My Daddy Hides His Power - Chapter 168

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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 hiding his strength
Episode 168
You’re the reason I’m alive.
“…….”
At his sudden confession, Lilis regarded Oscar with an odd expression.
“Ah, wait.”
Oscar laughed, pressing his forehead with one hand.
This is going to sound strange.
“Why are you so kind to me?”
“Because I love you?”
He’d given the same answer when they’d met again.
He’d only spoken the truth, yet somehow it always seemed to come out muddled.
“That’s not quite what I meant….”
“It’s the same for me.”
“What?”
“You’re the reason I’m alive too, Master.”
Lilis spoke slowly.
“I want to spend my whole life happily with the people I love. You’re someone I love as much as Father, so I’ll stay happy with you until the very end, no matter what.”
“…….”
“But if you ever died. If you suddenly disappeared from this world one day.”
Lilis met his eyes directly as she continued.
“Then I’d follow you.”
“What?”
Oscar flinched at her words.
“Don’t talk nonsense….”
“I’m not speaking carelessly. I mean it with all my heart.”
Without needing to emphasize it again, Oscar felt himself wavering at her sincerity.
The girl had already once, without hesitation, chosen death for her father’s sake.
‘But that was for her father….’
Why me?
What am I to you?
I raised you, spending my own life to keep you happy and safe….
Surely that’s not reason enough?
But what if….
What if she really meant it?
“You—you… have you lost your mind? What would your father do if you died?”
“He’d be sad, wouldn’t he? But I don’t care. I’d already be dead, so I wouldn’t know—and I wouldn’t want to know—about the grief left behind.”
“You….”
Oscar’s eyes widened.
Did she really mean that?
Why would she say such a thing….
“Don’t talk like that.”
Oscar’s voice trembled with sudden fury, sharp and cutting.
But Lilis showed no fear as she spoke.
“If you don’t want to hear such words….”
Tears were gathering in her eyes.
“Then just live a long life, Master. Let your reason for living be yourself, not me. Don’t die—find the will to survive no matter what.”
“…….”
Oscar stood stunned.
The girl spoke as if she knew everything.
“If you’re afraid of what I might choose in a world without you, then never die. Never think that death is the easy way out.”
Lilis grasped Oscar’s neck and pulled him close.
“I’m doing this all for you. But if you still try to stop me… I’m a good girl who listens well to what you say, so I’ll go home.”
Yet even as her embrace was warm, something terrible whispered against his ear.
“If I can’t help you and something goes wrong with you….”
“…….”
“…it’s still fine. I’ll just meet you again in hell.”
“You’re insane….”
“Sleep well.”
The girl left Oscar reeling in shock as she exited the room.
* * *
“…Your teacher needed shock therapy.”
“Still, wasn’t that a bit much?”
Cheshire reproached me in a quiet voice.
I’d just been confessing how I’d said something terrifying to Oscar—telling him to put himself in my shoes—and come back.
“But what else could I do? The man trembles at the thought of losing even a single second of his lifespan, yet he doesn’t care at all about his own death. How else was I supposed to shake him awake?”
“Still, you did threaten the Magic Tower’s master with your own life.”
……
I’d felt it before, but this one really….
Doesn’t say much, yet somehow always finds something worth saying.
So I felt a little stung. Because I knew, in my heart, that part had been cowardly.
“But I couldn’t think of another way. Now your teacher will feel something, won’t he? That his death won’t be the end—that it matters. Maybe that’ll make him cling to life with all he’s got.”
“…Yes. I hope so.”
“Anyway, why did you bring my things here? My father and I aren’t on good terms. I’m not speaking to him for three days.”
“Ah, the Duke will feel reassured if you’re nearby.”
“……?”
So it wasn’t for my sake—it was for Father’s?
“Wow, Cheshire.”
……
“This might be a childish question, but… is it me, or is it my father?”
Cheshire hesitated, then laughed.
“You.”
“But why? Don’t tell me you think Father did the right thing this time?”
