Black Killer Whale Baby - Chapter 336

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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Side Story: Episode 61
Silence poured between the two of them. Sizer pressed her lips together for a moment.
She had wondered if such a moment would ever come—sitting across from each other, conversing calmly without raised voices.
Yet part of her had also believed it would never arrive.
‘Perhaps….’
Sizer recalled her daughter Calypso, who had been with her just moments before.
Had Calypso not spoken to her in that place, today would not have brought this confrontation either.
“I have no right.”
It was her answer to Pierre’s words—whether she had the right to call his true name.
‘Sizer’ was a name she had carefully chosen. It came from the protagonist in a book she had read, someone who lived the most freely.
She had resolved that once she stepped outside, she would live by this name alone.
“What angered me most was….”
Sizer spoke slowly.
“Not only that you broke your promise. But what came after. You had things you should have said to me, yet you never said them.”
She had been angry. She had despised him. She had resented and hated him. Those were times she could not have endured otherwise.
Above all, what had made her suffer most during their time as husband and wife was.
The fleeting moments of joy and peace that came to her occasionally.
The day the child babbled. The day he first called her ‘Mother’. Her laughter when sharing amusing stories with Rayla.
The Eldest Brother taking the Second Brother’s hand and smiling brightly as he took his first steps.
All of these things weakened her heart.
“Yet you showed no interest in our children. They were our children, mine and yours.”
“….”
Pierre said nothing. His silence was an affirmation. For at that time, he truly had been indifferent to his sons.
All his attention and focus had been directed solely toward his wife.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“No.”
Pierre admitted it plainly.
“It’s all true.”
Sizer’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. Her sharp gaze pierced through him.
“I also think there’s nothing you can do even if she resents and hates me for the rest of her life.”
“….”
This time, it was Sizer who fell silent.
Had she ever imagined a day when this man would acknowledge his own shortcomings?
‘Never.’
Even after becoming the leader of the Shark clan, he was a man who occasionally surfaced in her thoughts, occupying her mind.
It was unavoidable. The years they had lived with skin touching skin had been etched into her body and spirit, whether she liked it or not.
Her eyes, which had been filled with bitterness and rage, crumbled in an instant.
As if her calm pouring out of resentment had never happened, she stared ahead.
“Calypso said something.”
Sizer spoke slowly.
“Isn’t hovering right in front of me the same as showing interest?”
Like parent, like child. My daughter’s words were always direct.
“I thought what I felt all this time was anger. Resentment and hatred, and….”
I never dreamed of reuniting. I only thought we would live apart like that for the rest of our lives until we died.
When I saw my husband again, more mature than before, what did I think? In truth, I couldn’t hide the bewilderment that arose alongside my anger.
Pierre pursued me for all those long years. Even when he wasn’t pursuing, as long as we occupied the same space, his gaze clung persistently to me.
“It seems it wasn’t.”
I thought the anger and resentment I couldn’t let go of still remained, and I wanted to torment that man with it.
I refused to let him take my hand, thinking I needed to release this uncontained anger somehow.
But when he said his illness had completely healed….
I felt somewhat relieved. I hadn’t wished for him to die, after all.
Bewildered by my own inability to be that cold, I let out a hollow laugh.
“When you feigned death and left.”
“….”
“For just a moment, I had the thought that I didn’t want to leave.”
Sizer turned her gaze to look at her husband.
Pierre flinched at my words but ultimately refused to look at me. He was keeping to the instruction not to look.
He was unnecessarily stubborn and dull in the strangest places.
“…They call it love.”
“What?”
The day I first felt reluctant to leave.
“I was told that the way I see you is love.”
Sizer, who was quick to read situations without being taught, had sensed one step ahead what feelings Pierre held when looking at me.
So I recognized that these words were sincere. It was laughable. That man seemed not to even understand what I was saying.
Why did I come to understand this deep emotion first? How irritating.
The man was indifferent only to the child, but toward me, he did his utmost as if offering compensation.
Though he himself thought it was nothing, my room was filled with the finest things comparable to what the Matriarch used in the family, and he brought every delicacy imaginable.
Whenever I casually mentioned wanting something, it would be prepared through Rayla the next day.
Sometimes I laughed hollowly, wondering who would ever know such luxury was happening in this remote manor.
The most absurd part was watching that man agonize as if he had done nothing at all.
“You’re anxious.”
“…About what?”
“There was finer fabric, but it was lost at auction.”
“I don’t need it. Rayla, tell him that.”
“That’s what I mean. If he would listen to me, it would be wonderful. I’m quite proud of myself for stopping my master from going to beat up the auction winner.”
Rayla spoke.
“Though you are my master, thinking you haven’t done anything about all this is rather… foolish, isn’t it? Ah, please forget you heard that.”
Back then, I was younger and more naive, so I thought ‘what is she going on about?’
But I know there was a day I smiled upon seeing a clumsy bouquet placed on my desk.
“He didn’t know roses have thorns. Really, looking at this, who would think of him as an orca rivaling the strongest? There’s no orca as unbalanced as you, Master.”
“So that’s why the flowers were such a mess.”
Sizer lifted her head.
Her husband still wasn’t looking at her. He was a man who clung to his principles with almost stubborn devotion.
Sizer stared at his turned back for a long moment before speaking.
“You have something to say to me, don’t you?”
If there was one thing I’ve always wondered—on that day long ago when I thought you were dead, what expression did you wear?
