The Mansion Awaits Spring - Chapter 167

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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 167
Articles about Pejin’s heroic deeds appeared in the Newspaper day after day.
Miller pitied Pejin for it, yet he couldn’t help but feel a quiet relief settling in one corner of his heart.
Half of him wished his brother would return alive, and half of him thought it would be acceptable if he simply didn’t.
Miller didn’t want to lose the stability he’d barely recovered.
He’d heard that April had crossed the Strait carrying a Life-Sustaining Treatment Consent Form.
But he couldn’t know what was written inside it.
Whether she’d consented to discontinuing Pejin’s treatment, or refused it.
Now, regarding April, he could no longer be certain of anything based solely on his prior knowledge of her.
The Factory becoming her property alone had already shown him that.
The Emperor seemed satisfied with handing over his shame to her, but Miller was not.
He felt the Nightmare he’d barely escaped creeping back toward him.
That Grand Residence.
It was as if the arrogant Head of the Lunos House and his wife had been resurrected.
For now she said she wouldn’t operate the Factory, but that was no guarantee.
What if April started running the Factory again?
What if she came to possess the wealth it generated?
For her, restarting the Factory would be far from difficult.
Rather, it would be easy. She had the Dye—something that could protect her even from that gas.
After the Fog came, she might extract payment for lives with it. She had more than enough weapons to accumulate considerable assets.
It tormented Miller that a house had emerged in this Grand Duchy that he would need to restrain.
He’d felled that great tree, yet it was growing again, spreading its branches anew.
He had to fell it again. He couldn’t stand idle while she expanded her power like this.
The conclusion kept returning: he had to kill her.
Completely uproot her, so she could never grow back.
When Heidi saw Miller’s expression darken again just as it had stabilized, she approached him carefully.
“Miller, wouldn’t you like to rest? Shall we take a walk?”
Miller then closed the Newspaper and asked her,
“Will Pejin… wake up?”
“Of course. He will.”
Hearing that answer, Miller’s nerves sharpened. It wasn’t as if Heidi could have said his brother wouldn’t wake up, so her position was equally difficult.
Ever since Pejin had threatened to kill the family, Miller had been different from other people.
Heidi had thought Pejin’s sensitive nature was something that appeared only with him.
But now, looking back, the previous Head of the Dieusz House had possessed that same sensitivity, and it had been inherited genetically by the brothers.
“What about April? Will she consent to discontinuing treatment?”
Heidi hesitated at Miller’s question.
Both of them had learned sufficiently that Pejin was in an almost irreversible state.
If they’d received the Life-Sustaining Treatment Consent Form, they would have consented to discontinuation out of sufficient consideration for his suffering.
But what about April?
Heidi nodded and spoke.
“Yes.”
……
“I think she will consent. April is the type to make clean breaks and clear decisions.”
“That’s true.”
Miller nodded.
Just then, as the two were speaking, an Imperial Guard knight rushed urgently into their presence.
The knight bowed to Heidi, then hurried to Miller and whispered in his ear.
“Commissioner Devin has just received word. Pejin Dieusz, the Security Director, has regained consciousness.”
“What?”
“He’s undergone three surgeries, and he cannot yet sit up. It will take a long time before he’s well enough to board a ship. But in any case, it seems he’s passed the critical point.”
“…Thank goodness.”
Miller forced himself to smile.
His brother, who performed heroic deeds to protect the citizens, had survived—what could be happier than this?
Yet he found it hard to smile convincingly enough to deceive people.
He was afraid.
He only now admitted to himself how terribly he dreaded Pejin’s return.
Miller spoke to the knight.
“Tell the Commissioner that I need to know exactly how long it will take before my brother can board a ship to the Grand Duchy. I should meet him at the Harbor when he arrives.”
“Yes, I’ll relay that at once.”
With those words, the knight hurried away, and Miller turned back to Heidi and spoke.
“Pejin’s awake—I should prepare him some gift or other.”
“Pejin’s awake? Really?”
“Yes, the boy’s so tough he managed to pull through somehow.”
After saying so, Miller clenched his teeth hard.
There was so much he had to do before Pejin returned.
