I’m The Male Lead’s Biological Daughter, But I Want To Live With The Second Male Lead! - Chapter 25

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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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Episode 25
Mabel, undeterred by the panicking maids, had smiled and spoken to them without a trace of fear.
“The beetle isn’t dangerous at all. Actually, if you look closely, it’s rather cute?”
At her audacious response, Kellik’s irritation flared hot.
“You told him, didn’t you? You warned him beforehand?!”
Kellik spluttered in protest, but Aseltt feigned ignorance.
“How could I know something you never told me?”
“Ugh…!”
And truthfully, he hadn’t known.
But Kellik couldn’t shake the sting of Aseltt taking Mabel’s side yet again.
“Just you wait!”
And so Kellik retrieved the Treasure Box—something he rarely brought out.
This box contained cicada molts, dried beetles, centipede antennae, and so much more.
A collection that even Aseltt found remarkable, meticulously curated by the fox-kin Kellik himself.
‘Hmph, no matter how strong she pretends to be, she won’t be able to stomach this.’
No one who’d ever glimpsed Kellik’s Treasure Box had failed to recoil in horror.
No one except Siegmund, his savior and mentor.
But Kellik’s expectations, as ever, shattered spectacularly.
“Wow, how fascinating. This beetle looks just like mother-of-pearl.”
It was unprecedented.
Someone who’d seen his collection and didn’t flee.
Someone who didn’t shriek and shove the box away.
Someone who truly understood the worth of these treasures.
Even Siegmund had lectured him about not spreading them across the dining table.
In that moment, Kellik felt the ground shift beneath him—a jolt that turned the world inside out.
‘She knows something!’
Flushed with excitement, Kellik thrust the Treasure Box before Mabel and spoke urgently.
“Right?! That’s why I call it the Opal Beetle! But do you know what opal is? I just learned about it recently, and you’re really smart!”
Once Kellik’s mouth opened, there was no stopping it.
“And look at this—it’s a snake’s molting skin. See, if you hold it up to the light like this…”
Kellik waved frantically for her to come closer, so Mabel rose and stepped to his side.
Then Kellik held his hand high, turning the snake’s skin this way and that.
“Look here! Doesn’t it look like a rainbow?”
“Wow, it really does!”
“That’s why I call it the Opal Snake! And opal is—”
Delighted by Mabel’s rapt attention, Kellik chattered on with redoubled fervor.
His excitement was so intense that his fluffy fox ears and tail—a russet hue—were on the verge of manifesting completely.
Aseltt, who’d been reading sprawled beside Mabel, caught sight of Kellik’s tail waving about and let out a quiet laugh.
‘Simple creature, as always.’
He’d been worried about how to make Kellik accept Mabel, so this was a relief.
‘I thought it might be better to let him experience things firsthand rather than force him to sit and listen to explanations.’
So even when Kellik had run off crying yesterday, Aseltt hadn’t gone after him.
He never imagined the boy would seek him out at breakfast this morning, despite everything that had happened.
“Wow, a tail! It looks so incredibly soft!”
“Right? It’s my pride. My tail is bigger than anyone else’s! Want to touch it?”
“Is it really okay?”
“Of course! You’re a special person—you appreciated my Treasure Box!”
Well, well.
He was even letting her touch his tail, something he rarely permitted anyone.
‘He’s completely won over.’
It had taken Aseltt a month to earn the right to touch that tail.
Though admittedly, their first meeting had been an unusual one—predator and prey.
Even now, Kellik wouldn’t entrust his tail-brushing to anyone but his dedicated maid.
But to grant her that privilege so immediately was highly irregular.
‘Still, that aside…’
Aseltt tapped the edge of his book against his lip, studying Mabel.
‘Why isn’t Mabel afraid of insects?’
After all, the Treasure Box didn’t contain merely beetle molts and snakeskins.
There were taxidermied bat specimens, severed lizard tails, dried centipedes, and more.
Even Aseltt sometimes felt a creeping sensation, as if insects were crawling across his skin.
Yet Mabel was gazing at the contents of Kellik’s Treasure Box as though she were looking at an actual treasure.
‘Ordinary children would have found it repulsive.’
Aseltt wasn’t the only one thinking this—Sheila called out to Mabel cautiously.
