Celebrity Lady - Chapter 125

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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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Celebrity Lady
Chapter 125
* * *
The path back to my room where Victor was waiting.
Father walked beside me.
He was dressed in pajamas and had even brought a pillow.
“Victor said he was disappointed. He came home and his family didn’t even come to greet him.”
“……? Since when did we welcome him so grandly every time he came home? He comes home, he comes home. What else?”
I asked Father, who spoke in such an indifferent tone.
“Wouldn’t you not even show your face once when I come home after being away from the house for so long?”
“You’re a daughter. A girl, and the youngest at that.”
Oh, such extraordinary favoritism compared to how my brothers are treated……!
For something so trivial, my heart lifted, and I covered my mouth, giggling quietly.
That was when it happened.
The corridor had drawn close enough that my room was visible just a few steps ahead.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
“Brother?”
For some reason, Victor’s eyes were rolled back. Almost instinctively, my heart began to pound.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
Thump, thump, thump.
Victor’s expression was fearsome as he approached with an angry gait.
“B-brother. What’s the matter?”
Victor stopped just before us, and then looked down at me with that furious expression barely contained.
“You…….”
Whatever he’d meant to say, he simply brushed past me instead.
The way he moved was unhesitating, as if he had somewhere urgent to go.
I tried to grab Victor in alarm, but Father was faster.
“Wait.”
Father lightly seized Victor’s arm and turned him around.
Smack—!
He struck Victor’s forehead cleanly with the flat of his hand.
At the same moment, Victor’s eyes went blank, and he collapsed onto the corridor floor with a loud thud.
“Good heavens!”
I flinched and stepped back.
“Gasp!”
Sprawled out and taking a sharp breath, Victor soon began to snore and talk in his sleep.
“Heh, heh, heh……. Your Highness, you can’t do this to me, can you? Aren’t you tired of it……?”
“Why, why is he like this?”
“Come at me, Crown Prince! There cannot be two suns beneath heaven!”
Victor thrashed about like a fish thrown from water.
He seemed to be under the delusion that he was swinging a sword…….
“Today I’ll show you who the true number one of the Knights Order is!”
Father swiftly scooped up the noisily sleep-talking Victor and hurried toward my room.
It seemed Father’s ability had knocked Victor soundly asleep before he could make a rash move.
“What’s wrong with this one? Why is he like this?”
Father, who had gently laid the still-thrashing Victor on the bed, asked me.
I had no idea, so I shook my head vigorously.
“We shouldn’t tell him. You know how he is.”
Father muttered under his breath.
I understood his meaning at once and shook my head again.
“No, I didn’t tell him. Victor still knows nothing. He was perfectly fine just moments ago. But suddenly, why…….”
“But why does the boy have his eyes rolled back? It looked like he was trying to go to Molga.”
Yes. I thought the same thing.
No matter how I thought about it, the place the excited Victor had been heading was toward Molga and the Twins’ bedroom.
But why suddenly……?
As I stood bewildered, unable to grasp the reason, I suddenly noticed the open drawer of the nightstand beside the bed.
An open drawer for some reason.
And scattered beneath it, my diary.
“Oh no.”
My head instantly spun, and I rushed over.
It was a diary I hadn’t deliberately opened to the beginning again, as it had been painful to reread.
What exactly had Victor seen?
With trembling hands, I flipped through the diary, and soon I despaired.
“Oh.”
This was bad.
* * *
The next day.
Victor opened his eyes as brilliant sunlight pierced through his eyelids.
He paused to recall the previous night, then bolted upright.
“Stop.”
His step toward the door froze.
Looking back, I sat there with my arms folded, my legs crossed.
“Brother, you read my diary, didn’t you?”
I pointed to the diary on the table with a jerk of my chin.
“Yes.”
“What kind of manners is that? Reading a lady’s diary without permission?”
“I’m sorry. But let’s talk after I get back.”
“Brother!!!”
Victor tried to leave the room, but my cry—almost a shriek—made him stop again.
“If you leave now like this, know that you won’t see my face twice again. I mean it.”
“…….”
“Come sit. Let’s talk.”
Victor trembled with his back turned to me.
“Brother, please.”
“Huh.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, tilted his head back, and took a long breath. Even so, calming his anger was difficult.
