The Mansion Awaits Spring - Chapter 56

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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 56
Pejin watched April’s hand, which had now gone completely still, then lowered his gaze to meet her eyes—eyes that had been fixed on the floor.
“There was something there, I think. At the banquet, when you lay in the snow.”
“Why are you trying to confirm that?”
“I’m curious. Whether it’s just a little fondness, or whether you’d actually do something for me.”
Pejin thought he wanted her to lose all feeling for him entirely.
He wanted to become so worthless that when she made decisions, she would consider everything in the world first, and only then think of him last.
After all, there was no future between them anyway.
And yet, at the same time, he wanted to remain in some corner of her heart. Even if only very small.
“So? How much is it?”
Faced with his persistent questioning, April grew unexpectedly calm.
After finishing her treatment, she tilted his chin up to meet her eyes directly, which he’d been bowing to see before.
Pejin gazed at her intently.
April spoke.
“I can say one thing for certain.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not the one, but someday I might have someone I love. But that’s not really important to me.”
The Lunos family head and his wife, and the family matriarch as Pejin remembered them, all shared a common quality.
They were unyielding.
They were all steadfast, never bending easily.
This had been her most defining attitude from the moment she took her first steps, from when she learned to dance with Pejin, and even when her betrothed broke his promise and committed treachery.
April continued.
“The Dieusz Family disgraced the Lunos name. I will take the fullest revenge I can manage. Whether my feelings are love or hatred or despair makes no difference to me.”
Because he knew her nature, Pejin found her words persuasive now. They were exactly what she would say.
And yet Pejin spoke.
“You only get one life. You know the state of your territory as well as I do. Even if, by some miracle of luck, you somehow restored the Lunos Territory to its former glory—you’d already be at the end of your days by then. What joy is there in that?”
He realized he was making an argument that didn’t suit her nature, so he expected April to grow angry.
But instead, she burst out laughing. It was a laugh like fire.
She spoke.
“Pejin, my parents were executed before my eyes.”
Pejin stilled.
“Will there ever come a moment in the rest of my life when I could forget that, when I could have joy without that memory?”
……
“If I gave up on vengeance, I don’t think I could forgive myself.”
For the first time now, Pejin felt as though he were meeting April Lunos all over again.
He had thought the April Lunos he remembered had vanished—ever since their first meeting this past winter, he’d believed that consistently.
But she was always exactly the April Lunos he remembered.
Cold by nature, trained in justice, that training sometimes showing itself as kindness.
So hateful there was no reason to hate her, yet he hated her anyway; so devoid of beauty yet beautiful; and his own feelings had somehow fallen in line with hers.
That young April Lunos.
Pejin, knowing she would not be easily swayed by something as trivial as love, felt reassured. So he laughed along with her.
When April, whose enormous rage had burst forth as laughter, felt Pejin laugh in response, she suddenly felt as though her entire body had plunged into lake water. Her rage cooled with surprising speed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I wonder why I hated you so much. When we were young.”
“That’s simple.”
“It was because you didn’t acknowledge me? Pathetically enough.”
……
“Listen.”
Pejin lifted his head.
He abandoned what he had been about to say—about the Fog, about the witch.
April was the sort who would rush straight to the factory the moment she learned the truth about the Fog.
If that happened, he would have to kill her.
There was no other way. If, by some chance, her devotion to her family could make her turn a blind eye to the Fog’s secret, it would still be a problem for Pejin.
It would be adding another weight to the ankles of someone who already couldn’t feel joy in life.
Pejin spoke to April.
“If the Lunos Family were to put Trading Ships back to sea, how far could we escape the influence of the Empire?”
……
“It’s just a question. Something we hear here and both forget.”
April felt the fine hairs all over her body stand on end.
“…… You’re an Imperial officer. If I told anyone what you just said—”
“Yeah, someone from the Empire would come to kill you. But you won’t tell anyone.”
“Because you think I have feelings for you?”
When April asked, Pejin shook his head with a slight chuckle.
“I’m saying this because you’ll understand it means I’m going to help the Lunos Family. Because you need it.”
……
“Because you won’t be swayed by love. Unlike me.”
April stared at Pejin’s pale face with a dazed expression.
Pejin continued.
“Tell me what you need for the Funeral Ceremony.”
“Flowers. A great many flowers. But the Harbor is all owned by the Grand Duke. I have no way to import that many flowers.”
“I’ll bring them. With my own money.”
“Why would you?”
“In exchange, you put Trading Ships to sea. You must. So you can bring Food Supply.”
“Food Supply?”
“Yes. In case the Empire completely cuts off contact with Right Island, so we can survive even if we’re in Isolation.”
“You.”
April asked with a hardened face.
“Do you think we’re already isolated?”
Pejin met April’s eyes directly. And slowly, he nodded.
“Yes. That’s what I think.”
……
“For quite some time now, I think it’s been that way.”
……
“If the Food Supply from the Empire is cut off, the wealthy will be fine, but most of the common people will starve.”
When she heard Pejin speak those words,
April was thinking the exact opposite of what he was saying.
The boy she had known—Pejin Dieusz—had completely disappeared.
His face was still beautiful, but the person had changed greatly.
April, having laid bare her own life to Pejin, watched him for a long moment before speaking.
“You’ve changed a lot.”
“I thought the opposite. That you were exactly the same as before.”
“That’s because—”
April nodded and spoke.
“You grew up meeting many people, being influenced by many. I didn’t.”
“That’s true.”
When a person’s character is formed, every moment of their life paints upon the foundation they were born with—but April’s life hadn’t afforded her many such moments.
The most shocking event of her life had only made the character she was born with that much harder.
After they had said enough, a brief silence fell.
By then the tea had steeped gently, and April, with practiced hands, poured it into both her cup and Pejin’s.
Pejin spoke.
“Sitting on the floor like this makes it feel like we’re doing Pretend Play.”
“Oh, I let you join in a few times, didn’t I…… What role did I give you?”
“A dog. Or, if I was lucky, a lady.”
At Pejin’s quick answer, April burst out laughing.
After Pejin wet his throat with tea, he protested.
“You find that funny? Do you know how humiliating it was?”
“Why ‘if I was lucky’ a lady?”
“At least you let ladies speak. Dogs got corrected when they did.”
At Pejin’s grumbling, April recalled childhood memories and laughed for a long time—a laugh that pulled her drained, exhausted self up from the floor by sheer force.
April spoke.
“When you think about it, we were…… friends, in our own way.”
“I hate to admit it, but we were close enough to call it that.”
Anything more than that hadn’t been permitted anyway.
Friends was already quite enough.
Both of them thought it was, in its own way, acceptable.

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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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