The Mansion Awaits Spring - Chapter 191

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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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Chapter 191
April gazed down at Pejin, who had fallen asleep with his face buried in her lap.
He’d said he’d taken a sedative, certain she wouldn’t come. He’d fought to stay awake, but sleep had claimed him anyway.
She gently freed his hands from where they were clasped around her waist. Even as she did, he didn’t wake.
As she considered leaving, Pejin stirred and softly gripped her collar again. It seemed he’d wake the moment she left the bed.
In the end, April simply lay down beside him and sought sleep.
“…You make it impossible for me to think straight when I’m around you.”
She spoke in mock reproach, touching his forehead lightly with one fingertip, then examined a wound on his cheek. It was faint, but it still bothered her.
“It’s a waste, isn’t it? How could anyone strike a face like this?”
April spoke candidly, then absently touched his closed eyelashes with her finger.
Even in sleep, he disliked it—his brow creased—and April found herself letting out a small, unbidden laugh.
As she laughed, she recalled something Pejin had murmured in his half-sleep.
“At first, it really wasn’t like that. I really just wanted to be a police officer. Come back to the Grand Duchy, create streets without thieves—that was my dream.”
But he couldn’t return to the Grand Duchy. That was pitiful.
When she woke after sleeping, it was morning.
Unwilling to wake him after such deep sleep, she sat by the window and gazed out at the sea beyond the glass. But as she waited, worry crept in—he still wouldn’t wake. Finally, she shook Pejin awake.
“Pejin, wake up.”
Irritated by her shaking, Pejin opened his eyes, then bolted upright when the soft winter sunlight streaming through the curtains hit him.
“What? What time is it?”
“It’s… one o’clock.”
“One? The middle of the night, or afternoon?”
“Afternoon. You were sleeping soundly. Ten hours straight.”
“I had two days with you, and I spent ten hours asleep?”
Pejin pressed his palms to his face with a sigh, then looked at April and asked, “My face is swollen, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Look carefully. It’s swollen. And that makes it cute.”
“You just look handsome.”
“Don’t dodge. Tell me if it’s cute or not.”
He’d heard “handsome” so many times in his life that it felt like mere deflection now.
April sighed while studying his face, then with a slightly mischievous expression, she pinched and stretched the cheek opposite the wounded one.
“This is a little cute.”
“Oh, is that so? I guess it’s easy to become cute.”
Pejin grumbled and pushed himself up. He took April’s hand and led her out, saying, “I have a full schedule but no time. So let’s hurry.”
“What schedule?”
“A date. You won’t remember, but I did something like propose to you the last time we met. It’s very important to me. So I need to create memories moving enough to make you accept it.”
“I understand what you mean, but…”
“So today, just follow my plans.”
“…It’s funny that you think I wouldn’t remember. It’s not like I’ve been proposed to multiple times in my life.”
Pejin stopped at her murmured words and turned back to face her.
April continued, seeing his momentary confusion. “Regardless of whether I accept or not, that was an important moment for me too.”
“…”
“It’s arrogance to think a proposal only matters to the person making it. It’s important to me too—an important decision. You’d made up your mind before you said it, but I hadn’t.”
“…Was that moment important to you?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself!”
As April’s voice rose, Pejin quickly pulled her into an embrace, stroking her back to calm her indignation.
“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
The fact that the proposal had been an important moment for her too made Pejin’s heart flutter.
Then he realized something more—that April had lain down beside him and slept too, even as he slept.
Pejin asked, “Why did you sleep beside me?”
“…What are you talking about?”
“I made a separate room for you, so why did you sleep beside me? Tonight.”
“How would you know that? I could’ve slept in another room and come back to wake you.”
“I would’ve woken the moment you were gone. I wouldn’t have slept through it.”
“I thought you might wake up.”
“What?”
“I was afraid you’d wake.”
“So you stayed beside me instead of leaving?”
“You’d have been annoying if you’d woken up.”
For all her matter-of-fact tone describing him like some unreasonable creature, Pejin laughed. Then he caught her hand and said, “Let’s go on a date.”
“What are we doing?”
“This is the Ragnar Family Villa. There’s plenty to do here.”
Following where Pejin led, April emerged into a verdant forest path.
She remarked with wonder, “It’s not cold at all, actually.”
“There aren’t many places in the world as cold as Right Island.”
Pejin spoke and offered his hand.
As they walked on, a gondola came into view—one that climbed the mountain.
The moment they boarded, the gondola swayed in the wind, and April gripped Pejin’s arm tightly.
“This is safe, right?”
“It should be. The Ragnar Family is second only to the Imperial Family.”
Pejin spoke, seating April beside him before sitting down himself. As the gondola swayed again, he caught the hand she’d clenched around his arm and said, “Don’t worry. If this falls, I’ll at least save you.”
“If it falls, we both die. That’s just how it is.”
“That’s hardly reassuring.”
“You don’t want to die with me?”
As April narrowed her eyes and asked this, Pejin laughed breathlessly and answered, “You keep making my heart race today.”
“What’s exciting about dying together?”
“Anything about doing something with you makes my heart race.”
As they bickered back and forth, the gondola, now stable, began its ascent up the mountain.
April gazed out the window and gasped in admiration. “Wow.”
It was a view she’d seen countless times. Yet somehow, the snow-covered forest looked fresh and beautiful to her now.
Right Island would already be approaching dusk, but here it was still afternoon.
In a world that seemed to exist for only the two of them, Pejin gazed at April’s profile as she looked out over the snowy landscape.
“April.”
“Hmm?”
When April turned, Pejin opened his mouth. “I want to go back to Right Island now. I think I’ve finished what I needed to do in Rasa.”
The war he’d desperately been forestalling had now been given a fixed date—it could be delayed no longer. So his words about finishing what he came to do held truth.
“Would it be so wrong if I went back to where you are? If you tell me to stay away, I will. I’ll keep my distance. But I want to live on the same island as you.”
Pejin looked at April quietly and asked again, “Is that not possible?”
For a long moment, April’s expression was unreadable as she thought. Then she asked, “Are you trying to become a police officer?”
“Yes. A Grand Duchy police officer.”
“Is becoming Logan’s junior really so distasteful?”
“That’s the biggest part of it.”
Pejin smiled faintly, playing along with her deflection.
After that, he didn’t press her. He waited quietly for her answer.
He hadn’t forgotten what April had said—that he’d betrayed them and should pay the price with his life on Left Island.
He could abandon anything to return to his homeland. If there was no place for him in the police force, he didn’t need any of it.
So the only thing he needed now to return to Right Island was one thing alone.
April Lunos’s permission.
* * *
When Heidi saw Miller take out a figurine that Pejin had made for him long ago, she smiled warmly and said, “I haven’t seen that doll in ages.”
“Right?”
Miller took out the figurine and gazed at it quietly.
After watching him for some time, Heidi spoke with difficulty. “Let’s go to the Empire.”
At her words, Miller turned to her, and Heidi continued, “I don’t have the confidence to stay here much longer. Like other Grand Duchy nobles, let’s go to the Empire and settle somewhere that isn’t the Capital City. We can raise the children there and live quietly. What do you think?”
“Somewhere that isn’t the Capital City?”
“Yes. I’ve made a lot of connections there. There’s a suitable place to settle.”
Miller was already exhausted.
The Emperor had begun constructing factories on the coast without his permission, and April was steadily expanding her power.
The fact that Heidi was visiting the Empire far too frequently was also painful.
What would happen to the position of Grand Duke after the war?
Miller had no desire to place himself—or his son—in that hopeless seat.
He looked at the figurine in his hands.
The only being who could replace his position.

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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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