Everyone Was Obsessed With Me After I Became the Youngest Princess Favorite

“I can’t believe there’s a nursery school in the mountains like this.”

Led by Duke Elad, the Lexion Knights arrived in front of Tessar Nursery School. As soon as they entered the entrance, a gloomy atmosphere lingered.

The weeds were growing wild. An old swing that was so dry that even a single ray of wind made an unpleasant metal sound. It was a space with a somber atmosphere that no one could imagine being a place for children to stay. The Duke looked at the place with cold eyes and opened his mouth.

“Call the director.”

“Johnny.”

And after a while

“Gwi, I didn’t know that a precious person came.”

A man in ragged clothes rushed out of the orphanage. The man couldn’t even make proper eye contact with the Duke. At the Duke’s words that he would just check the children, he moved quickly and called them to the yard where his snowflakes were blowing. The children, almost naked, trembled and bowed their heads. Before the frowning Duke could say anything, the director abruptly raised the arms of the children and burst into tears. It was an appeal that children were struggling to survive day by day with a small subsidy from the state. Seeing that blatant appearance, the Duke quickly glanced at the children instead of answering.

Again, there was no Diana.

From the moment he realized that the kidnappers were responsible for the child’s disappearance, he thought that she couldn’t be in a nursery school like this, but he still felt drained. Suddenly, the Duke felt a strange sense of incongruity with the director. To the series of actions that he blatantly asked for support while acting as if he was frightened, or that he was worried about the children and that he was actually brought into this cold.

“You. Have you ever seen a girl with silver hair and blue eyes?”

When the Duke asked, the children visibly shrugged their shoulders. The child who quietly raised his head out of curiosity did a swish and averted his gaze.

“Didn’t I ask? Come on, answer me!”

When the director came to work, the child who looked the eldest among the dogs spoke.

“I’ve never seen a kid like that.”

“If you lie, I will never forgive you.”

“I-I really am.”

The Duke’s face grew colder at the child’s trembling voice. Seeing this, the director got goosebumps, but he put on a shameless expression again. He was so excited that he had installed anti-recognition artifacts in the attic and in my safe, which he had purchased with half the money he had earned so far. He was confident that even the Duke of Elad and the Lexion Knights would find no evidence of the child-slave trade.

It was then.

Thud!

Before the full-scale search could be conducted, the mana in the air fluctuated greatly, and Bianca, who sensed it first, jumped forward.

“I can feel the flow of mana.”

“Right. Director, can I take a look at the nursery?”

As soon as the director nodded his head bewildered, the Duke averted his gaze, and the search party moved in perfect order. At that moment, an ominous feeling ran down the director’s spine.

* * *

“…what is this?”

Bianca, who arrived first after reading the flow of magical power, froze at the unexpected scene. She couldn’t lift a finger at the sight of the child lying on the ground.

“Captain!”

It was one of the men who came that brought her to her senses from her absent-mindedness.

“I can feel the mana from that child.”

At his words, Bianca felt mana so pure and powerful that she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it until now. The uncontrollable energy of mana was flowing out of her child’s body. However, the magic power was twisted arbitrarily.

‘It must have fallen from upstairs as there are no other entrances nearby, but it doesn’t hurt that much. Did he use magic unconsciously to protect his body from falling?’

It’s not common, but there were such children. Before learning magic properly, there were cases where she couldn’t handle her mana and caused a runaway. The problem was that at this rate, that little body might just explode.

Bianca, obsessed with the idea that she had to live somehow, stepped closer to her and reached out to the child. At that moment, knights surrounded the periphery of the backyard, and at the same time the Duke of Elad and the director arrived after him. Soon after, the director found Lia lying down and his face turned blue. Apparently, the windows were blocked with several layers of boards, but how!

Furthermore…

“Daddy!”

At the unexpected voice, Duke Elad immediately raised his head. After Lia jumped out, Diana, who had been watching the situation with her hands held in her mouth at the appearance of strangers, found the Duke and shouted. The Duke held his breath in relief as soon as he found the daughter he had never dreamed of meeting here. But even that, for a while, made a terrifying impression.

Diana was sticking her face out through the broken window. The Duke’s mouth opened at once, as Diana, in her dangerous posture, jumped to ask her to stay there so she would not fall.

“Diana, stay still and wait.”

At that moment, the director’s face, which seemed like he couldn’t get tired of it anymore, changed to that of being on the verge of suffocation.

“Okay!”

Then, with Bianca’s help, Lia, who had calmed her raging mana, let out a cough.

“…!”

Lia, who had barely come to her senses and blinked her eyes, froze at the sight of her icy blue eyes. Even though she was the same color as Diana, whom she had been with for several days, her mouth moved naturally in her instinctive fear.

“Sah, save me.”

