One Day, My Dad Disappeared - Chapter 4

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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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Chapter 4
“Hey, why are you crying?”
Aidan’s voice pulled me back to myself. Right—this wasn’t the time for tears.
I raised my arm and rubbed my eyes roughly, and Aidan, making no effort to hide his shock, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
“What is it with you girls? Haven’t you learned anything watching the other noble ladies at the Academy? I’ve told you time and again to maintain your dignity as a member of the aristocracy.”
Ordinarily, his lecture on “dignity befitting the nobility” would have annoyed me, but now it didn’t bother me at all. If anything, it was comforting.
“See? I told you I was right.”
I snapped open the diary I’d been holding and thrust it under his nose.
“My father definitely exists!”
At my eager tone, his green eyes narrowed. As if to say what nonsense is this, his gaze moved slowly from left to right across the pages.
“So you’re saying your father wrote this?”
“Yes!”
What clearer proof could there be? I clutched the diary tight as I spoke.
“He must have gotten caught up in something. Father has always been so tender-hearted—he was never good at showing it, but he was desperate to help others.”
Though I hadn’t said it aloud, that was who he was.
The kind of man who felt affection for a single flower blooming by the roadside. The kind who’d see a stray cat and make a point of going back to bring it something.
A man like that would save a nation and raise an abandoned child like me with love—a child left before a Gate that was bound to break open soon.
“You’ve finally lost it. You’ve definitely gone mad.”
Aidan shook his head and continued.
“How could a person’s very existence disappear just because he got caught up in some incident? If what you’re saying is true, the people in this village would remember your father. Your neighbors, the people from the Mercenary Company where your father worked—they should remember him.”
“That’s exactly why he must have been caught up in something! How else could a person’s existence be erased? I’m the only one in this entire world who remembers him. And this diary too……”
Why didn’t this diary disappear? When I went home, not a single thing of Father’s remained.
“This diary must contain something important.”
“I don’t understand this nonsense. For all we know, the baker here wrote it, or you did yourself.”
Aidan clearly remained unconvinced.
“A simple runaway might dispose of clothes and photographs, sure. But you can’t manipulate other people’s memories. No matter how advanced medicine becomes or how far science progresses, completely erasing someone’s memories from everyone’s mind is impossible—unless everyone happened to suffer amnesia at the same time, which is absurd.”
He was right. It really was absurd.
“Unless it were magic……”
The words spilled from my lips unbidden, and a smirk played across his handsome face.
“Ha—are you five years old? Do you actually believe in magic?”
“Ugh, I don’t believe in it! I’m just saying—theoretically!”
Wizards in fairy tales waving wands and casting spells—that sort of thing didn’t exist in this world.
But then again, Father’s disappearance wasn’t realistic either.
“That’s why I’m going to investigate. As you said, a person vanishing in an instant is nonsensical. My father must be somewhere.”
This diary is the only clue I have left.
“I need to go home and read through this diary carefully from the beginning.”
I’ve only read the last page of the diary. It’s quite thick, so if Father wrote in it consistently, there might be something I can piece together from it.
“Wait, come with me.”
“……What?”
“Come with me.”
A black umbrella that resembled him tilted toward me.
“You’re clearly not in your right mind, and I can’t very well let you go alone. That wouldn’t be proper conduct for a gentleman toward a lady.”
He genuinely seemed to think I’d lost my mind. At this point, I felt a spark of defiance. I wanted to see this arrogant young master apologize to me later.
“Fine, let’s go together.”
Was my answer to his satisfaction? The corners of his mouth, which rarely curved upward, twitched slightly.
“You could hold the umbrella properly, you know.”
I opened the umbrella the baker had found for me from the lost and found box.
“Of course I know that.”
With an expression that suggested he knew no such thing, Aidan stepped ahead of me.
“Wait, that’s not the right direction!”
“……Guide the way, then.”
The tips of his ears looked flushed, though Aidan concealed them under his large umbrella so I couldn’t quite tell for certain.

* * *

I drew the key from my pocket and opened the door.
Now that I thought about it, was the house clean? But if I asked him to wait outside, it would be as good as advertising how dirty it was.
Besides, there was no reason to try to impress Aidan, so it should be fine.
“Is this……your home?”
“Yes, this is our house.”
I never imagined that Aidan would be the first guest to visit the house my father and I had prepared to live in together.
“So this is… your house?”
“Yes, please come in.”
“This is really your house, isn’t it?”
Does it look like a stable to him? How many times was he going to ask?
“Yes, yes. It’s my house. I made up my mind and took out a loan to buy it, so it is.”
In Aidan’s eyes it was probably shabby, but realistically speaking, it was the best house I could afford.
At my sarcasm, he stopped looking around and shut the door behind him.
“Ahem, I didn’t mean it that way. It just seems a bit large for someone living alone.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a house for living alone.”
It was meant to be a house where my father and I could live together.
It was my chance to repay him for raising me all these years. That chance disappeared before it ever came.
I bit my lip quietly. I couldn’t let Aidan see my tears.
“Ah, I see.”
He answered flatly and sat down on the sofa in the living room without asking.
“And don’t bother with tea. I doubt this house has any high-grade tea I’d drink.”
I wanted to snap back, ‘Did I offer?’ but he was right—we didn’t have any fancy tea in the house. All we had was coffee to wake me up every morning.
‘Still, he’s a guest in my home. I should be polite.’
But since Father always used to say something about that, I poured him a glass of water and took out my Diary.
“Wait. Before you show me the Diary, let’s talk about your father first. I need to know what to look for if I’m going to find any clues.”
“Oh, that’s right. So my father, you see…….”
I explained about the person Ashford Violetta.
“Do you remember the Gate that shook the continent when we were very young?”
One day, a black fissure of unknown origin appeared in a peaceful Rural Village.
Investigators were dispatched immediately, but they could discover nothing except that enormous energy was being measured there.
The tragedy began exactly one week later.
Terrible Monsters poured out from the fissure, and the village was wiped from the map in two hours.
People began to call that sudden fissure a “Gate.”
There were no fixed rules for when or where one would appear, but it was certain that once one did, incomprehensible Monsters would pour forth one week later—something beyond human understanding.
Gates were humanity’s catastrophe.
“After many sacrifices, the Gate Research Institute was established, and we learned that each Gate has a one-week interval.”
“You know that the Gate disappeared exactly eighteen years ago, right?”
“Yes, because we discovered that we could prevent Gate formation using a Magnetic Field.”
Powerful magnets—Neodymium—were installed in each region to block Gate emergence. It was a kind of barrier.
The Empire proclaimed it as a triumph of great science.
Even if my memories of my father were erased, the work he did didn’t disappear.
“My father was the one who discovered that Gates could be closed by a Magnetic Field.”
Imperial Palace Records
Imperial Calendar 543, month XX.
Nearly half the villages of the Empire were wiped from the map by Gates.
Imperial Calendar 544, month X.
The Imperial Palace began development of a device to seal Gates. The Imperial Palace announced plans to install it starting in the Capital and throughout the entire Empire.

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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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