The Baby Sprout Who Bloomed in the Villain Duke’s Family - Chapter 3

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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 3
***
Clover’s talking four-leaf clover.
That’s what Lucky said.
That Father hadn’t abandoned him—he’d only left him in someone’s care because of circumstances.
After many nights had passed, after the sun had risen many times.
Father would surely come looking for him.
[So don’t worry, little one.]
Clover believed those words.
But then,
How many more nights would have to pass?
How many more times would the sun have to rise?
Clover was beginning to truly miss Father now.
A father he’d never once seen since birth.
Yet reality was:
Dangling.
He was being hauled along like a goose, caught fast in Demper’s grip.
Demper swept Clover up without ceremony and strode briskly toward his room.
There she set him down on the sunken bed and spoke.
“Stop acting on your own whims!”
She continued, grinding her teeth audibly.
“Don’t go running off whenever you please, understood?”
“…….”
“Answer me! Do you understand?!”
“Nngh…….”
Clover nodded, clutching the parchment tightly to his chest.
“Tsk.”
Only then did Demper withdraw her sharp glare.
She pressed her forehead, thinking.
‘This stubborn little thing really is impossible…….’
Clover couldn’t simply go outside whenever he pleased.
‘Not looking like this, anyway.’
Demper herself was an Authority User, just like Claudian.
The Demper family’s Authority was water.
She was an Authority User who wielded the power of water.
That was why the Demper Mansion had many passages throughout where water flowed continuously.
The mansion had been constructed this way because no one could violate Demper’s Authority from within a place where water ran freely.
In other words, as long as one remained inside the water-flowing mansion,
‘Even someone as formidable as Claudian couldn’t spy on what happened within these walls.’
Clover was essentially a blemish on Claudian’s record.
So no one would object to her treating him roughly.
After all, he was practically abandoned here.
Even sending him support funds was something she regarded as mere duty.
Yet however little she cared, the fact that he carried Claudian’s blood meant caution was never wasted.
If she were caught making a mistake, the trouble would fall squarely on her own shoulders.
So she kept the filthy-looking Clover from venturing into the Garden.
But Clover kept slipping past her watchful eye and crawling out to the Garden anyway.
All to practice that trivial, worthless Authority of his!
Having thought that far, Demper fixed Clover with a glare.
‘Huh.’
Startled, Clover’s eyes skittered away uneasily.
She looked disapprovingly at the heap of parchment Clover was clutching, then
“What is this?”
reached out and snatched the parchment from his hands.
“Ack!”
Again.
It was taken again.
‘It’s been taken again!’
Clover’s small mouth fell open as the parchment was snatched from him without warning.
This woman did everything in pairs—her actions were always identical!
After even the Countess had seized the Diary from Louis, Clover stared at her in bewilderment.
“I… it’s nothing…”
“If it’s nothing, why are you clutching it so carefully?”
She narrowed her eyes and examined the parchment.
It was covered densely with childish handwriting.
The Countess looked at Clover.
“Did you write this?”
“No, I… I didn’t…?”
Clover’s gaze slipped away.
A brief silence fell.
“I suppose.”
Having lost interest at Clover’s denial, the Countess returned the parchment to her.
………
“You couldn’t possibly write yet.”
Clover was only four years old.
She could recognize letters, but she was far too young to write properly.
So the Countess, unbothered, simply accepted Clover’s words at face value.
And she handed the parchment back to her.
But then.
Awful bad Auntie! She’s stealing the money Father sent me.
“…Wait.”
In that brief moment, having caught the words written on the parchment, the Countess snatched it back.
“Oh!”
“…?”
She held the parchment close to her face and began to decipher the crooked letters.
There, in meticulous detail, Clover had written out exactly HOW she had discovered that her aunt wasn’t spending the money on her.
“!”
Startled, the Countess continued reading through Clover’s diary.
What followed was even more damning.
Page after page of the Countess verbally abusing herself was densely inscribed.
The handwriting that Louis couldn’t decipher—
The Countess, skilled at puzzling it out, slowly raised her head.
And she fixed a hard stare on Clover.
“You……”line>
This was undoubtedly an accusation document.

