The Snow Leopard Baby of the Black Leopard Family - Chapter 235

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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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Side Story 3
It was a small Knitted Hat.
Though incomplete, left unfinished mid-stitch, it was unmistakably a baby’s hat.
As if someone had been preparing it for a child about to be born…….
The moment Tiel discovered the hat, she felt an indescribable emotion surge through her chest.
“……Mother?”
Tiel reached for the unfinished Knitted Hat with trembling fingertips and lifted it.
Cassius, who had been watching his daughter quietly from beside her, placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke.
“I think she was knitting it when she was in Nestian. Rena was never much good at needlework, so she probably never got around to finishing it in time.”
Cassius drew Tiel close with one arm, his warm eyes fixed on the tiny hat.
“Tiel, your mother loved you dearly. Everything Thender said was a lie—no one has ever loved you as much as your mother did.”
Tiel nodded.
How could she not understand that?
Though her mother was no longer in this world, she had been the one person who made Tiel realize, time and again through countless ways, that she was loved.
And if Tiel was honest, she was grateful that her mother’s knitting had been so poor.
‘If she had finished this hat and put it on me, Grandfather would have thrown it away for certain.’
Because it was an item Rena never got to give her, Thender must have kept it safely here.
The baby’s hat that should have been completed and placed on its rightful owner had ironically found its way back to her precisely because it remained unfinished.
After carefully taking the baby’s hat, Tiel looked around Rena’s room a bit more before turning back to Cassius.
“Father, let’s go now.”
“You can stay a bit longer. Though I suppose you’ll be able to visit often soon enough.”
Tiel shook her head.
“We can come back another time—this is enough for today. And…… truthfully, there’s somewhere I want to go right now.”
Cassius, who had been standing before Rena’s portrait, nodded.
He waited for Tiel’s words to finish before taking one last look at the girl in the painting.
Then he moved to Tiel’s side and stood beside his daughter.
“All right, Tiel. I’m curious where you want to go.”
Tiel and Cassius crossed the room and placed their hands on the door handle.
The backs of the two figures leaving the room suited it perfectly—as though they had always been its inhabitants.
Yet Thender, who had spent his life maintaining this room, could never shake the feeling that he was an outsider here.
***
While Tiel explored the room, Cassius stood before Rena’s portrait.
The painting was so lifelike that it seemed as if the girl in it might leap out at any moment and throw herself into his arms.
Rena Nestian.
Cassius’s first love, his wife, and the last woman he ever loved.
Even now, he could see her clearly as he had on that first day.
When he first met her, when he first took her hand, when he first held her small frame, when he first pressed his lips to her warm and soft mouth—it all remained vivid before him.
Every moment spent with Rena seemed to have happened just yesterday.
And yet.
‘Now you are gone.’
Now Rena was no longer here, and Cassius remained alone.
There had been a time when that fact had felt devastatingly, unbearably terrible.
There had been a moment when Rena’s absence from this world had given him reason not to go on.
Had Rena Nestian seen him in such a state, she would surely have laughed at him mercilessly.
She was a strong woman, after all.
Had she seen her husband clinging to her memory in death, she would have been furious—what foolishness was this?
At the thought of her, Cassius gave a low, soft laugh.
And he murmured.
“I still feel that way sometimes, Rena.”
A world without you doesn’t feel right. It feels as though I’ve lost something vast and vital.
But.
‘It’s not without meaning.’
He still had the children Rena left behind—beloved ones.
Ferdi and Ludian, and Tiel—they were still here in this world.
Though Rena was gone, the children born from her and Cassius’s love held his heart and comforted him.
That alone was reason enough to keep living.
This world still held meaning, and there was still much for Cassius to do while he remained.
So.
‘Wait for me a little longer, Rena Nestian.’
I must watch with these eyes to ensure our children live safely, and I must be at their side whenever they have need of their father’s protection as they grow.
There is still much left to do, so I must wait.
‘Wait for me, my beloved wife.’
Cassius gazed at the portrait and smiled softly.
‘And forgive me for not finding Tiel sooner.’
Then he spoke the words he had put off saying.
