The Mansion Awaits Spring - Chapter 206

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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 206
Once she leaned against him, she couldn’t straighten herself again.
With April still leaning on him, Pejin carefully wrapped his arms around her, then laid her properly on the bed, drew the blanket neatly over her, and lay down beside her.
April spoke.
“You can’t fall asleep.”
“I won’t. I told you—I’ll leave the moment you’re asleep. Don’t worry, just rest.”
“Is that… all right?”
April murmured.
With Pejin beside her, her body began to thaw bit by bit. She could exist in a state of complete exhaustion. For April, who had been acutely wary of her own collapse, this was a feeling she hadn’t known in a long time.
Just as she was wondering if that’s why Pejin too would fall into deep sleep beside her, he spoke.
“All this time, you’ve done so much work and carried so much worry. Even that was originally the Grand Duke’s House’s burden, but it fell to you. You didn’t turn a blind eye to it. So from now on, please let me bear it.”
He stopped there, took a breath, and continued.
“As for Daisy Hass, the Grand Duke’s House will provide compensation. She saved the citizens of the Grand Duchy, after all. We’ll give her a proper funeral. Her children are fourteen and ten—both will receive educational support and grow up as the children of a hero.”
……
“And regarding the hospital bills for the patients, I’ll have the assembly handle it when we return.”
April felt comfort in knowing that Pejin too understood the many matters she had been attending to in this harbor. And with that relief came sadness, and then a heaviness of spirit.
Ever since her release from confinement, she had spent most of her time in a kind of numbness.
Only after resolving what needed to be resolved did she stand at her room’s window, look out at the Fiefdom, and let her emotions surface. And even then, she urged herself on by remembering that these feelings shouldn’t be fully unleashed for the sake of this Fiefdom, this Lunos Family.
But now Pejin was thinking through the very things she believed she had to do.
Of course, these were matters Miller should have handled in communication with her long ago. If the two of them had married earlier, this cooperation would have begun much sooner, surely.
Even now, having it happen this way gave her support. Only now did she truly understand why the marriage of the Lunos Family’s daughter and the Dieusz Family’s son had been necessary for this island.
Though her eyes were closed and she lay perfectly still, Pejin somehow knew she hadn’t fallen asleep and didn’t leave the bed.
Sleep, which seemed never to come, poured over her at last.
April murmured in her sleep.
“Pejin.”
“Hmm?”
“For a little while…”
“Yes.”
“Should we live together for a little while?”
As she asked, Pejin answered neither laughing nor too hastily.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Let’s live together for a little while. I’ll pack my things and come to the Lunos Grand Residence. We’ll live there.”
……Yes.
“If it seems you want me to leave, I’ll go without making a fuss. You decide when it starts, and you decide when it ends.”
Pejin’s answer came to her distantly, through the haze of sleep.
* * *
Pejin moved as he had said he would.
The people of Lunos Harbor stepped forward one after another, saying they would raise Daisy’s sons as a whole village. There were certainly good neighbors capable of caring for the children.
A couple who had been Daisy’s neighbors and had gladly looked after her two children whenever she went to work offered to take them and raise them.
But the older boy had decided to enter a boarding school.
The eldest son, now fourteen, stood in front of the neighbors’ house with his ten-year-old brother clasped tightly in both arms, trying to comfort him.
Whether by fortune or misfortune, Daisy had made sure her children remembered that she, a sailor, could go out to sea at any time and never return. She had explained firmly what they should do in her absence.
So the two boys, weeping all the while, were gradually accepting death.
After the eldest comforted his younger brother by saying he’d be back soon, he ran to Pejin, who had been waiting for him. Together they boarded the carriage, and for a long time the boy simply stared down at his own hands resting on his lap.
To such a boy, Pejin asked.
“Why did you decide to go to school?”
The boy then wiped away tears that fell one by one with the back of his hand and spoke.
“It seemed like something my mother would want. She always wanted my brother and me to learn more.”
