Time Healer Ceres - Chapter 133

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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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At the sight of the man wiping his eyes with a trembling voice, Seres found herself stepping back without thinking. She’d never encountered someone quite like this, and conversation with him felt deeply unnatural.
“So what you’re saying is, you’re our parents’ close—”
“Jino.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Not ‘you.’ Call me Uncle Jino, won’t you?”
“I… well….”
“Uncle Jino.”
……
“Jino.”
“…Uncle.”
“Uncle Jino.”
“…Uncle Jino.”
“That’s right. I’m Uncle Jino. My goodness, our Seres has such a good memory. Tell her a name once and she remembers it perfectly.”
Not that it was just once—he’d kept pushing until she’d finally say it, hadn’t he?
‘What on earth is this man?’
Somehow she felt herself being drawn in deeper and deeper.
Thump.
“……!”
Seres, who’d been instinctively about to step back again, froze when she felt a hand settle gently on her head.
“You’ve worked hard.”
This time too, Seres found herself unable to say anything in response. She couldn’t even ask what he meant.
His eyes, fixed on her with the faintest of smiles, looked far too pained.
She was learning for the first time that a smiling face could look this sorrowful.
“Would you mind talking with me for a bit?”
Perhaps because of that man’s expression—Seres found herself nodding obediently, quite unlike her usual self, to his request.
* * *
“Our aunt?”
“Yes, that woman. Goodness, our Seres is so kind. You still call her aunt?”
The place where Seres had followed the Duke of Noroa was a Dessert Cafe near the Academy.
Having ordered every variety of cake on display in the shop, he kept pushing them toward her as if urging her to eat.
‘I’ve been noticing something since before…….’
Could it just be her imagination that this man kept treating her like a child?
Like bringing her to this colorful dessert cafe, or deliberately ordering milk from among all the beverages on the menu.
‘Of course, not only children like cake.’
Seres didn’t refuse the cake the Duke of Noroa handed her, working her fork across it.
“How much has our aunt been squeezing out of you?”
Then, hearing what the Duke of Noroa told her, the sweetness of the cake turned to ash on her tongue.
“The amount isn’t really the issue.”
“I think it probably is, though.”
So her aunt had been extorting money from this man all this time. She was divorced, hadn’t received alimony, was sitting in prison—and couldn’t give them a single coin of the compensation the court had awarded.
‘But now that woman has apparently been preparing another nest egg.’
Even after getting out of prison, she’d been carefully preparing her escape hole to the end.
“Ha.”
It was absurd.
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“Pardon?”
“There were two others.”
The Duke of Noroa pushed another slice of cake, with fresh strawberries piled delightfully on top, toward Seres as he continued.
“Yulia said she was ill.”
When Seres’s parents died in that sudden accident, all three dukes fell into deep contemplation.
Their hearts yearned to rush to the children of their bereaved friend, become their guardians, and care for them at once.
But all three dukes found they could not. Far too many enemies were watching for any weakness in the three houses that had long protected their respective regions.
Enemies from without were certain enough; from within, there were countless who eagerly awaited their misstep.
The moment they revealed their connection to the children, it was painfully clear that every single one of those enemies would target them.
“Your parents wouldn’t have wanted that.”
Few knew of the Duke’s friendship with Seres’s parents. Out of respect for their desire to live quietly, he had kept contact to a minimum, and deliberately remained publicly distant, making it seem as if even the friendship from his youth had long since been severed.
But now—to come forward as the children’s guardian, to make such young children into their own vulnerabilities—was that truly the right thing to do?
“Then someone came looking for us.”
“Don’t tell me….”
“Yes. That woman.”
Agnethe—Seres’s own aunt—had sought out all three Dukes in turn.
Having watched the bond between Seres’s parents and the three Dukes from childhood and knowing it well, she exploited that connection the moment the accident claimed both their lives.
She began extracting money from all three Dukes. When word came that Yulia was ill, they handed over the funds without hesitation.
“After all, she was the sibling of someone close to us. We felt a certain kinship.”
They harbored no real suspicion. From Seres’s parents, they had always heard that Agnethe was wonderfully kind, that their nieces were treasured deeply by this good-hearted sister.
They found some solace in the fact that she had become the children’s guardian, caring for them.
‘We should have placed people to watch her.’
Sentries, that is. Had we done so, we would have caught wind of Agnethe’s crimes immediately.
