Episode 69
“What about Cedric?”
“Brother said he’s busy today.”
“Is that so?”
A scholar by profession, Cedric usually holed up in his study, devoting himself to research. Unlike his usual mischievous self, when in his study he was the very image of a researcher—sensitive even to the smallest noise. With a sulky face, Damian climbed onto the bed and laid his head in Rowena’s lap.
“But Mom. Brother hasn’t come out since noon yesterday. The meal outside the door is still untouched. Do you think he’s sleeping?”
“If it’s been like that since yesterday, that is worrying.”
Rowena gently stretched her son’s cheek and abruptly proposed,
“Not eating or sleeping… what a bad boy. Shall we go scold him?”
At the mischievous glint in her eyes, Damian sprang up and nodded vigorously.
“Great!”
“All right. Wait until Mommy washes up.”
Smiling at the energetic answer, Rowena laughed and ruffled her son’s hair. The contents of her dream had long since flown away entirely.
* * *
“Cedric.”
“….”
“Cedric? Brother?”
“….”
They called out alternately and knocked, but there was no sign of movement from inside. Damian, excited at the thought of acting spoiled for the first time in a while, looked up at Rowena.
“Is he sleeping?”
“I wonder.”
If he was sleeping, she didn’t want to wake him with Damian’s fussing. Rowena glanced down at the cold meal and then turned her gaze to Damian.
“Will you go to the kitchen and ask them to prepare a fresh meal?”
“Yeah.”
As Damian nodded and moved away, Rowena knocked once more to check.
“I’m coming in.”
There was no answer. Convinced he was asleep, Rowena quietly opened the door and entered the study.
“Cedric?”
Unlike when Lauren had used it, the room was as dark as a cave. The moment she stepped inside, she knocked a book with her foot; tearing her eyes from it, she discovered the man sleeping face-down at the desk. He was sleeping uncomfortable, practically buried among mountains of books and papers. As she approached step by step, Rowena recalled the request Lauren had made before leaving.
—They praise him as a genius, but in my eyes, he’s just a child. If no one takes care of him, he won’t eat or sleep properly. So even if it’s a bother, think of it as having two children and take good care of him for me.
It had been a mistake to leave him alone all day yesterday for fear of disturbing his concentration. Even though it was morning, Rowena looked around the gloomy room and clicked her tongue softly.
“The room is a mess, and he hasn’t even drawn the curtains….”
She felt an inward pang, wondering if she had looked the same when immersed in writing. Passing the fast-asleep Cedric, Rowena approached the window and pulled back the tightly drawn blackout curtains.
“Mm….”
Bathed in the sudden sunlight, Cedric, who had been sitting with his back to the window, furrowed his brows. Only after pulling back the last curtain did Rowena shake Cedric’s shoulder.
“Wake up. It’s already morning. If you’re going to sleep, at least eat first and sleep properly in bed.”
“Mmm….”
With a hoarse voice, Cedric shook his head and buried his face in his arm. Rather than getting up, he seemed intent on sleeping more in that uncomfortable position. Rowena patted his back.
“I’m not telling you to stop sleeping. Let’s go to your room first. Okay?”
“It’s annoying…. I have so much to do.”
Cedric replied as if mumbling and shook his head. The determined man from not long ago was nowhere to be seen, and at his action of covering his ears, Rowena let out a small laugh. His disheveled hair was like that of a sulking puppy. A large breed puppy that wouldn’t listen, at that.
With the premonition that he would stay cooped up in the study all day today as well, Rowena muttered without realizing,
“If I had accepted the proposal, I would have ended up with a grown son rather than a husband… huh?”
Before she even finished speaking, her arm was yanked. Her upper body pitched forward as she lost her balance, and a strange smile hovered right before her nose.
“You weren’t ignoring me?”
“…That.”
“I was immersed in research to forget the pain of my broken heart, but are you going to keep making my heart flutter?”
Cedric added as if interrogating her, gazing at her with seductive eyes. Their noses touched side by side, and their lips stopped at a precarious distance.
For someone who had sat at his desk all day, he looked no different from usual aside from slightly haggard eyes. Up close, he was indeed handsome even in disarray. Intellectual pupils, a perfect nose as if carved, and slightly full, red lips. In contrast to those, his eyelashes—longer than a woman’s—were the same snowy white as his hair.
At this belated realization, Rowena blinked silently and subtly averted her gaze.
“You really say things to a woman with a child that you shouldn’t.”
“You talk just like an elder sister. Even though you’re younger than me.”
Cedric smiled, wrinkling the tip of his nose, and lowered the hand that had been holding her arm, tapping the back of Rowena’s hand, which had lost its place and was braced against the desk.
“What a bad woman. Is it fun to play with me? To swing me around and knead me?”