Written by a four-year-old child, no less.
“…Hic!”
Startled by the Countess’s fierce demeanor, Clover began to hiccup.
The frightened child clapped her hands over her mouth, but—
“Hic!”
Once started, the hiccups showed no sign of stopping.
The Countess glared at hiccupping Clover for a moment, then confiscated every scrap of the Diary from the child’s possession.
“Give it back!”
And then she began reading through it one page at a time, her eyes burning with fury.
Still covering her mouth, Clover muttered as she watched the scene unfold.
“Clover’s in big trouble now……”line>
[Oh no, I’m really in for it……]

Fortunately, that muttering didn’t reach the Countess’s ears.
“You ungrateful little wretch!”
But that did nothing to quell her rage.
The Countess let out a furious shout.
Clover yelped in fright and instinctively retreated.
“A-Auntie……”line>
First, she seized every last page of Clover’s diary in her hands.

She had no choice but to seize them.
After all, they were filled with a complete record of every wrong she’d committed!
‘This brat!’
She crumpled one of the pages as she spoke.
“Where on earth did you get the parchment and pen!?”
Clover was far too young to be taking lessons, so the servants certainly couldn’t have provided them.
Clover retreated hastily, as if fleeing, before answering.
“Auntie was…….”
“Me?”
“……Auntie, if you just stayed home drawing pictures, it wouldn’t be so surprising.”
[That’s right, that’s right! She gave it to me and then!]
Lucky chimed in agreement.
At Clover’s words, the Countess’s face crumpled.
Now that she thought about it, that did seem to be the case.
But that wasn’t what mattered now.
“I don’t care. From now on, you absolutely cannot write anything.”
She growled the words.
“The moment I catch you writing so much as a single letter, you’ll be thrown out of this mansion! Do you understand?”
[Wicked thing! Petty little brat! Just because the child used a single bad word and now she’s screaming at this tiny slip of a girl!]
Lucky too was thrashing about in fury.
But Clover could not echo Lucky’s protests now.
Clover nodded meekly.
“Yes…….”
“Is anyone there!?”
The Countess shouted loudly, and two maids from outside came rushing in.
The Countess issued her command without so much as glancing at them.
“Search that room thoroughly at once! Find every pen and piece of parchment and remove them all!”
“Yes, yes, ma’am!”
The maids answered.
“And Clover, from today on, you cannot set one foot outside your room.”
The Countess spoke in a furious voice.
Clover drew in a sharp, small breath.
“I’ll lock the door, so you won’t be able to sneak out either.”
“……!”
“Don’t do anything and stay quietly confined to your room!”
***
She hurled all the parchment sheets before Clover and strode out of the room.
Just then.
“Countess!”
Her aide hurried toward her as she fumed.
“Countess, you have a visitor.”
A visitor?
The Countess, thoroughly exasperated, demanded sharply.
“What visitor?”
“It’s… the Duke Claudian……”
At his words, the Countess stopped dead in her stride.
She turned to look at her aide.
“Who came……?”
“T-the Duke has arrived, ma’am! I’ve shown him to the Reception Hall for now.”
At those words, Demper froze like stone.
Duke Claudian?
He who had not shown his face once in the past four years?
Why now? Of all times, why this moment?
He was Clover’s father.
The man who had entrusted Clover to her care and had sent enormous sums of money over the past four years.
But his daughter, Clover, was right now……
‘Right now…….’
Locked in the second-worst room in the Demper household, whimpering.
‘This cannot happen now!’
This was not yet the time when that damned Accusation Document in Clover’s room would be disposed of.
Never mind the whimpering child; those documents had to be eliminated first.
Demper could not hide the urgency rising in her heart as she spoke.
“I’m going to the Reception Hall. You call two maids and two servants now…….”
And send them to Clover’s room.
Find that diary or whatever it is, quickly, and get rid of all of it.
That was what Demper was about to command.
“There’s no need to go to the Reception Hall.”
A voice cut through the air like a blade of winter wind, sharp and biting as the north gale.

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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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