Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 105

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 105

We bought crushed fruit juice and sugar candy, along with decorative pieces made from flower petals set in resin.
After standing in the flower rain for some time, petals clung to strands of her long hair like she were a flower fairy herself. When Debbie asked if she should arrange her hair, Titania insisted on leaving it as a memento, and with each light step, several petals drifted away into the air with a soft flutter.
Humming cheerfully, she selected simple wooden keepsakes, one for each person, and pressed them into our hands while insisting we treasure them as today’s mementos. Even when the hour grew late and it was time to depart, she bid us all farewell with a radiant smile.
Back at the Castrain Family Summer Villa, climbing down from the carriage, she was unchanged—beaming and still flushed with excitement, she said brightly, “Thank you all so much for today. Sleep well!” and climbed the stairs to her room without a backward glance.
Raymond, after exchanging goodnights, stood for a long time gazing at the spot where Titania had vanished. Several flower petals lay scattered across the polished floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Raymond bent and gathered them in his own hands.
The paper-thin petals crumpled at the mere touch of picking them up. As Raymond stood staring at the small, bruised purple petals resting in his palm—unable to discard them, yet unable to close his fist—Lisianthus suddenly spoke.
“Brother.”
Lisianthus’s expression was no longer playful as it had been moments before.
Perhaps it was the darkness surrounding them, but his demeanor bore little resemblance to the moments just past, when he had laughed in a somewhat foolish way, adding quips to each of the things Titania had collected. It was quite distant from that.
Compared to Raymond, who continued following Titania’s trail with an expressionless face—Lisianthus’s bright red eyes, gleaming like embers in the darkness, fixed themselves upon gold.
“It was fun, wasn’t it? If I’m being honest, it wouldn’t have been wrong even if Bibi had come down. I agree it’s better she didn’t come to avoid getting caught up in anything serious.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” Raymond replied quietly.
“Her Highness really did smile beautifully today.”
It was a strangely abrupt thing to say, yet Raymond made no response. Lisianthus slowly moved to Raymond’s side and shrugged his shoulders.
“She’s smiled in front of me many times before, but today, seeing her like that—it suddenly hit me. All those smiles until now were lies. I couldn’t breathe.”
“…….”
“She seemed genuinely grateful. Buying things, laughing so well, even burdening us with trinkets. She always used to show signs of finding it all burdensome, you know? But today she was just…. laughing and playing freely, like girls her age do.”
Even as he spoke, Lisianthus felt the wrongness of it.
Yes. “Before,” he had never once seen her laugh and play freely like a girl her age.
How strange that was.
It was the vibrant, manic laughter—asking him to set fire to twigs, prancing about in exultation—that had kept him from realizing it.
Titania never forced anything.
Even when standing before Illian and crowds all day, waving and smiling, she had never complained. And given that she had nearly died more than once and remained unbroken in spirit, perhaps one should have expected as much. Yet in another sense, that silent endurance resembled Raymond’s own stoicism remarkably.
Lisianthus thought of how obsessively Raymond had conducted himself. After Titania nearly died that one time, Raymond had truly become frenzied. Of course, the attack by that pack of Magic Beasts itself was an emergency, and the Castrain main house had to respond decisively. On the day of the Dedication Ceremony too, he had been wound tight with tension. Though that day, Titania had been quite proactive, wielding her sword with the attitude of “I will save myself!”—and the matter had been resolved somehow.
“Are you all right, brother?”
Titania always erected an invisible, transparent wall around herself.
Today, it seemed that barrier had eased, just a little. For she had smiled even with a face that looked ready to crumble, ready to weep.
In that moment, Lisianthus saw Raymond freeze like he could not have caught an attack even if someone had struck.
He could not help but see it. He had sensed it since the moment Raymond began frantically searching the entire area for traces of Magic Beasts. No—if he were honest, he had noticed long before that.
“What if I’m not all right?”
That is why Lisianthus was startled by Raymond’s response. His voice came rough as rust, the words swallowed and reconsidered many times before being spoken aloud.
“If I’m not all right, what other answer is there?”
“…….”
Lisianthus remembered the Wooden Memento that Raymond had carefully placed against his chest. And, just the same, the one he himself carried as though it were a precious treasure.
It was nothing remarkable. Crude carvings of flowers, butterflies, animals—painted in simple colors. The size was barely two finger-widths across.
For a Princess raised in the Imperial Palace seeing only precious things to choose something this simple, it was almost suspicious in its plainness.
Yet none of us present could have refused those bright hands as they offered it to us. So Lisianthus could only give the answer he had no choice but to give.
“No.”
His voice was infinitely bitter and sharp.
“There’s nothing like that. Not right now.”

