The Blue Dragon Clan’s Very Suspicious Little Chick - Chapter 44

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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 44

In the hour before dawn, commotion erupted in the eastern pavilion where the blue dragons dwelt.
So Rim, her face flushed as she darted about frantically, prostrated herself before Cheong Un the moment he emerged at the sound of the disturbance.
“Forgive me, my lord. Aran—the young lady has vanished. From the looks of it, with her clothes left behind, she must have gone out in her true form…….”
“What?”
If she’d flown away in bird form, the guards wouldn’t have stopped her at all.
Cheong Un called for the Blue Dragon Unit with a grave expression, while straining his Hearing to its limits—though the energy-suppressing mechanism left him unable to perceive sounds as clearly as usual.
It was then that Min appeared, rubbing her eyes as she spoke.
“W-what’s wrong?”
She’d been woken from sleep to find the training master prostrate before the household head in tears, so it was clear she’d snapped awake in shock.
“It’s just that Aran, the young lady…….”
When the training master couldn’t bring herself to continue and her voice grew choked, Cheong Un answered in her stead.
“Yes, Min. Aran seems to have disappeared. Have you heard her mention anywhere she meant to go?”
“No, not at all.”
Min seemed unsurprised that her sister had gone missing—she merely tilted her head in confusion.
Cheong Un barely stifled a sigh at the vexation of it all, then pressed further.
“It seems she went outside after changing form. I’m worried, though it’s likely nothing to be concerned about. Still, I don’t even know when she left…….”
“Huh?”
Min blinked in bewilderment before speaking.
“Oh, but Aran was sleeping with Yeon…….”
“What? Are you certain?”
Min nodded, her expression still utterly confused.
“Yes, I saw her when I came out—she was sleeping with Yeon.”
Cheong Un hurried to check, and sure enough, there was Aran cocooned in blankets on Yeon’s bed, fast asleep.
The outing to the Imperial Palace had worn her out thoroughly; Yeon’s gentle snoring alone filled the peaceful room.
Cheong Un’s shoulders, which had been drawn tight with tension, finally relaxed.
“Good heavens, that troublesome thing…….”
At Cheong Un’s sigh, So Rim hung her head, looking utterly at a loss.
“I beg your pardon, my lord. She sleeps so deeply that I didn’t realize the young lady had left…….”
“How could you have known she slipped out on purpose? She must have woken in the night and gone to Yeon’s side…….”
So Rim exhaled in relief as the tension drained from her frame.
“The two of them are so close to each other—sometimes it’s a problem.”
After reassuring So Rim, Cheong Un turned away, his brown eyes darkening with thought.
If he recalled his Future Sight correctly, there had to be a reason Aran was needed here at the Imperial Palace.
But what could that reason possibly be?

***

Meanwhile, the Crown Prince’s Residence had settled into an unusually quiet morning.
“It’s strange that he’s sleeping in this late…….”
Lady Nam, the royal nursemaid who had been practically driven from the Crown Prince’s chambers in the middle of the night, found this eerie silence unsettling.
By any normal measure, this was well past the time when the Crown Prince would be screaming himself awake.
Lady Nam had originally worked in the medical pavilion; when her predecessor, the former Lady Do, had left for her family residence two years ago under the pretense of ill health, she had been suddenly reassigned to serve as nursemaid.
It was an extraordinary opportunity for a woman with no powerful clan to support her—to serve the royal family directly—yet she found herself unable to celebrate.
Rumors of the Crown Prince’s brutality had spread even to the most humble servants within the Imperial Palace.
Among the palace ladies, it was widely whispered that the previous nursemaid, Lady Do, had been struck by a medicinal bowl thrown by the Crown Prince and bore an ugly scar as a result.
Until the moment she was summoned to meet Scholar Hwa, the Crown Prince’s maternal uncle and the Emperor’s strategist, Lady Nam had been at a loss—but the man of boundless power spoke to her with cold precision.

“Before he is the Crown Prince, he is my nephew. When you care for him, noble lineage is unnecessary. What he needs is a mother’s presence.”

A mother’s presence? What could that mean?

“Pardon? How could I possibly…….”

As Lady Nam began to demur in greater alarm, Scholar Hwa seized her wrist with a grip that brooked no refusal.
The lady servant trembled, her skin prickling at the scholar’s strangely cold touch.
It was then that the scholar spoke in a low voice.

“Is the child I left at the Sain Family Residence growing up well and healthy?”

