The Youngest Hides a Lot - Chapter 224

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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 224
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Rubian had turned five years old.
“I hate it!”
At the loud cry from the playroom, Leviathan rushed over at once. A wail that seemed to tear the air followed immediately after.
“Waaaaaahhhhh!”
“Miss Sortie!”
I had been in the middle of a conversation with the Count in the reception room of Count Camelan’s Mansion when the Maid spoke with obvious distress.
“Oh dear, it seems the young lady is in a foul mood. She was playing happily just a moment ago, but then suddenly pushed Miss Sortie…”
“Waaahhhhh!”
“Don’t cry, Titi.”
Count Camelan lifted the wailing Sortie into his arms.
“Rubian, you… Why did you do that?”
Leviathan exhaled a short sigh and lowered himself to meet the child’s eyes.
Though she seemed somewhat shy around strangers, I had been relieved to see her getting along well with the younger Sortie.
Yet now, for some reason, the child stood there with her lips pouted like a duck’s bill, huffing indignantly.
“No matter how angry you are, you shouldn’t push your friend. Apologize and say you’re sorry.”
“No! I hate Titi…!”
“What? You…”
I was at a loss for words.
Though she had a playful streak, she was generally a gentle child. That’s why I had rarely seen her act so stubbornly and unreasonably.
“Count, forgive me, but I need a moment alone with her.”
Leviathan decided to take a firmer approach.
After the Count left and only Rubian remained with me, I furrowed my brow slightly.
“You won’t apologize? What is this behavior?”
“N-no… Titi is stupid. She’s a crybaby…!”
“Look at me. What exactly upset you so much? You need to explain properly for me to understand. And how could you push a friend who’s younger than you like that?”
As my voice grew stern, the child who had been pouting dropped her head low.
Plip, plip. Water marks spread across the carpet.
The child’s brows furrowed as she cried silently. I desperately wanted to embrace her right then, but I held back.
Then, as Rubian swallowed her tears, she murmured something.
“Dad is… so kind…”
Her voice was broken by hiccups with each word, revealing just how sorrowful she felt.
“What did you say?”
“Dad is so kind, but Titi, whenever she sees Dad, she just cries and cries!”
…Huh?
“He’s not even a ghost! I hate it! I don’t like it! Our dad isn’t scary at all… Rubian loves Dad so, so much… It’s just so frustrating… Waaahhhhh. It’s so frustratingggg…!”
In the end, it was a fit of sobs.
Watching Rubian shed tears and blow snot bubbles, Leviathan let out a helpless laugh.
Where on earth had she learned to say something was frustrating.
At the same time, I recalled how Sortie had wept as though fainting when she first saw Leviathan.
I had brushed past it by simply stepping aside, but the child seemed to have taken it deeply to heart.
“This is maddening.”
How could I even scold her like this?
I swept my hair back and laughed helplessly.
“What am I going to do with you?”
“Wahhh.”
“You’re right, it was Father’s fault. Now stop crying, understood?”
Leviathan finally pulled Rubian into his embrace to console her.
“But you shouldn’t push your friend like that. Next time, Father will, um…”
“What?”
“Wear a teddy bear costume, so don’t do that again. Understood?”
Leviathan spoke with utter confidence, oblivious to what the actual problem was. Rubian, clever as she was, furrowed her brow slightly but nodded anyway.
“Okayyy…”
“So now you’re going to apologize to Miss Sortie, right?”
Rubian whispered as she wiped her eyes with the back of her small hand.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
I chuckled and rose to my feet. I was thinking of giving the warm child some water.
“Father.”
“Hmm?”
“Does Father hate Rubian? For crying? For pushing Titi?”
Leviathan brushed the child’s forehead.
“Does Rubian hate Father when he gets angry?”
“Yes!”
An immediate answer.
“I don’t like scary things! When Father raises his eyebrows like this, it’s scary. Like when he tells me to eat bell peppers… And also, um. Also when he tells me to eat bell peppers!”
“I see.”
“But… I like him again right away! It takes like… 10 seconds?”
Leviathan raised his eyebrows at the two hands spread wide open.
I poured water from a pitcher on the tea table and brought it to her lips; she drank eagerly like a baby bird, gulping rapidly.
“10 seconds? That’s the longest and scariest moment in the world, isn’t it?”
“Ha. Really? Then let me try to shorten it…”
I laughed again.
After all the crying and fussing, the child’s eyelids had grown heavy. As I patted her back gently, Rubian rubbed her drowsy eyes.
I wiped the water from her chin and pressed a kiss to her round head.
“Rubian, Father loves you without a single moment of absence.”
Every day, every hour, every minute, every second. If I could split those seconds further, I would love you even more densely than that.
Without any waste.
In every moment that exists.
I will love you.
Even if we were to….
Drift slightly apart from one another.
“I love you, my daughter. I….”
Drip.
The sound of water clinging to my fingertips fell to the ground.
“My one and only….”
Only then did I realize what to compare the child to. Not a weapon, and certainly not food.
“…jewel.”
My one and only jewel, Rubian.
“I’m sorry….”
Leviathan collapsed to the ground, still cradling the child in his arms.
And he whispered once more the name he had called hundreds, thousands of times.
“Daddy’s sorry, Rubian….”
But I knew that wasn’t the child’s real name.
Just as this memory wasn’t real.
Because I had never given my daughter a name.
“A name? I gave her one because I hated ‘Seventh’!”
“Rubian….”
“Daddy, why are you crying?”
