The Maid With a Child - Chapter 49

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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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49. The Woman Who Rolled My Life
My master was formidable.
So formidable that some days he would return from training without a speck of dust clinging to him, without a single bead of sweat on his brow.
But today—what manner of training had he endured? Had he faced the entire Knight Order alone?
Adlen, seeing Racalte return in tatters, went pale as death.
“Who on earth put the master in such a state?”
“…A woman.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“The only thing that’s ever rolled my life like this has been a woman.”
A governess. A master of Close Combat and the Knight Order. And you.
Especially you, Adlen—that one fell hardest on me.
Had it not been for Adlen, I wouldn’t have tormented myself over the Crown Prince’s circumstances; had it not been for Adlen, I wouldn’t have poured such effort into preparing the King’s party; and had it not been for Adlen, I wouldn’t have lost focus mid-training and become this heap of rags.
“My goodness, look at you…”
Adlen, unaware that one of those women was himself, only pitied me with genuine concern.
For reasons I couldn’t name, I felt heavy as I headed toward the Dressing Room. I thought that if I could at least wash, this weight might fall away.
The sensation of sweat-soaked cloth clinging to my skin was unbearable, so I began stripping my clothes off before I even reached the Dressing Room, thinking it safe enough since Adlen was occupied with the child elsewhere.
“Ah! Master, your side!”
But Adlen, concerned for me, had been keeping watch. When my ribs came into view, he spotted a massive bruise and cried out in alarm.
Racalte quickly pulled his clothes back up, only to discover the enormous bruise himself. It must have formed when the Sigelion Family Estate came under siege, when something had pressed into his ribs.
“…Ah. It happened during training.”
“Are you alright? It’s so severe… Let me see.”
Adlen rushed over and grabbed my clothes, pressing his face close to inspect whether there were any other wounds besides the bruise. A light breath brushed against my ribs.
“!”
Racalte flinched as if struck by lightning, stumbling backward.
“Why—what’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
“No, that’s not it.”
Again.
The tickling sensation had returned.
The forgotten tickle came back without warning.
Perhaps because it had been so long, it felt even worse than before.
“I’m sorry, I’ll be gentler. Actually, let me fetch some medicine first.”
This time too, Adlen remained unaware he was the culprit.
He focused only on the pain, never imagining the real cause.
Adlen grabbed my clothes and dragged me toward the sofa.
Compared to the knight who had reduced me to these rags, the strength with which he pulled was as feeble as an ant hauling grain.
And yet I went helplessly along, thinking with foolish resignation that a blow across my back would surely follow soon enough.
“Good heavens… How does one train to bruise this severely?”
Without hesitation, Adlen lifted my clothes to examine the damage, his whole face twisting in distress.
“Is it that bad?”
“Of course it’s bad! What kind of training causes this?”
“Choking.”
“That’s a training method?”
“An essential one.”
“…Good grief…”
Though Adlen couldn’t argue against the master calling it essential training, he could at least sigh. He slathered ointment on generously, working it in with practiced care.
“Going off to war is already grueling enough—how do you manage to injure yourself like this even in peacetime? I thought once you returned from war, you’d just rest properly.”
Moreover, the master was also warding off assassination attempts.
Yet on days without attacks, he repeated this kind of fierce training regardless.
“Rest and then return to war, and you’ll die just the same. A body grows sluggish—I can’t let that happen.”
“But that doesn’t mean you need to injure yourself.”
The definition of “injured” could vary. This degree of damage was not something Racalte would even call an injury—it was simply part of his daily existence. For Racalte, “injured” only began when it limited his ability to act.
But Adlen’s conviction was so firm that he couldn’t bring himself to protest that he wasn’t actually hurt.
“Bruises and minor wounds can’t be ignored. I once worked at a house where the young master fell while running down the stairs and got a bruise in exactly the same spot as yours. He grew feverish that night and within days couldn’t move his arm. He died not long after.”
“Such things happen.”
In war, trivial wounds often festered into grave illnesses that claimed lives.
But I had never once believed such a fate would be mine.
Those around me had never believed it either.
Thinking back, it was a dangerous way of thinking. Yet I had never truly been ill in my entire life, so perhaps such thinking was inevitable.
“So you must be careful too.”
The Orphanage had never had money; they wouldn’t treat wounds that were merely grazed or torn. If you were lucky, you healed without incident. If you were unlucky, you died from that wound.
It wasn’t as though we lacked money, or lacked someone to tend to his wounds. Why did our master insist on doing this?
Adlen muttered under his breath as he applied the ointment.
“But… why do you have so many scars, sir?”
Adlen’s brow furrowed as he concentrated on the wound, nose nearly touching it.
When he’d treated the wounds from the last battle, he’d focused only on that area and seen nothing else around it.
This time, with bruising spread across such a wide expanse, his eyes took in all the surrounding damage at once.
Racalte’s body bore countless scars, large and small. Some ran so deep they must have come from devastating injuries, while others were barely more than scratches.
“Did you get all of these fighting?”
War was something that happened far away, other people’s affair. The king and nobility took it seriously, but for those below them, it meant nothing unless their own lives were upended.
The war with Moren had begun long before Adlen was even born. Most of the battles took place in the barren borderlands where no one lived. Only knights and professional soldiers went to war. Now, even when soldiers returned home, there were no victory marches anymore.
So Adlen had never thought that people died in war, nor had he connected the dots to imagine they might be wounded.
“Most of them are.”
Racalte glanced down at his own wounds.
He’d never paid them much attention, had never consciously observed them. Even now, looking at his own body, he could see there were many.
“What happened to cause this one?”
Adlen’s fingertip traced carefully over an elongated scar beside his navel. Racalte’s breath caught sharply.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt… it tickles.”
“Ah…”
An old scar shouldn’t ache. Yet Racalte felt his abdominal muscles contract suddenly, and it startled him. At his words about the tickling, Adlen’s tense expression softened and he laughed lightly.
The gentle breath that escaped with his laughter brushed the old scar. It tickled again.
“I took a beating from my father as a child and fell, catching the edge of a railing with my side.”
“? You were beaten?”
Growing up at the Orphanage meant countless beatings, but to learn that the master had also been beaten…
Adlen’s eyes widened.
“Often. The future of the Sigelion Family rested on me—they couldn’t afford to raise me carelessly.”
“?”
Adlen’s confusion only deepened.
“What does your future being at stake have to do with beating you to raise you?”
“Whenever I failed to meet expectations, the discipline was to sharpen my mind.”
“…”
“It wasn’t abuse. I wouldn’t have been beaten if I’d done things properly. I was lacking as a child.”
Adlen’s expression suggested he’d just heard something absurd, so Racalte found himself defending the past without thinking.
It was something he’d accepted as natural all his life. His house had been stricter than most, but Sigelion was a line of knights. As long as they bore the obligation to answer the king’s call and march to war, they had to teach harshly to ensure his survival.
He’d believed this as a child, and he believed it still.
“Why beat someone who can understand words? They’re not beasts. I don’t know much, but that teaching method seems wrong to me.”
Adlen scowled deeply and grumbled, continuing to apply ointment even to scars that had long since deepened and would never truly fade.
It was the first time he’d heard such an argument. Was that so? If words were enough, there would be no need to beat anyone.
Wounds he hadn’t even known existed began to ache belatedly.
Racalte watched Adlen’s hand brush across his body in silence, and suddenly discovered something he’d overlooked all this time, just as he’d overlooked his own scars.

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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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