“Sorry? What do you mean?”
Ivelin frowned.
She didn’t think she was doing anything particularly wrong.
If anything, it was good.
But Richel didn’t seem to think so.
“Your method of upbringing is wrong.”
Sure enough.
“What?”
It was something she couldn’t understand.
“A heir of Lekash must not come to know affection.”
Must not come to know affection.
It sounded like words that also applied to Richel himself.
“…Ether is still a child.”
“And you have abused that child until now.”
“…You, you knew?”
“Of course. Did you think I wouldn’t know?”
“So you knew and still stood by?”
“Hatred is better than indiscriminate affection.”
“What, what in the world?”
Ivelin couldn’t bring herself to continue and bit down on her lip.
“I thought that if I said this much, you would understand…”
“No?!!!!”
Before Richel could even finish speaking, Ivelin shouted, and he quietly looked up at her.
“…That is not something to raise your voice over,”
She cut him off as if there was no need to listen and shouted.
“I disagree with your opinion!”
“This is not an opinion. It is a notice.”
“Then I reject that notice!”
“It’s completely impossible to communicate.”
Ivelin bristled as if she were seething, and Richel muttered while pressing his forehead with a look of utter disgust.
Then she sprang to her feet and shouted while pointing a finger straight at him.
“So you should play the role of Ether’s father too!”
Richel let out a hollow laugh as if he were dumbfounded.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Do I look like I’ve lost my mind?”
Ivelin was confident.
“Richel.”
“Address me as Grand Duke.”
Richel drew a sharp line.
“I have lost my memories, so there is nothing I remember. It looks that way to you too, doesn’t it?”
“…”
“Even so, I will try.”
“What kind of effort are you talking about?”
“Raising Ether with love, and having you take part in this method of upbringing as well.”
Perhaps deciding that nothing would come of this conversation, Richel finally stood up from his seat.
“Are you running away?”
Ivelin spoke toward the back of his head as he turned away.
Richel left the office without answering.
And after he left, Ivelin slid straight down onto the table and cried out toward Lotte.
“It will be fine, right? This much isn’t completely out of line, is it?”
Ivelin still didn’t fully know the Grand Duke’s personality.
To Richel, who had neglected Ether and criticized her method of education, it felt like she might have shouted far too loudly.
“…It does seem like you went too far.”
“Huh? I went too far?”
“…More than enough.”
“How do you think His Grace will react?”
“……”
“Please, can’t you say something, anything?”
“He will not kill you. I have not yet seen him kill a human.”
“…Huh? Kill…?”
Ivelin faltered at the words she hadn’t expected at all.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of help. Still, my Lady, you were very impressive.”
Lotte delivered words that weren’t comforting in the slightest.
And shortly after, Ivelin understood why the Grand Duke’s castle had been so noisy after Richel returned.
After ending her conversation with the Grand Duke, she had come out for a walk with Ether, only to see a mountain of demonic beasts piled up like a hill in front of the main gate.
So that was why Lotte had been talking about killing and such, Ivelin realized.
The neatly butchered bodies of monsters felt as if they were vividly alive.
She felt a chill when she thought she had met the eyes of one of the monsters near the middle.
Its gleaming gaze conveyed just how ferocious a demonic beast it must have been when it was alive.
The servants were in the process of loading the corpses onto carriages to send them to the Capital.
“Oh.”
Ivelin let out a small exclamation. It really had been a wrongheaded act of defiance.
“Wow.”
Ether simply looked fascinated.
“Ether, is this your first time seeing something like that?”
‘I am seeing it for the first time.’
Because Ether looked pleased, she asked the question reflexively, but Ivelin did so with an expression that looked close to tears.
“No. When I was over there, I saw it from outside the window. But it’s my first time seeing it up close.”
Over there?
When she looked in the direction Ether indicated, she saw the West Tower where Ivelin had abused and confined him.
“Ether, isn’t that West Tower scary?”
It suddenly grated on her nerves.
Perhaps to a child, that place would be where trauma was concentrated, and it didn’t seem good to keep it constantly in sight.
Ether thought for a moment, then said,
“It’s scary, but…”
“Really? Should we get rid of it?”
‘Just say the word, my baby.’
“…Then people would have a hard time. If work increases…”
“It seems my Ether wants to be an angel, not just a genius.”
“Hehe. But I don’t like things being hard.”
“Are you really okay with it? If you say you hate it, I’ll do it even if people have a hard time. That’s how Mom feels too.”
But in the end, Ether shook his head side to side.
“I hated it, and it was scary, but not anymore…”
She couldn’t break his stubbornness.
As she spoke, it was Ivelin who grew more and more unsettled and couldn’t bear it, and perhaps noticing that, Ether trailed off and then added,
“Le, let’s decorate it together.”
“Huh?”
“If we make it into a place so different that I can’t even recognize it, that’s fine, right?”
Ivelin’s eyes widened.
***
A few days after the mountain of demonic beasts had been mostly cleared away.
The servants had been too busy dealing with the monsters to even bring up other matters. Now that the carriages carrying the corpses had just left the Grand Duke’s estate, this was the chance.
