Star Child's Parenting Diary - Chapter 15

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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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Episode 15
Chapter 5. Sprout, Seed, Flower (1)
“Wish! Wish! This!”
By now, hand gestures and footwork had entered the fray.
Bell squeezed both eyes shut and pressed her palms together in the semblance of prayer.
Then Aspe clapped her hands sharply and cried out the answer.
“Wish!”
“Yes!”
“Ha! I knew it—I’m a genius! Your Grace, what will you do if you can’t even understand your own child’s words?”
“Haven’t you bitten your tongue yet?”
“Fortunately, no.”
“Then shut it before you do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aspe pressed her lips together and stepped back, while Setia pieced together Bell’s explanation like a puzzle.
“So if you plant this seed on a night when the moon is bright and make a wish, flowers will bloom?”
“Yes!”
At Bell’s clear affirmation, Setia’s face lit up.
She seemed delighted that she had finally managed to understand the child.
Bell, in turn, was pleased that Setia had grasped her meaning so well, and broke into a radiant smile.
“Then shall we plant it tonight?”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Good!”
Bell nodded briskly and finished her meal.
Then, cradling her full belly, she drifted happily into sleep.
The moon had already risen high into the sky.
Exhausted from the day’s exertions, Bell slipped into deep slumber and showed no sign of waking.
“She sleeps well.”
One would think the child ate in her dreams too, judging by her softly working mouth.
Setia, who had been gazing at the girl with affection, gently smoothed out the disheveled blankets.
“Shall we not wake her? We can plant the seed tomorrow just as well.”
“……Yes. You should rest too.”
Ethan drew Setia close by the shoulder and pressed a brief kiss to her temple.
He escorted her to another bedroom and saw to it that she could rest comfortably.
When he returned to his own room, he found the small child sprawled across his bed as if she owned it.
It had been a precaution taken in case of any emergency, but seeing her so peacefully ensconced there struck him as somewhat absurd.
‘You never can tell what a person is thinking.’
He was growing anxious over what lay ahead, yet Bell—the very subject of his concern—slept without a care in the world.
As it should be.
Bell was still only a child; all that should be required of her was to play without worry, eat well, and sleep soundly.
Unlike him.
His gaze upon the sleeping child darkened.
Whenever dusk fell, memories he could never quite suppress came flooding back.
It was a habit born in the wake of the Previous Duke of House Ibaek’s death.
“The one who must bear the Empire cannot afford to be a coward. Reflect on that within yourself.”
Ethan knew far too well what it felt like to stare at a world consumed by shadow.
And he knew just as intimately the brilliance of the light that awaited when one finally escaped that darkness and faced the world anew.
‘The Calamity must be completely eradicated.’
Bell was barely two years old.
An infant who communicates with scarcely a handful of words seems too young to bear such a fate.
He understood all too keenly how crushing and terrible is the weight of destiny imposed too early.
Ethan had a sturdy bulwark to shoulder that burden, but Bell’s circumstances were different.
No matter how hard he fought, he could not fight in her stead.
All he could do was stand by her side to ensure she grew safely, fully able to wield her own power—and already, that seemed in jeopardy.
‘Helpless as ever.’
Then and now.
“Father…! Father!”
Ethan’s thoughts drew him back, as they always did, to the day he lost his father.
Soft flesh torn away by dragon’s claws.
What had once been his world.
His only salvation.
The end of the Previous Duke of House Ibaek, who had been his hero in every way, was pathetic and undignified.
Not a single bone, not a shred of flesh remained—he simply vanished.
My beloved father.
Ethan would spend the rest of his life cursing himself for failing to protect him.
His eyes, darkened by despair, slowly closed.
“Tsk. How can this possibly work? How does he intend to inherit this House at all?”
The House of Ibaek in those days was frighteningly rigid and austere.
Especially toward the heir, the discipline was all the more severe.
Yet Garren, Ethan’s father, had refused it.
He renounced his position as heir and became a wandering knight, drifting from place to place.
