Rutus, who had been pushed into having tea time, sat across from the child at a table set up in one corner of the garden.
To the child, it was just snack time, but the excitement was evident all around.
In front of him were his favorite snacks, across the table was his father, whom he hadn’t seen in four years, and beside him, though a ghost, was his mother, who he could see, hear, and touch.
“Hehe.”
Though it wasn’t a typical family gathering, it was still a moment when the whole family was together.
For the child, it couldn’t get any better.
TL/N:
The child, holding a juice cup with both hands and blushing with happiness, looked at Rutus and spoke.
“Daddy.”
“……”
“Daddy.”
“…Yes.”
“Daddy…”
“……”
Responding to the child’s repeated calling, Rutus eventually realized that the child wasn’t expecting any particular answer. He silently lifted his coffee cup.
By this point, Rutus could no longer be unaware of it.
-…..
The child had never once hated or resented him.
Despite being confined and neglected, all the child had ever felt was longing and desire to see thim.
……That was all.
What little the child ever wanted wasn’t material possessions or grand things but rather love and affection.
It was almost comical how both parents, having created such a child, had been so scared that their first thought was to run away.
The child’s short legs, characteristic of his age, swung back and forth beneath the chair.
-The weather’s nice…
Sunlight filtered through the shade of the trees, the breeze blew coolly, and the occasional chirping of birds echoed through the quiet garden.
It seemed like a peaceful moment.
Aside from the occasional awkward hesitation when Rutus didn’t know how to interact with the child, the scene appeared serene.
“Um, could I…”
“……”
“Could I give you a bite of the cake?”
The child, who had been quietly staring at the cake, glanced at Rutus and asked hesitantly.
Ellie vaguely remembered seeing something like this on the paper the child had given her.
‘I can’t eat food, so…’
Though it was heartbreaking to see the child long for it, there was nothing Ellie could do.
So, Rutus had to make up for what she couldn’t provide.
It was touching to see the child offer a bite of his favorite dessert to his father before even taking a bite himself.
After a moment of hesitation, Rutus quietly leaned forward and took a bite of the cake offered by the child.
“……”
Though he didn’t dislike sweets.
Rutus didn’t usually enjoy such sugary things, and Ellie who noticed his jaw slowing down slightly, let out a faint smile.
While she was smiling with her lips curled up, the child had already taken a spoonful of his own cake and stuffed it into his mouth.
With a mouthful of cake, the child spoke.
“For my birthday… Marie made me a chocolate cake.”
“……”
“I’ve had cake before, and it was delicious then too…”
“……”
“I wanted to eat it together, so…”
“……”
“So I waited…”
“…I see.”
Whenever the child spoke unilaterally, a brief reply would occasionally come from Rutus.
Even after repeating this several times, the child never mentioned anything that could hurt Rutus.
For example, he didn’t mention how he had taken care of a flower pot for a week because he missed his father.
Or how he had cried when the pot broke.
Or how he had feared his father didn’t love him because he didn’t show up.
-……
“So, next time, I want to eat it together.”
TL/N: “it” = “birthday cake”
The child, still swinging his legs under the chair, said while lowering his gaze.
Clearly understanding that it was the child’s own way of being considerate…
“…Do as you wish.”
A slight tension could be seen in Rutus’s hand as he gripped his teacup.
After an unknown amount of time had passed and the once bright blue sky began to turn orange with the sunset, the conversation finally ceased. By then, the child’s plate was half-mashed with what was left of the cake.
“……”
“And… um…”
“……”
“And also…”
Despite clearly running out of topics, the child kept making an effort to continue the conversation.
‘……He’s doing this because he wants to spend more time with his dad.’
Ellie, who belatedly realized why he had dragged out the rather uninteresting conversation, extending the snack time that should have ended quickly until sunset, sighed.
The reason was that the child wanted to somehow extend the time spent with Rutus.
Once the snacks were finished or the conversation completely died, the tea time would be over.
“Um… so…”
Since this tea time had been hard-won through persistent effort, the child didn’t know when Rutus would agree to meet again.
Ellie couldn’t bring herself to interrupt and continued watching silently.
At that moment, Rutus, who had remained mostly silent, spoke slowly to the child.