At those words, Duke Elad, who was as beautiful as a statue, frowned, and his heart sank in horror. There was no one in the empire who did not know the rumor that Duke Elad was cold-blooded, but Lia knew better than anyone that the rumor was true. Because she experienced it firsthand. In her previous life, Duke Elad, after summarily disposing of the director, returned to the manor, leaving the children of Thesar Nursery School alone, who watched Diana’s danger and did not open their mouths in the end. He took Jack with him, the only one who protected his daughter. With nowhere else to go, the children from the orphanage became vagrants and wandered around, eventually ending up in a beggar gang. And that was Lia future too.

Shivering from the cold, it was a daily routine to have the boss take away what they had donated all day, and to starve. One day she was framed for stealing. She hated the coming of the next day so much that she ran away panting to the point of tearing her lungs.

‘I can’t repeat that again.’

She would never go against his wishes this time. But what she needed to do right now.

“Jack above… A friend is sick. Help.”

“Did this guy make it like that?”

Lia’s eyes widened as Bianca, who was next to her, asked, pointing at the director. The woman with her auburn hair in a high ponytail gave the impression of being strong and good. Lia felt more at ease with her appearance, and involuntarily nodded her head.

“He cursed at me all the time and said he would sell us all into slavery!”

“Slave?”

She was speechless just by the circumstances of the abuse now revealed. Slaves. Bianca’s face turned pale.

“It is a lie!”

He hastily reached out his hand to cover Lia’s mouth. As his large hand approached, Lia squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the pain to come upon her.

“Aaaagh!”

At the same time, a scream erupted from the director. Lia stared blankly at the large back blocking her path. At first glance, it seemed that the director’s wrist, held by the Duke, had been bent in the opposite direction. 

At that moment, the tears that had been welling up suddenly fell. Leah panicked and wiped away her tears.

‘I’m not surprised. I wasn’t scared.’

The Duke’s wrath was not directed at her. But… She couldn’t even be completely at ease.

“Hey!”

Lia heard Bianca calling behind her, and she started running into the nursery yard. As she remembered from long ago, she saw children standing in a row, naked, as if punished. Lia felt her thumping heart, and began to dig with her bare hands under the tree, where she had previously left a mark.

“Guy!”

Then, a beat late, the Duke appeared with Diana in his arms, along with Bianca, the knights, and the bound director. Lia was relieved to see Jack being carried away by the knights. She felt a heavy sense of responsibility as she looked at the children’s bluish expressions.

“What is it?”

“It’s a secret ledger with the details of the director’s dealings with children so far!”

The director, who believed that they would never be able to find evidence, looked at the familiar cover of the document Lia had handed to the duke, and in a panic, she screamed and went mad. Eventually he was even gagged by the knights. The children’s eyes were stained with confusion as they saw the director, who had been wielding omnipotent power, be suppressed helplessly. Lia, who had already experienced that heart, exclaimed desperately.

“There are many materials on embezzlement and corruption as well as the slave trade! The director has never treated us as human beings. The kids must have pretended not to know about Dana, but they were all threatened…”

The longer Lia’s explanation went on, the more the expressions on Bianca’s and everyone else’s seats hardened. In particular, the eyes of the Duke were terribly cold and scary.

“Yeah, like you said, they told me they had never seen a girl like Diana. So you, Children, are not at fault, is that what you want to say? For whatever reason, those kids lied to me.”

His cold voice made Lia’s heart freeze. But she didn’t avert her eyes. How could she turn a blind eye when she knew exactly what the children would be like in the future, how they would live, and the outcome?

“Please forgive us. It’s because we were afraid. Sorry!”

Lia got down on her knees and begged him for their fault. Tears came out without her knowledge. In the meantime, the children followed Lia and knelt down one by one, as if they hadn’t eaten for nothing. And wept and begged him not to kill them. As the naked and skinny children cried and begged for help, Diana also began to cry, wriggling her lips, as if her feelings had been assimilated.

The Duke pressed his temple lightly and said in a displeased voice.

“I want you to live. When did I say I would kill you?”

“…Hehe.”

“I won’t kill you, so stop crying.”

“…What?”

“It means to forgive.”

Finally, when she was told that all of the children would be transferred to another nursery, Leah finally stopped crying. Even after she stopped crying when the matter she was so worried about was resolved, her whole body was powerless.

“Guy!”

Then Diana, who had come down to the floor, hitting her father’s arms, which she had met with difficulty, with her cotton bat-like fist, ran toward Lia.

“Are you fine, missi?”

With her tears welling up in her big eyes, Diana examined Lia’s face and body. Only then did the Duke and knights realize that the reason Diana was crying was because of that child. Who had been looking after their precious young lady all this time?

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Translator Note:

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