“No, but I understand the Duke’s heart.”
“Huh? You understand it? Really? A man with so much work to do, and he even put on an old man’s disguise to follow me?”
“Yes. I haven’t raised a child yet, so I can’t understand it all, but… thinking about what I would do in his position, I think I understand the Duke’s feelings a little.”
……
“She’s your daughter. The apple of your eye. And she’s still so young, on top of it.”
Cheshire gazed at my face and smiled softly, then continued slowly.
“You’re too beautiful and too small.”
……
“He’d want to protect you. He couldn’t trust anyone else with that burden. Even if you grew older, even if you became stronger… the Duke’s heart would always be the same.”
Then Cheshire, looking embarrassed, fumbled with his hands as he asked.
“If I had a daughter like you someday… wouldn’t I do the same as the Duke?”
Cheshire as a father?
And he’d act like James, being all doting?
I couldn’t picture it, so I hesitated with my answer, but Cheshire spoke.
“Actually, I think I’d do even more. That’s why I understood the Duke’s heart right away.”
“I doubt it….”
“So stop being angry with him. Honestly, I’d be happy if the Duke came with us all the way to the end of the pilgrimage. You’re struggling, and I can’t even look after you properly.”
Faced with Cheshire’s words trying to reconcile me with Father, I hesitated for a moment.
Then I shook my head.
“But I can’t let it go this easily. What if Father follows me on my honeymoon later?”
……
“I understand. Three days still feels too short. But I’ll bear it because I’ve seen your face. Today, though—today really won’t work. I need to show him I’m angry, at least for today.”
* * *
“I’d like to follow along too.”
“If you’re worried about what choices I’d make in a world without my teacher, then absolutely don’t die.”
Oscar was still reeling from Lilis’s words, turning them over in his mind.
It was a threat.
‘Cunning little wretch….’
A threat held together by her own life.
A threat made by someone who knew all too well how much her existence meant to him.
Even as Oscar thought it surely wasn’t genuine, he found himself unable to dismiss her words.
If I truly have become that important to her….
“…ja?”
“Good grief!”
As I lay in bed, Enoch poked his wet head through the door and slipped in.
“What is it?”
“There’s nowhere else to go….”
“What?”
“The princess won’t talk to me until tomorrow evening. So she says she’s sleeping alone tonight.”
Enoch shuffled in with a pillow in hand and shoved Oscar, who was sprawled across the bed.
“Move over a bit.”
“Are you serious right now?”
Oscar bolted upright.
“If you don’t have a room, go find another one!”
“There are only two rooms on this floor.”
Cheshire had given them the top floor of the lodging house so they could rest comfortably with their Magic lowered.
“The lower levels are full, and the guards are staying there. I want to drop my Magic too and get some decent sleep tonight.”
“Then sleep on the floor! Or go outside! Sleep in the hallway!”
“That’s too much. I just bathed—I’m not sleeping on that filthy floor. The bed’s wide enough. Stop making a fuss about sharing with another man.”
Enoch ignored Oscar and lay down, closing his eyes completely.
God, this is infuriating. This madman.
In the end, Oscar ground his teeth and rolled over to face the wall.
…….
His eyes were closed, but sleep wouldn’t come.
And then that cunning woman’s terrifying words surfaced again.
“It’s all right, though. We’ll just meet again right away in hell.”
“Damn it.”
How could she say such a thing so easily?
Was dying so simple to her?
“Hey.”
“Yeah.”
Oscar thought he was asleep, but Enoch answered at once.
Oscar asked him a question he’d posed once before, long ago.
“Could you die in her place?”
“Yes.”
Of course—the answer came without a moment’s hesitation.
Oscar turned sharply to look at him.
“Can’t you at least think for one second before you answer?”
“That’s not a question that requires thought.”
Oscar felt he was going to lose his mind over this father and daughter who were so alike.
“If I told you to die in your father’s place, would you?”
“Yes, of course.”
What frightens him most is that this isn’t mere talk.