The child, drowsy just moments before, startled and touched Leviathan’s face.
I gazed at the bright child’s face with a devastated heart.
A face I knew, yet did not know, was there before me.
Five-year-old Rubian….
There was no way I could have known her.
Rubian taking her first steps—there was no way I could have known her.
Rubian crying in her cradle, Rubian just born, opening her eyes for the first time.
There was no way I could have known her.
“So this was it….”
The time I lost.
My lingering regret, my own weak darkness.
“Daddy couldn’t do this for you, I’m sorry, Rubian….”
Drip.
The sound of water droplets falling. From somewhere, a soft and warm mana blew like a breeze.
I had known all along.
That I had to return. That my reality was not this.
But. But….
Here, I could fulfill everything I had promised.
I wanted to be the first to show you the names of spring blossoms blooming in profusion.
In summer, I wanted to swim together in the beautiful Southern Sea, and in autumn, I wanted to gather dry fallen leaves and make bookmarks and such, laughing without worry. And what else could there be. Winter….
Yes, I thought I should carve a sled for you with my own hands in winter. Though I don’t know if you would grow up to be a child who loves sleds.
And the Northern Region would be bitterly cold, so I would have the finest furs made into clothing for him. For that, I would need to hunt diligently, bit by bit….
“Ah….”
Leviathan found himself alone once more.
The warm mansion was gone, the sunlight was gone, the scenery was gone, the child was gone.
He lay prostrate in nothing but an empty void.
Sorrow descended upon him like darkness.
Losing a child meant this—that all these days he had taken for granted would never come. That all the tomorrows he had counted on would never arrive.
Only promises he could never keep remained in that hollow space. Pain had always existed as a connector through every moment of his life, never as an ending.
What exactly have I been robbed of?
As the dream shattered, reality crashed down like a wave.
【 You will be robbed from me again and suffer eternal defeat. 】
Like the Mage King’s letter….
What was helplessly taken from me eighteen years ago.
Was it Rubian?
‘Please.’
Say it isn’t so.
“Please!”
He cried out in anguish from the darkness.
All manner of memories tangled together.
Memories from the Human-Beast War.
The horrifying corpses of dark beasts and soldiers. Black blood flowing like rivers and acrid smoke. A blood-red sky. Screams that tore at the ears. The cruel cold or heat that touched the skin.
‘Because I was robbed of you….’
Did you end up in that hell because of me?
Beneath the suffocating weight of this truth, he would rather flee back into illusion.
That was when it happened.
Father! Father!
At the desperate voice calling for him, Leviathan lifted his head.
Get away! Move!
“Rubian?”
He blinked in surprise.
Now that he thought about it, there had been a warm, blue aura enveloping him all along.
That gentle force pulling him away from the illusion….
Father! I’m here!
The moment he realized, the scene shifted with a whoosh.
It was the Iosia Border Town.
A desolate battlefield scattered with the corpses of dead beasts and fallen soldiers.
The child stood in the heart of that bleak hell, rummaging through the pockets of the dead.
The haphazardly cut silver hair and tattered, filthy rags struck him like arrows.
This memory too was one of his weak lingering attachments.
Leviathan called out to the child, feeling as though his heart was being torn asunder. As he handed over dried meat and brushed the dust from the child’s hair, blue eyes looked up at him.
“Uncle, is the war really over?”
Leviathan gazed down at the child in silence.
“Yes. It’s over.”
He added something more, though his throat felt tight.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t come sooner.”
I should have come to find you myself.
Instead, I made you come searching for me again.
The child clung desperately to his garments as if determined to follow him. Seeing those thin, small hands, he could hold back no longer and pulled Rubian into his arms.
Perhaps it was a false memory created by the illusion magic….
Yet he was grateful for it.
If only he could return to this moment.
He had always regretted not holding Rubian like this, always.
He stroked the pale, faded hair of his young daughter and pressed countless kisses to her dry cheeks.
“It must have been hard, coming to find Father.”
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry….
In that moment, the child in his embrace laughed softly.
No.
This isn’t Father’s fault.
A blue wind blew.
With that gentle breeze, the surrounding landscape began to fade away one by one. Corpses, dark beasts, ruined villages, darkened skies, foul odors….
Where the remnants of the past had vanished, radiant and beautiful mana swirled instead. The mana surged in powerfully, driving back Leviathan’s darkness and filling every corner of him as if purifying him.
The child in his arms had grown steadily and now reached his chest.
‘Ah, I understand now.’
He realized it.
This was his painful memory, but at the same time.
It was also the memory of when everything began.
And….
‘Rubian showed me this illusion to call me back.’
To return.
To not lose my way.
Now that he thought about it, he had once taught Rubian the names of spring flowers.
They had splashed happily together in the Southern Sea, trampled fallen leaves together in autumn, and every winter he had watched with joy as the child rode the sled he had carved.
‘Let’s go back.’
He straightened his hunched body. Though he was already standing, it felt as though he were rising.
Father. I came to meet you!
Rubian, now grown to his chest, laughs.
Leviathan looked down at his own hands.
In hands that had been empty, a single sword to protect what was precious now rested.
‘Let’s go back.’
So I won’t lose it again.
To protect it.
There are times when I falter before the anguish of my past, yet wrapped around me with equal weight is a love that sustains me…. My damned reality.
Leviathan slowly raised his arm and swung his sword. There was no hesitation in his motion as he tore through the phantom that had imprisoned him and stepped forward.
“I’ve been waiting, Rubian.”

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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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