Chapter 7

Why is this mister acting like this all of a sudden?

Isn’t his loyalty incredible?

“...Y-yes?”

I watched his expression and chewed on the sandwich with a gulp.

“I admit he’s an impressive person, but his personality is obviously not exactly likable to any—”

“Hand it over.”

That was when it happened. For some reason, mister’s mouth twitched, and he snatched away the orange juice I had been holding.

“!”

Having my food snatched away in an instant, I let out a sharp yelp.

“Why are you taking juice away from a little kid with milk still on her lips?”

“You said all you needed was carbs, protein, and fat. So why are you drinking juice?”

“Even so, what kind of person gives something and then takes it back? They say you shouldn’t even bother a dog while it’s eating....”

“You should be grateful I gave you a sandwich in the first place. A child who doesn’t know gratitude can’t come into the garden. Get out.”

“M-mister!”

What the heck. Why was he suddenly flying off the handle?

“Get out.”

“Nooo. Ugh.”

Mister tried to grab me.

Not wanting to lose, I clung to the bench until my fists trembled, but the huge hand caught me under the arms with absurd ease and lifted me lightly.

“Mister!”

Still holding me by force, he started walking toward the entrance to the garden.

“Aah, misterrrr. Why is this mister acting like this all of a sudden?”

“There you go again. That mouth.”

“Misterrrr.”

“Shut that pouting mouth and go back to the separate wing. Move.”

Then the gardener, without batting an eye, set me down inside the mansion. The door shut just like that.

“...Is this for real?”

He kicked me out of the garden just because I said one thing. That rational man was this petty?

It wasn’t even about him. It was about the head of the house.

Usually the servants in noble estates talked behind their masters’ backs when the master wasn’t around, didn’t they?

I’d thought he was deeply loyal, but not to this extent.

For a moment my thoughts stopped, and I just stared blankly at the closed door.

Then, all at once, I heard thudding from the other side.

“?”

The door flew open, and the person standing there was none other than the gardener.

Still glaring down at me with sharp eyes, he said,

“I don’t need juice from a little kid with milk still on her lips either. You drink it.”

Then he shoved the juice into my hands and disappeared again.

I stood there with a stunned face at what had just happened, then suddenly came back to myself. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Naturally, a snort slipped out.

“...Even now.”

Seriously.

“He still made sure I had my juice...! That’s flirting, you old man! If you’re not planning to raise a child, then don’t give it to meee!”

I shouted at the now-empty garden.

***

[Ariana]

The name of the garden, carefully written in elegant script, had been taken from his wife’s name.

Only the direct descendants of the Kreutz family were permitted to enter this place, and though it was maintained in perfect order without the slightest disorder, somehow it felt as desolate as a desert.

Because while Calypse had been fighting the war, every direct descendant of the Kreutz family had vanished.

I was left alone.

After ending the war, Calypse stared at the garden as silent as a grave.

And the one conclusion he came to was this.

It was a pointless war.

A long shadow stretched behind him as he looked at the garden.

The people who had cheered for him. The emperor who had praised his achievements in war. The nobles who had looked at him with envious eyes.

All of it was nothing but a hollow shell.

What I had wanted to protect was my wife, heavy with child.

His eldest, Cedric, who had once picked up a wooden sword and said that one day he would help him.

His second son, Lucas, who cared for nothing but books, yet had run outside to wave goodbye to his father.

...His youngest daughter, Eve, who had been about to be born.

It had been a war he joined to protect the people of the kingdom, but in truth, all of it had been for you.

“Haa—.”

His face, fixed on the empty garden, twisted as if he might cry, but the only thing he could let out was a long sigh.

Because knights were waiting behind him for his orders.

“...Dismissed. Rest.”

“Yes, Your Grace!”

The cheers for the hero of the war disappeared after that day.

The Kreutz family searched across the entire Frozen Kingdom for his wife and direct descendants, but all that ever returned were the dark expressions of the knights.

“My apologies, Your Grace.”

And so, on the one hundred fifty-ninth day of the search.

Before the knight had even opened the door, when he lowered his head while watching Calypse’s expression, Calypse realized something.

The knights’ faces were gradually beginning to resemble his own.

I suppose I’ll need to wear a mask.

From that day on, Calypse’s daily routine began with putting on a mask the moment he woke.

The grief of losing his family belonged to Calypse, not to them.

Once Calypse put on the mask, the knights, who had been flustered at first, gradually began to regard his mask as the virtue of a rational and cold-headed head of the house.

He stopped visiting the garden he had once gone to every day.

“Who are you, entering the garden?”

And if he ever happened to go into the garden again,

“I’m the gardener employed by His Grace.”

he had begun telling absurd lies with his face hidden behind a robe.

Because even if his own grief could be exposed, Duke Calypse Kreutz’s grief could not.

And so the Kreutz family became lively again.

As if nothing had happened.

As if only Calypse knew that his entire family had vanished.