It was inevitable that he was treated as a heretic within the House.
Eventually, the succession passed to the next heir, but those educated in rigid orthodoxy fell easily into factional strife and died ignominiously.
The sole heir who survived.
The heretic of House Ibaek had no choice but to return.
For all its coldness, it was his family, his blood, his home.
And he needed what the House offered—status, wealth, and power.
The woman he loved had become pregnant.
And so Ethan was born.
“The great Duke of House Ibaek holding a child! You wretch!”
“It’s my son. I’ll hold my own child as I see fit. What’s the problem?”
The returned heir continued his reckless ways.
Having swept across continents, he was free-spirited, spoke with vulgar eloquence, and possessed not the faintest trace of refinement.
He maintained this consistent attitude even before the Emperor himself.
Of course, the Emperor actually favored his unadorned sincerity.
In any case.
The rigid elders of the House could not accept this reality and still regarded him as a failure.
For this reason, they could not bear to watch the House heretic educate the heir.
“This child will inherit House Ibaek. By tradition, he must be educated in the Territory!”
“Nonsense. My child is mine to raise. Don’t you dare push that damnable education on him!”
Garren drove them out in fury, but the obsession of those who loved the House fiercely would not subside.
They crossed a line they should never have crossed.
They took the young Ethan away, almost by abduction.
Ethan suffered abuse masquerading as education.
“Aaaugh!”
“Focus yourself, Ethan Ibaek! You are meant to be the master of the great House Ibaek!”
Three months.
In barely ninety days, they thoroughly broke him.
He lost his sight then.
It was an accident, a mistake, and an unthinkable misfortune.
“Ethan. Ethan, my son.”
He heard his father’s wail for the first time.
Though he could not see, he could imagine how utterly devastated his father looked.
Ethan loved his father’s freedom, his rough eloquence, his straightforward manner, his honest emotion.
He loved all of it.
His father was everything in the world, his ideal.
He wanted to be like him.
It was his father who made it possible for him to love House Ibaek, which he might have come to hate.
Ethan could recite his father’s teachings word for word without a single mistake.
And one of those teachings was this:
“A child grows within parental love. So if you ever become a parent, take responsibility and raise your child with abundant affection.”
Yes. Just as you did for me.
I wanted to inherit that love you gave me as well.
“Hngh…”
Just then, Aspe mumbled softly in her sleep.
Her tiny lips made soft smacking sounds as they moved.
Ethan poked Aspe’s cheek gently with his finger.
The soft, tender skin yielded to the pressure, then sprang back and released his fingertip.
The child’s warmth was vivid and clear.
“Mm.”
As if wronged by being poked on the cheek, Aspe frowned slightly and whimpered softly.
He hesitated, worried he might wake her, but Setia soon returned to breathing steadily through her nose.
“The first word you said wasn’t ‘mama’—it was ‘papa.’ Do you remember?”
“I couldn’t possibly.”
“Ha-ha! Well, that’s true enough. Anyway!”
It was a memory he’d heard so many times it had worn grooves in his ears—so worn that he could no longer tell where his own recollection ended and his father’s began.
Yet the image of that beloved face remained vivid.
Far younger than he appeared in their final parting.
“When you called me papa, I felt like I owned the world.”
His father had told him that one day he would know that feeling too.
And now he had a child.
‘If you called me papa.’
Would I truly come to accept you as my own?
It had been only two days since Ethan adopted Setia.
Scarcely enough time for affection to take root.
And yet, on paper, Ethan had become her father.
This was his choice alone, and so the responsibility fell to him.
Whatever consequences this decision brought, he was prepared to bear them.
But if somehow we came to truly know each other.
Then might I wrap you in love rather than mere obligation?
Squish. Ethan deliberately pinched Setia’s cheek with a bit of force, then slowly let his eyes fall closed.
‘I don’t know.’
Sleep would have to do.
Setia, tossing restlessly in her sleep, sought warmth and burrowed into Ethan’s arms.
Naturally, he cradled the child against his chest and patted her back gently.

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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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