The Villainess Duke Lady Hides Her Identity - Chapter 14

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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 14

Reportnya watched Fellens hold out the chocolate and candy in his palm. There was such a glut of sweets that the smell had turned cloying.
She’d thought he was driving out all the servants to pick a fight.
Instead, he’d suddenly snatched away the figs and honey-pickled apples she’d been enjoying and shoved the chocolate and candy at her instead.
Then he said he’d stand watch, so she should eat quickly while he kept a lookout.
“Give me back my figs and pickled apples.”
“What? Not the chocolate and candy?”
Fellens spun around, his voice carrying the pitch of disbelief.
“You seriously don’t know what this is? Never had chocolate or candy before? Well, Father’s so obsessed with health that there’s no way he’d give you this kind of thing. Come on, try this. Once you taste it, you won’t even look at your figs and apples.”
“I know what they are. Buddy gave me some once, and I’ve tried them.”
“You’ve had them? And you still want the figs and apples?”
“One or two pieces are fine, but too much gets tiresome.”
Reportnya selected exactly one candy from the heap and set it aside.
“A five-year-old who practices restraint when faced with chocolate and candy—you’re the first one I’ve seen. I ate chocolate in secret from Father at your age and got sick.”
“Is that why you gave me all this—hoping I’d get sick?”
“No. You’d need to eat for hours to get a stomachache from this much.”
…Now Reportnya was starting to understand why her brother still hadn’t graduated from the Academy.
“I’m still a patient.”
Five-year-old Reportnya spoke with businesslike precision.
“Patients need to eat properly. If the doctor finds out you’re eating nothing but chocolate and candy, there’ll be trouble.”
“That’s exactly why I said I’d keep watch—so no one sees us.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you?”
“What?”
Fellens faltered. In that moment, Reportnya retrieved the figs and honey-pickled apples he’d taken and pierced one neatly with her fork, speaking as if it were nothing.
“You’re not on my side anyway.”
She hadn’t called him “sir” like yesterday, but she hadn’t used his name either. And calling him “brother” felt wrong.
Of course, before she’d grown younger, Reportnya had been twenty and Fellens twenty-three, so he was her brother by age.
‘If I call him brother, it feels like I’m completely stealing this pseudo-daughter role from someone. That bothers me.’
Reportnya was at best a few years’ substitute—at worst, a matter of months.
“You think I’m a con artist.”
Reportnya popped a pickled apple into her mouth and spoke matter-of-factly.
“You came to drive me out, didn’t you?”
There was no point dancing around it.
Reportnya tucked a honey-pickled apple into each cheek and mumbled her question.
‘Funny—with food bulging both cheeks like this, my tongue has more leverage and my mouth opens wider, so my pronunciation is clearer.’
She’d have to practice her pronunciation this way every time she had a snack from now on.
Reportnya chewed her pickled apple methodically, seized by an odd notion.
“What exactly are you? You’re talking to me like this even after knowing what you know?”
As if exchanging one expression for another, Fellens’s eyes turned cold.
“Reportnya Kraitan. I told you that yesterday.”
Reportnya murmured her name absently. After introducing herself so many times, the Kraitan surname felt quite fitting trailing after her name.
“…You little thing. You don’t understand yet how heavy that name is.”
Fellens’s voice dropped to a chill.
Tap-tap-tap.
With a face gone rigid, Fellens emptied the chocolate and candy from his palm onto the table. It looked like he was discarding them—or like a sandcastle crumbling.
“You’re right.”
Fellens sat down across from her, propping his chin on his fist.
“So I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the mansion quietly, without making a fuss.”
Reportnya chewed her pickled apple methodically and said nothing.
“If you promise to go quietly, I’ll sponsor you until you come of age. A safe, clean house goes without saying—and if you want, I’ll even send you to the Academy. I’ll make sure you don’t want for anything until you’re an adult.”
“Say that after you graduate.”
Five-year-old Reportnya pointed out the flaw cleanly to adult Fellens.
Fellens’s face crumpled.
“I haven’t graduated because I haven’t chosen to, not because I can’t! I could graduate on the next exam if I wanted.”
“Oh.”
Reportnya nodded.
“Wouldn’t that be a decent proposal for you too? So when were you thinking of leaving—”
“But I have no intention of leaving.”
Reportnya cut Fellens off mid-sentence. At her words, his face darkened visibly.
“Why? It’s warm and pleasant right now.”
“It’s not as though I don’t know the weather. Why are you talking about leaving home as if it were just a casual outing?”
Reportnya shook her head in disbelief, then cut a fig and placed it in her mouth.
The soft flesh of the fig burst against her tongue, releasing its juice in a sweet flood across her palate.
Yes. Fruit really does taste best when it’s fresh like this.
“When I offer you patronage, you’d do well to defer to my wishes, little one. What if I threw you out this very moment?”
Fellens threatened her in a menacing tone. Had Reportnya actually been five years old, she might have agonized over the proposal.
‘So he means to cast me out first, then change his mind later?’
But Reportnya was not five years old.
‘Besides, if I can just find a way out and leave, I’ll be free to live as I please. I won’t even need patronage.’
Reportnya studied Fellens carefully.
‘He’s different from the rumors.’
Everyone said he was selfish, moody, an unpredictable ruffian who made people walk on eggshells around him. There were even whispers that if he was in a foul mood, you risked a beating that would leave you half-dead just for catching his eye.
“Still, you won’t be able to throw me out.”
“What? Ha, you’re confident, aren’t you, little one.”
Fellens sneered.
“The fact that you’re so certain of that tells me you must have something to rely on. You used the word ‘swindler’ yourself just now. Did whoever sent you here warn you absolutely never to leave?”
Fellens narrowed his eyes sharply, as if he had pierced right through her.
