The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 155

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

Part 2, Episode 25
“Lilly hasn’t visited in so long—let’s not pick at each other like this. That’s how the Bellion household ends up with people calling us commoners and worse.”
“Look at the lot of you. One causes nothing but trouble out there, another’s too mad to accept his role as heir so he goes around manufacturing pointless fights everywhere, and one’s such garbage he can’t even control his own strength—he just keeps bothering everyone until now he’s locked himself in his room and won’t come out!”
Rozelin blinked, startled by Devon Bellion’s sharp words.
The grandfather she remembered seemed far gentler than this.
When she turned her head, her father stood with his mouth firmly shut, his face rigid as he looked away.
Her father remained gloomy, cold, and dry as ever.
Yes. Everything was still the same. It matched her memories without a single difference.
So much the same that Rozelin herself found it vaguely unpleasant, memories of her past rising to the surface.
She’d thought seeing him after so long would bring joy first, but instead displeasure came first.
The displeasure of watching once more what she had turned away from.
The world she had returned to was the past of a future where happiness was impossible—different from that place where she’d met Garren Wilbred—and she turned her head slightly away from this realization.
The younger version of herself standing behind him was tense, frozen, her fists clenched as she hung her head, unable to do anything either way.
She glanced toward her father with concern, but didn’t dare approach him, fearful of being rejected.
Seeing herself from the perspective of a third party felt strange.
‘A complete mess.’
Rozelin thought distantly.
Perhaps this collapse—this relationship that seemed to have been struck head-on by an ancient magical bomb potent enough to obliterate a village—was what had stolen both her father’s ruined social aptitude and her own in the future.
‘Right. This was something that developed, not something I was born with.’
Rozelin watched Isis Bellion, still too hot-blooded to brush things off with the smooth ease of her future uncle, instead bristling indignantly.
“Anyway, all of you are garbage. When are you going to do your part?”
“…Forgive me, but Grandfather. Garbage?”
The words Rozelin had been thinking suddenly tumbled out of her mouth.
“…What, what…?”
He looked down at her with suspicion, as if doubting his own ears, scratching his ear.
“Ah, I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant. I was just so nervous the words came out wrong.”
“…Ah, well, that could happen. I suppose I raised my voice too much in front of a young girl.”
“So if those people over there are garbage, then wouldn’t you be the king of garbage for giving birth to garbage?”
Rozelin tilted her head and asked, and in an instant the Reception Room fell into such silence that even the attending servants gasped in shock.
“…What?”
Din, the young butler, stared at Rozelin in surprise.
“Think about it. You just said those young masters are garbage, right?”
“…Right.”
He nodded reluctantly.
“But when a person gives birth to a child, the child is called a person, and when a dog gives birth to puppies, they’re called dogs—so if those young masters are garbage, wouldn’t you have to be garbage too?”
“…?”
“Since you’re the father of garbage, wouldn’t that make you the king of garbage?”
“No, what in the world is this child suddenly—”
Devon Bellion, too taken aback even to manage anger, blinked slowly as he looked down at the small, almost adorable child.
“A child can’t be born without parents, after all.”
“No, what I meant was—”
“Insulting your own children is the same as insulting yourself, so I don’t understand why you’d say such harsh things. Do you have a hobby of belittling yourself…?”
Rozelin’s words hit the mark, and Devon Bellion froze.
He looked uncertainly at his daughter, Lilly Bellion, and seeing her own eyes widen in surprise, he turned back to the child.
The Reception Room fell silent in an instant. Some little girl was delivering words even they couldn’t manage, her expression utterly dry and matter-of-fact, and the feeling was strange.
Refreshing, perhaps, or exhilarating, or simply strange—
“…Heh, bwahahaha! What is this little brat? She can really talk. Man, I’ve never seen our father speechless like that before.”
Isis Bellion burst into laughter.
He couldn’t quite manage to roll on the floor, instead leaning against the wall unsteadily, clutching his sides as he wheezed with laughter—he seemed slightly mad.
In any case, Rozelin didn’t want to believe that because of this family situation, her future self had become a gloomy, unsociable version of her gloomy father.
In fact, she wanted to change it.
“Grandfather, I guarantee you—if you raise them like this, you’ll ruin all your children.”
Rozelin spoke with a serious expression.
It was advice offered with genuine sincerity.
“…Pardon?”
“One will think he’s so great he’ll join a criminal organization and end up with a spike driven through his chest. Another will grow up gloomy and raise a daughter just as gloomy as himself. Both of them will hear nothing but that they have no social aptitude whatsoever. One will become a rebellious brat who won’t listen and talks back constantly, living on his own terms.”
In order, these were Ian Bellion, Cherti Bellion, herself, and Isis Bellion.
“…How are you being so specific, little one?”
Even Isis Bellion seemed unsettled, slipping in a comment.
“Call garbage garbage—what else would you call it…?”
“So if Grandfather is trash of the highest order, then the three of you who came from him must be trash as well.”
Rozelin glanced sideways at Devon Bellion as she spoke.
“Do you admit it?”
“Admit it, you damned brat? What kind of fool stands before an elder and can’t tell what should and shouldn’t be said—!”
Devon Bellion roared with such a harsh expression that his very presence sent a chill down the spine.
Of course, Rozelin was the sort of person who never let fear show on her face.
Her body and expression simply stiffened, nothing more.
“Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“Of course calling an adult trash isn’t something to be praised for—!”
“Did it offend you to hear it?”
“Obviously it—!”
Devon Bellion faltered mid-sentence.
He had felt the gaze of his own children upon him from behind the girl.
“But why did you say such things in the first place, Grandfather?”
……
Devon Bellion, struck squarely at the back of his head, opened his mouth but could not bring himself to make a sound, and closed it again.
“The problem is that you couldn’t do what you were told. Because you’re someone who couldn’t pull their own weight—”
“Usually that means something like ‘I had expectations for you, but you’ve disappointed me, and that upsets me,’ doesn’t it?”
“What…?”
Rozelin had learned a few things since entering the Bellion ducal house.
One was that these people, unable to be forthright, harbored true feelings beneath their words that ran much deeper.
Just as her father’s constant warnings not to be a burden had, in his own way, been expressions of concern.
“Lilly, what exactly is this child?”
“…Um. A girl who always hits the mark?”
Lilly Bellion answered, rolling her eyes thoughtfully.
Then Isis Bellion crouched down in front of Rozelin and began poking her cheeks, his mouth falling open.
“How did that Wilbred fellow manage to have a daughter who looks exactly like him?”
“…Ugh.”
Her stomach turned.
“…What?”
“The Duke seems to be on particularly close terms with Rose. They bicker quite a lot, you know.”
No, that wasn’t it at all—he was being sincere.
But Rozelin couldn’t quite bring herself to say it.
“…All right, all right. No point saying more to a child. Anyway… since you’ve helped my daughter, it’s only right that I give you something in return.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“Um, is anything all right?”
At the child’s words, Devon Bellion nodded, his chin resting on his hand.
He thought—what could such a small thing possibly want that would be any real trouble?
“Then, aside from the reward money for finding your daughter, could you lend me some money without interest? I don’t want to hold out my hand to my cursed father. And would it be all right if I came to visit often? Oh, because I want to be friends with Rozelin Bellion. Since I think I’ll be able to sleep over often, I’d be very grateful if you could set aside a private guest room for me.”
Without so much as taking a breath, the barrage of requests tumbled out, and Devon Bellion dropped the arm he’d been leaning on, his mouth falling open wide.
Silence settled over the room—how many times now, one could not say.

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