Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 280

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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 280

Now, at last, he understood. How all of this would unfold.
A voice echoed from the Basement. Raymond descended on trembling legs. Even now, the girl—impossibly small—cradled someone smaller still, whispering desperately against the crushing weight of the moment.
-Bibi, it’s all right.
But it wasn’t. No child could be all right in such circumstances. Raymond remembered Titania laughing, saying she’d gotten lucky and it had all turned out fine. That was what she always said when crisis ended, when everything was over. But it was a lie.
It was always a lie.
There had never been a single moment when things were truly all right.
-I’m fine. And now the Young Duke will be fine too.
Before the trembling drained from that fragile frame, he would run faster than anyone, yet he could save no one.
As if this were fate itself—written from the beginning.
Again and again.
Over and over, Raymond watched Titania die. The emotion rising in his throat threatened to suffocate him.
In places he didn’t know. In places he did. Endless. Endless.
At some point, he wanted to scream. Stop. Please, stop. If watching this scene dozens of times, ten thousand times would erase her suffering—if it would undo the past—he would watch it as many times as needed. But don’t kill her meaninglessly. He prayed like a believer to a god.
He felt as though he were dying right then. He wanted to throw himself from the Cliff below without another breath. But Raymond endured.
After moments stretching toward eternity, when silence finally fell over the Small House, Raymond staggered out. He walked toward the Sandy Beach below the Cliff.
Beside the stunningly white sand lay a small grave. Pathetically small.
Waves crashed ceaselessly near the grave. Upon the small mound that somehow still held, a girl sat. Her eyes shone like stars. A beautiful child—so young she seemed barely more than an infant.
“……”
Raymond stopped breathing without meaning to.
He had regretted it so many times.
That face—her cheeks flushed red when she’d met her Betrothal for the first time, smiling.
That face. He wished he hadn’t given it up. He wished—as his father said, as everyone said—that he hadn’t mistaken accepting an Engagement Dissolution for something mature and prudent, even though the Betrothal was doomed anyway.
But he knew, instinctively.
This was not Titania.
-Shall I grant you a Wish?
The figure—neither god nor demon—smiled hazily.
“…Who are you, and where is this place?”
-You don’t know what’s happening ‘outside’, it seems. I was surprised myself. That you managed to create a state like this—half-melting Beloborg and Chernobog, then fusing them together. Well. Humans call me Chaos.
“What is Titania’s condition?”
-You and that child both stand on the Border between Death and Life. Had you lived, you wouldn’t see me. Had you died, you wouldn’t hear me.
Chaos spoke like a song.

I am the end of the living and the dying. Parent of the sprouted seed and the dormant. One who descends only in the hour between dog and wolf.