* * *
April returned to Right Island without witnessing Pejin’s final surgery with her own eyes, and she threw herself into her work as much as possible to forget about him.
But it didn’t work.
The last thing she’d seen was Pejin’s breath stilled.
The emptiness that flooded through her when that small trace of life he carried simply vanished came upon her unexpectedly.
So you too are trying to disappear.
Why do all the people I’ve given my heart to always have their lifelines cut short like this?
Caught in such thoughts, April fussed at Bauman, who’d ridden with her in the carriage.
“Eat more salmon. It’s good for the heart.”
“I’m eating it diligently enough for someone who doesn’t like it, Miss.”
“You should eat it every day the way someone who actually enjoys it would. How can you be from Right Island and dislike fish? What are you eating then?”
“I understand—I’ll make sure to eat it from now on.”
Bauman stammered, trying to soothe April.
In any case, after collapsing once from a heart problem, April was the one who’d become most frightened.
Madam Eve had always been cool-tempered, so he was used to her scolding, asking if he wanted to collapse again. But when April, usually so composed, occasionally warned him to watch his heart—that troubled expression of hers was terrifying in a way nothing else was.
Of course, it wasn’t that he disliked these two people, whom he could say without exaggeration were the most cherished of all in the world, caring for him so much. Honestly, he thought himself blessed in his twilight years.
Watching her hand resting on her own knee, Bauman spoke.
“And you, Miss—please stop hurting yourself.”
At that, April wrapped her fingers—which had gotten a mild burn this morning from touching the hot Kettle hanging on the fireplace—in her other hand.
Recently, April had become careless. Most of her mistakes left scars on her body.
Bauman had also noticed lately that April couldn’t read the Newspaper.
The papers he brought her were always folded without so much as a crease from being opened. He suspected it was because she was afraid someone’s death might be printed there.
As the two exchanged nagging like a real family, the carriage they rode entered Brewery Village, which April had purchased. Following directly behind was another carriage carrying Shaper.
Upon arriving at the village, Bauman bustled about checking the lodgings where April would stay.
Shaper, who had descended from the carriage after April, spoke.
“So you’re asking me to… go into the liquor business?”
Shaper had wanted to avoid obeying his parents’ orders to go to the Empire, marry, and become a soldier there.
April had prepared a solution for that.
“I’m planning to sell this alcohol to the Empire. But the liquor from here caused many illnesses in Rasa, so it’s already been banned on both islands. Even if safety were guaranteed, to conduct business legally, I’d need connections like yours.”
“Serving as a soldier in the Empire is a great honor to my parents. To make them abandon that, it would have to be quite a large enterprise, wouldn’t it?”
“Regardless, I’m going to invest enormous sums in you. Enough to recruit a navy on Right Island.”
“You’re confident?”
“I don’t know about confidence, but I’ve finished my preparations. The result is in the hands of providence.”
“It certainly looks like your preparations are solid.”
Shaper laughed lightly at the organized state of the village April had arranged.
It showed not the slightest lack in her ambition to seize a share of the Empire’s liquor market.
A distillery of enormous scale, such as had never been seen before on Right Island, was being constructed.
Shaper asked,
“What if that liquor is still contaminated even after the Factory shuts down?”
“Then I’ve made a bad investment.”
April answered matter-of-factly and headed toward the Research Laboratory, where Kritz was studying the groundwater flowing into the village.
Inside the laboratory, the air was thick with the smell of fermentation.
Kritz greeted April with a weary face.
“You’ve come?”
“How is it?”
“No significant changes yet. The alcohol is still showing high Contamination Levels.”
“I see.”
“But the reason I wanted you to come is… for the past several days, the weather has been unusually warm, and the accumulated snow hasn’t stopped melting, has it?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that by today, the groundwater would have been diluted by that melted snow, so I wanted you to come see it.”
April nodded, finding the logic sound.
Looking out the window, the day was indeed unusually warm.
Warm being relative—only slightly above freezing—but the fact remained that the accumulated snow was melting rapidly.
April spoke.
“Then let’s wait until we can check again.”
“Yes. We’re drawing up groundwater now, so we should have results soon.”

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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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