The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 17

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 17

“It’s okay, Mom. I’ve been doing very well all this time. I made lots of friends too. Look, I’ve grown up so well like this.”

Rita smiled brightly and clasped her mother’s hands. The Countess looked up and down at Lillieta’s beautiful appearance without a single scar, then smiled with reddened eyes.

“Thank goodness… Our daughter, you’re so beautiful. You’ve grown up so beautifully. Thank you for growing up so well on your own. Mom should have, Mom should have been by your side, but I couldn’t…”

The Countess’s face, which had been smiling, gradually contorted. She burst into tears and pulled Rita into her arms.

“Lili, sob, Mom is sorry, Mom should have properly protected you when you were little, but Mom lost you, sob, because Mom couldn’t protect you…”

“No, it’s not Mom’s fault. Don’t cry, I came back safely like this, okay?”

Rita stayed in the Countess’s arms until she fell asleep exhausted from crying.

Leonhardt, who had been quietly waiting at the door, spoke to Lillieta as she turned and came out.

“Are you sincere?”

“About what?”

“About having been doing well all this time.”

“I am sincere. Why? Doesn’t it seem like it?”

When Rita asked back in puzzlement, Leonhardt silently wiped the corner of his mouth. She tilted her head in confusion, then remembered the patchouli incident and went “Ah.”

“Is it because I went wild in front of the Dressroom?”

“…”

“Come to think of it, I couldn’t explain properly then. Do you want to hear why I did that?”

“If it’s not a difficult story to tell.”

“It’s nothing much. Let’s go to my room and talk, Brother Leon.”

When Rita took a step toward the Guest Room, Leonhardt tried to stop her. Rita reflexively swatted his hand away and took a defensive stance.

“…”

“…Ah.”

Leonhardt stared blankly down at his swatted hand. Rita awkwardly scratched her cheek.

“Sorry, Brother. This is, um, a habit. When approached from a blind spot, I automatically…”

“…Lili, shall we go to your room?”

“My room?”

“You can’t stay in the Guest Room forever. Let’s go to your room. It’s the room you used as a child, so it’ll need redecorating, but… I had it cleaned up this morning, so you should be able to use it temporarily.”

“Good.”

The siblings silently left the Annex and headed to Lillieta’s Room in the Main Mansion.

The room that had been preserved by magic for 10 years had the magic lifted and was neatly organized by Leonhardt’s order during the morning.

Rita looked around the cozy room with fresh eyes.

It felt completely different from a few days ago when she had seen it while her memories were stolen. Each item held memories and brought the past back to life.

She passed through curtains draped in layers of pink and yellow and sat on a yellow sofa with rabbit-shaped ears.

Looking closely, even the carpet was light pink. Rita let out a hollow laugh and muttered.

“Right, I really loved pink and yellow back then.”

“You loved rabbits too.”

Leonhardt said, gesturing toward a rabbit doll as big as a small child placed on the bed.

Rita looked around at the various small rabbit dolls piled around that big rabbit, the rabbit ears on the sofa, and even rabbits living in the fancy dollhouse in the corner, then smiled softly.

“Right, I loved rabbits so much too.”

“Not so much now?”

“Well… I’d say it’s closer to ‘I don’t think about it at all.'”

Colored pencils were scattered on the table in front of the sofa. Seeing a sketchbook with an unfinished drawing reminded her of how she used to love drawing as a child.

‘I wasn’t very good at it. I can’t tell what I was trying to draw.’

She absentmindedly gathered the scattered colored pencils and put them in a gold-decorated wooden box open next to the sketchbook. Leonhardt, who was sitting across from her, flinched.

“What?”

“…No, it’s nothing.”

Rita looked down at the colored pencils she was organizing with fresh eyes.

‘Come to think of it, the family left these without organizing them.’

She looked at the sketchbook again. Only then did Rita realize what she had been drawing 10 years ago.

‘I was trying to make a congratulations card.’

Young Lillieta had been drawing an academy graduation congratulations card for Leonhardt who would return soon. But time got late, so she fell asleep with the sketchbook open, and disappeared that night.

And the family had kept everything intact without touching even a single colored pencil she had carelessly thrown around.

What feelings made them leave it as it was? Imagining it made her chest ache.

