Dad is Back From a Deserted Island - Chapter 6

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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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Father has returned from the Deserted Island
Chapter 6

Perhaps from striking my head so violently, I couldn’t even recall my own name.
For three years, I existed in a state where I couldn’t remember how I’d come to be stranded alone on this island.
After surviving three years on the Deserted Island, I was rescued by a passing ship.

‘Here! There’s someone here! Save me!’

It was fortunate that a ship passed through an island not included in any shipping route.
It was a terrible misfortune that the ship was a slave trader’s vessel.
My beauty caught the slavers’ eyes, and I was sold into slavery without hesitation.
I was sold for such an exorbitant price that the slavers couldn’t hide their laughter—but by sheer grace, I was rescued before being handed over to my new master.
The auction house was raided and destroyed.
Yet even freed from slavery, the fact remained that I, with no memories, had nowhere to go.
Wandering aimlessly, I was taken in by a kindhearted Merchant.
Moved by my tragic story—though my appearance certainly didn’t hurt—the Merchant took me under his wing and taught me various skills.
I followed him like a father and absorbed everything he taught me like a sponge.
Ten years passed in this way.
Then one day, as a splitting headache seized me, all my memories came flooding back.

The trembling love in my heart, the joy of cradling my child, the anguish of parting with my beloved, the weight of responsibility for a daughter growing up without knowing her mother’s face….

‘Vivian!’

My everything.
My entire world.
How could I have forgotten Vivian?
I could forget my own name, but never Vivian.
There was no time for regret.
I immediately sought out the Merchant, revealed that my memories had returned, and set out for my homeland to see Vivian.

‘My precious princess must have grown so much.’
‘I need to tell her I’m sorry for leaving, that I’ve missed her so much.’
‘How beautifully she must have grown.’

God was surely watching over him.
Ron genuinely believed this.
How else could he have survived alone in that savage sea? How could he have endured three years on the Deserted Island with no memory? How could he have been rescued from slavery and met such a kind Merchant?
But it was a delusion.
Every stroke of fortune God had granted Ron was merely the price for the misfortune that awaited him.
Ron never saw Vivian again.
What greeted him was a pitiful grave without even a headstone.
Left to decay so carelessly that one might pass it by without realizing it was a grave at all.
The truth was far more cruel.
After Ron’s disappearance, Vivian had been treated like a servant by Ron and Mary, and the moment she came of age, she was forced into marriage with Peter.
Unable to bear the thought of marrying the man who had tormented and abused her entire life, Vivian stabbed her husband with a candlestick before their wedding night could even begin.
She was beaten mercilessly by an enraged Ron and Mary, then left locked in a warehouse.
When Peter recovered from his wounds—and terribly, he still harbored obsessive, sinister feelings for Vivian—and attempted to free her from confinement to earn her gratitude.
She was already a cold corpse.
Whether she died from the injuries sustained, or from starvation after being denied even water, no one knew.
Ron and Mary had quietly buried Vivian by the roadside without even calling a priest, as if to bury the matter itself.
Had no one in the Village recognized Ron’s face, he would never have heard this story at all.
That person, shocked by Ron’s return whom they had surely thought dead, approached him with a guilt-stricken face, begging forgiveness for having been unable to do anything but witness it all.
Ron shed no tears over what his daughter had endured.
He simply rose quietly, bid the villager farewell, and departed.

‘A ghost has appeared!’

He set fire to House of Lamber.
He killed Ron, Mary, and Peter—all three still living in that house—without mercy.
His slaughter was so brutal that the incident grew and consumed the entire Empire’s attention.
This forced the trial of Ron, a provincial nobody and a nobleman without lands, to be held in the Capital, the very heart of the Empire.
The Merchant who had taken Ron in pleaded for leniency, explaining his circumstances, but the vast majority of people—nauseated by the descriptions in the newspapers alone—demanded his execution.
Ron’s situation was pitiable, but releasing him back into society was far too unsettling.
The Emperor, upon hearing all of this—yes, it was a trial with the Emperor himself rendering judgment—sentenced Ron to life imprisonment.
Ron lived like a corpse. No, he merely clung to life. Even if sentenced to death, he would have offered no defense.
This thread of life, which even the tempest could not sever, was so stubborn that it refused to let him die, even as he refused proper sustenance.
Perhaps keeping him alive through this hell was the punishment Heaven had imposed upon him.
Days, or perhaps weeks, months. Maybe even years passed.
Ron, who had closed his eyes in the Prison waiting only for death, opened them upon the Deserted Island.
And the moment he saw his reflection in the water, he understood. He had returned to the past.

* * *

This was the extent of the story that Vivian would never know, and never could know.
Ron carried the chocolate and warm milk into the Living Room with a smile. Such hardships would never befall her again.
“So sweet…”
Vivian savored a piece of chocolate and a sip of milk in her mouth for a long moment, then pressed her cheeks with both hands and shook her head in delight.
Watching her overflow with happiness, Ron’s face broke into a foolish grin.
Ron had been about to bring out every snack in the house when Vivian’s single word stopped him.
“I want to stop eating now.”
“Why, why? You don’t like it anymore? Wasn’t it delicious? Should Dad make you something else, my little Vivian?”
“No, it was. It was so delicious that I want to save it. Chocolate is expensive, after all.”
“…What?”
Vivian continued in a solemn voice. Though she had not yet learned to read, that was only because she had not been taught—Vivian was a perceptive child.
Everything that Ron and Mary had said until now had accumulated carefully in Vivian’s heart.
“You left to earn money because I like expensive things, right? I don’t need to eat expensive or delicious things anymore. No, I mean, I’m fine eating less of them.”
So please don’t go.
As her small hand gently pushed away the plate with the chocolate, Ron’s heart shattered once more.
“Who, who told you that?”
His voice trembled as he asked.
“Ron told me.”
Ron forced a smile and lifted Vivian into his arms.
“Ron was mistaken, Vivian. I left to keep a promise I made with your mother.”
“A promise? With Mom?”
“Yes. I promised to buy you a beautiful dress when you grew up and became an adult.”
“I don’t need a pretty dress! I don’t have to wear one.”
Vivian burrowed into Ron’s embrace as though starved for affection. Holding her high enough that she could cling to his neck, Ron rested his chin on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Vivian. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to leave you alone. I wasn’t trying to entrust you to such people. I just—”
Unable to finish his words, hot tears streamed from Ron’s eyes.
Though he gently pressed her head with his hand so she wouldn’t see, Vivian, pressed against him, could not possibly fail to notice that her father was crying.
“Dad’s crying? Why? Don’t cry, Dad.”
As Vivian’s voice too grew thick with tears, Ron suddenly regained his composure, unable to bear the surge of emotion any longer.
“You don’t need to worry about such things anymore, Vivian! We’re rich now!”
“Really?”
“Dad brought back a treasure chest!”
“A treasure chest?”
Holding Vivian, whose eyes had grown wide, Ron climbed the stairs to his room.
The chest, which he had camouflaged with straw and brought in the carriage for fear someone might steal it, was still wrapped in cloth.
“Just a moment, Vivian.”
As Ron carefully unwrapped the cloth, a chest emerged—bearing the patina of time yet emanating an antique elegance.
The box alone would fetch a considerable price if sold separately. To Vivian’s eyes, it was merely an old wooden chest.
But when the lid of that chest opened, a gasp of wonder escaped Vivian’s lips.

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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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