After watching Bell return to his room to rest, Hestia and Hephaestus turned their eyes on Loki.
Those sharp, knife-like stares made Loki instinctively shrink back.
"Why are you two looking at me like that?"
"Why do you think we're looking at you like that?"
What the hell?
Loki was at a loss. She was the one who asked the question, so why was this little runt so confidently throwing it back at her?
"How should I know what's going on in your heads? One moment you're fine, the next your faces completely change."
It wasn't like she had provoked the shorty this time. And it wasn't just one of them—both their expressions had shifted at once. Loki had no idea what she'd supposedly done wrong.
Seeing Loki still unwilling to explain, Hestia's protective glare didn't soften in the slightest. She remained on guard against her.
"Why don't you tell us what that reaction of yours just now was about?"
"Hah?"
From the start, Loki hadn't understood what the shorty was getting at.
Hestia's eyes grew sharper, her tone losing the restraint it had earlier as she went straight to the point.
"Loki, as far as I know, you don't react like that to anyone else."
"My reaction?"
Loki's head was full of question marks. She just couldn't follow what the shorty was implying.
But she did realize one thing—the reason both Hestia and Hephaestus had suddenly gone pale was because of how she had reacted.
The problem was, what reaction had she even given?
"You really haven't noticed? When you laugh like a maniac or an idiot, you've never once tried to hide it. I even asked you before why you always laugh like a fool, and I remember you told me, 'I, Loki, never hide my emotions.'"
...I think I did say that.
Loki dug through her memories, recalling her life back in the Tenkai. She was pretty sure those words came from then.
Back in those days, she was the very definition of the "Tenkai tyrant," a god who indulged in every form of mischief and wrongdoing imaginable. Everything she did was reckless, wild, and purely for her own amusement.
Even now, Loki hadn't changed much in that regard. Some people just claimed she had become more… smooth.
"And what does that have to do with right now?"
"Do you want me to show you what your face looked like just now?"
Hestia's expression turned grim.
Without giving Loki a chance to respond, she picked up the gemstone that had been set aside, tapped it lightly with her finger, and a projection appeared before them.
The sight left Loki completely dumbfounded.
"Holy crap, you still keep something like this in the house?"
Hestia's gaze shifted aside.
This wasn't something Bell had set up. The safety of this home was already beyond question, so installing such things inside was unnecessary.
But Hestia simply couldn't bring herself to fully trust whoever might come in.
To put it bluntly, the device was there to guard against Loki.
What she hadn't expected was that this anti-Loki safeguard would actually trigger in a situation like this.
"...Come take a look at yourself."
Hestia dropped the previous topic entirely and froze the screen on the moment Loki had her face covered.
Though she had plenty more she wanted to say, Loki was struck dumb the instant she saw the image of herself hiding her face.
"That's me???"
Even as the person in question, Loki could barely recognize the figure as herself.
She was supposed to be more shameless than anyone—so why did just a few words make her hide her face?
Of course she knew she'd been trying to hide her smile, but even she found such behavior disturbingly strange.
Normally, she never hid her laughter, not even in situations like this.
In fact, when she teased her own children, she'd laugh in an outright lecherous way. At least, that's what Lefiya claimed—though Loki herself would never admit to being lecherous.
But honestly, even lecherous was better than this deliberate attempt to cover things up.
'Is it because I tease Lefiya so often that her shyness somehow rubbed off on me?'
Even she had to admit the thought was absurd.
Watching Loki staring at the screen in disbelief, Hestia and Hephaestus relaxed slightly. From her reaction, it looked like the early signs of something.
"So, what do you have to say now?"
"...."
Even when faced with the shorty's rare confrontation, Loki couldn't find words.
After all, even she couldn't believe the sight of herself on the screen. No wonder Hestia and Hephaestus had gone pale.
Now she understood the reason—but it was one she could hardly accept.
"I have no interest in that boy."
"Your words don't mean anything."
"Yeah, I'd say the same." Loki's lips twitched, realizing she'd probably been caught.
"But I like cute girls!"
This was the one thing she absolutely refused to budge on—she would never admit to having any feelings for the shorty's child.
"But your reaction doesn't look like that. With how careless you usually are and how little you care about appearances, it's hard to imagine you acting this way."
Hestia knew Loki all too well.
And precisely because she knew her so well, she understood that Loki would never unconsciously change her behavior for just anyone.
The thought that Loki might also be eyeing Bell made resentment rise sharply in Hestia's chest.
"Damn it, why is everyone targeting my Bell-kun?"
"First Freya, then Hephaestus, and now even Loki..."
"Hey, hey, hey! Don't lump me in with them!"
Listening to the shorty's grumbling, Loki could practically feel the sourness oozing from her words. But when it came to herself, she knew she had to explain properly—otherwise, she'd never dig herself out of this hole.
"I'm not like Freya."
"Aren't you both just thieves?"
Hestia's bitter jab left Loki speechless, while Hephaestus deliberately looked away. She hadn't forgotten that she too had once been that kind of "thief."
After venting her frustration, Hestia gave Loki's figure a closer look and suddenly felt a bit of relief.
"But with that scrawny body of yours, you're definitely not Bell-kun's type."
The words landed like a heavy blow.