The Villainess in the Childcare Story Doesn’t Hide Her Personality - Chapter 45

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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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Isobel’s face flushed crimson.
“I-I would never accept anything from someone like Noah Ark!”
Interesting.
I caught the revealing slip in Isobel’s words.
A phrase that reeked of wounded pride.
‘So she truly never accepted anything from Noah Ark.’
It seemed she did have some principles of her own.
Though they appeared to be the shallow sort—accepting gifts from those of sufficiently elevated nobility.
“Is that so?”
I nodded slowly.
“Never received anything? Truly?”
“Never!”
I hummed thoughtfully.
“Noah Ark boasted about his connections everywhere. He claimed to have them in the Finance Ministry too.”
I held Isobel’s gaze as I continued.
“But for now, I’ll take your word for it.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t accept anything!”
With that final protest, Isobel hurried away in a fluster.
Her retreating figure oddly resembled Noah Ark’s own hasty escape.
“The Vice Director certainly has a mischievous streak.”
Director McGarvin, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke.
“But it’s refreshing nonetheless.”
I let out a soft laugh.
“I wouldn’t have done this in the past.”
Back in my Finance Ministry days, I would have handled it through proper channels and settled matters with gentle words behind closed doors.
Though ‘gentle’ was merely my own interpretation, of course.
But being cast out had taught me something.
No matter how graciously one conducts oneself, refusing to participate in sordid affairs earns you the reputation of having a sharp tongue—and the label of villainess.
Today especially demanded a harsher approach.
So that next time, Isobel wouldn’t dismiss my reports carelessly.
So that I wouldn’t send another Hans Noark through unchecked.
“The Vice Director has grown considerably.”
“I’m hardly a child. What growth are you speaking of?”
“Everyone grows.”
Director McGarvin looked quite earnest.
“I myself have learned much from you these past months.”
* * *
Hans Noark.
Once a dapper figure whom everyone acknowledged, he had become the very picture of a pauper.
The lustrous fur coat that once adorned him now hung in a pawnshop to cover his fines, and the gold rings that once crowded his fingers had vanished entirely, leaving only swollen bare digits.
A week had passed without a proper bath, not even a wash—my body reeked.
In my former days, when I’d douse myself in expensive perfume twice daily, I could never have imagined such a state.
‘Tessa Harrington… It’s all because of that woman!’
Her ruthlessness knew no bounds. Closing the Orphanage wasn’t enough—she’d meticulously seized every coin I’d earned on the side, leaving me with nothing.
I’d begged the inspector to arrest me instead of confiscating my money, but he’d merely looked at me as though I were vermin.
Baron Pecho, and even my uncle, refused to take my calls anymore.
Noah Ark continued to drink.
Only when I guzzled cheap beer—the kind you could buy for a coin or two—did the suffocating rage that gripped my chest finally ease.
“One more!”
“Pay for what you’ve already drunk first.”
“Wh… What…?”
“Completely wasted.”
The tavern owner clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
“You’ve been guzzling for three hours straight. Pay up now, or I’ll throw you out.”
“I… I’ll pay! Just give me another drink!”
But the drink never came. Instead, the owner’s rough hand seized my coat.
“What’s this? It’s completely empty.”
“….”
My head spun dizzily.
I was certain I’d had money.
I quickly patted my waist. I always kept an emergency coin purse there.
‘…Did I get robbed?’
My emergency purse had been lifted by some pickpocket long ago—a fact I’d failed to notice, so thoroughly drunk had I become in recent days.
Realizing I didn’t have a single coin, the tavern owner’s face flushed crimson with fury.
“This bastard drank for free!”
Large, brutish men rose from various corners of the tavern and began moving toward me.
Before I could even comprehend what was happening.
Crack.
A fist slammed into my jaw.
Crack, crack.
Even as tears welled in my eyes and my vision turned blood-red, the blows didn’t stop.