Lady Nam drew a sharp breath.
In truth, she had been married once before—a widow now, her husband long dead.
Faced with poverty afterward, she had entrusted her child to her sister and come to serve in the palace.
Je-hak regarded the pallid Lady Nam with a thin smile.

“Surely you didn’t believe no one in the palace would learn your secret?”

Despite her youth and humble birth, Lady Nam’s rise to her station had long been Je-hak’s doing.
After Je-hak seized power, he methodically cultivated palace servants he could leverage—those with vulnerabilities he could exploit.
Disposable pieces to be used and replaced as necessity demanded.

“I ask this as a favor. Your child and the Crown Prince are much of an age, are they not?”

The words carried the shape of a request, though no request at all.
After becoming a nurse-attendant, as each day passed and the Crown Prince grew more violent, Lady Nam came to understand: perhaps the former attendant had never returned to the Sain Family at all. Perhaps she had simply outlived her usefulness and been replaced.
Standing vigil before the Crown Prince’s chamber, Lady Nam finally summoned her courage and spoke.
“Your Highness, might you be coughing?”
The Crown Prince was terrifying—demon-like in his rages.
Yet if she failed to tend him properly, her own child and her sister’s family would be imperiled.
From the silent chamber, a clear voice emerged:
“Yeah, just woke up.”
Lady Nam flinched.
The gentle tone was utterly unfamiliar to her.
Could he truly speak in conversation, not just in screams?
She eased the door open and stepped inside to find a child sitting upon the bed—a stranger to her, though she’d never seen him before.
No, it was certainly the Crown Prince, and yet……
His face, which had always worn such a dull and sunken pallor, now gleamed with a warm, peachy flush.
Those eyes that had perpetually seemed clouded and dark now blazed like the sun itself—the Golden Dragon Eyes in full radiance.
This Crown Prince, transformed so utterly that he seemed another person entirely, rolled a single white feather between his pale fingertips.
“Where did you… where did that come from?”
Lady Nam began to ask, so bewildered, but caught herself with a start and fell silent.
Speaking first to the Crown Prince only ended with objects hurled at her face until it bled—a foolish mistake.
Yet as Lady Nam lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut, an answer came to her ears—innocent, almost childlike:
“I had a dream about Mother. But when I opened my eyes, this feather was lying on the bed. It smells like Mother.”
Lady Nam did not labor to find meaning in the boy’s nonsensical words.
Only one fact astonished her:
The Crown Prince had not raged. He had answered her question.
Lady Nam blinked her eyes stupidly before speaking: “Shall I bring a box to keep it safe for you?”
“Yeah, I like that!”
When she glanced up, the Crown Prince’s mouth curved into a lovely arc of a smile.
Lady Nam felt as if she’d been bewitched by a spirit.
Shrieking, convulsing, weeping, raging, destroying things—or else laughing with a strange, crazed giggle—that was all the Crown Prince had ever been.
They said the loss of his mother had cast him into grief; that beneath it all, he was a good child.
Could Je-hak’s words have been true?
Lost in her thoughts, she’d kept the Crown Prince waiting too long.
He fussed, as any ordinary child might.
“What are you doing? You said you’d fetch the box. Get it now!”
Lady Nam snapped to attention.
“Yes, Your Highness. I shall bring it at once.”
She gestured to the palace maids to bring washing water.
For over a year, the nightmares had continued without cease, day after day. That even a single day might pass differently felt like a gift beyond measure.
Lady Nam hurried to fetch the box, taking care not to displease the Crown Prince.
Perhaps today would be one of those rare, fortunate days when no one was hurt.

***

That evening, the Sain Family held another banquet. The Emperor, who had declined to attend the day before, had sent word that he would grace them with his presence after all.
It seemed the audiences he’d granted to the various family heads that afternoon had softened whatever displeasure he’d been harboring.
Aran had settled between the twins as before, turning her attention toward the elders at the head table, when a voice rang out from beyond the doors.
“His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.”
Everyone in the Banquet Hall rose to their feet to receive the imperial family.
Yet the eyes of the bowing Sain Family retainers were all fixed upon the small child who followed in the Emperor’s wake.
It was the first time any of them had seen the Crown Prince from such a distance.
The Suspicious Chirping of the Azure Dragon Family — Episode 44
E-book Release Date | 2026.08.05

Author | Ravioli
Publisher | Odd Eye
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ⓒ Ravioli 2026

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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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