The Youngest Hides a Lot - Chapter 72

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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 72
* * *
Several days had passed.
From the moment I returned to the Zebert Mansion, I fell ill with a mild fever. Eventually, at Zebert Duke’s stern insistence, the physician from Zelocks was dragged all the way to Ipson.
I learned the details of the kidnapping case’s conclusion through fragments of adults’ conversations I caught while drifting in and out of sleep.
Licht, Titi, and Olivia all returned home safely, and the criminals were arrested and sent to prison.
Asha was nearly implicated as another suspect in the kidnapping for approaching the girls, but thanks to the testimony of Licht and the other children, she was barely cleared of suspicion.
I simply lay in bed, sleeping continuously, as if trying to replenish the strength that had drained from me.
“It appears you’ve caught a cold. You should rest well for several days….”
After examining me thoroughly, Borbel concluded that I’d caught a cold from being caught in the rain.
A cold.
When I finally released the tension I’d been gripping so tightly, a cold could indeed find its way to me like this.
Half-awake and half-asleep, I felt the cool sensation on my forehead and thought hazily.
Why won’t the fever break?
Why do I keep crying?
Someone’s anxious voice buzzed faintly in my ears.
It was strange. While I was ill, I kept crying. It seemed tears flowed because the fever had concentrated in my eyes, but….
To be completely honest… every time Father’s hand touched me, tears would fall.
“Suddenly calling him Father? That feels a bit off.”
“Why? You were happy enough when we adopted him.”
“Well, that’s true, but the child doesn’t act like a child.”
“That’s a fair point.”
“Always reading the room, always calculating—it feels somehow cunning somehow. It’s not what I expected.”
Memories from my past life came crashing down like a whirlwind.
I wanted to refute the voices flowing through the crack in the master bedroom door.
You were the ones who made me walk on eggshells. If that’s how you felt, you should have just bought a doll.
But not wanting to return to the orphanage, I only looked down at my feet before turning away. In the end, it was nothing but a meaningless gesture.
“Children with experience of being returned need to be embraced with even more love, they say.”
When my second parents’ words flowed through an internet broadcast, I was wandering a dark alley, clutching my hungry stomach.
Still, they were kind parents who didn’t openly despise me.
“I’m sorry. Life has become too difficult for us to keep you.”
“You… didn’t really like our house anyway, did you? Among all the children, you were the only one who wouldn’t call us Mom and Dad. Because of that, the broadcast became awkward….”
I was not an object you could borrow and return when you no longer needed me.
Even then, I wanted to scream that, but I held it in. Holding things in was my daily routine.
After two returns to the orphanage, it was around that time I became absorbed in a novel I happened to read there.
A protagonist who plants a sword in a desolate wasteland where everything is lost and rises once more. I felt an inexplicable tenderness and comfort in that image.
Could I too rise again someday?
But I had neither a sword nor anything else.
I was too weak and insignificant to endure the harsh winds that blew across the earth….
I read and reread Part One, which featured Leviathan, as if questioning my own existence. That’s why when Leviathan died, I wept bitterly beneath my blanket.
‘If I were you, I would have felt wronged.’
To struggle through a harsh life only for it to end in a meaningless death.
‘That’s why I wanted to protect you….’
Perhaps that’s why I was reborn into this world.
Honestly… I was a little happy about it.
Becoming a character in such a cruel world was certainly difficult, but it felt like I’d been given an opportunity to change something.
So from that Battlefield onwards, little by little….
Very gradually, I decided to help you….
….
….
‘Wait?’
In that moment, a doubt crept into my wandering consciousness.
‘When I returned to the Orphanage….’
I had returned my phone, and the password to the shared computer had been changed, so I couldn’t use it.
‘Then where did I….’
Where on earth did I read that novel?
That’s when it happened.
No, wait.
With a voice I recognized, the illusion shattered in an instant.
What unfolded before my eyes was endless darkness.
Not yet.
In the midst of the darkness, a single bright light floated gently.