“Get out. If I see your face around here again, I’ll break your legs next time.”
I was hurled bodily out into the Alley beyond the tavern.
With tears, snot, and blood coating my face, I wailed.
“Y-you’ll see… I won’t end like this. My great-aunt was a viscount’s daughter…!”
Whether my deceased great-aunt had been a viscount’s daughter or a duke’s daughter mattered little now—she couldn’t save me from this.
Sprawled on the alley floor, I wept bitterly for some time.
‘…?’
A familiar silhouette passed in the distance—one I’d tried to forget but could never truly escape.
Walking briskly in a neat bureaucrat’s uniform, growing smaller with each step—the enemy I would hate for all my days.
It was Tessa Harrington.
‘That woman.’
Noah Ark hauled his battered body upright. Where the strength came from, he couldn’t fathom—moments ago, even walking had been agony—yet he found himself pursuing the retreating figure.
Alcohol, rage, pain from the beating, and terror.
As these forces converged, Noah Ark’s reason shattered completely.
Without understanding what he truly wanted, he chased after Tessa Harrington.
Blood dripped in his wake with every step.
‘Catch her… catch her… I’ll have my revenge!’
The beggar-like man limping forward, blood streaming from his wounds, drew stares from passersby, yet none dared intervene.
It was obvious at a glance that something was profoundly wrong with him.
Naturally, no one imagined he was pursuing the ordinary Imperial Bureaucracy official walking ahead.
After turning through a couple of alleys, the strange pursuit finally ended.
Tessa Harrington stopped before a modest building.
A Three-Story Brick Building with only a few small windows puncturing its facade.
To anyone’s eye, it was a rental dwelling for commoners.
‘Here… she lives here.’
For a woman who had carried herself with such arrogance while cornering him, her residence was pathetically humble and unremarkable.
Moments later, a faint light flickered in a second-floor window.
A twisted smile crossed Noah Ark’s lips as he committed her address to memory.
‘Hehehehe, now that I know where she lives…!’
Stripped of his fortune and severed from all connections, Noah Ark currently possessed no means—by any method—to harm Tessa Harrington.
In his current physical state, he couldn’t even overpower her through brute force.
Yet his shattered mind failed to register this reality.
Then.
From the window that had glowed with only faint light, an intense amethyst radiance burst forth, casting a massive shield emblem across the entire alley.
‘…?’
Noah Ark’s foggy mind suddenly cleared as if mist had lifted.
‘That… that is…!’
The owner of that shield emblem—something even commoners would be branded a spy for not recognizing—was…
None other than House of Cardicha.
‘Wait.’
Noah Ark was seized by panic.
The alcohol evaporated from his system in an instant.
‘Wait, wait, wait, wait!’
That radiance meant a wide-range communication artifact.
Even when he’d been wealthy, he’d only glimpsed such things a handful of times—he’d never dared dream of possessing one.
And on top of that, the emblem of House of Cardicha.
‘An Imperial Bureaucracy official… communicating privately with House of Cardicha? Unless she’s a spy for the House, how could she possibly have something like that?’
Noah Ark’s thoughts spiraled toward an inevitable conclusion.
‘…Her dismissal from the Finance Ministry was a cover! She deliberately lowered herself to completely evade surveillance…!’
This isn’t some weakness of Tessa Harrington’s.
Rather, considering Grand Duke Cardicha’s reputation, I couldn’t let anyone discover that I knew this terrifying truth.
Even if I could use this fact to bring down Tessa Harrington, I’d be eliminated by Grand Duke Cardicha immediately afterward.
No one would protect someone like me—a commoner in all but name, despite my noble lineage.
As Noah Ark barely stumbled out of the alley on trembling legs,
“Ugh!”
My foot caught on a stone, and I crashed hard, my already battered face slamming against the pavement with a sickening crack.
Searing pain tore through my entire face, yet I ran and ran still.
Swearing to myself that I would never again venture anywhere near Tessa Harrington.

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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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