‘All right. Let me ask Ruby first. I might be misunderstanding.’
Victor barely restrained himself and turned to sit in front of me.
“Is there something you want to ask me?”
“Yes. About Grandmother and the Twins—”
“It’s true that the Twins bullied me as you saw in the diary. Molga knew all about it but pretended not to. No.”
I added matter-of-factly.
“She hated me more than the Twins did. She said terrible things.”
“Is that so? Then what reason do I have for not tearing this place apart right now?”
Victor started to rise, ready to dash out at any moment. I, eyes narrowed, grabbed his arm.
“I haven’t finished talking yet.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“…….”
When Victor asked sharply, I fell silent for a moment.
“If you’ve read my diary, you’d understand—it wasn’t that I didn’t tell you—”
“Are you talking about that idiot of an older brother right now? I’m talking about me. About me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Biego didn’t believe me either, so I wondered if you would. Also—”
“Is that what you call talking?”
Victor held his head and looked baffled.
His eyes were wide open with bloodshot whites, and they were wet, which startled me.
“How could I not believe you? I would, I would—”
“I saw you crying!”
“……?”
For a moment, Victor was shocked. Tears welled up in my eyes as I cried out sharply.
“I saw you crying alone in your room, missing Mom. From that moment on, I decided I couldn’t throw tantrums at my brothers. I don’t actually remember Mom very well…….”
I closed my eyes. The tears that had gathered spilled down my cheeks.
That’s right.
Victor at six years old. An age when Mother was his entire world.
Unlike me, Victor still remembered his mother’s face, her voice, her scent.
“Molga comforted you when you cried. She held you and told you she loved you. That’s why you came to think of her as your mother. She was exactly who you needed, someone whose presence eased your longing for Mom…….”
“…….”
“But how could I tell you? How could I…….”
I wept like a child.
Watching my younger self roughly wipe away the endless torrent of tears, Victor found himself speechless.
“You needed Mom, you needed her……. How could I tell you…….”
“Ha.”
Victor clutched his chest as his breath caught. His little sister’s silence had been for his sake.
“I…….”
Ruby’s concerns were, in fact…… not unfounded.
When their mother passed when he was young, Victor had felt abandoned in the world.
His father was alive, which was something to be grateful for—he was merely enduring. His siblings were all young.
For the boy Victor, who had nothing to lean on, it would have been unbearable without Molga’s care.
That’s right.
Victor, too, had come to think of Molga as his mother.
It was an undeniable truth.
“I’m sorry.”
Victor bitterly regretted the moments from just a few minutes ago when, in a rush of emotion, he had reproached his sister for not telling him sooner.
“Damn it…….”
Soon, he too began to cry like a child.
A father who was both hateful and pitiful.
An older brother who had to become cold to protect the family, who would not allow himself to think of Mother.
A younger sister who knew nothing.
Even as years passed, this great house remained full of Mother’s traces, and Victor had finally run away.
He was a coward.
He admitted it plainly and collapsed.
Holding his pitiful sister close, Victor wept for a long time until his tears ran dry.
Words of apology flowed out countless times mingled with his sobs.
For a very long time.
“Brother…….”
How many hours had they wept?
Nearly exhausted, the two siblings sat slumped beside each other, their eyes swollen.
As I wiped Victor’s eyes while he sat there dazed, I asked.
“But here’s the thing.”
“Yeah…….”
“Are you still curious? Don’t you have any other questions?”
Victor suddenly went rigid.
Looking closely, I was visibly on edge.
“I do.”
“Um, what is it?”
Victor swallowed hard and opened the diary that lay on the table.
The first page. The first entry.
[Imperial Calendar Year 1519, Month 1, Day 7.
I’ve come back.
Father is alive. Thank you, God.]
Victor pointed with his finger to the words “I’ve come back” and asked.
“What does this mean?”
* * *
Whoosh, whoosh—!
Each time the sharp-edged blade tore through the air, the knights trembled and flinched.
It was only in the afternoon that Vice-Commander Victor appeared at the Training Grounds.
He looked thoroughly angry.
For the past two hours, he had been dancing with his Real Sword fiercely, alone.
“Hey, I told you putting a poster on the wall was going too far, didn’t I?”
“We both liked it, so why are you making a fuss?”
The two knights, shrinking their necks like turtles, quarreled quietly.
