The Baby Sprout Who Bloomed in the Villain Duke’s Family - Chapter 67

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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 67
“Here, here.”
Clover grabbed Pluto’s hand and ran to the center of the garden where the moon shone clearest.
Two handmaidens and two knights followed behind them, ready in case anything dangerous should befall the children.
Pluto and Clover filled a shallow bowl with water and crouched before it. The round moon hung high in the dark water, reflected with perfect clarity.
Water seen at night was truly like a mirror—it seemed it would show you anything your heart desired to see.
Clover whispered to Pluto in the darkness.
“Mother, you have to make a wish for someone you want to see.”
……
“Did you wish?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Truth be told, Pluto had thought it nonsense from the moment she first heard the tale.
That on nights when the moon hung high, water would show you the face of someone you missed.
If that were true, there would be no one in the entire Empire who longed for another. All one would need to do was stand before water on a moonlit night whenever you felt that ache.
‘And that’s what they said—just a folk legend.’
Her former nursemaid, now gone and dismissed, had once told her that such folk tales existed in the remote corners of the Empire.
So Pluto did not believe it.
Yet she couldn’t understand why she’d come all this way.
“Be careful, careful.”
Clover flopped down flat and patted the space beside her, tapping it gently with her fingers.
Pluto lay down cautiously next to her. Moonlight settled softly on the crowns of the two small heads.
“The older boys wanted to come too, but I didn’t let them.”
“Why?”
“Because this has to be kept secret.”
Clover giggled.
“But it might not work.”
……Mm.
“Belze said so—she didn’t succeed even once.”
Pluto glanced toward Belze.
Belze, standing a little apart, smiled as she looked at Pluto.
“How many times did she try?”
“I don’t know.”
Whisper.
Just then, on a gust of wind, Kalid’s summoned creature, the North Wind Lion, appeared.
The cat lay down beside where Clover and Pluto were, tucking its front and hind legs beneath its body.
Knowing that through the summoned creature an Authority Bearer could watch this place, Pluto looked at the North Wind Lion with some discomfort.
Mm.
Noticing that Pluto was uneasy with the North Wind Lion and the gaze of Kalid beyond it, Clover asked the cat:
“Cat, is Father watching?”