“I already explained the reason to you. Did you forget it already?”
“What? What reason?”
Fellens asked, his voice laced with threat. Reportnya blinked her eyes innocently.
“I’m still a patient.”
The sharpness drained from Fellens’s gaze in an instant, his eyes softening.
Right. She knew exactly what kind of reaction that would provoke.
Even Fellens, with his vicious reputation, apparently couldn’t bring himself to treat a five-year-old child harshly.
“You were going to throw out a five-year-old patient?”
“Ha. You make it sound like I’m some kind of monster. That’s not what I meant. I just… forgot about that. Ha.”
Fellens ran a hand through his hair, contorting his face. His blue eyes darted about uncertainly, as if searching for some counter-argument that wouldn’t come.
She’d been injured on Kraitan Mansion grounds, and the culprit might well be among the family—he’d have to let her go eventually, yet he seemed to feel a sense of responsibility regardless.
‘The fact that he feels indebted to me is a good thing.’
Among all human emotions, wasn’t a sense of debt the weakest?
‘He’s softer than I expected.’
Reportnya’s expression remained impassive as she finished eating the honey-pickled apple.
“Hey, little one.”
Fellens spoke to her again as he watched her.
“Why don’t you call me brother?”
Reportnya tilted her head thoughtfully.
“You’re my brother?”
“What?”
“You’re not my brother. You don’t even think of me as a pseudo-daughter.”
Reportnya spoke flatly, as though accepting her position—as though she understood that everyone except the Kraitan Duke regarded her as something other than family.
She answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“How could I presume to address you, the second son of the Kraitan Household, so casually?”
Calling him by name felt too familiar, and the title of brother didn’t suit someone who wasn’t family.
“Besides, aren’t you going back to the Academy? You haven’t graduated yet.”
“Hey, little one. That graduation business… ha, I’m telling you, I’ll graduate on this next exam. I’ll graduate as the top student, just watch.”
“We’ll see.”
“What? You think I’m stupid and can’t graduate? It’s not that I can’t—it’s that I haven’t…”
“It’s not that. It’s just that I don’t know if I’ll still be here when you graduate. I could die in an accident, leave, or get cast out.”
“What? Hey, what kind of talk is that—”
“The future is unknowable. I never imagined I’d be here in such a fine mansion, wearing fine clothes, eating fresh fruit, being called a pseudo-daughter.”
At most, she’d only planned to slip in as a servant—who could have predicted becoming a pseudo-daughter?
“So because the future is uncertain, you won’t even call me by any name while you’re here?”
“Using your name feels too familiar, and I don’t want to use that title.”
Fellens’s brow furrowed. He was supposedly speaking to a five-year-old, yet somehow a wall had risen between them. There was something wrong about the emotions in the words this five-year-old spoke—or rather, the complete absence of them.
They were faded, worn thin like an old cloth, stripped of all dreams and hopes. What remained was merely creased, weathered despair and resignation.
And this was all that a five-year-old possessed of emotion.
“…Did I really become this numb? I don’t think I was ever this bad before.”
“Hm? What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Fellens shook his head.
“Still, you ought to have some way to address me. Like you said, who knows what the future holds, right?”
“Then… what should I call you?”
“Use my name if you want something intimate, and if ‘brother’ bothers you, then ‘little one’ works fine—or make up whatever you like. …Look, the sunlight here is too bright.”
Fellens gestured to the maid standing quietly beside Reportnya. Startled, the maid hurried over with a parasol open, moving toward Fellens.
“What are you doing? Not me.”
Fellens pointed his chin toward Reportnya. Only then did the maid notice the sunlight streaming directly onto Reportnya’s arm and quickly shielded her with the parasol.
“Didn’t you know there was a fire in her bedroom? The child might have burns—you need to keep the sun properly off her.”
“I—I’m terribly sorry.”
“If you can’t do your job properly, write your resignation and leave.”
Fellens leaned back against his chair with an irritated expression and closed his eyes.
‘So the rumors about his terrible character aren’t just hearsay.’
Reportnya felt relieved that she still had the appearance of a five-year-old and pondered this silently.
“Then… senior?”
“…What?”
Fellens, leaning against the chair, raised his torso as if utterly taken aback.
“Hey. Is that how family members address each other?”
“We’re not even family—why do you keep saying we are? You told me yourself there’s no family here for me.”
“…You’re really good with words, aren’t you?”
“And you said you were planning to send me away anyway. Why do you keep fixating on what to call me?”
Fellens faltered.
“…I suppose so.”
The strength drained from his voice. Reportnya, who had been eating a fig, glanced sideways at him.
“Maybe I’ve gone mad like my father. Or perhaps your face reminds me of someone.”
“My face?”
Reportnya rubbed and smoothed her face, and Fellens simply laughed. Then, as if nothing had happened, he spoke with sudden vigor.
“In any case, I’m not your junior, am I? Right?”
“…But you said just before you’d sponsor me, and if I wanted, you’d let me attend the Academy too? Then ‘junior’ isn’t wrong, is it?”
Faced with the five-year-old’s perfectly logical counterargument, Fellens found himself speechless.
“I tell the juniors at the Academy not to call me that because it creeps me out, you know?”
“Hmm. So you don’t like it?”
Reportnya asked carefully, reading his mood.
Seeing the five-year-old gauge his feelings, Fellens felt a sudden distaste rise in him. He let it all go and closed his eyes again, leaning back against the chair.
“Fine. Just call me whatever you want. Senior, junior… what does it matter anyway?”
“Okay, senior.”
Reportnya smiled and finished the remaining honey-pickled apple.
With nothing more to say and nothing left to do, Fellens remained at her side, eyes closed, keeping her company.
Until Reportnya had eaten every last fig and honey-pickled apple.

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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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