Chapter 44
“We’re in the middle of a conversation. Are Lady Taldon and I invisible to you, Countess Rachel?”
“Ah. I’m sorry. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lady Taldon. You’ve likely met my sister.”
Lady Taldon, who had been frowning as though she did not understand, gradually brightened.
“Ah! You look just like her. Are you the sister of Countess Roderick, Her Majesty’s lady-in-waiting?”
“Yes, that’s right. I heard about you from my sister, and I was actually planning to send you an invitation. You made your debut last year, didn’t you?”
“Oh my. You know even that?”
Countess Rachel’s name was well known in society. For Veronica Taldon, who had made her debut last year but had remained on her estate due to poor health, Countess Rachel’s acknowledgment was an important opportunity. At the unexpectedly warm attention, Veronica’s mood quickly softened, and she quietly lowered her tail.
“It seems my friend may have made a mistake.”
“Not at all. These things happen.”
Laughing lightly, the countess linked her arm through Rowina’s.
“Then may we be on our way?”
“Yes. I’ll see you again.”
Veronica shot Rowina a brief glare, then smiled back and brought the situation to a close.
“What on earth was that?”
“I’m sorry. Just a moment.”
Once the disappointed onlookers had dispersed and the gazes on them had somewhat fallen away, Rowina immediately turned toward the place where Damian had disappeared. Just then, Bobo, who had run off after slipping his leash, came trudging toward her. Rowina froze, and her eyes met Joan’s, who was gripping Bobo’s leash. Without a word, Joan gestured with her eyes toward her arms. In her embrace was Damian, exhausted from crying his heart out. Behind her followed a man.
“……
Mr. Zenok?”
Zenok, removing his hat, gave a slight bow.
* * *
“I thought something truly terrible was going to happen because of Bobo earlier.”
After somehow making excuses and leaving the hunting grounds, Damian refused to leave Rowina’s arms all the way back to the townhouse. Having soothed her terrified son, who did not even know what had happened, Rowina sat facing Joan and Zenok in the drawing room. As soon as Joan wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and opened the conversation, Rowina pounced with a question.
“Terrible? What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain.”
Zenok raised one hand to stop Joan, who was about to speak in agitation, swallowed dryly, and picked up his teacup. Only after taking a sip of the steaming black tea did he continue.
“A dangerous vagrant had entered the hunting woods.”
“What?”
At the thunderbolt of a statement, Rowina sprang to her feet and demanded an explanation, her face drained white.
“Right now… are you telling me that makes any sense?”
“It doesn’t. Most likely, with the grounds being open to the public, he slipped in while the keepers’ vigilance had loosened a little, intending to catch and eat a rabbit. Then he found the young master.”
Zenok set down his teacup and clasped his hands together with a grave expression.
“Of all things……”
“Of all things?”
“……”
“Tell me. Now!”
Rowina shouted in a shrill voice, her body trembling. Something horrific could have happened to Damian. It felt as though the blood in her body had frozen from head to toe.
With a shadowed face, Zenok lowered his eyes, then turned his head toward Joan beside him.
“Would you step out for a moment?”
“Ah. Yes.”
As soon as Joan left the room, Zenok got to the point. The next moment, Rowina was swept up in a shock that could not compare to what she had felt moments ago.
“He might have harmed the young master.”
“Harmed……”
Her heart dropped. As an image she could not bear to imagine flashed before her eyes, it felt as if every drop of blood in her body had turned cold.
“My God!”
Rowina covered her face with both hands and trembled.
“It was an accident. Fortunately, nothing happened. The young master simply happened to be there at the very moment the vagrant was wandering that place. It was unavoidable.”
Zenok tried to console her with a pained expression, but it was not enough.
“How can you say that? I was the one who forced Damian to come here!”
Rowina snapped in a shrill voice, then sank weakly back into her seat. A chill ran down her spine.
Only after taking a long while to catch her breath did her trembling heart finally settle. The shock and anger were brief; her resentment turned wholly toward Killian, who had dragged mother and son to this place.
“Thank you for saving Damian today. I’ll repay this debt someday, Mr. Zenok.”
Having barely composed herself, Rowina gave a slight bow and went upstairs.
Too much had happened in one day. Normally, she would have had to wait until Killian returned, but today, she did not want to. After checking her sleeping son’s face and going up to her bedroom, drowsiness came flooding over her.
* * *
A cold hand touched his forehead. At the cool temperature, Damian slowly woke from deep sleep. When he opened his eyes, someone was sitting by his bedside. The man withdrew his hand from Damian’s forehead and, by the light of the lamp on the nightstand, was reading a thick stack of documents.