The cat swished its tail and answered. Clover immediately relayed this to Pluto.
“Father says he’s not watching.”
“……How do you know?”
“The cat told me.”
?
Pluto, who hadn’t yet heard that Clover could converse with summoned creatures, furrowed her brow slightly, but the boy asked no further questions.
The moon hung high. Gentle ripples occasionally crossed the surface of the water in the bowl, as if small fish were swimming softly through it.
Yet nothing changed within. Only the faces of Clover and Pluto, staring intently at the dark, transparent water, were reflected back.
That was how the entire night passed in held breath.
“Maybe it won’t work tonight.”
Clover whimpered and draped herself across the grass, burying her cheek in her arm.
Pluto, who had been watching her quietly, spoke softly.
“……It might be because of me that it’s not working.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t really want to see anyone that much.”
“That’s not how it works.”
Clover countered.
“Or maybe it’s because I don’t know what Mother’s face looks like.”
Mm……
“I’d have to know her face to long for her.”
Pluto does not know his mother’s face.
The Imperial Consort died not long after giving birth to him, and the Emperor had all her portraits removed.
That wasn’t all—he disposed of every memento she left behind, turned the palace into ruins, and raised the young Pluto there.
So Pluto grew up in the very palace where his mother had lived, yet found no trace of her.
Naturally, he didn’t know what she looked like.
“The Empress Dowager says I resemble my mother greatly.”
The Emperor Oron had brilliant golden hair.
Pluto had jet-black hair.
Then did his mother have black hair?
“In what way do I resemble her?”
“Your eyes, your nose, your mouth…….”
Pluto murmured absently, staring into the Bowl.
As he spoke, an image of an adult woman who resembled Pluto flickered through Clover’s mind, then vanished.
Pluto continued to mutter, his gaze fixed intently on his reflection in the water.
A mother who looks just like me.
‘So that’s what she looked like.’
He could barely imagine it, yet somehow he could.
In that brief moment, countless faces of women composed of a boy’s features rose and fell in Pluto’s mind.
But still, the water in the Bowl showed him no face he wished to see.
Clover, disappointed, rolled across the ground and gazed up at Pluto with a question.
“You’re really staring hard at that Bowl.”
“…….”
“So you want to see something.”
Pluto said nothing in reply.
“Wanting to see someone—that’s not a bad thing.”
Clover continued, absentmindedly stroking Lucky in her palm.
A child remembers a mother who held him for a moment, then vanished like a dream.
“So it’s okay to want to see her.”
“……!”
“If you don’t feel like speaking, you can just think it to yourself.”
“Okay.”
Only then did Pluto realize he had been peering into the water far more intently than Clover.
The moment he understood this, the boy’s feelings twisted strangely—an emotion he’d never felt before, a sensation entirely new to him.
‘I want to see her…….’
Clover had been right all along.
Pluto longed to see his mother. Where in this world is there a child who doesn’t wish to see theirs?
But he couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud. He was the one who had killed her.
‘Ah…….’
The young boy gazed into the water, transparent in the moonlight, and thought.
Perhaps what reflected in this water wasn’t the face of someone he missed, but the longing itself.
Pluto’s face, twisted with thoughts of his mother, reflected clearly on the water’s surface.
Even as the wind rippled the water, that face remained vivid and undistorted.
“I want……to see her…….”
Pluto whispered the words aloud.
Then Clover, gazing into the water again, echoed him softly.
“Me too.”
In that moment.
“……What?”
A dream? A hallucination?
Did Pluto’s longing for his mother conjure a phantom for him?
A woman with black hair and features that mirrored Pluto’s exactly appeared for an instant, then vanished.
“That can’t be…….”
As Pluto murmured, Clover looked at him and asked.
“Huh? What’d you see?”
From the way she asked if he’d seen something, it seemed Clover had not.
Pluto stared blankly into the Bowl, as though waking from a dream.
The woman’s face that had appeared for a moment was gone without a trace, leaving only Pluto’s vacant reflection.
So he could not speak of it.
That he had seen his mother.
It might have been a mistake.
“No……that’s not it.”
Pluto’s face twisted slightly as he lied, his expression pained.
But the boy held back his tears and answered steadfastly.
“I didn’t see it…….”
With Pluto’s answer, ripples disturbed the water’s surface again, clouding it.
Yet the minds reflected there remained clear and undimmed, their gaze falling upon the two children.
***
“Where is the Divine Tree?”
“It is here.”
The man in blood-red robes answered the old man’s question at once.
He wore cloth draped about his body, its edge fastened at one shoulder in an unusual fashion that left one side bare and exposed.
Following the man’s guidance, the old man gazed upon a small branch carefully planted in a shadowed corner.
A branch of the Divine Tree, the World Tree—said to have vanished long ago.
It was something his teacher had cherished and maintained, and his teacher’s teacher before him, and on through the generations.
The World Tree’s branches required meticulous care, for if buried too deeply they would fuse with the earth itself and never surface again.
And now, though the branch appeared somewhat changed from before, it still held its form well.
“Good.”
The old man glanced at the branch and spoke to the man.
“Tend it carefully. Soon I will bring the soul of the World Tree here.”
When the soul enters, the Divine Tree will awaken.
When the Divine Tree awakens, the World Tree will be reborn.
This was the legend and mythology that the Religious Order to which Denoraon devoted himself believed with faithful devotion.
“Yes, Denoraon.”
“When the wandering soul arrives, the Divine Tree shall grow anew and tend to this world.”
This was his intention—to bring a suitable soul for the World Tree’s resurrection.
It was the mission bestowed upon him by God.
Denoraon turned to face the man and spoke.
“Keep watch over it until the Founding Ceremony. Not a single blemish must appear.”
The man in red robes bowed low, lowering his mouth to the ground in reverence.

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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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