“Um, miss…?”
Sheila was a maid who had been promoted after servants were dismissed following the incident in the activity room.
This time, she had succeeded through fierce competition and now served Mabel alongside Ella.
That very Sheila was now on the verge of fainting.
The young lady she served—so small, so precious, so endearing, so soft, so warm, so clever, so kind—was holding up a withered raven’s skull.
“Ah… aren’t you frightened…?”
Sheila asked as delicately as she could manage.
Her instinct screamed to tell her young mistress to put that disgusting thing away, but she held her tongue because the box belonged to Kellik.
Yet Mabel only smiled, placing the raven’s skull in her pale palm—hands so delicate that even the finest treasures seemed unworthy of them.
“Yes! It’s so fascinating!”
And to prove she wasn’t joking, she held it up to her nose to examine it more closely.
“I used to see them all the time—starving to death or rotting away in corners.”
“…What?”
At Mabel’s words, Aseltt, who had been silent until now, rose from his seat, marking his place in his book with a finger.
Sheila and Ella, who had seemed to be smiling on the verge of collapse, suddenly snapped to attention and stared at Mabel.
“Really? Where did you see all that?”
Kellik asked eagerly, wanting to see for himself, and Mabel answered with a sheepish laugh.
“Where I used to live.”
“Where you used to live…? Wait.”
Only then did Kellik sense something was amiss.
Mabel was from Asilonia—and she was its only princess.
So why would such things have been in the chamber of a princess who ought to have been cherished?
Aseltt and Kellik knew only that Mabel was Sophia’s daughter; they had no idea what treatment she had received in Asilonia.
To these two, Mabel explained with the same casual expression she might use recounting this morning’s breakfast.
“No one looked after me. I was told I shouldn’t have been born. So I lived alone in a storeroom, or a back room, or an attic—somewhere like that.”
“Oh, miss…”
Ella hurried to cut Mabel off.
She didn’t want Mabel dwelling on that dreadful place again, nor did she wish to see her wounded anew.
But contrary to the adults’ concerns, Mabel seemed to be coping better than expected.
“There were so many insects there. Centipedes as long as my palm, and rats with eyes as red as mine.”
Before she understood that this was a story, Mabel had actually been more familiar with insects and rats than with people.
On silent nights when everyone slept, she would sift through garbage heaps without hesitation if insects came crawling out, eating whatever she could find.
“When I think about it now, I wonder how I could have borne it, but back then it was truly fine. I suppose because I didn’t know any better. So even now, it doesn’t really frighten me—”
“You fool!”
While the others sat speechless, it was Kellik whose voice shattered the silence, bursting out.
He immediately knocked the raven’s skull from Mabel’s palm.
“How can that be fine? That’s wrong, that’s all wrong!”
“Oh! Young master’s treasure!”
Mabel, startled, scrambled to pick up the raven’s skull that had fallen to the ground.
But again, Kellik got there first, kicking it away with his foot.
Then he grabbed Mabel’s hand, pulled her to the Fountain, and scrubbed her palm thoroughly clean.
“You listen to me—don’t ever touch something like that again. Understood?”
“Huh…?”
Mabel was bewildered, unable to understand why he was behaving this way.
Hadn’t he been showing it off so proudly just moments ago?
Aseltt stepped forward and offered a Handkerchief.
Kellik snatched it and dried the moisture from Mabel’s hands thoroughly, then let out an anguished cry.
“From now on, touch only good things! Beautiful things! Soft and lovely things! Nothing but things like you!”
As he cried out, the corners of Kellik’s eyes had turned bright red.
Aseltt, as if he’d expected this, handed him a fresh Handkerchief, and Kellik buried his face in it, his sobs turning to wailing.
“How could anyone say such a thing? That you shouldn’t have been born—you’re the one who’s foolish! Why did you just sit there and listen to such words!”
Kellik continued shrieking even as he cried.
His voice was loud enough to make her ears ring, but Mabel did not shrink back.
There was nothing but concern in Kellik’s voice.
“Young master…”
When Mabel moved to comfort him instead, Kellik grabbed her hand forcefully and shouted.
“There is no child who shouldn’t be born!”
At those words, Mabel’s eyes went wide.

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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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