“…Meals,”
“Yes, yes?”
“…I’ve heard you’ve been eating meals in your room until now.”
“Well, yes… but how did you know…?”
“……”
“……?”
“…Why is that?”
Rutus, dodging the child’s question, simply asked why he hadn’t come out of his room to eat.
After all, it wasn’t as if he could tell the child he’d been receiving reports on how the child had been living since arriving at the main estate.
The child answered Rutus’s question.
“Well…”
“……”
“When I eat in the dining hall, there’s too much food, and…”
“……”
“I feel like I’m wasting it… but if I eat in my room, it’s not that much, so…”
Though it was true that room service meals tended to be smaller, it wasn’t a significant enough difference to matter much…
-……
It wasn’t that the child didn’t know this. The real reason was simple.
He just didn’t want to eat alone in such a large dining room.
“……”
“Oh, um! Daddy, would it be okay to try your drink?!”
Unable to stand the silence, the child quickly pointed at Rutus’s half-finished teacup and shouted.
Rutus, looking between the child’s finger and his teacup, silently handed the cup to the child.
As Ellie watched the child eagerly gulp down the drink, she thought.
‘…Wait. That’s all cold by now, so it’s going to taste really bitter for Adi’s taste…’
Blech—
Sure enough, the child couldn’t handle the bitterness and spat it out before it even went down his throat. Coffee spilled down his small mouth.
Ellie was shocked by what happened next.
“…A-Ack, cough! …?”
“……”
Rutus, surprised, reached across the table and caught the coffee dripping from the child’s chin. He had half-risen from his seat.
The child, blinking in confusion, called out to Rutus.
“Dad—”
Before the child could finish, Rutus straightened up, pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his hands, and turned away.
“It’s late, so let’s end tea time here.”
“……”
With that, the child sulked, not even bothering to wipe the coffee still dripping down his chin, and hung his head.
Ellie watched the child fidgeting with his fingers in silence before turning her gaze back to Rutus.
Rutus, who had taken a few steps away, stopped and spoke again.
“Unless something comes up, have your meals in the dining hall from now on.”
“……”
“I’ll try to join you for dinner when I can.”
“……!”
Woosh.
The child, shocked, looked up at Rutus.
Though he had already walked quite a distance away with long, hurried strides, it didn’t matter to the child.
So those words meant…
He was saying, in his own way, that he would make time to be with the child regularly from now on.
* * *
It was a few days later when something noticeably unusual happened.
It seemed that what he had said to the child was not entirely false. Rutus would spend the entire day holed up in his office, but in the evenings, he would come to the dining hall to have dinner with the child.
Though there were occasional days when he couldn’t make it due to a lack of time, on those days, he would send a servant in advance to leave a message.
-Adi, it’s still a long way until dinner. Why are you already like this?
“But it’s not that long… ”
-……
You haven’t even had lunch yet. The unspoken words that couldn’t be voiced lingered in Ellie’s mouth.
The conversations during dinner were usually limited to recounting how the day had been, with only occasional responses from Rutus.
Despite this, the child waited all day, making it so that the afternoon activities almost entirely skipped by, which wasn’t much different from missing the entire afternoon.
‘No, it’s not just missing the afternoon.’
It felt like the whole day was on hold.
Perhaps the only fortunate thing was that the proportion of words exchanged was gradually increasing, and these days it could be called a conversation now.
‘Even so, if this continues, it’s a bit…’
Just as Ellie was about to worry and ponder,
Knock, knock
“Ah…”
The child, who looked visibly dejected at the sound of the knock on the door, opened his mouth slightly.
If someone came to knock on the door at this time, it meant that Rutus would not be appearing for dinner today.
The child turned away, walked dejectedly to his bed, and lay down on it.
“Come in…”
The servant, who somehow managed to hear the muffled words buried in the pillow, opened the door and spoke,
“I’ve come to deliver a message from His Grace.”
“Uh-huh, I understand, so just go now… I want to be alone…”
“The preparations for the young master’s chambers have been completed, so His Grace requests to escort you over.”
“…Huh?”
Surprised by the servant’s unexpected statement, the child lifted his face from the pillow and stared at the servant, his eyes wide as if they were about to pop out.
* * * *
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