‘Who are you? Why are you speaking inside my head?’
I asked, then realized.
I knew that presence. It was the power of magical knowledge that existed in my mind—the entity known as the Wisdom of Wizeria.
‘What do you mean “not yet”?’
Because the time hasn’t come yet. But… yes, I think it’s time to return this memory.
The light flared brilliantly. I squeezed my eyes shut as the spreading luminescence engulfed me.
The surroundings spun, then suddenly stopped.
Back to a moment in my past life.
I was sobbing beneath the blankets of my Orphanage bed. My phone’s light glowed brightly beside my pillow.
Why was I sobbing?
Because the protagonist I loved had suddenly died.
Why did he die so suddenly?
That was….
The fog that had been obscuring everything finally lifted.
Now I could answer that question.
‘Because he was murdered.’
“The price of defying our King shall be severe.”
Dressed in white priestly robes, with a brand seared into his right forearm….
To the Kingdom Mage Order.
* * *
Kalid slowly opened the bedroom door.
He approached the sleeping Rubian, treading as silently as possible.
In the moonlight streaming through the window, I could see beads of cold sweat glistening on her round forehead.
“….”
He glanced around, found a damp cloth, and gently wiped her brow. Rubian whimpered softly, caught in what seemed to be a nightmare.
“Don’t hurt.”
Kalid clenched his lips tightly and carefully took hold of her fingertips.
“…If you’re in pain, I don’t know what I’d do.”
He gently infused his mana into her, yet Rubian’s furrowed brow refused to ease.
“I’m sorry. Because of me….”
I promised to protect you.
Yet I made you endure hardships you never should have faced.
Kalid exhaled a low sigh, consumed by self-recrimination. And then.
“…Kalid?”
Rubian’s eyelids opened silently.
“Are you alright…. Your eyes….”
A fierce crimson radiance swirled violently within Rubian’s irises.
Kalid’s brow furrowed involuntarily.
Whenever Rubian wielded Wizeria’s power, her eyes would turn red like this—drawing magic beyond her limits from the Sea of Wisdom, that vast reservoir of magical knowledge.
Thanks to this, Rubian grasped even the most intricate magical circles with ease, and occasionally manifested equations that defied all logic without hesitation.
In the Kingdom and on the Battlefield, her power had always been activated to its absolute limit.
Because of this, most of them believed Rubian’s eyes were a deep ruby color.
For someone in hiding, perhaps it was fortunate….
“Damn it.”
Kalid’s insides twisted again.
‘I never let her rest for a single moment.’
It was as though he had always exploited her strength. Perhaps that was why Rubian’s growth had stalled.
Merely recalling that fact made him feel as if rage would consume him.
“…Kalid.”
Her voice emerged, heavily laden with sorrow.
“Don’t strain yourself. Did you have a nightmare?”
He grasped Rubian’s fingers. She lifted her sleep-heavy gaze.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll be right here. Or should I call Zebert Duke instead?”
At those words, her small shoulders seemed to flinch. Her eyes, which had swiftly regained their blue radiance, now glistened with transparent tears.
“Why are you crying? Are you in pain?”
Rubian shook her head.
“In the dream… I died.”
“Who?”
“Leviathan….”
Kalid faltered.
“A mage killed him…. But I don’t know who…. I can’t figure it out….”
Rubian rambled in a faint voice.
“Rubian, calm down.”
“I have to find out….”
Kalid assumed Rubian was still delirious from fever, wandering between dreams and wakefulness.
He quickly pushed his mana into her.
Rubian, who had been muttering incoherently, lost consciousness again and her eyes fluttered shut.
“I have to save Leviathan….”
When I pressed my forehead, the searing heat returned. My head drooped heavily. It had been far too long since I’d felt such helplessness.
“I really wish I could suffer in her place.”
Self-recrimination and fury crashed over me simultaneously.
If I could, I would have hung myself upside down.
It wasn’t that I lost you at that hot spring….
For the young boy, it was a long, endless night.
It was a long, long night for the Young Boy.

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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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