Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 282

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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 282

When I opened my eyes, my whole body felt weightless.
A sword hung in the air, shimmering with light different from before. The blade that had sliced through both Raymond’s chest and mine now gleamed brilliantly in ten thousand colors, as though not a drop of blood had ever touched it.
I opened my eyes and looked at the face of the figure before me, whose breath had caught in fear.
The eyes that had been swallowed by black—that had looked more like tarnished brass than gold—now held that clear brightness again. Like the moon hanging in the night sky.
“……Why.”
His trembling lips barely formed words as he looked at me.
“Why did you come back? You said you’d grant my wish…….”
His voice was stricken with fear, as if something was missing, as if something had gone wrong. I surveyed the scene around us.
“She’s alive!”
“We did it!”
“Damn, I knew it would work!”
“Raymond is fine too!”
“We’re not safe yet—keep watch around us!”
Well, this was quite the commotion.
I realized that both Raymond and I stood unblemished, not even a scratch on us, holding the sword floating in the air above our heads, our bodies pressed against each other.
Thump-thump, thump-thump—I heard the frantic beating of the man’s heart. It was a strange resonance.
Though it was his heartbeat, a similar sound echoed from mine as well. Ah, so this was what it meant to share a heart. The man looked utterly bewildered.
Ah, that’s right. This man had been certain.
That if he sent me back to my original world, I would live happily ever after with my beloved family.
That I would never return.
Our bodies, souls, and hearts melted together and then separated. An ambiguous state between death and life. Perhaps it was because we had bound our hearts together through the sword as a medium. What I knew, Raymond also knew. What Raymond knew, I also knew.
That is to say, I could now roughly guess what this man had been feeling all this time, why he had done what he did.
“Now this world will finally have peace.”
……
“I thought that you should return to the people who love you more than anyone else…….”
His expression held a question—why are you still here? I answered him lightly.
“And you were meant to spend the rest of your life alone, pining for me, growing old and dying?”
“……In any case, I know it was only a formality meant to save me. There’s no need to feel indebted. So…….”
“Both of us have come far too far, honestly.”
To begin with, even if this began as a god’s desperate thrashing to keep the world going somehow.
What we chose was our own.
Crossing over and across those cycles of regression and reincarnation, this tangled web of time and existence that cannot be explained away lightly—we had become hopelessly intertwined. To any observer, it was never a pretty or beautiful relationship.
If you asked whether something like this could truly be called love, I didn’t have an answer either.
Besides, he hadn’t even denied the idea of spending his whole life alone, missing me, growing old in solitude. I bit back the urge to click my tongue and spoke instead.
“Did I really seem like someone who could abandon a man willing to die for me, act as though I knew nothing, and live happily ever after?”
Raymond’s pupils trembled. His expression was one of disbelief—that I could have done such a thing for him.
If you’re willing to thrust a sword through your own chest and stamp a Marriage Registration Document, shouldn’t you at least believe it? Honestly, if it hadn’t been Raymond, if anyone was about to die because of me, I would do anything…….
……So that’s why he couldn’t believe it? As if reaching a conclusion similar to my reasoning, Raymond’s gaze darkened. His voice leaked out like it was creeping through the gap of his bowed head.
“……I’m a sinner.”
“A sinner? Both Raymond and I had pathetic beginnings. But we can’t just make all of this ‘not happen.'”
I remember a small child, trembling and crying, clinging to the edge of a high balcony, looking down below.
That child was also me.
I cannot forget all those memories and feelings from those days.
But Elaine, the Imperial Consort, the birth mother who craved love so desperately, was also a victim who had been abandoned by others.
Raymond carried the weight of responsibility on his shoulders from childhood, suppressing himself as he lived. If I collapsed, if I failed. Countless people would die. Unlike me, he was walking a precipice with no room for error.
The younger Titania who had only looked at his outward appearance and marveled at how wonderful he was had known nothing at all about him.
Even though now I know everything.
Even though now I can choose everything.
In the end, he and I stand here now. Because we couldn’t deny even the flawed and mistaken feelings of our past.
When I pretended to be dead and went off playing joyfully. I remember the lanterns floating above the sky and sea. Burying my face in my knees. Eventually, unable to endure it, I had cried.
‘……The truth is.’
‘I wished that someone, anyone, would not forget me.’
‘I was so lonely…….’
‘Mother, I’m suffering…….’
‘I don’t want to do this anymore…….’
That man came to get me.
Intending to end it all by dying himself.
To grant the foolish wish I had never asked of anyone.
Because if he explained it plainly, I wouldn’t listen. I would run away again. It was enough if only I sacrificed myself—why would I rage at him for doing the same thing, calling it senseless.
Unable to stop me, he acted first, and anyway, I didn’t love him so—he would have thought it didn’t matter if he died.
Such a selfishly executed salvation.
A sacrifice for self-satisfaction alone.
A fool who looked just like me, thinking it enough that only I sacrifice for everyone.
And then I understood.
Ah, I cannot abandon this man.
Cannot tear him out of my life, cannot pretend not to know him and walk my own path. Not at all.
For a while I thought I could, but no. It’s different.
“You’re truly hopeless and idiotic and a damned man who comes to his own conclusions alone and executes them.”
……
“……I seem a bit like that too, I suppose.”
……
“……Maybe we should settle this senseless relationship and try starting over. In any case, we’ve saved the world. Well, we have all the time in the world now.”
The man’s eyes widened.
I felt unaccountably shy, so I avoided his gaze and grasped the hilt of the sword floating in the air, drawing it closer. Then I gestured to Raymond. After a moment’s hesitation, Raymond placed his hand over mine on the sword hilt. His firm, calloused hand trembled at first, then in the next moment, as if he’d made a decision, strength filled it. As if he would never let go, no matter what came.
Now a bright, cheerful voice that no longer I alone could hear spread out.
-Yes, Contractors! What shall we do now? With this power, you can do anything at all.
I had a bit more Power of Light, and Raymond had a bit more Power of Darkness. It was perfectly balanced.
On top of that, counted only in the power that everyone had poured into us to reconstruct ourselves and expel Chernobog—well, what is there that we couldn’t do?
We had killed Chernobog. No more Magic Beasts would be born.
But remnants of Magic Beasts still lingered in places. There was much work to be done. People throughout the Empire were still fighting.
After thinking, I poured power into the sword, and its blade grew hot with red light. Without a word, Raymond followed my action and added his strength.
We infused power into the golden thread of light that had bound Raymond and me together.
Like weaving cloth from warp and weft. The broad, vast twilight light spread to cover the entire continent. Covering earth and sky, scattering hope.