“You really have no filter.”
During the time she had lived alone with Damian, she had received various advances and temptations, but never this openly.
“I’ll take what you just said as a joke. There must be someone far more suitable for you.”
“…Suitable. Who?”
“A young, pretty lady from a good family, without children.”
He was a good man, but that was precisely why she couldn’t accept his heart even as a joke. He was the beloved youngest brother of her benefactor and friend Lauren, a man with a bright future ahead of him.
“So stop joking like that now.”
“Who decides that?”
Rowena forced a smile at the awkward atmosphere, about to change the subject. A low voice pressed her. As Rowena hesitated, Cedric rose from his seat and pressed further.
“Did you decide that?”
“That’s.”
“Rowena.”
Cedric turned the chin of Rowena, who was averting her gaze, to make her look at him, and declared,
“I decide my heart, and the partner who suits me. So I’ll politely decline that ‘imaginary’ woman you mentioned.”
It was a gaze without a shred of wavering or hesitation. He was a man who had always been gentle, always calm like water. But now he was like a sharply honed blade. Looking at Rowena, who was so surprised by the suddenly changed atmosphere that she couldn’t move, Cedric withdrew his hand with a grin. Then he added playfully,
“Ah. For your information, my type is a young, pretty woman with a cute, clever son from an ordinary family.”
“….”
“Not that you’re curious.”
As Rowena, thrown back those very words, momentarily forgot how to speak, Cedric turned his head at a presence near the door and broke the silence.
“You were there, Damian.”
They didn’t know how much Damian had heard or seen from in front of the study. Rowena watched her son’s reactions the whole time, but she breathed a sigh of relief when he showed no difference from usual.
It wasn’t something shameful in Damian’s eyes, but she had nearly felt uncomfortable nonetheless. But fortunately, to make such worries groundless, Damian appeared completely oblivious.
“Brother. They say there are rabbits and deer in the forest nearby? I want to see them.”
“Really? The weather has warmed up today, too; shall we go take a look?”
“Great! Let’s go together, Mom. Huh?”
After eating the meal Damian had brought and then making up for the sleep he had deferred until noon, Cedric looked considerably better.
At the suggestion that came up in the middle of lunch, Rowena shook her head.
“I’m fine. You two go.”
“Mom. Don’t be like that, can’t we go together?”
Damian pouted at the refusal and whined.
“I want to see them with Mom. Huh?”
As if he had never been mature and sensible, Damian had grown more spoiled by the day while staying here. Perhaps because he felt this was a place where he could attach his heart, Rowena couldn’t bring herself to be firm. Cedric proposed to the hesitant Rowena,
“Let’s go together. It’s right in front. It won’t take long. I even know where the rabbit holes are.”
“Shall we, then. All right.”
Thanks to Cedric acting as if nothing had happened, the morning’s events were quickly forgotten. Since the day she had gone to the bookstore, it had been a long time since she had properly gone outside. If it was right nearby, she thought they could go and come back quickly. Rowena meekly nodded.
* * *
Though the weather had warmed, the forest was covered in snow as if draped in a white blanket. Finding it amusing to sink deep past his ankles, Damian deliberately stomped through the white snowfield. He held Cedric tightly with one hand and Rowena with the other. Smiling fondly at the excited Damian, Rowena suddenly asked,
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah! I like it so much.”
Damian nodded energetically, looking alternately at Rowena and Cedric. It was a scene he had dreamed of someday. Though a certain face flickered in one corner of his heart.
“That’s a relief. If my son likes it, Mom likes it, too.”
It was when Rowena, gripping her son’s hand tightly, smiled brightly—
“Shh.”
Cedric suddenly stopped walking and put his index finger to his lips. The two looked at him in puzzlement, and he pointed to one spot.
“Look over there.”
“Wow….”
Standing in the distance was a buck with magnificent antlers. Rowena and Damian exclaimed almost simultaneously. In the winter forest where snowflakes had settled, it stood proudly as if it owned the place, looking this way. Damian was half-dazed at its size and grandeur, even greater than in pictures.
Two does approached from behind the buck, which was watching the three warily. Discovering the fawns trailing after the does, Damian grabbed Rowena’s arm in overwhelming excitement.
Rowena knelt down to meet his eye level, and he whispered in her ear.
“Mom, look at that. It must be a deer family. So cute.”
“It really is.”
To Rowena’s eyes, Damian’s excitement and joy over such small things were even cuter. Watching the two smile brightly at each other, Cedric promptly rummaged through his coat and held out what he had brought.
“Try throwing this.”
Wrapped in small paper was none other than deer feed in pellet form.
“You throw it far. Can you do it?”
“Yeah!”
Damian answered with determined eyes, grabbed a handful of feed, and threw it toward the deer with all his might.