The Morning Star Baby Wants a Family - Chapter 4

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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 4
Hae-na could only blink stupidly.
She must have misheard him. Yet she lacked the courage to ask him to repeat himself.
Hae-na turned his words over in her mind again and again, her eyes widening as she asked.
“Then, then does that mean…”
“….”
“Is Tamlang Seongggun… my older brother?”
Seowan fell silent for a moment, meeting her gaze—those eyes gleaming like the sunset itself.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does!”
In that instant, Hae-na cried out, her fear momentarily forgotten.
But her boldness faded just as quickly.
Watching the child’s eyes dart nervously back to him, Seowan exhaled a low sigh.
“You became a traitor as a member of the Yeon Family because I abandoned you there.”
“….”
“Had any other soldier found you, you would be dead.”
Even as he recited this harsh truth, Hae-na’s expression remained serene.
Finally, Seowan asked directly.
“So why don’t you resent me?”
He expected to hear from her the same words he had once heard from his own mother.
It was inevitable, and so Seowan stood before the child prepared to accept that resentment.
“Well, that’s…”
But such innocent eyes.
Hae-na lowered her head, hesitating.
She fidgeted with the small hand clasped in his, then lifted her gaze once more.
“Still, you came looking for me… and you saved me.”
“I might not have.”
“B-but you did.”
Hae-na trembled as she spoke, her words tumbling out with quiet conviction. The child continued hesitantly.
“There was someone who gave me a name. Until two years ago, he was the chief steward of the household.”
At the thought of him, Hae-na’s expression dimmed slightly. She swallowed once.
“He always said I wasn’t abandoned. He was the first to find me, lying at the main gate—that man, the steward.”
The man known as Seo Chief Steward.
He had cared for Hae-na like a father, though everyone else turned away from her.
“The clothes I wore, even my swaddling clothes—they were all very expensive silk. The kind only a noble child would wear.”
He had done so to say I was a precious child, that I should be cared for well.
The steward had smiled brightly as he said these things.
“He said there must have been circumstances preventing my parents from raising me. But because they wanted me to live well, they left me that way, he said.”
As Hae-na spoke, her voice grew thick with emotion.
Seo Chief Steward had died two years ago.
When Hae-na was assigned to the Underground Facility, it was because I had noticed what was happening in the basement while caring for the child.
I earnestly dissuaded the head of the household.
It was because of my affection for the young master I had served since childhood.
But Yeon Ki-mun was no longer the young master I had known.
He killed the Seo Chief Steward to prevent information from leaking, and discarded the body without even holding a funeral.
After the Seo Chief Steward’s death, Hae-na was left alone.
Whenever she felt lonely and sorrowful, Hae-na recalled the words he had spoken to her.
That she was a precious child.
That her family, surely somewhere in this world, would wish for her to live happily.
‘Never forget that I too will always wish the same for you, Hae-na.’
Those were the last words the old man had given her.
Tears fell from Hae-na’s eyes as she bowed her head.
Seowan noticed the tears and furrowed his brows slightly.
Hae-na lifted her head, her eyes swollen and red.
“Isn’t that right?”
Seowan did not answer. Yet he could not immediately deny it either.
“It seems like it must be true. You recognized me the moment you saw me, and you brought me here…”
“….”
“If you had thought my death didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have done so.”
Hae-na continued speaking, her red eyes holding back tears.
“The old man always said so. That everything a person does returns to them. So on that day, I thought I was receiving my punishment.”
But then Seowan appeared.
The person who wished for me to live well.
The one who regarded me as a precious child.
“I was truly happy that you saved me then.”
Hae-na’s lips curved upward. Her smile, trembling through tears, made for an odd expression.
“Eight years ago and now… I am truly grateful.”
The child bowed deeply.
Her already small frame appeared even tinier as she bent forward.
Looking down at her, I felt a complicated emotion stir within me.
I had thought the child resembled me, but it seemed that was not the case.
Neither I nor my mother possessed even a fingernail’s worth of goodness. Yet here was this child, so pure and innocent.
‘She must take after her father.’
