The Baby Who Regressed Refuses Childcare - Chapter 135

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Hiana Calbey was wandering in a dream.

The first scene began with her mother lying still.

Her drunken father roughly shook that mother while screaming.

“You! How dare you try to end your life and leave me! Money, where did you hide the money-!”

A colorless, gloomy underground inn room.

The walls were full of rat holes, and broken windows that rattled whenever the wind blew.

“Hey. Where did your mom hide the money. You saw it, didn’t you? Where is it, huh?”

Her father’s hands that approached Hiana reeked of alcohol and filth.

“…Useless thing. Can’t even speak, skinny as a rat!”

In that room no different from a sewer, whenever father raged, mother’s clothes would flutter.

Hiana blinked blankly.

Then the scene blurrily transitioned.

It was a dimly-lit tavern.

“What’s this. Why did you bring this small thing?”

Someone with a bushy beard was staring intently at her.

A fierce-looking man missing one eye.

Then father spoke.

“Lord Dan. She may look like that but she’s mute, perfect to send as a servant to some noble house with secrets!”

Father’s face seen under the flickering candlelight was quite pretty.

The same father who got angry every day, had bloodshot eyes, and yelled at mother and herself.

So father could smile so brightly like that.

“…Well, yeah. We’ll find some use for her.”

Soon something like a heavy iron necklace was fastened around Hiana’s neck with a click.

Hiana frowned at that cold sensation.

‘I don’t like cold things…’

Whenever she did cleaning work in the inn’s kitchen, mother would bring an old towel and warm it up.

And with that towel, she would wipe Hiana’s face, body, and under her fingernails.

Hiana loved that warmth.

The coldness of wind rushing through broken windows in midwinter,

The coldness of alcohol flowing from bottles father had smashed.

Even the coldness rising from the floor when lying alone in an empty room.

Cold things always made Hiana sad.

“Come, follow me.”

Hiana was led by the one-eyed man’s hand, walking barefoot on the dirty floor.

Her wrist hurt as if it would break, and the stench of filth stung her nose.

She could instinctively realize.

‘Warm things are over now.’

Turning to look back, father was counting something behind them.

It was the money father loved so much.

She looked forward again expressionlessly.

Ahead, a dark and cold corridor stretched endlessly.

Like that, one step, one step.

Walking with slow steps, sometimes being pushed along.

“I’ll buy that child.”

Someone blocked their path.

“Who are you! How did you get in here…!”

The one-eyed man questioned in a frightening voice, but the person blocking them didn’t budge.

That person was very tall, a woman with jet-black hair streaked with white here and there.

Even her clothes were all dark colors, making her look exactly like a tree in moonlight.

“Would 200 million tera be enough?”

The man hesitated and closed his mouth.

“200, 200 million tera would be…”

“200 million for this child’s price. And I’ll add 300 million more.”

The woman withdrew her black eyes that had been staring at Hiana the whole time.

Where her gaze turned was toward father, who was counting money in the back.

“Let’s handle that filth here too.”

Thus the third scene that followed was father collapsed on the floor.

No longer smiling or counting money.

Not breaking things or shouting either.

Just father lying quietly on the floor.

That day was when Hiana Calbey became just Hiana.

The dream continued.

“Seeing that not only your appearance but even your name is the same, you must have been destined for this from the beginning.”

The woman like a dark night tree, Philomena, said that.

“My dead niece’s name was also Hiana.”

The place Philomena took Hiana to was a small cabin in the woods.

The cabin had no rat holes in the walls, no broken windows.

Hiana grew up there.

The first day she made a sound, Philomena burst into quiet laughter.

“So you can speak?”

Then she stared at the blazing fireplace for a while and muttered.

“Perhaps it worked out for the better.”

Philomena came to see Hiana once a month.

On days she didn’t come, an old woman whose name she didn’t know took care of her.

That woman couldn’t speak, like Hiana when she was younger.

One day Philomena told her that the woman couldn’t speak because she had no tongue.

A little over two years after living in the cabin.