“Mis……
ter?”
Recognizing who it was, Damian doubted his eyes.
“Is it you, Mister? The one I saw in the park last time?”
The man set down the documents and looked at Damian. The moment their eyes met, Damian’s mouth fell open.
“Keep that up and a bug will fly into your mouth.”
“Mister, you look exactly like me! Is this a dream?”
“What would you prefer?”
“Hey!”
The man, the corners of his lips lifting slightly, pressed his index finger firmly against Damian’s forehead as he tried to spring up, forcing him to lie back down. Damian struggled for a short while, but in the end, exhausted, he raised the white flag.
“Go back to sleep.”
“I woke up because of you, Mister.”
“Close your eyes and sleep. Sleeping is what children are supposed to do.”
“Will you disappear if I don’t sleep?”
“Yes.”
At the dry answer, Damian pouted.
“You don’t have a child, do you, Mister?”
“Why?”
At the sudden question, Killian tilted his head and crossed one leg over the other. It was only that simple a movement, yet elegance could be felt in it. Damian, momentarily entranced by the sight, answered deliberately mischievously.
“You look like you wouldn’t.”
“I actually have one.”
Killian clasped his hands together and blinked slowly.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Though it was only a brief affirmation, for some reason it made Damian’s heart sink. The excitement that had risen in him plummeted in an instant. Crestfallen, Damian only opened his mouth again after quite some time.
“Is it a son or a daughter?”
“A son. As far as I know, about your age.”
“You say it like you don’t know him very well.”
“Because I don’t.”
At the strange sense of dissonance, Damian stared hard at the man. The other person was certainly an adult. No matter how Damian rubbed his eyes and looked again, he was a grown man, and yet, strangely, in this moment he felt like someone his own age. As if a cold-hearted boy had simply put on the shell of an adult and was sitting there.
“Are you really a father with a son?”
“Who knows.”
Killian stared into the air for a moment as if thinking, then answered calmly.
“I dislike children. All they do is cry and scream, and they can’t be reasoned with. Once they’ve grown a little, they become willful and troublesome. They’re noisy, uncontrollable, and bothersome.”
As if the brief moment when he had seemed like a boy had been a lie, the man returned to being an adult. Damian, who had been blinking blankly at the string of insults that were not quite insults, belatedly flared up.
“Then why did you save me in the park?”
“Just because.”
“Oh, right! Your arm was hurt.”
Damian’s gaze turned to the man’s left arm, the one that had shielded him. At that gaze, Killian raised his right arm as if to show it off.
“It was your left arm, though? It was the left arm.”
“You saw wrong.”
The way he moved without so much as blinking somehow did not seem like a lie. Judging by the motion with which he lifted it, it looked as though he had never been injured at all. At the unbelievable sight, Damian’s expression gradually stiffened. After thinking seriously for a while, Damian came to a conclusion.
“Mister, are you perhaps a ghost?”
“……”
“My gr—no, our teacher said there are ghosts in the world who don’t even know they’re dead. Spirits that wander because they still have lingering attachments to this world.”
He was certain. He had clearly seen with his own two eyes how much blood there had been, yet the man had become perfectly fine in such a short time, and his sudden appearance out of nowhere made no sense unless he was a ghost. Excited by his blossoming imagination, Damian continued.
“You came to find your son, didn’t you? You died, but you couldn’t go up to heaven yet because you wanted to see your son, right? That must be—”
“What if that were true?”
His confident guess could not continue. The man smiled quietly. The moment Damian saw not the faint smile from before, but a smile spread across his entire face, his mind went completely white. The winter air that had felt somehow cold and chilly disappeared without a trace, and it felt as though a warm, pleasant spring breeze was softly blowing. It felt like his feet had floated off the ground, as if he were stepping on clouds. From the first time he saw this man, he had felt strangely that way. It was truly strange.
“Then.”
Nervous under the intent gaze of the face that looked just like his own, Damian cleared his throat and lowered his eyes.
“Let’s be friends. I’ll help you find your son too.”
“Why?”
“Because you saved me, Mister. Even if it didn’t mean anything.”
“It wasn’t meaningless.”
“Yes?”
“I said I dislike children. I never said I dislike you.”
At the gentle answer, Damian’s face turned bright red. At the same time, for some reason, tears welled up in his eyes. He felt longing and sorrow. At the same time, he envied this man’s son so much. They looked this much alike, and yet it was not him.
“Could you… not be my father?”