Chapter 185
TL: Zimmings
I hid under the fence of the orphanage and watched as the baby was found by the caregiver. The daycare workers hurriedly hugged the baby and shouted.
“Manager, there’s a baby!”
“Oh my… Asital, you go and get hot water quickly.”
“Yes, yes!”
Two middle-aged women and a young man holding the baby hurriedly ran into the building.
I looked back at them until they disappeared, and then I turned my head.
Adrian was looking at me all this time.
“…….”
He said nothing. It was a silence that felt more bitter than a few words of comfort.
I couldn’t come up with words to reassure him either, so I laughed.
“Now let’s go back. Ag, but how are we supposed to go back?”
We came here not voluntarily, so we couldn’t go back on our own.
I groaned and thought while holding my chin.
“The jewel that the cardinal had was the medium that brought us back to the past, so should we find it? Oh, but now I’m just a child with no connection, where can I find it…”
“I know.”
“Huh?”
“I know how to get back.”
Having said that, Adrian pulled something out of his arms.
It was a small jade-colored jewel and a letter.
“How do you…”
“Because your mother told me how to.”
“What?”
“She knew everything.”
I looked at Adrian, stiff as if rooted in the ground.
I remembered that she whispered to Adrian when she suddenly let me go.
She handed me jewels and a letter. When I opened the letter with trembling hands, I could see her handwriting. This is the exact handwriting that I saw in my aunt’s room before.
[By the time you read this, would we have parted?
Child. My dear child. Don’t be too sad even if we part like this. I have no regrets in life, so I am a very lucky person.
What should I tell you first? It would be better to start with the fact that my purpose of life was determined by the temple from an early age. As a child, I was unhappy. I was sold for 40 francs and lived in a prison called the temple. The only joy I had at that time was the cheerful, lovely child I saw in my dreams.
The girl with the curly hair was always lively, sweet, and vicious. Many loved the child. An old man I know well called the child little miss.]
It’s me. This was my story.
‘The old man must be the chairman.’
[From a very young age, I have admired the child in my dream who kept moving on, no matter how hard it is. I was so happy when I realized that she’s my child.]
I decided not to cry anymore, but my eyes kept getting wet and tears fell on the precious letter.
[Thanks to the child, I was able to gain courage and live my life after leaving the temple.
But I didn’t leave the temple alone. I had a jewel with me]
What?
If it’s a jewel kept in a temple…
‘Etwal.’
[I had six friends inside the jewel. Two of them are the kind one who sent you here and a lovely deer who will one day be with you.]
Pur…….
[My friends helped me a lot. Thanks to them, I have a family, I have a lover I want to spend the rest of my life with, and I was able to have my precious children.
But I knew the truth. The reason they helped me is because their true master wanted to help me for some reason. And only today did I find out who you really were. Child, you saved my life from beginning to end.]
The letter continued on to the next page. However, the last sentence was cut off.
[…So please protect them on my behalf. Child, when will you come to my side? I want to know your name-]
The handwriting of the letter was more messy than the previous note, so it must have been written by my mother while avoiding the attack of the temple.
How did my mother feel as she wrote the letter knowing she was running towards the end of her life?
‘Mom was wrong.’
I didn’t save my mother, she saved me. I hugged the letter and cried for a while.
“Leblaine…”
“I, I ended up doing nothing…”
Adrian hugged me.
“Don’t think like that. Something had obviously changed.”
“But…….”
“Trust me, Leblaine.”
Adrian looked at me with determined eyes. I stared at his stubborn eyes then bit my lips.
“Last, last… The last time I cry… And, I won’t cry when I go back, so…”
“Yes.”
I sighed and gripped the jewel.
“Let’s go back.”
“That jewel was the devil’s passage. Maybe it’s the devil who sent us here.”
Adrian, who is quick-witted, seems to have finished guessing the situation with what he witnessed and what he heard from my mother.
“Then we can go back to our original time.”
“Yes.”
“My guess is that we’ll be going back to the place where we came. We might run into a cardinal, so be careful.”
The moment I nodded, he put our foreheads together like we did as a child. My body warmed up, and I could feel my divine power filling up.
“……Adrian?”
I suddenly became anxious.
