Star Child's Parenting Diary - Chapter 8

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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 8
Chapter 3. A World of Many Colors (2)
Bell pointed at Argares’s clear, luminous eyes and cried out.
“Blue!”
Then she gestured toward the transparent glass window beyond.
“Blue!”
The bright sky was blue. The warm sun was golden.
“White! White! White!”
“Yes, yes. The clouds are white.”
Bell bounced on her toes in mid-air.
Understanding the child’s intention, Argares descended and set her down, and she immediately scurried over to wrap her arms tightly around the Emperor’s leg.
“This! Red!”
Bell pointed at the red in the Emperor’s robes.
“Purple!”
Then at the cufflinks on Ethan’s shirt sleeve.
“Green!”
And then at the color of the carpet on the floor.
“Oh, pretty!”
She pointed at the Emperor’s smiling face and beamed with joy.
A world of many colors, glimpsed for the first time.
Faces of people she was meeting for the first time.
Slipping out through the crack in the open door, Bell wandered the corridor, stopping to look at each person she passed.
“Hi!”
When Bell pressed her palm against her cheek and greeted them, people nodded and smiled.
“Good day to you.”
Their smiles and greetings came right back to her.
She could see their expressions and emotions so clearly.
‘Beautiful.’
The world had transformed.
Once she’d driven away the black smoke, the colorless had bloomed into a riot of hues.
And it was all thanks to Bell’s power, they said.
‘I want to see more.’
Would the Headmaster and Lily have smiled at her so warmly?
What did the other people at the Orphanage look like?
Was the forest truly green?
How vivid were the flowers?
Curiosity bloomed wild and unbounded in the heart of a child who had truly seen the world for the first time.
It was the moment Bell formed her first dream.
To see a world clean and clear, unspoiled and pure.
She hoped that everything she would encounter would shine in its own true, complete colors.
‘I can see!’
And Bell had the power to make it happen.
“Look how your hair’s messed up.”
Bell pointed at Ethan’s necktie, which had somehow come to sit askew beside her.
“This! This! What color is this?”
Ethan lifted the excited child effortlessly into his arms and answered without expression.
“Purple.”
“Purple!”
“Pur-ple.”
“Pur-ple.”
Watching Bell repeat his words with a beaming smile, Ethan let a thin smile escape his lips.
“You like that much, do you.”
Meeting Ethan’s smile, Bell suddenly grabbed his face.
“This! Pretty face!”
She loved it.
She wanted to keep looking forever.
“Yes!”
Bell answered cheerfully, and her stomach rumbled loudly.
“Let’s go eat.”
Ethan whisked her up and tucked her against his side.
And then, a short while later.
“Buh-ko! Chu-oh!”
Bell’s color-matching game continued right through the meal.
“Broccoli. Green.”
“Ko! Moose color?”
“Sigh. Beans. Bean-colored.”
They’d been at it for two hours now.
Exhausted by the endless color game and the meal itself, Ethan answered with barely concealed indifference.
“Ethan. Try to show a little patience.”
How else would he manage when the real “Why attack?” came later?
The Emperor, looking equally worn, offered the reproach without much strength behind it.
Whether he heeded it or not.
Delighted, Bell pointed at the Emperor’s hair and cried out with glee.
“Puh-oo color!”
“That’s right. My hair is pink.”
The Emperor touched his fine pink locks lightly, closing his jade eyes with a smile.
“What color do beans look like?”
Moving naturally to Bell’s side, the Emperor settled the child on his lap.
“Uh-ung. Red-ish?”
“Exactly, you got it. Should we eat them and see if they taste red too?”
“Uh-huh!”
Bell opened her mouth eagerly.
The Emperor deftly placed two beans into the child’s mouth and made her chew them thoroughly.
“How is it? Does red taste like this?”
“Uh-huh!”
“Then what do you think this yellow yolk tastes like? Would you like to try?”
“Mm.”
“It seems experience does make a difference, Your Majesty.”
Aspe, who had entered the palace early that morning, whispered into Ethan’s ear.
Startled, Ethan reflexively threw a punch at him, but Aspe dodged by ducking his head, as if accustomed to such responses.
“You could stand to learn from watching.”
“Yeesh, you scared me.”
“Ye-sh. Scared-a.”
“Don’t teach her strange things.”
Seeing Bell already mimicking Ethan’s words, Aspe reproached him.