“That’s true—parents on Right Island are quite eager for learning.”
“Mother loved the sea very much, but she didn’t want me to become a sailor. So… I think when she finds out I’ve gone to school, she’ll be happy, even from the sea.”
“Yes. Of course she will be.”
“Did Mother save many people?”
“Yes. Very many.”
The boy nodded and looked at the Medal of Honor he held tightly in his hand, his mother’s name inscribed upon it.
When he received this medal in his mother’s stead, the boy came to understand exactly what his mother had done.
The boy began to cry aloud.
Pejin handed the boy a handkerchief, and even after they arrived at the nearby boarding school, he remained in the carriage and waited until the boy’s tears subsided, not stepping out.
Just as April had once comforted him when he was young, he simply remained at his side.
And so the boy, like Pejin then, quieted his own tears.
Only then did the boy step down from the carriage and, returning the handkerchief to Pejin, asked.
“Why did you wait for me when you’re so busy?”
“I had no other way to offer my gratitude to your mother.”
……
“Once more, I too wish to offer my thanks as one of this island’s citizens.”
Pejin placed a hand over his heart and bowed deeply to the boy.
The boy, still gripping the Medal of Honor tightly in both hands, nodded. Then, exhaling a breath tinged with tears, he turned toward the school.
* * *
News that April had evacuated the citizens of the Grand Duchy reached the Emperor before the ship itself arrived on Right Island.
The Emperor fell into a rage, and the nobles of Grand Ducal origin within the Imperial Palace trembled with dread.
For now, they were not granted 2nd Class Citizenship. But given the current mood, one couldn’t know when the Emperor might suddenly change his word and reduce them further.
Though the Emperor held supreme command of the Army and Navy, most military councils were conducted under the purview of the Ministry of War.
With the Emperor’s displeasure, there was no one in the Imperial Palace at ease.
Officials and generals gathered in the Ministry of War began speaking one after another. Then one official asked.
“How does April Lunos possibly possess enough money to move Riuru’s ships?”
At that question, the people in the room fell silent for a moment, mouths shut.
That part was the crux of the problem.
No one had an answer for how she had moved two Riuru vessels, much less induced them to act against the Rasa Empire itself.
Leslie Ragnar, the Chief of the Police Department who had been listening, spoke.
“Hasn’t this clarified things? We don’t even properly understand Right Island, let alone the precise assets of the Lunos Family’s Head of House. Under such circumstances, we cannot rashly begin a war.”
At Leslie Ragnar’s words—the only one here consistently to hint at opposition to war—protests erupted from all sides.
After the chair’s mediation, an official from the Army Ministry gained the floor and spoke.
“Do you call that argument? The military strength of the Rasa Empire and the Grand Duchy are so vastly different that comparison is laughable.”
Then Lian Ragnar, the Police Commissioner, countered.
“What if the Lunos Family’s Head of House does as he says and actually detonates that residence? If fog really does form?”
At that, the Army Ministry official let out a derisive laugh.
“If they make such a foolish choice, it would work in our favor. How would fog cross the Strait? If it did, only the Grand Duchy would be destroyed—wouldn’t that be to the Empire’s advantage?”
The officials in the conference room applauded in agreement with the official’s words, which represented everyone’s sentiment. They were confident in this, but they also didn’t want to cross an angry Emperor.
Yet Lian Ragnar remained resolute.
“The Police Department’s position is clear. I cannot speak for the military branches, but our first duty is to protect Your Majesty the Emperor and the Empire’s citizens. The Police Department will not risk the danger of fog crossing here—not even if the probability is one in a thousand, one in a hundred.”
After Lian spoke, chaos erupted once more as the others criticized the Police Department’s “absurdly excessive caution.”
Agreement was reached that punitive measures were necessary against the Grand Duchy for its defiance of the Imperial Edict.
The conclusion: bombardment.
It was a punitive action for defying the Imperial Edict, and a bombardment to gauge the Grand Duchy’s response.

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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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