A Paper Flower danced through the void.
The scattered petals became ash, and from the ash bloomed dandelions that soon faded, their seeds dispersing like dust.
-Chernobog was too greedy. Beloborg was so fond of humans that he was reckless enough to risk his own dissolution, carrying powers that weren’t even fully his—but Chernobog’s greed knew no bounds. He would have tried to swallow even me if given the chance. So Beloborg wanted at least to prevent mankind’s annihilation. He asked me to keep that child alive until her Contractor brought everything to an end. I granted him that much, and what an interesting spectacle it turned out to be.
A small, slender finger pointed to one place.
-That is Chernobog.
Raymond looked down at the convulsing form trapped between white sand and blue water.
Nearly chimeric. Fingers and toes sprouted and withered. Its entire body swelled and contracted.
It was clearly shrinking, growing ever more pathetic.
Simply existing in this world was killing it.
In a sense, it resembled Kosheay. One who had regarded the death and ruin of others so carelessly, yet crumbled the moment it became his own affair.
The figure in young Titania’s form giggled and turned its gaze away from the creature.
-It will hold on for a while yet, but not for long. Yes, you succeeded. Your world is safe now.
“Is there something you desire from me?”
-Not particularly. It seems her death was far more terrible to you than your own. You’ve endured, kept your self intact even as you gazed directly at death, at darkness, as flesh dissolved and regenerated in agony—even as you pushed away a god’s very soul. Without someone like you, there will be no human who can summon me, no Contractor, for ages to come. So I thought I might grant you one Wish.
The god’s manner was light and intimate, as if addressing a distant descendant.
“…Rather, please grant Titania’s Wish.”
-That child already received my Divine Protection, so she has no right to wish of me. She has been as good as immortal all this time.
In the void, dandelion seeds danced and wrote words.
A noble soul.
A soul that sacrificed for the world.
One that endured unbearable pain.
One that achieved the impossible.
One that wagered everything for a hope without certainty.
I am very fond of such souls.
So, look. Child of humanity.
What is your Wish?
I can truly do anything.
Shall I turn back time? Make Titania love you completely? Remove the royal family as your obstacle? Resurrect your mother?
Yes.
Return to the very beginning.
Take the hand of innocent, ignorant Titania.
Give her perfect love as it should be?
Don’t you still regret not reaching out your hand to that child in her childhood?
Now, both light and darkness must truly withdraw from this continent.
This is the final blessing.
A miracle that shall never be granted again.
What do you wish for?
“……”
Raymond laughed bitterly. Was this what gods were? Entirely different from when he’d made his Contract with Chernobog. He felt it now—the other truly saw through everything within him.
It would not be a lie.
If he accepted that offer and opened his eyes, Chernobog would cease to exist. Titania would still be lonely, still the outcast to everyone else, and he would become her sole savior. The opportunity would be there.
How could he harbor such greed?
He had done all this so that, after he died and everything ended, Titania could live in peace.
……Yes, he had wanted her to remember him. If he was going to die anyway, he’d sometimes wished she would hate him instead.
Yet.
This world was reality and unreality. Dream and death. And perhaps—Titania’s interior. The accumulated core of her most intimate memories and records. Filled with her most vivid, most terrible recollections, it appeared at first glance to be a world overflowing with her deaths.
It was quiet.
A space where her will echoed like a testament—even as she died and died again, unaware, striving to fulfill her purpose.
Somewhere, he saw Titania in terrible condition, murmuring something.
Perhaps. Yes. Was this how she had looked when she made her Contract with Beloborg?

-I want to live again.
Even though my end will be so shameful.
Even though I’ll have to part so miserably from someone I loved and was loved by.
Because I’ve wronged Raymond.
Because I realized my love was poison.
I don’t know what ‘the right way’ means anymore.
So maybe, if I live properly, I’ll understand……
Her eyes had been so radiant as she made that resolve, as she chose to try again. And so Titania achieved her Wish.
She grew properly and resolved to save the world. She did everything she could.
She even attempted to sever that ill-fated Betrothal.
……Yet what the person herself had been struggling against was not the shackles of past feeling and circumstance—only her own imperfection.
“If I returned to the past and took the hand of the ignorant, foolish Titania and whispered of love… yes, that would be no lie. But.”
He simply wished Titania had not died.
That was why he had acted mad. Why he had become truly mad.
He had never imagined he would be granted such a chance.
All the cost should have fallen to Titania.
“……That would be a deception. Titania has already saved herself.”
-Is that so?
“If I loved her enough from that first meeting to give my life, it would be a lie. Only after everything became ruin did I realize—this feeling I couldn’t even call beautiful, not even as mere words…… it existed. And so I gave up. I thought she would be happy in a world without me.”
-So then?
“…Please restore what Titania has lost.”
-Do you even know what she lost?
“I don’t know what she lost. But that’s all I can think of. I need no Regression or anything else. I regret the past, but…… I cannot pretend it never was. That would betray Titania, who accepted her own past and chose to walk this path.”
So please, let us return.

The man who had chosen to bear his past sins and twisted feelings and walk toward the future—rather than undo it all from the beginning—spoke thus.

dawn finally came.

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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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