Every time he fell asleep, he had to jerk awake because of the screams of his missing family.

From the shadows that followed him.

From the empty chair across from him.

From the dining room he entered alone.

At every moment he breathed, the guilt of failing to protect his family tightened around his throat.

Then one day, after time had passed, Calypse no longer needed the mask.

Because he had decided he should go to his family’s side.

He had never thought about how he would end his life.

But he was the kind of man who, once he decided something had to be done, carried it through.

If there was one thing he had failed to do, it was protecting his family, so it seemed only right that he should go to their side as quickly as possible, as an act of apology.

[The vial of poison]

Standing in the garden one last time, he took a potion from his pocket. He was just about to pull out the cork.

Then—

“E-excuse me!”

Someone trespassed into the space that belonged to him and his family.

“A scary person is chasing me. I’m just going to hide inside your robe for a little bit.”

The culprit was a tiny blond brat no bigger than a chestnut burr.

Twin tails stuck up like arrows, twisted into tight little bundles.

Huge eyes like sapphires set into her face.

“Whew, thank goodness.”

She slipped inside his robe without permission, settled in comfortably, and even let out a relieved sigh with shameless ease.

“......?”

Too dumbfounded even to grasp the situation, he looked down.

Then a small white hand popped out from the robe, and the face that followed glared at somewhere ahead.

It was a maid of the Kreutz family.

...What in the world is this,

But he had no time to wonder.

It was obvious without asking anyone that the scary person the child had mentioned was her, and that the maid was looking for the child.

“Have you perhaps seen a child running this way? A girl around five years old.”

At the same time the maid approached, he shoved the child’s head back inside the robe.

Probably the daughter of some maid who got caught playing around.

If that was all it was, then it was fine. Before dying, he could willingly serve as a hiding place for a child.

But—

“That child said she knows where the young lady of the main line is.”

When he heard news of the daughter he had all but given up on, the senses that had been silent as a grave began to stir little by little.

So after sending the maid away, he had tried to speak with the child alone.

The little brat had not obediently revealed the place where the young lady was. Instead, she had smoothly begun rattling off the condition she wanted.

“Please become my father. A father who protects me from bad people.”

She had been an audacious little brat.

“And what exactly is the extent of your safety?”

It was from then on that the face hidden beneath the mask first twisted.

...The extent of my safety?

It was not the language ability of an ordinary five-year-old, but there was another reason his face had hardened.

The child’s will to live was bursting from her whole body.

“...Actually, right now my goal is somehow to survive, eat delicious desserts, make friends, and get a boyfriend, you know? What do you think? Makes you want to help me, right?”

And yet she wanted to live for reasons like that.

He could not understand it.

Just because she wanted to eat tasty things? Because she wanted to make friends, and get a boyfriend?

She wanted to live for that?

When there was no one by her side even now?

When she was a street orphan with no family?

She found hope in things like that?

He had no words. It was absurd, but that did not mean he could crush a child’s dream.

In the end, his resolve to return to his family’s side was delayed more and more.

Partly because he needed to find his youngest daughter first.

But also because, the more he spoke with this child, the more curious he became about her identity.

And then.

When he happened to stop by the laundry room and saw that fist-sized blond head, Calypse let out a hollow laugh inwardly.

Because the laundry the child was touching was glowing blue.

That was the reaction that appeared when the power of poison had been used.

Soon, when he saw the words rise onto the fabric, he was certain. The little brat was a spy sent by the Pose family.

To think I’m being swayed by a five-year-old brat now of all things. I really must have grown soft.

He closed his eyes in emptiness.

He was furious at Duke Pose for trying to exploit the weakness of a child, and a hollow laugh escaped him at his own stupidity.

He even felt a trace of resentment toward the child who had tried to deceive him, and he was just about to call for the knights.

But then—

“Haa... If I’ve done this much, I should be able to survive, right? I really want to get away from the Pose family....”

A sigh completely unlike a child’s caught at his ankles.

As if asking him to please listen.

Breathing out that strained sigh, the child neatly folded the fabric with the writing on it.

It was strange.

That should have been an order report, and now that she had confirmed it, she ought to have hidden it. But the child did not do that.

Instead, she deliberately laid out the fabric so the writing would be clearly visible.

As if she wanted anyone at all to see it and understand.

“Who told you to do the laundry?”

“...Pardon?”

Calypse understood at once.

“Mister, would you like to try growing a child?”

The things she had followed him around saying all day had not merely been jokes.

They had been desperate struggling.

“Your Grace! I-I think we may have found a spy from the Pose family. There’s writing on a maid’s clothing...”

“I know.”

So now it was an adult’s turn to help.

Calypse did not even look at the fabric the knight brought him.

But his eyes, which had seemed all but dead, were displaying their true light for the first time in a long while, wavering with a vivid blood-red glow.

“Bring the maid called Dorothy to the office at once.”