!" Happy flapped his wings in midair, happily adding fuel to the fire. "Gildarts is jealous!"
"Damn it!" Natsu, who couldn't follow what was happening at all, scratched his head and shouted, "Gildarts is acting so weird! Now I want to fight him!"
Not far away, Mira watched with her arms folded for a while, then pursed her lips without saying anything. She turned and dragged Elfman and Lisanna elsewhere.
Seated on the counter, the Guild Master watched Gildarts fawn over his daughter one moment and glare at Blanc the next;
Then he looked at little Cana, who had finally lowered the defenses she had carried for years and wore a truly unguarded smile, and at Blanc, hiding behind her and feigning innocence to deliberately provoke her father. The old man's lips unconsciously curved into a smile.
He slowly raised his glass and took a sip, letting out a satisfied, relieved sigh:
"Honestly... every last one of them is an idiot kid who makes me worry."
Makarov tilted his head up slightly, his gaze growing incredibly gentle.
"But that's what a guild is. Everyone has a past they can't speak of, heavy burdens and doubts. But as long as they come back here, with friends to give them a little push, even those frozen secrets will thaw someday."
"That brat Blanc may usually keep his distance, but here in this guild... he's a very caring member of our family, too. If we leave the future of Fairy Tail to these children, it'll surely become livelier than ever."
The shouting and the crash of breaking tables and chairs rose once more. Instead of getting angry, the old man laughed heartily and drained the fine liquor in his glass.