Ivelin’s so-called “West Tower renovation operation” began.
Ether said he had mostly been confined on the very top floor, so he didn’t remember the lower levels very well.
But a tower was a tower. There was no space that could really be used as living quarters.
It looked so useless that no one even knew why, or by whom, this tower had been built in the first place.
It felt like a single gloomy gray building sitting there all by itself.
Because of the ominous atmosphere coming from the Forest of the World Tree, the Grand Duke’s castle didn’t feel particularly bright to begin with, but the West Tower was on another level entirely.
Of course, the Lekach Castle was generally in a dilapidated state, aside from the main building.
The main building was at least maintained because people actually lived there.
In the end, the castle was large in size but lacking in substance.
Thinking that if one drew a sword, they might as well cut a radish with it, Ivelin came to see Richel.
After all, Richel was the Grand Duke, so she felt she should at least get his permission.
And she also felt that she needed to make an excuse like this to talk to him, one way or another.
After that day, Richel hadn’t even shown his face near the main building where Ivelin and Ether were.
He was staying in the East Wing, which Ivelin called the “poop wing.”
Because it smelled awful.
Anyway, as soon as Ivelin finished organizing her thoughts about the West Tower, she came to find Richel.
Knock, knock.
But no matter how long she knocked, there was no response from inside. Ivelin gently opened the door and peeked inside.
Through the slightly opened gap in the door, she met Richel’s eyes head-on as he sat neatly inside.
Ivelin threw the door wide open and shouted as she stepped in.
“What is this, why were you pretending you weren’t here when you clearly were?!”
Ivelin shouted reflexively, then gasped and quickly covered her mouth.
“Why have you come again?”
But Richel’s attitude was calm.
“What do you mean, again? Anyone listening would think I come here all the time.”
“Don’t you?”
“…You knew?”
In truth, Ivelin had been dropping by the East Wing whenever she had a chance, sneaking looks at Richel before leaving.
He always stayed holed up in his bedroom and never seemed to come out, so she thought he didn’t know.
“How could I not know?”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Did I need to?”
Of course, it wasn’t that he had to say anything. Still, was he not even curious why she kept coming to the East Wing?
Ivelin muttered softly and plopped down into a chair at the table.
“I didn’t offer you a seat.”
“When I lost my memories, I must have sent my manners along with them.”
Either way, since he had known all along and still let it be, she felt confident that he didn’t intend to do anything to her right away.
But Richel, as if he didn’t even want to converse with her, gave no response at all.
Ivelin was troubled.
Ether was still young and untainted by the world, so even though she had been a violent mother, he would laugh and cling to her as long as she treated him a little better. But this man was different.
He was already a fully grown adult, and it looked like a great deal of distrust had piled up inside him.
Then how had she even ended up having a child with him?
“Richel.”
“Address me as Grand Duke.”
“Ah, yes. I did not realize you were such an old-fashioned fossil, Your Grace. From now on, I will definitely call you Your Grace, Your Grace. More importantly, there is something I am curious about.”
Not knowing what an “old-fashioned fossil” meant but apparently sensing it was not a good thing, Richel’s eyebrow shot up sharply.
“Stop the nonsense and say what you came to say.”
“Well, are you going to kill me if you don’t like me?”
“Ha.”
Richel let out a hollow laugh.
“If that were the case, you wouldn’t be here anymore.”
And he answered with an indifferent expression.
“Then, Your Grace, I am the Lady of House Lekach, correct?”
“…”
“If that is so, then I have full authority to manage this castle, right?”
Richel, who had been watching to see what this woman was getting at, had his expression utterly collapse.
So that was it after all.
“Even if you tried to sell this castle, there would be no one willing to buy—”
“Who said anything about selling?”
At Ivelin’s firm reply, Richel blinked.
“…Then why did you ask about full authority?”
Ivelin was dumbfounded.
“Who would even come to this polluted land? I have enough sense to know that much. I was just asking because I thought I might change the castle a little.”
“Change what?”
“It’s too gloomy. And one only starts wanting things when there is actual money, but the finances are a total mess too.”
Richel let out a small cough and lowered his head.
“Anyway, you are giving your permission, right?”
“Do as you please.”
“Oh, right. Your Grace.”
“Yes.”
“This is a gift.”
Ivelin suddenly held out a small tree branch with a single flower on it.
Near the corrupted World Tree Forest, there were no flowering trees.
Most of what grew there were tangled masses of strangely shaped shrubs or enormous coniferous trees.
She had found this flower by chance in a corner nearby while coming and going from the East Wing every day to see Richel.
All the other trees were huge, but this one was small.
She hadn’t broken it off on purpose. It had fallen to the ground, and she thought it would be nice to give it to Richel, so she brought it along.
“It’s pretty, right? I was thinking of coming back later with Ether to see it too.”
“…”
“Aren’t you going to take it?”
She asked because he was just staring blankly at it without any intention of accepting the flower.
“I don’t need it.”
Richel replied with a dry expression.
Ivelin withdrew the hand she had been holding out, her expression bitter.
“Your Grace, since you said you will not kill me, I will say one more thing.”
“…”
“You are really unpleasant.”
