The Maid With a Child - Chapter 2

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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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2. The Baby’s Identity
Even as he spoke, Adlen knew his words made little sense—but lacking any real knowledge, he’d simply blurted out whatever came to mind.
It was a disaster born of circumstance: gathered here were people who’d never married, or had no children in their lives at all.
Throughout it all, the baby had kept crying until it reached its limit—its entire face flushed crimson, gasping as though breath itself might slip away.
“……Perhaps we could try soaking bread in broth and feeding that to it?”
Adlen offered the suggestion again, as though testing the waters.
“Oh, yes—that’s it!”
The panicked group descended on Adlen, then bolted toward the kitchen. Adlen rushed after them, the baby still cradled in his arms.
“Broth, broth! Bread!”
They looked like a gang of thieves ransacking the pantry.
The kitchen servants, who’d just begun preparing the master’s and the Knight Order’s meal, froze in alarm.
“Quickly!”
Faced with a baby on the verge of suffocation and desperate shouts, the servants grasped the situation at once.
The baby the master had left them to raise! A baby gasping for breath!
They abandoned everything and rushed to prepare baby food.
“Eat, eat, please—eat…….”
Everyone watched the spoon enter the baby’s mouth, their voices joining in silent prayer.
The spoon slipped between the baby’s parted lips.
“Aw.”
The baby stopped crying and began working its mouth. The kitchen fell so quiet that even breathing seemed to pause.
Gulp.
The instant they saw the food slide down the baby’s throat, everyone clenched their fists and cheered without sound.
They’d done it. They’d managed to keep the master’s baby alive for—roughly ten minutes.
Only ten minutes had passed.
It had felt like hell.
“Hah…… raising a child really is exhausting.”
Everyone, suddenly wilted and worn, collapsed with groans.
Adlen exhaled deeply and brought another spoonful to the baby. Once it had tasted the food, it ate eagerly.
Sprawled about, one of the servants suddenly asked:
“So what is this one?”
“Hmm…….”
The group huddled closer, peering down at the infant.
The baby, mid-mouthful, turned its head at their attention.
Though tear tracks marked its cheeks, the chubby-cheeked child was devastatingly round.
Round head, round eyes, round lips.
“……It’s adorable.”
“……Truly adorable.”
“Its parents must have been exceptionally handsome.”
“They must have been.”
“How did such a beautiful child end up parentless, dropped here like cargo?”
The servants searched the baby’s body thoroughly for any clue. But wrapped only in a worn Military Blanket, the infant was bare—not a hint of information on it.
“What on earth is it?”
“Perhaps the master took pity on a War Orphan and brought it back?”
“Our master?”
“……Well.”
“Or took responsibility for the family of a fallen soldier…….”
“Our master?”
“……Well.”
Every answer ended the same way: “Our master?”
“Why would our master do such a thing?”
The other servants seemed to know, but Adlen was in the dark. He’d spent so much time at the Royal Palace or the Battlefield that it hardly seemed likely he’d ever have a chance to observe the master closely, so he’d never bothered to wonder.
The master, reeking of the Battlefield’s blood and iron, was certainly terrifying enough even from a distance that one’s legs would quiver.
Still, just because someone looks that way doesn’t mean their heart is the same.
“Our master is…….”
“Hmm…….”
They could gossip among themselves, but openly judging the master was difficult. The servants exchanged nervous glances until finally one spoke up.
“A most excellent commander, surely.”
“Pardon?”
“That is to say…… they say the master was born to excel in battle?”
“You mean their martial prowess is extraordinary?”
“Of course there’s that too, but—well, temperament, character, all of it fits just right, you could say…… Why, some people simply aren’t suited to certain work. Show them a drop of blood from a needle prick and they faint dead away.”
“Ah!”
Adlen had found the answer.
“You have neither blood nor tears, do you?!”
“Exactly! No, wait—what I mean is, our master hates nothing more than neglecting their duties or wasting time on pointless things. Someone like that would never take on work that isn’t theirs out of mere pity.”
The servant, pleased to have stumbled upon the right answer, had eagerly agreed—then hastily tried to undo the damage. But the words were already out.
