Chapter 80
His mouth snapped shut like it was bonded shut.
“Call me Dad.”
Urgent quest.
Call the man she has seen four times, Dad!
“…”
There was silence again.
Archduke Halbern, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown, gave her a facial attack.
“Aren’t you going to call me?”
“…”
Ugh.
Honestly, it’s a crisis.
She give anything to see that face.
But…
‘I can’t get the word “dad” out of my mouth.’
She knows he’s her biological father, and she doesn’t have a problem with him being her dad, but she doesn’t want to call him dad and pat him on the back?
She narrowed her eyes, and Archduke Halbern, who had been scrutinizing her with a set jaw, burst out laughing.
It was a clear, clean, boyish laugh, and for a moment it made him seem younger than he was.
“You’re cute. You don’t look like me at all.”
“…?”
Is that an insult?
She was wondering if it was the right time to speak up, when the Archduke of Halbern, who had been studying her intently, appraised her as if looking at a painting.
“Your eyes.”
“…”
“Pretty.”
Ah, yes. Thank you.
Maybe he is not as bad as Mehen said he was?
The person who complimented her on her beauty was a nice person.
“You have nice eyes, too.”
“Old man.”
Archduke Halbern laughed.
As she had thought the other day, he was a very funny man. What was so funny?
“Is it because you don’t want to call me dad?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it, but…”
“Are you uncomfortable?”
“It’s uncomfortable, but…”
He couldn’t help but laught, who couldn’t understand what was so funny about her stammering.
She can’t call him dad anymore.
“So.”
“…?”
“I’m wondering why Mehen became your mum, and you’re not going to tell me?”
Nothing big, but she didn’t want to spoil it.
“It’s a secret.”
“How very Halbern of you to keep a secret already.”
He would ask her when she wanted to know, but he didn’t seem to be questioning her. He was a very strange man.
He’d stroke her hair with a gentle touch. He didn’t look like he could control such a delicate force.
‘Archduke Halbern…’
Suddenly, an old question came to mind.
Why did Halbern take over after Arellin’s death, why did Mehen leave, and why does the Archduke of Halbern appear as a villain at the end?
What happened?
She still doesn’t know why.
Perhaps if she lives long enough, she will find out. If not, she will never know.
Maybe that’s why she wondered about this person.
“Why have you never come to see me?”
The hand stroking her hair flinched for a moment.
His gentle expression hardened for a moment. The transparent pupils of his eyes darkened once more, and his lowered lashes fluttered uneasily.
“I thought it was because you hated me.”
She didn’t say it, but I vaguely thought so.
‘But if not, why didn’t you come to see me, not once?’
It wasn’t that she particularly wanted to see him, but she still wondered sometimes. Why doesn’t he come to see her? Does he hate her that much?
The question marks in her life that she ignored as meaningless, but also ignored because she couldn’t let them out of her life entirely.
The hand moves again. It strokes her hair with an infernally affectionate touch, and a low, resigned bass voice answers obediently.
“I thought you might be in trouble.”
“Trouble with what?”
“I think I might want to kill you.”
“What?”
‘What did I just hear?’
She blinked in surprise, and warmth flooded the pupils of the eyes that met hers.
“I think I might want to kill you.”
“…”
‘I don’t know.’
Unlike the murderous warning, there were no highs or lows in his voice. The emotionless tone of his voice and the kindness in his eyes threw her for a loop.
What is this? Does he want to kill her?
Her biological father smiled a bitter smile as he looked at her surprised expression.
No, she is the one who gave him the murder warning, why is he making such a face!
“Now, do you want to kill me?”
Archduke Halbern shook his head.
A firm denial.
But that didn’t quell the unease that had been stirred up. This was not a trusting relationship to begin with!
“Daughter.”
She would have fled if it hadn’t been for the voice calling her back.
In an overly sweet, soft voice, he whispered to her, like a devotee blandly reciting the truth.