It was a cruel question for Pierre, but she had always been curious about the answer to this selfish inquiry.
“You look exactly like Sizer. I was so shocked when I saw Calypso at the Elementary Institution.”
The day I returned here, I met Rayla after a long time as well.
Through Rayla, I learned how my daughter and husband, and my other children, had been living all this time.
I also heard that day about the brawl Calypso had caused when she attended the Elementary Institution.
“This is what I think. Pierre already loved long ago.”
“….”
“Meeting Calypso, he learned from her how to give and receive love.”
He was a late bloomer. That’s why he was also the man who had given me unforgettable wounds.
‘He learned love.’
Yes, it appeared that way.
The husband I reunited with was different from the past.
“You must have something you need to say to me.”
Until now, she hadn’t given him the chance. She had thought that if it wasn’t sincere, it wasn’t necessary.
And she had also judged that this man would never understand his own wrongs in his lifetime.
The man seemed to be gazing at something. He lowered his head for a moment, then lifted it again.
Sizer was curious what his expression looked like as he stared at that wall.
“…I’m sorry. I apologize sincerely.”
His voice trembled slightly. The man who had never feared even the Matriarch was most afraid of her.
Sizer let out a hollow laugh.
At the sound of her laughter, Pierre instinctively began to turn his head, then stopped himself and tensed again.
“…You can turn around if you’d like.”
As if he’d been waiting for permission, the man turned. The child sleeping in his arms flinched slightly, but only for a moment.
At his almost frantic movements, Sizer smiled faintly.
“I’ll accept that apology. But I won’t forgive you.”
Pierre couldn’t take his eyes off his smiling wife.
It was a smile he could only glimpse in fleeting moments, even when they lived together.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll spend my whole life apologizing.”
At words that sounded like a vow, Sizer blinked.
It was an apology she had longed to hear so desperately back then. She wished he had said it like this then.
But that was a time long past. No matter how quickly regret comes, it always arrives too late.
Sizer faced forward, confronting the reality before her eyes.
“I am the leader of the sharks. From now on, I may not be able to visit as often, or I might only come once every few years.”
It was a lie. Her city was peaceful, and her close associates were rather clamoring about what the leader could possibly be lacking, urging her to remarry.
I would often slip outside to avoid all that commotion.
“If you truly regret it, I’m curious how you plan to atone.”
“….”
Sizer extended her hand.
It was pale and scarred—the hand of a warrior.
“Will you come with me?”
Pierre gazed at her hand, which appeared white and beautiful to his eyes, then lowered his gaze to his own.
“…No.”
The answer came with great difficulty.
What next captured his gaze was the granddaughter cradled in his arms—a child sleeping peacefully.
She resembled Calypso in her childhood.
The man with a faint smile lifted his eyes.
“Not because I dislike you, nor because I don’t wish to go. Rather, I desperately want to go with you.”
Because his tone was so calm, his sincerity came through unfiltered. Sizer closed her mouth.
“But the children you left behind remain here—our children.”
A complex expression crossed Pierre’s face, both melancholic and joyful.
“To turn away from the children and leave would be to break the promise you left behind in the past.”
Now I understand. My sons, who had been distant for so long, subtly relied on me.
That proud Eldest Brother casually brought up matters of policy and sought my opinion—proof of this.
And what of my granddaughter? After her mother, Pierre was the person she loved most.
“Did you not ask me to look after your share as well?”
Those were words she had suddenly left with him days before she departed—before she died.
A promise he had failed to keep until the moment he met his daughter after believing she was dead.
“If I were to abandon all the children and leave now, you might be disappointed.”
“….”
“This is how my atonement to you must appear—not merely in words, but in deeds.”
Sizer could say nothing. It was a reason she had not anticipated.
…You still remember those words?
“So if you don’t mind….”
Pierre hesitated for quite some time, wondering if he truly had the right to say such words, yet he desperately wanted to speak them.
“May I come visit you?”
Sizer looked at him with startled eyes, then widened them.
“…Yes. Or rather, yes.”
The elegant yet playful tone at the end of her words was familiar to Pierre as well.
“Pierre.”
Sizer called him this way, then spoke again.
“Young Master.”
It was neither complete reconciliation nor forgiveness.
Yet Pierre heard the title he had longed to hear again for so long.
It was a moment of incomparable happiness.
Pierre lowered his head for a moment.
Even when he had received a terminal diagnosis, his eyes had remained steady, yet now they threatened to grow moist for no reason.
Becoming a decent father to the children had not erased his lofty pride. So this appearance…
Sizer, who had been watching, casually dropped a remark.
“For the record, I like men who cry too.”
“Then I should gouge out my eyes.”
At the sight of him actually raising his hand, Sizer blinked before laughing.
A clear, crystalline sound rang out.
Pierre, equally startled, soon smiled gently. Soon that smile became the laughter of the happiest man alive.
It was the day when a long-standing curse of bitter enmity finally broke.
It was also the day when new shoots sprouted in the broken place.
Those shoots had existed long before.
Under the name of love.
* * *

Calypso, who had been attending to duties in her Study, suddenly lifted her head.
“My, how clear it is.”
The day was remarkably bright.
Could something good be happening somewhere?
Yes, at Father’s Mansion, no doubt.
Calypso giggled softly, imagining the conversation between her parents that would be unfolding now.
Tomorrow and the day after will be clear too.
Our future always will be.
Calypso stretched languidly.
“Well then, shall we go apologize to our daughter?”
It was a peaceful day, no different from any other.
It was also a harbinger of the happiness that would continue to unfold.
【Side Story Complete】

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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