Adlen took the brief first impression of his master, their actions, and the servant’s assessment, and quietly assembled them in his mind.
‘Best not to attract notice.’
How one conducts oneself depends entirely on the master’s nature.
Some masters will toss you an extra coin if you fawn and cling to them; others find being noticed itself an irritation.
Their new master was the latter sort.
If someone who strictly divides their own duties from their own business were to employ servants, the odds were catastrophic that those servants would be picked apart endlessly.
“So what’s the baby, then?”
The subject turned back to the infant.
No matter how many times you looked at the baby, you couldn’t determine who it was, and no matter how many times you asked, it remained a riddle.
Then one person cried out as though they’d grasped some cosmic truth.
“Ah!”
“What!”
With everyone’s attention fixed upon them, the enlightened one began to explain with mounting excitement, laying it out in order.
“If the baby’s this young, it must have been born during this war, right?”
“That would make sense?”
“So if you calculate backwards from conception, it would’ve been right before this war started? Or maybe early in the fighting if the baby came a bit early?”
“Um…… I suppose that could be?”
The baby’s exact age was unknowable, but rough calculation suggested as much.
The enlightened one lowered their voice as though imparting a secret truth.
“Could it be our master’s……?”
Eyes all turned at once to the baby’s hair. Chestnut locks and brown eyes touched with blue.
The master had hair like ink steeped in silk—grey—and eyes a pale violet-tinged blue.
There was no resemblance whatsoever.
“Doesn’t look like them, though?”
“Wouldn’t brown mixed with a woman who has brown eyes come out darker?”
“That’s a stretch. Besides, if it were the master’s child, they wouldn’t just haul it here like cargo and toss it around like a toy.”
“The master might do something like that? If it were an accidental child…….”
“What if the mother died in the chaos of war or something, and the master had no choice but to bring the baby along…….”
With several heads put together, creativity was channeled in quite remarkable directions.
But after mulling it over for some time, everyone arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.
“……Our master would……?”
Surely not.
Every person shook their head in unison.
“Why not? It seems plausible to me.”
Adlen alone tilted his head and offered a dissenting opinion.
It all sounded like it could happen. Why was everyone so firmly shaking their heads?
“Our master doesn’t let women close.”
“Ah, so then men—”
“Smack!”
Adlen, speaking without prejudice, was silenced instantly with a sharp blow.
The servants went pale and, not content with scolding him, clamped his mouth shut and glanced nervously around.
“If the master heard that, they’d really take your head off.”
“Eek?”
“Our master is simply! So consumed! With matters of state that there’s no room to spare for women!”
“Y-yes. Yes.”
“Certainly not unpopular!”
“Y-yes…….”
They say strong denial is just affirmation in disguise…….
But Adlen, displaying his considerable talent for servitude, nodded obediently along.
As everyone knows, life runs smoothest when one possesses no self.
Though Adlen had yielded quietly, the servant—as if haunted by some dreadful memory—pressed on, unable to stop the flow of words.
“There was a man once who thought the way you do, made comments about it…….”
“W-what……?”
“The master never uses force except in combat situations…….”
“What…?”
“His facial bones were shattered. One punch.”
“Huh.”
Adlen’s face turned the same color as the servants’, and he shrank back.
He’d been trying to defend his master, thinking that appearances and personality might not always align—but he was retracting that thought now.
His master was someone whose bloodthirst emanated from deep within, not merely an impression on the surface.
“Ah, what does it matter who the child is! The master has ordered us to raise him, so doing a good job of it is what counts most!”
“Exactly! We are Sigel Lion!”
The servants all clenched their fists and shouted in unison.
We are Sigel Lion!
It was a rallying cry Adlen had never seen in other households. The servants of Sigel Lion were unusually emphatic about their family’s sense of belonging. It must have been a knight house thing.
Though he hadn’t yet fully embraced that sense of belonging himself, Adlen clenched his fist along with them.
“Yes! I am Sigel Lion!”
“That’s the spirit! So Adlen—hang in there. We’re counting on you!”
“…Pardon? Just me? What do you mean?”

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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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