Philomena took Hiana out of the forest for the first time.

It was a night when cool wind blew, as if autumn was about to begin.

The carriage she rode for the first time in her life stopped on top of a high hill.

Philomena opened the carriage door and showed Hiana the bustling district of the territory spread out wide, saying.

“Over there. Do you see the place where the brightest light among all the lights is shining?”

“…Yes.”

“That’s Longton Castle.”

Longton Castle?

Philomena grabbed Hiana’s shoulders to make her look at her.

“In that castle lives someone like your dead father.”

Thump-

Her heart beat loudly.

“Someone like your father who made your mother that way and tried to abandon even you.”

Having said that, Philomena asked.

“How do you feel?”

With a very dark expression.

“When I killed your father for you.”

Hiana blinked silently.

The collapsed father came to mind.

Father lying quietly on the floor, doing nothing.

Cold and cold father.

She slowly opened her mouth.

“…It was quiet.”

“…”

“It was peaceful.”

Philomena burst into laughter.

“Then I suppose I gave you the gift of rest.”

The two stood side by side again, looking down at Longton Castle together.

“Then could you also give me the gift of rest?”

Hiana looked up at Philomena.

Philomena was also looking at her.

“Since I killed your father for you, you kill my brother for me too.”

“…”

“Become my brother’s daughter, become a daughter with very high utility value. At the moment when he’s most excited about the thought of exploiting you.”

“…”

“Plunge a blade into that bastard’s heart.”

Philomena and Hiana exchanged gazes for a long time.

Without saying any words.

And that day, Hiana decided to go from just Hiana to Hiana Longton.

Time continued to flow.

When all preparations were finished and Hiana turned twelve years old.

“Y-Your Grace!! We found the youngest princess, we found the youngest princess!!”

Hiana was led by Philomena’s hand into the castle where the monster lived.

“Originally, this should have happened when you were five years old. It got twisted because Lambert unexpectedly took in another child.”

Hiana recalled the words Philomena had emphasized over and over.

“That child who came to the manor first will only interfere with our plan. Looking at it immediately, it would be a hundred times better if she disappeared, but.”

“…”

“Perhaps I thought it might be good to use that against our plan in reverse. So I pulled some strings. That you had actually come to the manor first, seven years ago.”

Philomena showed Hiana an object.

It was an incense burner made of brass, covered with strange patterns.

“It’s an item lent by the one I serve. The world also calls it an ancient relic.”

“…An incense burner?”

“Yes. A strange power springs forth from this incense burner. That power scatters people’s emotions.”

According to the owner’s desires, according to the inputted commands.

The incense burner had the ability to manipulate people’s emotions in negative directions.

“This incense burner will help you. So that child loses all the trust she built in this manor. So that you look more pitiful.”

“…”

“So you must make the members of Longton favor you more than that child.”

“…”

“When Lambert trusts you, relies on you. When he considers you the most useful card among what he possesses.”

“…”

“You must definitely plunge a blade into that bastard’s chest at that moment.”

That child.

The child who would only interfere with her and Philomena’s plan.

The dangerous child who was too clever and only filling the monster’s belly.

Philomena had definitely said that, but.

“Oh… H-hello.”

The child she first met in the dining room was frozen with her two big eyes wide open in surprise.

Her small frame and white cheeks full of fragrant bread somehow caught her gaze.

Hiana unconsciously frowned.

Lips pursed as if frightened.

A small, harmless, endlessly weak-looking face.

‘…A squirrel.’

Somehow feeling uncomfortable inside, she closed her mouth.

Annellia was, the obstacle she was supposed to slowly strangle to death from now on was.

“Nice to meet you, Hiana…! I-I’m Annellia.”

A child whose awkward smile stung like a thorn under her fingernails.

“Um, it must have been really hard for you all this time, right?”

A child who made her stomach churn just by looking at her face.

“From now on, I’ll be a good older sister to you! Let’s get along well together…!”

A child who resembled the warmth of that wet towel when her mother used to wipe her face in childhood.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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