Rita took out the colored pencils she had been organizing and held them. She wrote letters over the frame she had clumsily drawn 10 years ago.

Congratulations on graduation!

“This is what I was drawing.”

When she tore out the drawing paper and held it out, Leonhardt fell silent. He quietly stroked the colored pencil drawing for a long time before asking.

“What did you draw at the bottom here?”

“Our family welcoming you home.”

“…”

“I drew it so badly you couldn’t tell, right?”

“No, you drew it very well.”

“Liar. You didn’t know what I had drawn until I explained it.”

“…Right, I actually didn’t know.”

He slowly stroked the drawing again, then drooped his eyes and muttered.

“I was so curious about what you had drawn last… Now I finally know.”

Rita watched her eldest brother staring intently at the crude drawing, then picked up the colored pencils again. She clumsily drew a bizarre monster on blank drawing paper.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a named magical beast called Mimic.”

“Named…?”

“Particularly strong magical beasts are given unique names to distinguish them from ordinary magical beasts. Those are named magical beasts.”

She took out a red colored pencil and colored around the Mimic’s mouth as she continued.

“This one was exceptionally good at disguising itself as a human, so it was named Mimic. When it was first discovered, it had 172 victims, and for three years after that, it devoured thousands of people without being caught.”

“What a terrifying creature.”

“Of the initial 172 victims, 8 were colleagues from my squad. One of them was my… friend.”

Rita drew a circle inside the Mimic’s wide-open mouth.

“The sight of the Mimic rolling that kid’s head around in its mouth like candy is still vivid in my mind.”

Leonhardt’s complexion turned pale. Rita put down the colored pencil and continued.

“The smell from that time was the first patchouli scent I ever encountered.”

“Patchouli scent? From a monster?”

“Magical beasts emit their aura while digesting the people they’ve eaten. Usually only people sensitive to energy can detect it, but particularly strong auras become scents that anyone can smell.”

Rita wrinkled her nose.

“It’s similar to the patchouli smell. It’s the scent that named magical beasts emit while digesting humans. When that smell appears, it means there’s a powerful magical beast nearby that has just devoured a person.”

“…So that’s why you attacked the maid?”

“I can’t let my guard down just because something looks human. There are quite a few magical beasts besides Mimic that can wear human skin. But there are almost no magical beasts that can hide the patchouli smell. Thanks to that, I’ve ingrained the habit of immediately attacking anything when that smell appears.”

Rita shrugged and tore out the monster drawing, crumpling it in her fist.

“But it’s okay now. Od… I mean, I can now use the special ability I used where I lived before. With that power, I can distinguish between humans and magical beasts, so I won’t attack innocent people again.”

Leonhardt picked up the crumpled drawing that Lillieta had put down. He unfolded it and looked at it, then raised his head.

“Lili.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you live fighting these kinds of things all the time in that world?”

“Well, that was my job.”

“You said you belonged to a place called Beacon. Like a mercenary?”

“Um… I’d say between a mercenary and a soldier. Our squad generally chose missions autonomously and took civilian requests, but we still had to obey headquarters’ orders. We also performed the duty of defending the Last Line of Defense.”

“Since when? You’re 22, right? How old were you when you started that work?”

“I started training at 10 and was sent to the Last Line of Defense as soon as it ended, so from age 12?”

“…”

The sound of grinding teeth could be heard. Rita wore a bitter smile.

“Don’t get so angry, oppa. It might sound strange, but cases like mine weren’t uncommon there. Besides me, there were several other recruits around twelve years old. All our squad members were kids who enlisted between the ages of 12 and 14.”

“Damn it, they sent children to fight monsters like this? What kind of insane world is that…?”

Leonhardt couldn’t hold back and cursed. Rita replied calmly.

“It was a world where the sun’s fire had gone out, two-thirds of the world was occupied by magical beasts, and clear skies and seasons had disappeared. Inside the Last Line of Defense, even the rats had been hunted to extinction, so starving people devoured each other, and beyond the Last Line of Defense was a hell where you couldn’t even breathe with your bare body.”

“…”

“It’s a place that can’t be understood by the common sense of this peaceful and beautiful world. There, my situation was actually pretty decent, so you don’t need to get that angry.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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