“Borrow people from me? I don’t have anything to lend,” Adrian said with a broad grin.
Adrian was second-born, set aside by imperial favor. He had decided to make full use of that fact.
Simply moving through social gatherings and conducting himself well in high society was insufficient to seize actual power.
Thanks to his mother being Empress, a few high-ranking nobles who valued legitimacy leaned slightly toward Adrian.
But the current Emperor’s obvious favoritism toward Brian and Cleo meant everyone was careful not to fall out of the Emperor’s sight as well.
In other words, Adrian figured he would never have proper opportunity, so why not try to recruit talented people from outside the palace through back channels? He had been making covert excursions beyond the Imperial Palace.
More specifically, he frequented taverns where mercenaries gathered, dressed in commoner’s clothes. His sword skill—something the Emperor himself had never discovered—had been honed through these covert expeditions outside the palace. If certain friends of his learned Adrian was a prince, they would clutch their chests and collapse.
Still, no matter how unskilled the Empress was, she could hardly conceal her own son’s outings beyond the palace.
If Cleo had caught wind of it, she would certainly have seized the opportunity to kill Adrian. That is why, while Adrian was away, a young attendant who bore his face would play his double, remaining at the Empress’s side. And since neither the Empress nor Adrian went out much from the Empress’s Palace on the surface, there was no one to suspect a thing.
So Adrian sat at his usual tavern today, merrily ordering beer.
If not for this girl who suddenly sat across from him out of nowhere, badgering him to “lend her people,” he would likely be draining his beer by now.
“Your alias has very poor effort put into it. ‘Lian’? Anyone would know that’s a nickname for Adrian.”
Adrian looked at the girl across from him with considerable surprise.
A half-sister with whom relations had recently improved. The youngest daughter of the Castrain Family, whom Titania had risked her life to save. By her young age, she was surprisingly capable, and the rumors said she had melted the hearts of all the members of that cold-blooded dukedom. He had seen her face while Titania was being treated at the Empress’s Palace, and had even spoken with her once.
But that was all. He had never imagined he would run into her like this, in a place like this.
“The name ‘Lian’ became quite famous, didn’t it? I didn’t know your sword skills were so excellent. I didn’t realize that being the second prince of the Imperial Family was something so manageable that it could be done in parallel with working as a top-tier mercenary?”
A face like a cute, grinning squirrel smiled at him. Adrian felt a headache coming on.
Now that he thought about it, not a single one of his regular patrons was visible today. The faces he saw scattered about were deliberately ordinary enough that Adrian wouldn’t suspect them—people who looked like they worked in this area—but they all had drinks and food positioned on their tables as cover.
‘It’s all a smokescreen.’
What kind of trick had she pulled? Setting up an entire tavern just to have a conversation….
“Well, Miss Bibi? I don’t mind that you’ve exposed the second identity I’ve kept hidden at risk to my life, and I don’t care if you mock my alias for being provincial. But what exactly do you mean by asking me to lend you people?”
Adrian decided to surrender with both hands raised. The shrewd capability of the girl sitting across from him, her blue eyes glinting cunningly, was more than he could handle.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————