While my family was busy rolling the mage around for fun—
“They seem to be enjoying themselves. What a relief.”
I snapped the curtain shut at the window and turned around. The last thing I saw was Hazel approaching the mage, casting a black shadow over him.
“Of course. We’re welcoming him so warmly.”
When I turned, I saw Dad sitting at an angle on the sofa in my room.
“He’s in Hazel’s hands now, so he should stay quiet until tomorrow.”
The reason that mage had appeared at this particular moment was probably to ruin my coming-of-age ceremony.
If he exposes that the Princess of House of Zebbert is actually a mage...
It would cause a commotion in all kinds of ways.
And even more if it comes out that I’m the seventh child of the Mage King, practically one of his closest people.
That was still a secret not many people knew. Especially when we were hostile to the Magic Kingdom like this, it was not something that could be revealed lightly.
The nobles would never sit still.
They might try to shift responsibility onto House of Zebbert for hiding the truth and use it to tear down our ducal family, which was at the height of power. Whether it was true or not.
Especially the nobles who follow the First Prince.
House of Zebbert was clearly not on the First Prince’s side. They might leap at the chance to attack us.
He was probably planning to reveal that, ruin my coming-of-age ceremony, separate me from the Zebbert family somehow, and then approach me.
I laughed.
Because there was an enormous flaw in the Mage King’s thinking.
I don’t think my family would throw me away just because the ducal family’s reputation gets scratched.
Of course the Mage King would not know that.
To him, children are nothing but weapons.
“Massage!”
I squeezed Dad’s shoulders, hard, again and again. Whenever affection surged up in me, I strangely kept wanting to touch Dad somehow.
“Are you showing off your strength?”
“I’m strong, right?”
“Extremely.”
Dad gave a small laugh, then jerked his chin toward one of the tables.
“But you. What exactly are you planning to do after leaving that there?”
“Oh, right!”
I quickly went over to the table. A large bowl was full of fresh cucumber slices.
“I completely forgot.”
Actually, I was scheduled to be very busy tonight!
“As you know, I’m the star tomorrow. I need to prepare a little...”
Muttering, I slapped the fresh cucumber slices onto my face one by one. Ugh, cold.
Dad let out a slightly dumbfounded sound.
“After this, I’m going to finish with a milk face wash. I plan to waste a little of Dad’s fortune like this today. I’m asking for your understanding in advance.”
“What exactly do you think our family’s wealth is?”
I half-listened and carefully placed a cucumber slice on my cheek in the vanity mirror.
“Oh, but Dad. Hup.”
The moment I opened my mouth, a slice slipped.
By chance, the end of the cucumber slid between my parted lips.
Crunch.
“It’s good.”
“You’re doing every vegetable in the garden. Come here.”
“This one’s cucumber-cucumber.”
Dad crooked his fingers, and I quickly went over, set a cushion on his thigh, and lay down.
“Do I just put them on?”
“Yep. Carefully, so there are no empty spots on my skin...”
Hmmm.
Muttering that this was his first time doing this, Dad carefully placed cucumber slices on my face.
“Hrk, cold!”
Then Dad thought for a moment, placed a cucumber slice on the back of his own hand to take the chill off, and put it on me.
“So why did you call me just now?”
“Oh. About that. I was wondering why you kept holding on to it.”
I glanced with my eyes toward the seat beside Dad. He had been fiddling with something for a while, and when I looked, it was the old bundle the mage had brought.
“I was checking whether he had done anything to the objects. Since you brought it up, good timing. What do you think?”
“There aren’t any magical devices on them...”
“And they are your things?”
“Yeah.”
Dad’s fingertips, which had been placing cucumber on my forehead, paused slightly before continuing.
“Hm. These fingernail-sized things really are yours, then...”
I lifted my eyes and looked up at Dad’s handsome face floating above me like a full moon.
“Your Grace’s eyes are stained with greed. You look like a villain.”
At that, Dad lightly pinched the tip of my nose.
“You’re imagining things. But stop eating them. Do you want them on your face, or do you want to eat them?”
The truth was, for a while now I had been flicking my tongue out and stealing the cucumbers stuck near my mouth.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Why are they so good? They’re full of water. So moist.”
Ah, I give up.
When I sprang upright, the cucumbers that had been on my face all came tumbling down.
“If they’re good for you stuck on your face, they must be even better if you eat them, right?”
“I feel like that’s not quite right, but it has its own logic, so I have no way to refute it.”
“Great, Dad! Let’s eat them all!”
I picked up the remaining cucumbers from the plate one by one and shared them with Dad.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
By finishing even a glass of milk cleanly, I completed my preparations for the coming-of-age ceremony perfectly.
*****
Leviathan left Rubian’s bedroom and walked down the corridor.
“That man?”
Leon, who was following behind him, answered in a voice stripped of all excess.
“Hazel handled him well.”
Meaning she had locked him somewhere in a secluded room and was watching him.
“And the Emperor’s side?”
“They do not appear to have noticed the presence of the mages yet.”
The mages who had smuggled themselves into southern Babilon had been discovered first by Leon and captured by him alone.
Since the matter of Rubian’s birth father was tangled up in it, Leviathan intended, for now, to be careful about informing the Imperial family.
“Report to me if there is any movement on either side.”
“Yes. Are you going to your bedroom?”
“Mm...”
Leviathan gazed out through the window into the black deepened night, then turned his steps a little impulsively.
“There is somewhere I need to stop by, so withdraw and rest.”
Leon bowed lightly and moved away.
Step, step.
His calm footsteps stopped before a door deep inside the ducal estate.
When he opened it, he saw a neatly ordered room. It was a sort of unused storage room, but the inside was full of baby supplies that had never once been used.
I filled the townhouse with them too, in case we came to the capital.
Why had he suddenly thought of this place?
He did not know.
I do need to clear this place out too...
He had not been able to clear away the things in the eastern room of the northern ducal castle because Rubian had stubbornly insisted otherwise.
As Rubian said... perhaps there were things in the world that could be left stopped just like that.
With a faint smile, he crossed the room and walked to a small baby bed.
On the bed lay an equally tiny baby pillow.
“...”
He searched inside his clothes and took out the old bundle.
There was a baby pillow in there too.
When he placed them side by side, they were so tiny that laughter came out on its own.
“Even bread wrapping would be larger than these.”
While he was at it, he took out all the clothes Rubian had supposedly worn and the baby clothes he himself had bought.
Then, suddenly—
“...They’re too new.”
His gaze went to the stiff new clothes, then to Rubian’s wrinkled, limp ones.
Objects carried time within them.
It seemed obvious where the breath of a living person had once touched.
His chest ached again, as though it were being cut into.
The new clothes, abandoned without ever meeting their owner, suddenly felt ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) unbearably sorrowful.
Yet the strange thing was that what he was holding in his hand was Rubian’s old clothing.
As much as he grieved the child he had lost, as much as he regretted it—
What was Ruby like when she wore this...?
That was what he wondered.
What kind of baby had Rubian been?
How had she cried and laughed?
Rubian before ten years old, the Rubian he did not know.
The Rubian who must have slept, opened her eyes, and whined on a pillow the size of his palm.
If only I could hold her just once...
At the thought that came to him before he knew it, Leviathan gave a short shake of his head.
What am I thinking?
When she was already grown.
He gave a faint laugh and put the room back in order.
“It seems I regret it more than I thought.”
That his child was growing up.
That she was already coming of age and about to leave his arms.
Mocking himself for still seeming to remain in that time, Leviathan left the room.