“Come on, Ethan. Watch your language around her.”
“As you can see, even Your Majesty, experienced though he is…….”
“Want to get smacked around?”
Ethan threatened him with a smack while gripping a Dining Knife, and Aspe quickly fell silent.
“Smack!”
In just that short time, Bell’s vocabulary had grown considerably.
Now that she could see people’s mouths more clearly, mimicking speech came even easier.
“Now, let’s have some of this orange carrot too. Yum-yum.”
“Yum-yum.”
The Emperor fed the child with practiced skill, popping food into her mouth one piece after another.
It was while Ethan was watching this scene with a sullen gaze.
Argares, who had circled the entire Imperial Palace, returned.
“The Purification reached exactly to the Palace grounds.”
“Does that mean the power is weak?”
“No.”
Argares negated the Emperor’s question.
“It’s too strong.”
Isn’t strength supposed to be a good thing?
Argares’s expression had darkened considerably.
“Those who dwell in the Darkness may already have noticed.”
It meant Bell’s life was in their sights.
Understanding his meaning, both the Emperor and Ethan questioned him almost simultaneously.
“Is there no way to stop them beforehand?”
“Is there a way to kill them?”
“There’s no way to stop them. But there is a way to kill them.”
The dragon managed to parse the distinction in those words, and his gaze settled on Bell.
“If it’s Guardian Power, it’s possible.”
“You want to have this pebble fight those things?”
The Emperor checked Ethan as his eyes sharpened in an instant.
“Calm yourself.”
Ethan was far too sensitive about such matters.
Knowing the reason why, all the Emperor could do was soothe him.
Argares met the gaze that Ethan shot at him and asked a question.
“Do you know the identity of those who dwell in the Darkness?”
“We’re tracking them, but we’ve learned nothing.”
The Emperor answered in his stead.
They knew almost nothing about the Calamity.
Neither the purpose nor the identity of those who dwelt in the Darkness.
They didn’t even know how the Calamity had retreated in the first place.
As a result, they could only watch helplessly as lesser calamities—scarring the empire in countless places and causing problems—persisted unchecked.
‘But if the Star Clan were to exist, they could resolve the Calamity.’
Argares’s curse was one of those calamities as well.
Bell’s power, which had resolved it in a single breath, would become the only key to resolving calamities in days to come.
But Bell was only two years old.
Time was needed for her to grow sufficiently.
‘If it could be resolved before then, all the better.’
Information was necessary to resolve it.
The Emperor gave a brief explanation of what had transpired when the Calamity arrived, the events that followed, and the empire’s current circumstances.
“There are five confirmed remnant calamities at present. We don’t know where or what else might emerge.”
“I see.”
The dragon nodded heavily as he absorbed the situation in silence.
“……Those beings…….”
And then, at last, his mouth opened.
“They are stars.”
“Stars?”
Ethan reacted sharply.
Bell, who had been busily babbling, blinked her eyes without understanding the situation.
Ethan gently covered Bell’s ears with his palm as she stared blankly at him.
“Why would stars try to kill the Star Clan?”
His voice, lowered considerably, carried a note of suspicion.
“Because they are stars that were never discovered. They hate mankind more than anyone, curse the world, and harbor murderous intent toward the Star Clan like none other.”
Argares recalled events from three years prior.
Nameless stars had appeared abruptly amid black smoke, surrounding him and chanting the Reversed Incantation.
“If Aether disappears, the world loses balance and collapses.”
Countless stars would become meteors and fall to the earth.
The unceasing heat of the sun melting people’s skin and burning their bones, screams of agony filling the air—it would be no different from hell itself.
“They mean to erase what maintains the balance of Aether.”
What maintains the balance of Aether.
Dragons.
Spirits.
And humans.
Of these, humans—the weakest beings—would crumble to dust from even the slightest fracture.
“They corrupted our minds and made you kill each other. If two of the pillars collapse, one alone cannot support the world.”
But there was another reason why “those who dwell in the Darkness” had targeted only dragons and humans.
“If we disappear and you humans go extinct, the Spirits will lose their power at once.”
To lose power meant to lose light.
The Spirits would be buried in eternal darkness, and nature would shatter, erasing all trace of itself.
And when that happened…….
“The stars that were never discovered will become Spirits themselves.”
They would become Spirits of their own accord, reestablish the balance of Aether, and remake the world anew for themselves.

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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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