Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - 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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Chapter 25

“This is a difficult matter indeed. The moment you contract with me, your existence in ‘this world’ becomes fixed. I cannot touch any of the royal family except the contractor, so I cannot lay a hand on your parents here…. Let us do this instead.”
The White Entity spoke.
“I shall allow you to be born briefly in another world. You will be born to excellent parents, receive a fine education, and be loved abundantly. However, there will be slight differences, and when you reach your current age in that world, it will end. Your existence there will be erased as well. Ultimately, in order to properly fulfill the contract, you will awaken in your past body at some moment…. When that happens, you will no longer be ‘the current you.’ Are you still willing to accept this?”
“I, I, it doesn’t matter.”
“Your memories will not remain intact either. You need not remember that you are my contractor. There will be shocks as your soul passes between the worlds. The reality you remember may remain distorted.”
“It’s fine.”
“This much is what I can give you. From this moment on, we speak of what you must do after contracting with me.”
It was a long discourse.
The White Entity asked once more if she truly intended to contract, and Titania agreed without hesitation. No matter what price she paid, she would harbor no regrets.
Titania felt sorry toward Raymond. Shamefully so, and only now. The words Lisianthus spoke when he betrayed her would not fade from her mind.
Yet she could find no way out.
She had been told that a person of conscience, a person who knew shame, would not act thus toward Raymond.
She had heard countless times that it would be better if she did not exist at all.
Then what did it mean to be ‘normal’?
Looking at Bibi, whom she had truly envied and despised, Titania came to understand what that meant.
Yet whenever she saw Bibi, whom everyone loved, her own depravity would resurface, and she could not bear it.
So she had harbored wicked thoughts, and this was the result. It was reaping what she had sown.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
If death could serve as an apology, that would be fine, but I am told I cannot die.
There is no need to blame anything in this world.
What was wrong was Titania. The harm caused was hers alone.
So let me begin anew.
I need not be loved.
I will not shamefully seek love.
Then everyone will be better off than they are now.

