Chapter 05
“…Alright.”
“Eh?”
“I won’t tell anyone. Not until you reveal it yourself.”
I jerked my head up. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.
“R-Really? You’ll keep it a secret?”
Asuka met my gaze with unusually serious eyes. There wasn’t a trace of his characteristic irritating playfulness.
“Rel. I am, of course, the person who finds tormenting you the most amusing thing in the world, but I’m not trashy enough to go around spreading personal affairs like this.”
Look at this trash.
He just admitted with his own mouth that tormenting me was his hobby. My face contorted as if I’d chewed on sand.
Whether I reacted or not, Asuka straightened his attire with a much calmer expression.
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“Huh?”
“That you have a daughter.”
Got caught on the first try, you bastard.
“No one besides you.”
“That’s one thing I like.”
Asuka replied neatly and opened the door.
“You’d better keep this a secret as much as possible. If it gets out that a royal mage was hiding a child on the Southern Continent, the Crown Prince won’t take it lightly.”
Ah, that damn man who would be burning with determination to find my weakness…
Just thinking about it sent a chill down my spine.
“I was planning to do that without being told.”
Publicly, my image—that is, ‘Lelsis Valtine’s’—was that of a highly exemplary mage.
It wasn’t that I wanted to wear that mask. It was strongly recommended by the Ethelheim royal family to maintain dignity.
Since I was already being torn apart because of my background, having bad conduct would imply that the King who appointed me had poor judgment.
If this fact… well, it’s not actually a fact, but anyway, if Sis’s existence were revealed to the world, I would be attacked from all sides, including the Crown Prince.
I must never be found out. Never.
“Good. Then the arrangement is settled.”
With those words, Asuka took a step into the hallway.
“Y-You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, something came up that I need to look into urgently.”
I followed him with an anxious heart.
Though Asuka had said he would keep the secret, you could never really know with him.
He might be reassuring me now, then go back and spread the rumor all over the capital. He was someone who could easily afford the front page of a famous weekly magazine.
‘Should I hit him hard on the head and give him amnesia?’
Asuka’s back, walking ahead, seemed to dig deeper into my eyes today.
Meanwhile, Sis, who had been squatting on the landing, lifted her head as we came down.
“Di-Did you finish talking, uh, ‘Mom’?”
Sis’s face, stammering, was literally the picture of confusion.
It was understandable. Suddenly caught up in a magic experiment, she’d ended up in a strange place, and then I’d even called myself her mother.
That’s probably why there was a faint glimmer of hope in Sis’s eyes as well.
‘…She’ll be really disappointed when she finds out it’s not true.’
Knowing she would be hurt, my heart felt incredibly heavy. Unable to bear looking at her, I averted my eyes from the child’s face.
Meanwhile, Asuka approached Sis.
“So, this is your daughter.”
No matter what, referring to a child as ‘this’ was a bit much…
Whether he knew I was displeased or not, Asuka quietly looked down at Sis.
The somewhat tense atmosphere made me hesitant to jump in, and I just swallowed dryly.
‘D-Did he figure it out?’
Asuka was one of the few people who remembered me as a child. My anxiety grew.
Sis, sensing the ominous air, also had a wary look in her eyes.
“…Who are you, Mister?”
“I’m not ‘Mister.’ I’m Asuka Muiere Willovice.”
“A-Ash?”
“You can call me that if it’s easier.”
After a curt reply, Asuka actually knelt down in front of Sis.
His indifferent gaze was like observing a test subject. It was the look of someone looking at an object, not a person.
Sis, completely tense, slowly edged backward. Ready to knock him unconscious if necessary, I watched Asuka’s back closely.
After a long silence, lost in thought, he finally parted his lips.
“…She looks a lot like you.”
“Huh?”
“She looks exactly like you. How is it possible to resemble someone this much?”
Suddenly, Asuka reached his hand out toward Sis. Startled, I stepped between them.
“Th-That’s because she’s my daughter!”
As I aggressively cut in front of Sis, Asuka took a step back.
His slightly widened eyes as he looked back and forth between me and Sis showed he was quite surprised by my reaction.
‘Did I treat him too much like a plague?’
Given that I was the one with something to hide, I had no choice.
“The child’s scared, so please just leave.”
I pushed Asuka toward the door with all my might.
“Just go! Go!”
“Alright, stop pushing.”
Asuka, who hadn’t budged an inch, finally moved his feet at my persistent urging.
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to have figured out Sis’s true identity. Instead, he had learned that I had a hidden daughter.
‘I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing…’
Just as I was starting to think it was probably the latter, Asuka, who had stepped outside, turned back to look at me.
His face was completely unreadable.
“…Is there something else?”
I asked awkwardly, and a strange smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. For some reason, I had a bad feeling about this. Whenever he made that face, something bad always happened to me.
“I’m leaving for today, but I’ll come back again, Rel. Until then…”
Asuka’s eyes flicked briefly toward Sis.
“…Be good with that kid. Don’t get caught.”
“What? What do you mean you’re coming back?”
As I asked in surprise, Asuka’s body began to blur. He answered lightly.
“Just what I said.”
Immediately after, Asuka’s figure scattered into the air like flower petals and vanished. It was an astonishingly delicate and perfect spatial movement spell.
Both I and Sis stared blankly at the spot where he had disappeared for a while.
It was little Sis who broke the silence first.
“Um, are you really my mom?”
She asked using strange honorifics, and I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eyes.
“Well, I’m really sorry. The thing is…”
I hung my head low and began explaining the situation from the beginning.
After a not-so-short time of laying out the long story, fortunately, Sis didn’t seem sad or regretful.
“Yo-You liar!”
Instead, she ran at me and kicked my shin.
“Ow!”
Despite her small size, it hurt quite a bit.
—
From a very young age, there was no such thing as a ‘difficult task’ for Asuka Willovice.
Everything he set out to achieve came easily. Reading, studying, magic—it was all the same.
So he easily became numb. A life without challenges or obstacles, without any stimulation, was his reality.
Watching their young son, who seemed devoid of emotion and rarely laughed or cried, the Duke and Duchess Willovice felt the seriousness of the problem.
Their concern that their son, born with a magical eye, would live a life different from ordinary people never faded.
So they tried their utmost to create entertainment that would pique Asuka’s interest.
Swordsmanship, horseback riding, hunting, shooting, card games…
The answer they found was Lelsis.
He still vividly remembers the moment he first met Lelsis at age six.
An orphanage he visited with his father. A little girl crying bitterly, as if something terrible had happened.
‘That was you, Rel.’
Perhaps it was because he had never witnessed such intense emotions before.
For the first time, Asuka felt curiosity toward another person.
Because she had captured the interest of his plant-like son, Lelsis caught his father’s eye.
When the Duke Willovice discovered that this lucky little girl also had a talent for magic, he gladly decided to sponsor her.
That was the beginning of Asuka and Lelsis’s long bond—or perhaps their long feud.
Through Lelsis, Asuka learned many things. Joy, sadness, and a sense of lack and competitiveness he had never felt in his life.
—
‘If you like it, I like it. If you hate it, I hate it.’
—
From some point on, Lelsis’s emotions became his emotions, and Lelsis’s wishes became his wishes.
If there was a misfortune, it was that Asuka Willovice was an unprecedented genius.
Only after he had grown up did Asuka suddenly realize that he had been taking away everything Lelsis had ever wanted.
It was far too late to turn back.