Perhaps, just as I was truly the child of Tamlang Seongggun, the promise Hae-na’s father had made to my mother was also truth.
Would it have been better to seek out the child’s father rather than leave her before the Yeon Family residence?
But regret cannot change the past.
“You owe me no gratitude.”
Seowan spoke curtly.
“Like the one who cared for you said, I too merely take responsibility for what I have done. So tell me what you desire. What reward do you wish for?”
At his words, the child lifted her head with a bewildered expression.
Seowan, uncharacteristically kind, added an explanation.
“It’s compensation for the suffering you endured at the Yeon Family. Tell me anything you wish. I will grant it within the bounds of my ability.”
Hae-na’s eyes widened in surprise.
Though uncertainty flickered across her face, Seowan did not retract his words.
“Then… would it be alright if I stayed here? I’ll do whatever work you ask of me. I don’t need wages either.”
At her answer, delivered after much deliberation, Seowan’s expression twisted.
“Are you asking me to use you as a servant in this Residence?”
At his cold response, Hae-na’s shoulders sagged.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Please forget what I said.”
Hae-na had nowhere to go.
If cast out alone into the streets, she could not fathom what fate might befall her.
It seemed he was indeed reluctant to employ a child from a traitor’s household as a servant.
‘What am I to do now…?’
As Hae-na began to despair about her future, Seowan’s voice reached her ears.
“I shall provide you with proper lodging.”
Hae-na, who had been staring at her feet, lifted her head in astonishment at his words.
“The compensation I promised you is far more than that. So speak of something truly worthy.”
Gulp.
Hae-na swallowed hard.
To be treated as a young lady rather than a servant was already beyond her station, yet he claimed this was not even the compensation itself.
‘What could I possibly ask for?’
His gaze was too piercing to answer that nothing was needed.
After much hesitation and deliberation, Hae-na finally voiced the greatest thing she dared request.
“Then… um… would it be alright if I called you sister?”
* * *
Seowan granted Hae-na’s request.
Though immediately after hearing it, he frowned as if he had heard something he shouldn’t have, and asked twice whether that was truly all.
But Hae-na nodded firmly, and Seowan eventually consented, albeit reluctantly.
She muttered something about adding a debt to settle, but Hae-na’s ears, overjoyed at her request being accepted, did not catch it.
Before long, the sun dipped below the horizon.
After Seowan returned to her quarters, Chung-yeon brought evening sustenance and changed Hae-na into sleeping garments.
It had been a day of countless trials.
She had thought herself dead, yet she lived. She had discovered the existence of a sister whose fate she had never known.
As she lay upon the bedchamber, tension released and sleep came swiftly.
“Sleep well, young lady.”
With Chung-yeon’s gentle words as her last memory, Hae-na fell asleep as if losing consciousness.
How long had she slept?
Hae-na felt brilliant light piercing her eyes.
“Mmm…”
Hae-na frowned and pulled the blanket over her head.
Yet the light remained harsh and unforgiving.
‘So dazzling….’
I stirred in my sleep, disturbed by the brightness seeping through the window.
‘What time is it?’
The sudden thought jolted my eyes wide open.
I gasped in alarm and bolted upright. Through the window, the sun hung high in the sky—far higher than it should have been.
Even accounting for early summer, it had to be at least the Hour of the Snake—nine to eleven in the morning.
‘I’ve lost my mind!’
I scrambled down from the bedchamber in haste.
Normally, I woke at the Hour of the Rabbit—five in the morning.
It was my duty to prepare meals for the children in the Underground Facility and keep that place clean.
The entire morning had slipped away. How hungry they must be.
As I moved about frantically, the room’s appearance finally registered in my mind.
This was not the cramped chamber with its worn bedchamber that I had occupied at the Yeon Family estate.
Sunlight streamed generously through the well-fitted windows, illuminating a space that was elegant and immaculate.
“Ah….”
Right. Of course.
My mind understood that my circumstances had changed, yet my body had not yet accepted this reality.
As I sank back onto the bedchamber with a heavy sigh, I heard movement beyond the door.
“Miss, are you awake?”

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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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