But there was no one left to trust. Betrayal by the aide we had trusted most had left our Intelligence Network in ruins.
It took four years to rebuild it properly and completely.
‘All three Houses fell to the same ruin.’
Not just his own family, but both of his friends’ Houses had suffered identically.
Suspicion was inevitable. Three Houses collapsing their Intelligence Networks simultaneously defied reason.
‘The traitor took his own life.’
In the end, the mastermind behind it all remained unfound to this day.
In any case, the betrayal made them more cautious in all matters, leaving them no time to focus properly on the children.
Moreover, the lands under their control, scattered across the far reaches of each continent, endured an endless stream of demon incursions that left no room for other concerns.
The Black Forest’s emergence had grown markedly more frequent, and the demons lurking in the outer regions showed signs of unprecedented unrest.
When the Black Forest appeared, demons moved with even greater fervor as if drawn to it, attacking humans with a madness that knew no bounds.
As a result, they could not lower their guard for a moment, and naturally, they could not give proper attention to the children living in the Empire.
In the end, the three Dukes eased their guilt by sending the vast sums of money their aunt demanded each time, and they took what comfort they could in hearing news of Seres and the two children through her reports.
‘We believed in nothing but photographs.’
Looking at pictures of the children beaming with happiness, they held fast to her assurances that Yulia was recovering steadily.
All three were living well on the money the Dukes sent—foolishly, they had believed every word.
But then, at some point, all communication from Agnethe ceased. The letters that had arrived faithfully two or three times a week dried up completely.
And only then did they learn the truth.
“That we had been deceived by that woman all along.”
Learning that Agnethe had been imprisoned and discovering the reason behind it, the three Dukes fell into stunned silence for a long while.
She had deceived them and extracted their money. Yes, they could have forgiven even that much.
The mere fact that she was the sibling of a friend, the blood relation of that child—that alone would have been enough to overlook such things.
“But she laid hands on children. Young children.”
Poisoning Yulia and using that poison to force Seres into debt was something they could never, ever condone.
In the end, Seres had…….
When Duke Noroa first heard that news, the vertigo of it all washed over him again, and he exhaled a deep sigh.
“Seres.”
Duke Noroa gazed quietly at Seres, who kept clicking her tongue in frustration as she listened to his account.
“I’m sorry.”
“Pardon?”
Seres’s eyes widened slightly at his sudden apology. Agnethe was the one at fault—why was he apologizing?
“I made a grave mistake in my judgment.”
Consumed only with the thought of protecting the children, fixated on the need to hide them from those who would target the ducal Houses, he had acted far too carelessly.
“I’m sorry for trusting that woman so easily.”
“…….”
Meeting his gaze, Seres let out a short breath. She could read in his eyes a deep, lingering sorrow.
“You’re not the one who owes an apology. I mean—Jino, you shouldn’t apologize.”
The moment she said “I mean,” Duke Noroa’s face fell, and Seres quickly corrected herself.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
He truly had nothing to apologize for. If anything, Seres was struck by what he had done all this time.
He had given such enormous sums of money simply because they were the children of a friend.
“Thank you.”
Seres bowed respectfully.
‘Sigh.’
A pang of regret suddenly struck her. What if the original Seres—the true owner of this body—had known the truth from the beginning? Would she still have taken her own life?
The pitiful image of that Seres reaching out desperately, begging for his help, rose vividly in her mind once more.
Perhaps this man might have been the one to take that hand.
‘Agnethe, what this woman did……’
How could such a thing ever be repaid?
“We didn’t execute her.”
“Excuse me?”
At the sound of the Duke of Noroa’s voice once more, Seres lifted her gaze. He smiled faintly and drained his drink in one long pull.
“That woman. I didn’t kill her. Not yet…….”
“…….”
…Not yet — did that mean he could kill her whenever he chose?
“Um, sir.”
“Hmm?”
“What do you do?”
Now that she thought about it, she’d never properly learned who he was. The way he’d produced such large sums of money for Aunt Agnethe suggested he was no ordinary man.
“Me?”
The Duke of Noroa smiled faintly again and made a sweeping gesture with his fork, as if plowing the ground with great force.
“I farm in the Southern Region…….”
“Ah.”
So he was a farmer. He must farm on quite a large scale. To have that kind of money flowing so freely…….
“Head of House Noroa.”
“I… I’m sorry?”
…What did he just say?

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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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