“I would do anything for you.”
His violet eyes were so pitiful, so sad, like he was crying, that if nothing else, she knew he meant it.
“Let’s go to mum.”
Archduke Halbern looked at her as if he had nothing else to say.
***
He is in trouble.
No, he is not in trouble, is he?
Mehen crossed his arms and glared at them obliquely.
“Why are you bringing Arel with you, My Lord?”
“He wants to see his mum, honey.”
A pen flew through the air.
***
Halbern Manor, sometime in the past.
Amidst the faded landscape of the manor house, more faded than she remembered, stood Arellin, a little older than she had been.
Khukk.
Blood stains the knuckles of her tiny hand, which reflexively clamps over her mouth as a dry cough breaks out.
Arellin’s cheeks were too pale for her fair complexion.
‘You should prepare yourself.’
‘No more…’
Mehen, who had never been more shabby than he was now, frowned in despair as he stood amongst the doctors who spoke negatively.
No longer did the mysterious potions from the palace help Arellin’s illness.
He realized too late that Arellin’s illnesses had been caused by someone stealing the medicine.
Mehen, wracked with unspeakable guilt, held on to the portal. The direct line to the northern provinces gave no reply from the Lord.
‘Come back. You must see your daughter’s face at least once before you die.’
When the connection was made once, Mehen informed him of Arellin’s plight and demanded his return.
‘Archduke Halbern delayed his return, saying he had ‘business to attend to’.
‘What the hell is more important than coming to see your dying daughter?!’
Time and time again, praying for a connection, Halbern threw all his energy into Arellin’s recovery, but Mehen’s efforts were in vain.
As he took the child’s hand for the last time, Mehen felt his own helplessness for the first time.
Arellin was dead.
By his own hand, the sweet, loving child he had raised was gone.
‘…Arell.’
All his life, Mehen had thought of himself as rational, but that day he learnt just how emotional and irrational he could be.
He felt as if he was solely responsible for Arellin’s death. It was ridiculous, but it was his responsibility.
More than anything, he could not forgive Valar for that.
Mehen’s patience snapped when he saw the Archduke of Halbern at his daughter’s funeral.
‘Why now?! Why now?! Why now?!’
A fierce anger rose in him.
‘Was it so hard for you to come once? She was your daughter, your own daughter, whom you threw away on a whim, do you think this situation makes any sense?’
The Archduke didn’t make any excuses, just stared down at the cold little child.
Mehen’s eyes saw nothing in him, even though his beauty, admired by all in the ecliptic, was ruined, and he was one of the strongest men in the Empire, with multiple injuries.
‘I’ve had enough of your irresponsibility.’
‘Mehen.’
“Let’s stop. No, I’ll stop.’
Mehen was tired. He hated Archduke Halbern for putting him in this situation.
The loyalty and trust he’d had in him had been extinguished the moment the little child lost her breath.
‘Now live your life as you wish.’
What had begun as an unknowing following in the street one day at the age of six ended with the unilateral separation of the twenty-six-year-old Mehen.
‘Let us never see each other again.’
Without representation, without titles, without surnames, without everything he owned, and with only the salary he had received for twenty years of labor, Mehen left the Halbern manor.
The Archduke of Halbern could not hold him, and he was ruined.
Then one winter day.
The Archduke of Halbern disappeared from his manor.
Rumors of the Archduke’s disappearance spread through the capital.
***
She blinked dazedly as she woke up.
She must have had a weird dream.
“Is it the mood?”
She tried to remember, but nothing came to mind.
However, the sigil on the back of her hand, which had been silent for a while, was glowing unusually brightly, and she was nervous that someone would see it.
“I don’t have a stalker, so why is this glowing?”
Now that she thinks about it, she can’t see it.
She is trying to decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, and she decides that it’s a good thing, and she going to enjoy another peaceful day.
“Arellirin, help!”
An unwelcome visitor appeared.
