Chapter 6
<Chapter 7>
What is wrong with this man all of a sudden?
His loyalty is off the charts.
“…Ye-yes?”
I watched him warily, then clamped my mouth shut and chewed on my sandwich.
“I admit he’s a great man, but anyone can see his personality isn’t exactly likeable…”
“Give that here.”
It happened then. For some reason, the gardener’s lips twitched, and he snatched the orange juice right out of my hand.
“!”
Having my precious sustenance stolen in an instant, I let out a shriek.
“Why are you taking a little kid’s juice!”
“Didn’t you say you only need to hit your macros? Why bother with juice?”
“Even so, how can you give it and then take it back! They say you don’t even disturb a dog while it’s eating….”
“You should be grateful I gave you the sandwich in the first place. A child who doesn’t know gratitude isn’t allowed in the garden. Out with you.”
“A-Ah, mister!”
What the heck? Why is he suddenly flying off the handle?
“Out.”
“No way! Mmph.”
He moved to grab me.
Not wanting to lose, I gripped the bench until my knuckles turned white, but his massive hands easily caught me under the arms and lifted me as light as a feather.
“Mister!”
He carried me out by force, walking toward the garden entrance.
“Ah, ahhh, misteeeer. Why are you being like this all of a sudden?”
“There you go again. That mouth of yours.”
“Misteeeer.”
“Shut that pouting trap and head back to the annex. March.”
Without so much as a blink, the gardener set me down inside the mansion. Then, the door slammed shut.
“…Is this for real?”
He kicked me out of the garden just for saying one thing? Is that rational man really this petty?
It wasn’t even about him. It was about the Duke.
Don’t servants in noble castles usually badmouth their masters behind their backs?
I knew his loyalty ran deep, but I didn’t expect it to be this much.
My brain stalled for a moment as I stared blankly at the closed door.
Suddenly, I heard a heavy thud from the other side.
“?”
The door swung open, and the person standing there was none other than the gardener.
He looked down at me with those sharp eyes and spoke.
“I have no use for a little kid’s juice. You have it.”
He shoved the juice back into my hands and vanished again.
Standing there with a stunned face after everything happened so fast, I finally snapped out of it.
Naturally, a snort escaped me.
“…Even in the middle of all that.”
Unbelievable.
“He still made sure I got the juice…! This is flirting, mister! If you don’t plan on raising a kid, don’t give it to meee!”
I yelled at the now empty garden.
* * *
[Ariena]
The name of the garden, written with careful cursive, was taken from his wife’s name.
This place, which only direct descendants of the Crost family could enter, was perfectly maintained without a single leaf out of place, yet it felt as desolate as a desert.
This was because, while Calips was away at war, all the direct heirs of the Crost Duchy had gone missing.
‘I am left alone.’
After ending the war, Calips gazed at the garden, which was as silent as a tomb.
And he reached one conclusion.
‘It was a pointless war.’
A long shadow stretched behind him as he stared at the garden.
The people who cheered for him. The Emperor who praised his military feats. The nobles who looked at him with envy.
It was all a hollow shell.
‘What I was trying to protect was my wife, who was near her due date.’
His eldest, Cedric, who used to hold a wooden sword saying he would help him one day.
His second, Lucas, who knew nothing but books yet ran out to wave goodbye to his father.
…And his youngest daughter, Eve, who was soon to be born.
It was a war he joined to protect the people of the kingdom, but in truth, it had all been for them.
“Sigh—.”
His face contorted as if he were about to weep while looking at the empty garden, but a long sigh was all he could let out.
This was because the knights were waiting behind him, anticipating his orders.
“…Dismissed. Everyone, rest.”
“Yes, sir!”
The cheers for the war hero vanished after that day.
The Crost Duchy searched the entire Frozen Kingdom to find the wife and children, but the only thing that returned were the dark expressions of the knights.
“I am sorry, Your Grace.”
And so, on the 159th day of the search.
When the knight, who had been wary of his reaction even before opening the door, dropped his head, Calips realized something.
The expressions of the knights were slowly beginning to resemble his own.
‘I need to wear a mask.’
From that day on, Calips’s routine began with putting on a mask as soon as he woke up.
The grief of losing his family belonged to Calips, not to them.
Once Calips donned his mask, the knights, who were initially flustered, gradually began to view his mask as the virtue of a rational and cold-headed Duke.
He even stopped visiting the garden he used to go to every day.
“Who are you to enter the garden?”
If he happened to go in once in a while.
“I am a gardener employed by His Grace.”
He even began to tell absurd lies, hiding his face with a robe.
Even if his own sorrow was exposed, the sorrow of Duke Crost must not be.
In that way, the Crost Duchy regained its vitality.
As if nothing had happened.
