For a moment, Erza and Mira stopped fighting. Elfman and Lisanna also forgot all about feeding Kabe.
Macao and the other guild members just stared at the father and daughter, emotions swirling in their hearts.
Wakaba muttered, completely unaccepting of reality,
"Impossible, I refuse this. Why are you so lucky, Gildarts? How come you get such a cute daughter!"
Erza smiled slightly.
"So Cana's father is Gildarts. Congratulations, Cana. Congratulations on being reunited with your father."
Mira snorted, folding her arms.
"Hmph. In that case, our battle can wait until next time.
For now, we should be celebrating our friend Cana first."
They still did not quite understand how those two suddenly turned out to be father and daughter.
But right now, thinking about that was meaningless. All they needed to do was give the loudest, warmest congratulations.
Makarov grabbed his mug, sprang up onto the second floor railing in a single leap and shouted,
"Brats, to celebrate Gildarts and Cana being reunited, we are having a party!"
"Party!"
"Long live the master! Long live Gildarts! Long live little Cana!"
The announcement of the banquet instantly sent the guild's atmosphere into a frenzy.
In that roaring sea of joy, only Kabe stood there, mouth hanging open in a daze, still not recovered.
Wait a second, that is not how this was supposed to go.
I am the protagonist here, I have not even made a move yet, how did those two already reconcile on their own?!
After doubting his sense of presence for a while, Kabe eventually gave up thinking about it.
No matter what the process was like, as long as the outcome was perfect, that was enough.
Cana being able to reunite early with Gildarts and finally untie the knot in her heart, that was exactly what Kabe had wanted to see as her friend.
At once, he burst out of the annoying bandages wrapped around him, jumped up onto a table and yelled excitedly,
"Master, bring out all your precious top shelf liquor. On a day this rare and worth celebrating, you are not allowed to hide anything!"
Makarov was in a great mood too. Today he had not only seen how quickly the younger generation, especially Kabe, was growing, he was also sincerely relieved that the always troublesome Gildarts now had a family he would treasure.
High on the moment, he personally ran down to the cellar and hauled up crate after crate of the good stuff he normally could not bear to drink, earning a wave of heartfelt praise from all the drunkards in the guild.
Even Kabe, swept up by the fiery mood on scene, completely ignored Fiore's law about needing to be fifteen to drink. He grabbed a bottle and clinked it together with Gildarts, drinking against him mouthful for mouthful.
Erza and Cana were so furious they nearly went berserk together.
Before long, even Natsu, who was still supposed to be in the hospital, got carried back.
He had no idea what had happened while he lay there all day, but as long as it was a party, there was no way he would miss it.
For a while, aside from a few unlucky people like Gray who were still out on jobs and could not make it back, everyone in Fairy Tail joined the revelry.
This was Fairy Tail. When the family in the guild laughed, they laughed along.
When the family in the guild cried, they would cry with them.
From the moment you joined the guild, you were part of a single whole.
...
"So heavy. I cannot breathe, who is lying on top of me?"
In a fog, Kabe felt like there was a mountain pressing down on his body, making it hard to draw air into his lungs.
"I remember I got drunk last night. Then what is with all this weight on me?"
His thoughts slowly started to move.
"Wait, do not tell me I did something… wrong while drunk?!"
He snapped his eyes open in horror, brain spinning at high speed.
"Who is it?! Erza, Mira, or Cana?
No no no, they are all still so young. If I really laid hands on any of them, I would be an absolute beast!"
Body tense, he carefully turned his head. What entered his vision was Natsu's dumb face, drooling in his sleep.
"Ahhh!!!"
A shrill scream cut across the quiet guild hall, prompting several drowsy grumbles.
"Who is that, keep it down, people are still sleeping."
"So noisy, yell again and I will kill you, got it!"
Those familiar insults did not make Kabe angry at all. Instead, he suddenly felt a warmth in his chest.
He quickly kicked drooling Natsu off his body, then sat up and looked around.
When he saw that he was still in the Fairy Tail guild he knew so well, with guild members lying all over the floor sleeping, he finally relaxed and let out a breath.
At the same time, memories of the previous night began to return bit by bit.
Relying on his naturally ridiculous alcohol tolerance, he had first knocked out Macao, then knocked out Wakaba.
After that, it had become a three way drinking war between him, Gildarts and Makarov.
As far as he could recall, he had collapsed in a heap under the cheers of Natsu, Mira, Lisanna and the other kids.
As for what happened after that, he had no memory at all.
The moment he tried to think too hard, a stabbing pain like needles jabbed through his skull.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth.
"Here, drink this, it will help."
A small hand appeared in front of him, offering a glass of juice.
"Thanks."
Kabe took it without thinking and gulped it down in two big swallows, then let out a long breath of relief.
Only then did he turn his head to look at the person who had spoken.
Erza stood over him with her arms folded, glaring down at him with a face full of resentment.
Behind her, Mira and the Strauss siblings along with Cana and the other kids were still sprawled over tables, snoring away.
Kabe forced himself to endure the headache and nausea as he slowly climbed up from the floor.
He casually kicked aside two idiots snoring in the passage, then dragged Erza over to sit at another table with him.
He rapped his knuckles lightly against his skull and groaned in discomfort.
"Ugh. Alcohol really is not a good thing. Erza, you must never try drinking in the future."
"Hmph, I would never like something that tastes bitter and is bad for you."
Kabe nodded in satisfaction and, out of habit, reached out to pat Erza on the head like he was praising a well behaved child.
Erza, blushing with embarrassment and annoyance, slapped his paw away in one smack.
"Kabe, stop treating me like a kid. You are only one year older than me, and you are not even as tall as I am."
Kabe's raised hand froze in midair, his heart twisting like it had been pierced through by a feathered arrow.
Ever since his friends had all started shooting past him in height one after another while he stayed exactly the same, he felt like his status among them had been shaken to its core.
But this was just how Saiyans were built. Not growing taller as a child was a trait he could only accept with bitter resignation.