Why is he warning me to watch out for cardinals and handing over his divine powers to me?
It was as if..
Suddenly,
Krkr–!!
The ground shook violently, and small black spheres rushed towards me. The surroundings quickly became noisy.
“Earthquake? Earthquake?!”
“Aghh-!”
I quickly reached out to Adrian.
“Hurry up!”
But Adrian took a few steps away from me.
“I still have something to do.”
The sphere embraced me like a blanket, and light began to spread within it. My body was getting lighter as Adrian smiled.
“Be careful going back.”
“Adrian-!!”
And then, I lost my consciousness.
***
I hurriedly looked around inside the cardinal’s room.
The box containing the jewels was open, and in my hand were the jewels that Adrian had given me and the jewels I had taken out of the box before leaving for the past.
But Adrian wasn’t there.
‘That fool!’
What is he going to do there?
I quickly infuse the jewel with divine power.
‘Send me back to the past, please!’
I need to bring back Adrian. The devil’s passage is in my hands, both in the past and in the future. If this happens, Adrian may never come back. Then…
“The emperor… will make you an empress… is there no news from Empress Dowager yet?”
I could hear someone’s voice from afar.
‘The cardinal is back.’
If he finds out that the cardinal’s jewel is missing, he’ll be looking for the culprit. If they find out that I wasn’t in the dorm at that time, I may have to wage an all-out war with the temple.
‘Not yet. We can’t go to war yet.’
Above all, both jewels suddenly looked murky. As if the devil was sent away.
‘It’s no longer a devil’s passage.’
I didn’t need such a jewel, so I hurriedly returned the jewel in the box and went out through the secret passage.
I rushed back to the lodging and took a deep breath.
“Little miss?”
“……Cecilia.”
“Oh my God, child. Why are you sweating…!”
I quickly grabbed her hand.
“Adrian. Have you ever heard of Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“Did Adrian ever become an adult?!”
If he hadn’t been able to return from the past, he would have to live in that time and be an adult now.
“What are you talking about… it’s not like that and His Majesty ordered him to go to the border this morning.”
“Border?”
“Yes. He must have left by now? Well, now it seems that they are trying to attached forces from the border to the 2nd prince in order to confront the 1st prince…”
It seems that Adrian came to tell me this story today.
‘Then I need to buy time. I need to find a way to get Adrian back before that…’
As I was thinking about it, something caught my eye. There was suddenly a book on the table.
“…What is that?”
“After I left for a while, it was lying there. Isn’t it yours?”
I hurriedly opened the book.
‘It’s not mine.’
This book was a journal.
Well, a journal about me in the Empress Dowager’s library.
It must be Adrian.
Only Adrian knows that I have entered the Empress Dowager’s library.
Amand can sense the remaining mana, so I guess he knew that I was looking at it.
But, the contents of the journal were different from those found in the library of the Empress Dowager.
[After a month, the child does not cry or laugh. At the meeting it was decided to give up on the child. It’s sad.]
There’s no mention of the kidnapping.
‘How did this happen…’
Then, the writing in the journal was erased and new writing started to appear.
[The child disappeared and came back. The returned child cried and laughed normally.]
[There were violets on the child’s bedside.]
[At around two in the afternoon, I saw someone’s shadow outside the window. I secretly waited to catch the culprit, and what appeared was a very beautiful blond boy. Far from harming the baby, the boy stroked the baby’s head and smiled very sweetly before returning.]
The person who kidnapped me and sent me back was Adrian.
Did he do that to protect me?
As I put the book down, I noticed that there was a mark on the back cover that had been erased once about my birthday.
Very, very vaguely, I could see ‘January 7’ written on it, and ‘February 29’ was written over it.
In an instant, I realized what Adrian’s ‘remaining work’ was.
“This fool……!”
“Little miss?”
The day I left the baby was January 7th. That’s why they can’t believe the baby’s birthday is February 29th, so Adrian secretly fixed it.
‘Orphan children’s birthdays are usually the day they are listed on the nursery documents.’
Now I don’t have to manipulate my documents anymore. I bit my lip and told Cecilia.
“I have to go home.”
“Huh?”
“I have something to say to my family.”
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