The hardness that had gripped Cassius’s face until his encounter with Thender had quietly melted away.
His eyes full of love, he gently touched the frame.
‘How frustrated you must have been these seven years, watching this inadequate husband search blindly for his own daughter.’
In that moment, Cassius felt as if he heard a voice from somewhere—’Yes, absolutely maddening!’
Then it was.
“Father, let’s go now.”
Cassius turned to look at Tiel.
There stood a daughter who had grown taller than he remembered.
The small child who barely reached his waist when he first knew her had grown so much she was now calling for her father.
She must have been even smaller when she was first born.
Small enough to fit entirely in one hand, perhaps.
As Cassius imagined the moment Tiel first entered this world, his lips curved into a soft, warm smile once more.
He approached with affection and stood beside his daughter.
Meeting her eyes, he spoke.
“All right, Tiel. I’m curious where you want to go.”
***
Tiel climbed the Nestian residence’s stairs with familiar steps.
The staircase, the long corridors—nothing had changed since then.
Yet if something had changed, it was that climbing these stairs no longer felt difficult.
Tiel and Cassius passed the landing and continued upward, heading toward the very top of the Nestian mansion.
There, the Attic stood.
The coldest and most remote corner of this vast manor.
The Attic, tucked into a recess so far removed that no one’s gaze could reach it.
For a moment, Cassius’s face stiffened subtly, but Tiel stood with her back to him and did not see it.
Tiel stared at the firmly closed Attic door for a moment, then brought her palm to its surface.
And gently pushed it open.
Creak…….
The door opened easily.
Tiel opened the Attic door and carefully stepped inside.
“Ah…….”
And she sighed softly.
The Attic was exactly as she remembered it.
Cobwebs still hung from the ceiling, and wind still seeped in, making it bitterly cold.
But if something had changed, it was that dust had accumulated heavily on the floor since no one lived here anymore.
Back then, Tiel had lived within these walls, so dust hadn’t gathered in her living space.
The same was true of the small window where she used to look outside—there too, dust had not accumulated when Tiel lived here, for the child had constantly wiped it with her sleeves. Now it was so dirty the outside couldn’t be seen through it.
Which meant that since Tiel escaped from this place, no one had been confined to the Attic in the Nestian mansion.
Tiel was relieved by this fact, yet at the same time, she felt a little sad.
Cassius, who had remained standing behind her all this while, placed a hand on Tiel’s shoulder.
“Tiel, this place…….”
“This is where I lived, Father.”
Until she was seven years old, when she escaped the mansion with Iandros’s help and went to Asterian.
If she hadn’t escaped then, Tiel might still be confined here even now.
Tiel’s gaze turned toward the Attic’s most remote corner.
That was where she had curled up every night to sleep.
In that moment, she saw before her eyes the image of a young Snow Leopard, curled into a ball as it slept.
The young Snow Leopard, seemingly cold, lay with its tail in its mouth, still occupying that corner.
That was the Tiel of long ago.
Tiel from a time when this Attic was her entire world.
In truth, Tiel had been confined in this Attic for a very long time.
Though she escaped when she was seven, she still found herself thinking of this place often, just as she had told Thender before.
That meant Tiel had never truly left this narrow Attic behind for a very long time.
Yet.
‘Not anymore.’
Tiel gazed at her younger self, curled up and watching her intently.
And she carefully used her Ability.
Brilliant light bloomed…….
The brightest, warmest, and gentlest light in the world filled the cold, narrow Attic.
‘I am no longer trapped here.’
Tiel’s Ability, now taking the form of a fish with long, flowing fins, flooded the Attic with radiance.
‘I escaped from here.’
And no one could ever confine her in this place again.
Not even Tiel herself.
And the moment she understood that truth.
“…….”
The image of the small Snow Leopard visible only to Tiel’s eyes scattered like starlight and vanished.
And it never appeared in that place again.
‘So there’s no need to cry anymore.’
Tiel withdrew her Ability and bade farewell to the child she once was.
It was something only she could do, something she had to do.
‘Goodbye, my childhood.’
For only Tiel herself could soothe the wounds of her own heart.

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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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