TTMLPTWW ~ Chapter 145

“What did Princess Margarita say back then?”

“She said I had to go to the north to find the child’s father.”

“……What?”

“I’m just relaying what I heard at the time. I had no idea why the Princess was being chased with only Cynthia, or what my father-in-law was doing back then.”

Masera’s expression was calm, but his tone suggested he found the situation pathetic.

The Count’s face cracked for a moment, but he quickly regained his usual composed demeanor.

However, inside, he was slowly crumbling.

‘She came to me, saying she was going to find the child’s father?’

Was she here to give the order to find the father, or……?

Various emotions clashed sharply within him, creating a cacophony.

The Count, barely escaping his torment, slowly opened his mouth.

“If Cynthia used the explosion as an opportunity to leave your side, what will you do? Perhaps she didn’t trust her husband and sought a new helper. If so, will you resent and destroy her, or respect and let her go?”

His question was mixed with personal curiosity, applying his own past to the situation.

The knight who left the Princess behind to protect his honor destroyed everything about her when she left him.

What choice would this young soldier make?

“It’s my fault for not giving her enough faith, so I have no right to resent her. However, I have no intention of letting her go easily. And……”

Masera trailed off, staring at the Count.

“This is only a story before we had faith in each other. My wife is not the kind of person who would leave me for someone else.”

“Faith?”

“It means there is a foundation of trust and connection.”

Where did that unwavering faith come from?

The Count found the young man’s youthful arrogance amusing, yet also considered it extreme.

“Aren’t you still unsure, Father-in-law?”

The following question etched a faint shadow on the Count’s brow.

Masera thought that the Count and the Princess must not have had faith in each other. Otherwise, why would the Princess have run away with her child alone?

The portraits of her he had seen from the mansion to the greenhouse contained the passage of the four seasons.

It was as if the Count’s lingering attachment to the lost time, endlessly questioning her as she left.

Did the Princess truly love her knight?

Masera rose from his seat and placed the lollipop on the table.

“I’ll be going now. And you should quit smoking cigars. My wife hates it, so I quit too.”

Even quitting cigars, what a stubborn guy.

The Count, finally defeated by him, wore a weary expression.

‘That’s why I hate being a dog of the state.’

As the saying goes, officers and knights were like cats and dogs, and the two men were in-laws with the worst compatibility.

The Count, gazing silently at the victor’s retreating figure, leaned back on the sofa.

“……That damned son-in-law, verbally crushing his father-in-law and leaving.”

Much more human than himself, who would have hung his father-in-law’s head on the castle walls.

* * *

After Masera left, the Count ran his fingers through his hair nervously and sighed.

He fiddled with the cigar in his hand for a long time but didn’t light it.

“She said I had to go to the north to find the child’s father.”

Instead of asking him to find the child’s father, the Princess had asked him to protect the child.

He stared at the ceiling as if glaring at it, quietly questioning himself.

“Did I ever do anything with her to make a child……?”

The Count quickly shut his mouth, muttering quietly.

He almost uttered blasphemous words against the Princess.

“……Did I do anything that could have made me a father?”

But even in its softened form, the premise was still incredibly disrespectful.

A knight must always maintain his reason, so he doesn’t drink alcohol and lives a life of restraint, not unlike a clergyman.

For a lifelong knight to lay a hand on his master, the Princess, in his right mind was not only a serious crime but also a humiliating admission that he was an uncontrollable bastard.

‘If I were really the father, she would have told me before she died.’

It was frustrating and confusing, like untangling a tangled thread.

“Marriage is a noble’s duty. If you ever give up your position as a lifelong knight, you’ll get married too, right?”

He recalled Princess Margarita’s anxious voice from the past. Then, he remembered the night before he left for the war.

“If you leave for the war tomorrow, we might not see each other for years. So, please stay with me. Like you used to stay by my side every night when it thundered when I was little.”

“……Grant, say you don’t want to if you don’t want to. As a knight, you can’t refuse my words. I hate that. I can’t know your true feelings.”

What did I say back then?

Strangely, that night, in particular, was like a memory with pieces cut out, and he couldn’t remember it well.