* * *

When my eyes opened, the ceiling was unfamiliar.
“…….”
And gathered around me were people even more unfamiliar than the ceiling. What, what is this, what is this.
The moment she confirmed that my eyes had opened, a maid who had been standing guard at my bedside sprang up as if she had been frozen solid in life and cried out.
“The Imperial Princess is awake!”
“Y-Your, Your Imperial Highness!”
“Titania!”
Like believers witnessing the messiah descending upon this world, their fervent reaction left me frozen.
I could say with certainty that my birth itself had not warranted such a response.
Every one of them bore the haggard look of those who had not slept for days, and their eyes gleamed with something like madness.
I examined with a dubious expression the bed I had been lying on and the room around me.
It was a place I had never seen before.
It was enormous. The bed alone where I lay seemed large enough for five or six healthy people to sleep upon.
Towels, water bottles, medicine bottles, bandages, and a dizzying array of colorful Mana Stones, and a silver tray still steaming with fresh soup….
It rivaled the lavish private hospital rooms of real-world tycoons.
No matter how I looked at it, the design and furnishings were not from Rose Palace at all…?
The faces of these people either…?
And more than that—is that person lying on the floor in an utterly exhausted state, wearing clothes only a High Priest would wear, paying no mind to all this commotion…?
It was precisely when I sat bewildered, unable to grasp the situation, that the door opened.
“Sister!”
Bibi bounded in like a rabbit with quick, eager hops, about to throw herself into my arms, but hesitated—as if afraid I might shatter at her touch—and watched me with trembling hands.
The moment I saw those lovely, hesitant eyes watching for my reaction, I found myself nodding as though entranced.
Then Bibi broke into a bright smile and pulled my hand toward her, burying her cheek against it.
At the soft, warm sensation, I felt my heart melt like a snowman placed beside a hearth.
Is this—is this some sort of heroine power? Is that what this is? What, what is this. Bibi, what is this. Bibi! Why are you so adorable!
“…Thank goodness you woke up! If you hadn’t awakened, if you had remained asleep, then Bibi would, Bibi would….”
Her blue eyes brimmed with tears.
“…have been so heartbroken that I would have died!”
It was certainly an adorable and lovely thing to say, yet something about it felt strange. Was it because I knew she was a Returner…?
‘Listen, you all, be good to your sister.’ It felt like she was proclaiming it in a different way…?
From the moment Bibi’s eyes filled with tears and she began to sniffle, the people who had been barely holding themselves together near my bed openly panicked.
“No, young lady!”
“Please conserve your strength!”
“The Imperial Princess is unharmed!”
“Please, spare us such words!”
Ah, I see….
These people and the High Priest dozing away with his wits scattered and all this absurdly luxurious furnishing—it was all thanks to Bibi, after all….
Now I understood, and I nodded with humility. I was someone who had brushed with death not long ago.
The difference between then—when I had failed to finish my treatment on a sweltering summer day in Rose Palace and lay gasping—and now was, truly, heaven and earth.
My Bibi is like a magpie that repays kindness. How kind she is.
Looking at the array of instruments employing Mana Stones of every color, I was left speechless.
That one adjusts humidity, that one adjusts temperature, that one regulates body heat, that one repels insects…. And countless other purposes.
It was a luxury that none but the Castrain Ducal House, which had a monopoly on the distribution of Mana Stones, could even imagine.
I would wager that selling everything in this room alone would yield five years’ worth of Rose Palace’s budget.
Moreover, I tested it by putting strength into my back and sitting up, and my entire body felt light.
It seemed I had never felt this at ease while living in this body.
The High Priest sprawled on the floor, drained of all vitality, had likely played the greater role in this.
Just then, I heard hurried footsteps.
“You’re awake?!”
My eyes widened sharply as I confirmed who had arrived. Raymond, the Young Duke, who had always lived with knife-sharp, flawless composure, entered in a noticeably disheveled state.
From somewhere across the hall, I thought I heard a wild voice cry out, “Damn it, you coward! You’re gonna dump this on me and leave first?!” but it may have been a hallucination.
The man’s golden eyes took me in with surprise, then relief, then something shifted into a strange hue.
It resembled something like self-reproach, something like regret….
Barely seated upright, one hand extended toward Bibi, my eyes vacant and blinking dumbly, he approached without hesitation and stopped one step away.
And he knelt on one knee.
“……?!”
No, he, why would he do this here. Why?!
I was genuinely shocked.
The weight of Raymond’s knee was immense. To put it bluntly, he does not kneel even before the Emperor.
In the original work, there was even an episode where the Emperor desperately tried to receive a proper kneeling bow from Raymond at his formal inauguration, only to be humiliated.
The Castrain Ducal House’s authority was effectively equal to imperial power.
Given the empire’s reality, where the duchy already handled the security of more than half the realm’s territory, it was impossible to force the House to submit.
It would have been different if it were Lisianthus, the second son, or Rasper, the youngest, or the adopted Bibi.
If they chose to kneel individually to repay personal debts according to their own will, well…. That might be possible.
But Raymond’s knee—as the next head of the House—was not his personal property.
No matter that she was his betrothed, no matter that she was the life-saving benefactor who had saved his family’s lives.
It was not the sort of thing a lady could naively plead for a knight’s oath, seeking the honor of a knight’s vow to herself.
Upon that knee rested the blood price of the Castrain House’s loyal knights and soldiers who had died maintaining the northern front….
“Titania Sol Kite Hamastion, First Imperial Princess Your Highness.”
His profile, honed like tempered steel in deep water, opened his mouth as though to speak the words he must speak.
Eyes like sunset solidified in amber held me entirely and spoke.
“I have received from you a grace whose value cannot be measured.”
It was at that very moment.
I doubted my own eyes.
Everyone in the room slowly knelt following Raymond.
Even those who had been watching Bibi with pleading eyes, saying “Please, young lady, regain your spirits!”, knelt with solemn silence.
Their heads bowed, turning toward the direction where I sat.
Bibi was no different.
She grasped Raymond’s skirt and knelt beside him, bowing her head. The face that had borne an innocent, childlike smile moments before was now strikingly solemn. The sight of those knelt before me with their hair and garments spilling across the floor left me stunned. It did not feel real.
“Raymond of Castrain speaks for all in offering you our gratitude.”
“…….”
“Grace fills both hands, and retribution does not rest while the feet can still move. Yet the grace you have bestowed upon us is so profound that nothing can measure its depth.”
Grace is repaid tenfold and more through every method and means available to both hands.
Retribution does not cease until the victim reaches the end they desire. Toward those who have inflicted harm, no one is forgiven.
It was the unofficial Family Creed of House Castrain. And….
“Therefore, Castrain shall henceforth be your hands, your feet, and your sword.”
I lost myself for a moment at something I had never even imagined.
‘That’ Raymond of House Castrain slowly pressed his lips to the back of my hand and to the top of my foot.
With the utmost formality.
As though approaching something that might shatter at the slightest touch.
It was something I could not have imagined even in dreams.
“I shall ensure that no one, not death itself, can take your life from you.”
And if this happened, it would surely…. have been something that could not occur….
I could say nothing and had to suppress the violent pounding of my heart.
My face, staring blankly at Raymond with a vacant expression, must have been quite a sight.
For some strange reason, I felt as though I might weep.

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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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