“Let there be light.”

So that true tomorrow could finally come.

* * *

“Mother.”
Frederick blinked.
The Evacuation Shelter they had barely escaped to was packed with people. Frederick’s mother had cried ceaselessly until she finally found Frederick, then clung to him so tightly she hardly let go.
The temporary shelter had no windows. More precisely, where windows had once been, boards had been nailed down and cloth layered over them. The knights had said it would be dangerous if the Magic Beasts noticed any gaps.
They had set up special devices. Absolutely. No one was to go outside, they had warned repeatedly. In the first place, most of those gathered in this shelter were commoners.
People who had been out working when disaster struck and had barely managed to escape. The old, the women, the children. All huddled together, trembling.
Screams. The sound of people fighting. Magic Beasts making eerie sounds. Listening to all of it, they could only pray endlessly.
Let all of this pass.
Let everyone be safe.
But Frederick, nestled in his trembling mother’s arms, kept his eyes wide open.
When Adrian’s voice had echoed out earlier, everyone had felt somewhat reassured.
But someone had objected. Still, he’s the Exiled Prince that the Emperor drove away. How can we trust that?
Ugh, is there really time to trust or distrust anyone right now? Whoever saves us is the best.
Anyway, please. I just hope this chaos ends…….
Of course, Frederick murmured words under his breath. Prince Adrian had promised. He said he’d save Mother.
So right now. Even though Mother is very frightened and scared. I should tell her that it’s all going to be fine. That I at least believe in him. That I was given a promise.
At some point, the screams stopped. Yet everyone continued trembling, unwilling to look at the situation. Only Frederick, looking around fearlessly with wide eyes, noticed the change.
“Mother, look over there.”
“No, don’t touch the wall—they said we mustn’t.”
“It’s okay, Mother.”
Frederick slowly stood and parted the many layers of cloth. Through the tiny gaps between the wooden boards stacked upon one another, sunlight seeped in like grains of sand.
It was a warmth almost unbearably gentle.
Watching it, Frederick laughed softly.
“The sun came!”
The war was over.

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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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