As if only Calips knew the fact that his entire family had vanished.
Every time he fell asleep, he had to bolt upright because of the screams of his missing family.
From the shadows that followed him.
From the empty chair across the table.
In the dining room he entered alone.
In every moment he breathed, the guilt of failing to protect his family choked him.
Then one day, Calips no longer needed the mask.
It was because he decided he should go to his family’s side.
He had never thought about how he would end his life.
However, he was a man who accomplished whatever he set his mind to.
The only thing he had failed to achieve was protecting his family, so he felt he should go to them as soon as possible as an act of atonement.
[Potion of Death]
Standing in the garden for the last time, he pulled a potion from his pocket. It was right when he was about to pop the cork.
“He-hey, you there!”
Someone trespassed into his and his family’s domain.
“A scary person is chasing me. I’m going to hide inside your robe for a second.”
The culprit was a blonde brat no bigger than a chestnut.
Pigtails that shot up like arrows, rolled into little buns.
Large eyes that looked as if sapphire blues had been embedded in them.
“Whew, thank goodness.”
She even had the audacity to sneak into his robe without permission, settle herself comfortably, and let out a sigh of relief.
“……?”
Absurdity made him forget to even grasp the situation as he looked down.
Then, a small white hand popped out from the robe, followed by a face that glared somewhere.
It was a maid of the Crost household.
‘…What on earth is—’
But he didn’t even have time to wonder.
He could figure out without asking that she was the scary person the child mentioned, and that the maid was looking for the child.
“Have you seen a small child running this way? A girl about five years old.”
As the maid approached, he shoved the child’s head back inside the robe.
‘She must be the daughter of a maid who got caught playing pranks.’
If that was the case, it was fine. Before he died, he was willing to be a hiding place for the child.
But.
“That child said she knows where the Young Lady is.”
When he heard news of the daughter he had almost given up on, his senses, which had been as still as a grave, began to stir.
So he sent the maid away and tried to talk to the child alone.
The brat didn’t simply reveal the location of the Young Lady. Instead, she began to list her own conditions.
“Be my daddy. A daddy who protects me from bad people.”
She was a cheeky brat.
“What is the scope of my safety?”
That was the first time his face, hidden behind the mask, crumpled.
‘…Scope of safety?’
Her vocabulary was not that of a typical five-year-old, but that wasn’t why his expression soured.
The child radiated a will to live from her entire body.
“…Actually, my goal right now is to survive no matter what, eat delicious desserts, make friends, and even get a boyfriend. How about it? You want to help me, don’t you?”
To think she wanted to live for such a reason.
He couldn’t understand.
She wanted to live just to eat delicious things? To make friends and get a boyfriend?
When she had no one by her side right now?
When she was a street orphan with no family?
She found hope in such trivial things?
He was speechless. It was nonsense, but he couldn’t bring himself to trample on the child’s dream.
In the end, his resolve to return to his family’s side kept getting pushed back.
Partly to find his youngest daughter.
But also because the more they talked, the more curious he became about this child’s identity.
And.
When he happened to stop by the laundry room and saw that fist-sized blonde head, Calips let out a dry laugh internally.
It was because the laundry the child was fiddling with was glowing blue.
That was the reaction when the Poison Ability was used.
He was certain once he saw the writing appearing on the fabric. The child was a spy sent by the Pose Duchy.
‘To think I’m being swayed by a five-year-old now. I must have gone soft.’
He closed his eyes in hollow frustration.
He felt anger toward Duke Pose for trying to use a young child’s weakness, and a dry laugh escaped him at his own stupidity.
He felt a slight resentment toward the child who had tried to deceive him, and was about to call the knights.
However.
“Sigh—if I’ve done this much, I should be able to survive, right? I really want to get away from the Pose Duchy….”
A sigh that didn’t belong to a child caught his footsteps.
As if she were pleading for him to listen.
The child, who had let out a heavy sigh, neatly folded the fabric with the writing on it.
It was strange.
That should have been a set of instructions, and since she had checked it, she should have hidden it, but the child didn’t.
Instead, she laid out the fabric so the letters were clearly visible.
As if she wanted anyone to see and notice.
“Who told you to do the laundry?”
“…Yes?”
Calips realized immediately.
‘Mister, don’t you want to try your hand at fatherhood?’
The things she had said while following him around all day weren’t just jokes.
They were a desperate struggle.
“Your Grace! We—we seem to have found a spy from the Pose Duchy. This was written on a maid’s uniform…”
“I know.”
So now, it was the adult’s turn to help.
Calips didn’t even look at the fabric the knight brought.
However, his eyes, which had seemed dead, showed their true light for the first time in a long while, flickering with a vivid crimson.
“Bring the maid named Dorothy to my office immediately.”