Enoch actually did die in his daughter’s place, and Lilis had been about to do the same for her father before Oscar barely stopped her.
“You need to get your head on straight. Would your daughter actually be happy if you died for her? I’m saying this because you don’t seem to know her very well, but that girl isn’t as mentally strong as you think.”
Oscar clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
“She’s not the type to pull herself together and think, ‘Father saved me, so I must live well.’ If she followed you to death, then so be it.”
“…I understand. That’s exactly why I have to make sure nothing like that ever happens. I’ll protect the princess and live as fiercely as I can. These days, I’m working carefully on the battlefield—not like before.”
Enoch smiled brightly.
He looks happy.
He must be thinking of his daughter.
A bond so precious and urgent to each other.
When Oscar felt the depth of their connection—a link no outsider could ever penetrate—he found it beautiful and yet felt himself grow smaller inside.
“But why suddenly ask that question? Is the princess going to die for you or something? Or follow you somewhere?”
…What’s going on here?
Oscar’s eyes widened.
“What? That’s nonsense. Why would she say something like that? It has nothing to do with me.”
…….
Oscar watched Enoch, whose eyes were fixed on empty space with a strange expression.
He’s going to be hurt.
Whether it was sincere or not, if he knew she’d said such a thing….
“No, what I mean is—”
Oscar quickly changed the subject.
“I don’t understand it. You have your own life too. But how can you be so willing to think you might die because of her?”
“That’s a strange question.”
Enoch let out a quiet laugh.
Not understand? The person who understood it best would be the one asking.
“It’s possible. Because the child is my world—my everything.”
He found himself remembering the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
“I remember. When Lilis was first born, it was so incredible, you know? This tiny baby, looking exactly like me, breathing, blinking her eyes, smiling….”
“…….”
“So small. So fragile. And I—I brought her into this world. When you think about it like that, at first all you feel is this sense of responsibility. Oh, I have to protect her.”
Enoch’s eyes deepened with the weight of memory.
“Lilis was late to speak, but once she started, she’d ask me dozens of questions a day. Papa, what’s this? What’s that?”
“…….”
“She didn’t know anything yet. The child’s world was blank. So I taught her. This is a flower. That’s the moon.”
At those words, Oscar remembered.
How he’d taught that child, lost and imprisoned in darkness, everything from the very beginning, one thing at a time.
“If I’d told her the moon was something else and the flower was something else, she would have believed it the opposite way. That feeling—how do I describe it? It was as if I was creating the child’s world itself.”
“…….”
“Right now, the child has no one but me. I am her everything. She knows only what I teach her.”
Enoch turned to look at Oscar as he continued.
“The moment I realized: this child’s world is me. That’s when she became so precious. So precious that she became my entire world.”
Everything….
Yes. That was it.
“From that point on, my world was filled with nothing but that child. Truly, you could say she was my everything. She is my greatest meaning.”
Oscar could understand every word Enoch spoke now.
Because he too had known that same experience—his world filled completely with that one child.
“And I think you are the same for her, too…. I have so many memories I don’t know about.”
Enoch smiled.
At those words, Oscar couldn’t bring himself to meet Enoch’s eyes and rolled over.
His mind was in turmoil.
“It’s all for you, Master.”
The child’s words—that she would do anything for him.
Oscar found it painful, worrying, anxious, and yet….
“Because you’re someone I love as much as Father. I’ll definitely be happy with you until the day I die.”
At the same time, the fact that he’d become so significant to her made his chest swell with emotion.
It was a contradiction almost laughable in its absurdity.
“I trust Lilis. Somehow, she’ll find a way. And so will I.”
A way….
If such a thing existed, I would have discovered it before anyone.
Having dared to use Magic that covets the Divine Authority itself, I cannot escape the price of that transgression.
Searching for a way felt as hopeless as wandering lost in thick fog.
So naturally, he’d never even dared to imagine a future where he would survive….
“So let’s live.”
Oscar’s lips pressed together at the force in Enoch’s voice.
“Let’s both live. Together.”

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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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