Despite the ominous foreshadowing, nothing particularly worrying happened to Ellie.
The servants would peek in to see if he was alive or dead, showing at least minimal interest before disappearing again.
Above all, the daily life of the four-year-old child, who was unable to leave the mansion and play alone, was excessively monotonous.
At most, he would go back and forth between his original room on the second floor, the study, and the attic where he was now.
‘…Wait a minute. It’s not that there are no problems, it’s just that everything from one to ten is a problem, and they haven’t noticed it?’
Narrowing her eyes and tilting her head, Ellie, who had a reasonable suspicion that she had become dull, wondered again.
It was unbelievable that this was even better.
What was it like when she first decided to stay with the child?
[Adi, are you going to stay here today too?]
[I can’t go out?]
[No, I’m not saying you have to go outside, but more like…]
At least being confined to the room didn’t seem right.
Ellie couldn’t help but worry about the child’s lack of physical activity, who didn’t even think about going outside the attic.
If she hadn’t worked hard to encourage him into doing something, he probably wouldn’t have changed much by now.
At an age when he should be running around, he wasn’t even walking properly, let alone running. It was a big shock to Ellie in her own way.
‘When I was about his age, I I used to roll around in the garden and everyone sweated like crazy because I ate ants.’
Although it wasn’t something to be proud of, still, she thought her son was overly quiet for his age.
No matter how you look at it, this can only be explained by the influence of being locked up all this time, right?
So, Ellie would take the child for a light walk around the mansion every day, sometimes go to the study and read books, and in the remaining time, she would teach the child how to read and write, or simple arithmetic.
[Do you really know everything in this book now?]
[Yes.]
[…It’s only been three days since you started learning to read?]
In the process, it was inevitable that Ellie would try her best not to contract the common parental disease of ‘my child is a genius’.
In fact, she had noticed that he was out of the ordinary, even objectively, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it.
Anyway, there was no one to show off to, and she didn’t want to burden a four-year-old child anymore.
“Lia, Lia.”
-Uh, yeah?
And so, after a short walk with the child inside the mansion as usual.
It was a day when he went to his room on the second floor and returned to the attic with paper, a quill pen, and ink.
The child, who was sitting at the desk and scribbling with black ink, suddenly turned around and opened his mouth hesitantly.
“Fairies came out today…!”
-… Fairies?
Suddenly confused by the meaningless remark, Ellie followed the child’s hand gesture and turned her gaze.
She saw a window on one side of the attic.
Ellie’s eyes narrowed in confusion as she looked at the child who had turned his head towards the road, drawn to the scene that had suddenly come into view just beside the window.
-Are there any fairies on the window?
“That’s not it…!”
The child, who seemed frustrated, tapped his own forehead with a small fist
“I heard that when flowers bloom, fairies come!”
The child, who had started using honorifics again after calming down a bit after waking up from his nap, got up from the chair he had been sitting in and pressed his palms against the window.
A short memory from her childhood flashed before Ellie’s eyes, and she unconsciously swallowed her saliva.
[Ellie, isn’t that right? Flowers are bloomed by fairies.]
[Lies. I read it in a book. They said they bloom when it’s time for them to bloom.]
[…….]
It sounded just like something her mother had said once.
Speaking of which, it seemed like flowers were blooming outside today…
‘I don’t remember ever telling that story anywhere.’
How does he know that? Could it be that it was just a playful lie that adults often tell to children?
Ellie pondered this, carefully going over her memories, and then dismissed it as nothing important. Since Marie was the same age as her, it might have been Marie who told the child.
TL/N: OR MAYBE HIS FATHER:) (NOT A SPOILER!)
In any case, it was important to protect a child’s innocence… so Ellie improvised.
-Hmm. So, you think the fairies came because you saw flowers blooming?
It was a day after the 30th day that Ellie had been lingering around the child as a ghost, and a week before the child’s fifth birthday.
The child, who met Ellie’s eyes, wiggled his fingers and opened his mouth.
“But… fairies… it’s hard for them to come here, right?”
-Huh?
“Because it’s high here….”
-…Ah.
I know what he wants.
Ellie awkwardly averted her gaze as he peeked around slyly.
Since the garden was quite large, the attic, which was at the top, had the best view of everything, but it was also too high to see the flowers in detail.
But if she went down to the first floor, the trees would block her view of the garden.
‘So, he’s asking me to catch a fairy and bring it to him now, right?’