“We got Vice-Commander confined to quarters because of us!”
The Crown Prince, who appeared unexpectedly, had banished Victor from the Barracks.
It was surely a punishment for thoughtlessly disturbing the order of the Barracks, imposed on his superior instead.
Victor’s obvious anger was likely for that reason…….
Yet contrary to their assumptions.
Victor was merely training to calm his turbulent mind.
“What does this mean?”
When Victor asked the meaning of “I’ve come back” written in the diary, I answered as if I had prepared my response beforehand.
“I don’t know if you’ll believe it, but brother. I had a dream.”
“What?”
“I saw my future in the dream. What I wrote as ‘I’ve come back’ doesn’t mean I literally came back from the future to the past.”
“…….”
“When I woke up, I was clearly forty-five in the dream, but I was fifteen years old, and so. ‘Come back’ is the wrong expression, but I just wrote it that way for convenience.”
“Is that so? How strange.”
“Right? I think God showed me my pitiful future beforehand. In the end, everything worked out fine. I’ve changed, and like this, long-standing misunderstandings with you have been cleared up.”
Victor asked Ruby nothing more after that.
Because.
He was certain her words were false.
If that were the case, asking further would only elicit the same rehearsed answers.
‘Ruby.’
Victor quietly turned the name of his kind younger sister over in his mind.
She couldn’t bear to see her brother pining for Mother, couldn’t cast aside Molga, who had become his support.
So even though it was hard, she had kept quiet and endured.
Such a Ruby would certainly lie.
She would never let anyone know that she had lived a terrible, lonely life alone before returning through Regression.
“Hyah!”
Then how could such a miraculous thing as ‘Regression’ have come to pass?
Imperial Calendar Year 1519, Month 1, Day 7.
I’ve come back.
It wasn’t hard to surmise.
January 7.
Ruby’s fifteenth birthday.
The day she made a contract with a Spirit. Though the contract had failed…….
“Ha!”
Crash—!
With a shout, Victor’s blade struck hard against the massive stone in the corner of the Training Grounds.
Or rather, what appeared to be a massive stone.
Looking closely, it had form. Like a human clad entirely in iron armor.
Boulder, the Spirit of Unbreakable Stone.
“Why do you summon me only to swing a sword for two hours?”
Boulder asked in a voice so deep it echoed as if from within a vast cavern.
“I want to ask you something.”
Boulder tensed.
Victor, a skilled fighter, could handle most situations without the Spirit’s strength, so Boulder was rarely summoned.
Yet suddenly he was called, and once here, it wasn’t even an urgent battle situation.
That meant he’d been summoned for another reason…….
“Ask only what I can answer.”
Boulder warned.
“You can answer this.”
“…….”
Victor stopped swinging his sword and stood before him, speaking.
“I don’t know, but you do.”
“…….”
“My sister’s secret.”
Boulder swallowed hard.
He had suspected as much.
Wasn’t this the biggest buzz at the Spirit Spring right now?
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t waste time.”
“Victor.”
“What.”
“You know as well as I do that Spirits can never reveal a fellow Spirit’s private matters to their own Contractor.”
“You won’t do it, but you can. That’s different.”
“Why would you seek to disturb the order?”
“Because my sister matters more to me than that realm’s order.”
“If you forcibly break the taboo, the connection between you and me will sever as well. Your sister’s secret is secret for a reason. There’s no need for you to risk danger just to find out what is, in the end, a secret.”
Crash—!
Victor brought his blade down once more against Boulder’s shoulder.
Of course, not even a scratch appeared. It was merely a threat.
“This is maddening.”
“Are you going to spend all day just running your mouth?”
Victor showed no sign of backing down.
Boulder knew well the nature of his Contractor—once he made up his mind, he never yielded.
Finally, with a long sigh, Boulder spoke first in a brief farewell.
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
“Probably as you suspect.”
Two eyes gleaming from a fissure in solid rock.
“Your sister is indeed a Spirit Summoner.”
Then, in an instant, Boulder’s form faded without shape.
Clink.
At the same moment, Victor’s sword slipped from his hand to the ground.
He slowly raised his head with a hollow expression.
The blue sky came into view.
“Sigh…….”
Contrary to the turmoil within, the sky remained cruelly clear and blue.

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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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