‘Why was she crying?’

A throbbing headache, like a hangover, washed over him, so he decided to stop wandering in the endless maze.

What was important right now was what to do with what she had left behind.

“Cynthia.”

He pronounced the name several times.

He chewed on the unlit cigar, recalling the time when he had lost consciousness for two days due to poison and woke up.

Cynthia was sitting by his side, chattering away, and her noisy babble seemed to have awakened his consciousness.

“You old geezer. I won’t let you off if you die.”

Where else could you find such a handsome old geezer? He almost retorted without thinking but stopped himself.

“Anyway, it’s time for revenge. I’ll thoroughly ruin you.”

Cynthia’s excited voice made him think she was going to inflict a revenge worse than death, such as branding his body with a hot iron or crippling him—

“…….”

She drew on his face and tied his hair in pigtails, inflicting mental abuse and humiliation on him.

“Oh, instead of being ruined, you’ve become a cute uncle with apple hair. Next time, I’ll put on a bunny headband…….”

‘Stop it.’

He felt helpless, being subjected to children’s games.

And she was the kind of person who would talk alone for hours, not caring whether the other person could answer or not.

“They say that generals start wearing stars from the rank of one-star general, but the rank insignia is diamond-shaped, you know? Is it because there are many generals who are embarrassed to wear star-shaped insignia? Oh, speaking of stars, have you ever heard that you can’t see the back of the moon?”

Is this conversation…… a stream of consciousness technique?

The conclusion he reached after being subjected to such mental torture consisting of endless chatter was that she didn’t want him to die.

“Humans have various masks. Sometimes they can be tyrants who make others cry, and sometimes they can be clowns who make others laugh. So, I set my own criteria. Anything that poses a real threat to my life. I decided to be generous to those who don’t cross that line. Helene may have tried to take and seize, but she didn’t try to kill me.”

He couldn’t tell whether she was kind-hearted like her mother or a calculating person like himself.

“You didn’t intend to kill me from the start either, did you, Mister?”

He had simply been unable to refuse Princess Margarita’s order to protect another First Lady.

He slowly lifted his lowered eyelids.

‘So, did that child die?’

If so, he had ultimately disobeyed the Princess’s order.

The moment he questioned it, he felt the sensation of the Princess’s hand gradually cooling in his hand. And the small hand of the child clutching his empty hand.

“Dad?”

He clutched his forehead, tormented by memories like phantom pains.

He felt like he was drowning in deep despair, just like on the day his time had stopped.

The Count slowly got up and headed to his study.

Sitting at his desk, he stared at the newspaper carelessly placed on the corner for a long time.

More precisely, it was the photo in the newspaper article of Cynthia smiling brightly and hugging him.

“……I’m going crazy.”

Princess Margarita was his eternal master and ruler.

Her gentle voice was an order, and it bound him to the world as a mission to live.

Proposals, marriage, the child’s guardian, a train station named after her.

‘Was that also because she wasn’t sure?’

He wanted to know what his existence meant to her. He thought he might find the answer if he faithfully carried out her orders.

But damn it, now an even greater challenge had come.

One thing was certain: Cynthia’s death was not a fundamental solution.

He had to face an extreme truth, either a nightmare or a rest.

Am I the father of that little white-haired girl, or not?

Of course, if Cynthia died, it would become an eternal secret.

“No, that won’t do.”

The Count ran a hand over his face and jumped up from his seat as if reacting. He immediately summoned his aide.

“Summon the leaders of the Wild Dogs. And.”

The ‘Wild Dogs’ referred to the rival organizations that had been pushed out by the gun-smuggling Organization in the power struggle.

He added in a plain tone.

“Dispose of this mansion.”

At the unexpected order, the aide asked with a bewildered expression.

“May I ask why? This is an important house that you refused offers to buy at a premium.”

The Count stared at the window that held the scenery she loved.

“……I don’t need it anymore.”

He was now just a cold-blooded man who only knew how to solve things with force and money.

“I have something I need to find before those damn military dogs.”

If Cynthia was really his daughter, this would be his last chance to act as a father.

As if a fire that had gone out was rising again, his blue eyes were burning coldly.