That’s right. He wanted to see something that he thought was a fairy or something, but he couldn’t see it, so he was asking her to find a way to make it happen.
However, there was a big problem here.
‘No, I have to catch it if it exists. How can I create something that doesn’t exist…?’
Ellie racked her brain again. Her composition skills, which had been failing her throughout her time at the academy, had been improving by leaps and bounds as she raised the child.
Ellie opened her mouth, thinking up a flimsy excuse.
-…But, wouldn’t it be hard for me since I can’t catch anything? Look, I can even pass through the bed and the window.
“But I heard that fairies can’t be caught with human hands either.”
-…….
“They fly like Lia…. Don’t they?”
-…….
Strictly speaking, I was floating rather than flying.
You could say that’s the same thing, but it was quite different. Flying is something that butterflies and bees do, not ghosts.
…How did I know? Well, I didn’t really want to know either.
Speed aside, I couldn’t go above a certain height.
-Then let’s do this. Since we shouldn’t carelessly catch a fairy, I’ll go down instead and see what it looks like and let you know. How about that?
“…I want to see it too.”
-Adi can come down with Daddy when he gets here and we can see it together. If Adi sees the fairy first, Daddy might be sad that he was left out.
“……Daddy…?”
Hmm, maybe that was a bad idea.
With distrustful eyes, Ellie had to coax the boy for a long time.
-Adi. Adi?
“…….”
-Uh, don’t I need to go down first to check if the fairy is there?
“…Can’t you just call the fairy here?”
-Huh?
“What if Lia runs away while I’m not there with her…”
Seeing the child’s anxious eyes darting around, Ellie finally realized her mistake with a small sigh. It was because she had accidentally forgotten.
Ever since the roof incident, the child had been clinging to Ellie like a koala baby to its mother for a whole month, unable to leave her side.
Of course, since I was a ghost, it wasn’t like he was really clinging to me; it was just that he was following me around constantly.
‘No wonder he asked me every 30 seconds if I was out when he was washing.’
If I didn’t answer for a while because I was lost in thought, he would run out with a pale face, crying and pretending to be pitiful. Anyone would have seen that he was soaked like a drowned rat, even if he was washing.
With a heavy heart that felt like something was weighing it down, Ellie tried to hide his complicated feelings and opened his mouth to speak.
-…Then let’s do this. I’ll go out the window and come back in so that Adi can keep watching. You’ll be able to see the whole garden from here, won’t you?
“…….”
-I’ll only count to 300 in my head, okay? We learned how to count numbers last time, right?
“…….”
-Yes?
“……You have to come back quickly…”
Ellie, who had finally succeeded in compromising, nodded lightly and left the attic.
As she glanced back to check, she saw the child standing by the window with both palms pressed against the glass. His mouth was moving as if counting numbers, and the window was fogged up with his breath.
Hmm, he was quite cute.
‘I’ll have to use my imagination to figure out what they look like first.’
If she didn’t want to be caught, she figured she could just pretend the fairies had clocked out, right?
Ellie headed towards the garden, her mind already racing about the child’s birthday, which was only a week away.
‘I’d like to give him a present, but I don’t know how.’
Just as Ellie was starting to let go of some of her anger towards the servants, who had seemed unusually busy since the day before, wondering if they were aware of his birthday, she heard the servants talking near the garden.
“What, really? That’s why we’ve been so busy?!”
“Oh, shut up! Don’t you read the newspaper? The whole empire has been talking about it since yesterday.”
“No, I thought the war was going to drag on for a few more years. But how could it end so quickly!”
“The duke suddenly started pushing things a month ago. That’s why it ended quickly. They say the Duke is the one who cut off the head of the kingdom’s army commander.”
The voices coming from behind the annex grew closer and closer, and soon faces appeared. Since they were unfamiliar to Ellie, they were probably the ones who had been staying in the annex from the beginning.
Even as they walked towards the main mansion, their conversation continued, and Ellie soon learned the real reason why the mansion had been so busy lately.
“Even so, it would take a few weeks to get from there to here, so why the rush?”
“…They say he used teleportation. It will only take three days at most.”
“……”
Ellie, who had been heading towards the garden, stopped in her tracks at the shocking news.
-So the reason they were busy wasn’t because of the child’s birthday…
It’s because of Rutus’s return?
…Damn it, I never thought of this possibility.
TL/N: DADDY IS FINALLY HOME!
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