A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 101

Chapter 101

“What do you mean, appeared?”

At Adeline’s question, Tie fidgeted and stared behind her.

But there truly was something there from just a little while ago.

Something only visible to Tie’s eyes at this very moment.

‘Before, Tie didn’t know what that was either.’

But now he knew.

Because in Pearl City, he had once met Basto’s dead wife, Eve.

Tie lowered her voice and said,

“It’s like, a ghost, no, a spirit….”

“Don’t joke.”

But at that moment, Adeline cut Tie off.

Her voice was already trembling in tiny shakes.

With bloodshot eyes and her jaw tense, Adeline said,

“It’s my… mother. No matter how young you are, that kind of joke….”

Tie’s eyebrows drooped low.

“It’s not a joke though….!”

When he looked at the members to ask for help, Nordix stepped forward with a serious face.

“The child’s words are true.”

Adeline looked at Nordix with an expressionless face.

“That child is a magician. More precisely, a necromancer who handles dark-attribute magic. On previous occasions, he has also often seen the dead….”

“Is this all it amounts to?”

But Adeline’s answer was sharp all over.

“I was trying to help all of you, and this is all I get in return?”

“Come now, Adeline. That is not….”

“If this isn’t mockery toward my mother and me, then what is it?”

At last, tears that Adeline had long endured began falling plop, plop from her eyes.

The hand she had clenched into a fist was trembling in tiny shakes.

“I….”

Staggering, she dropped to the floor with her shoulders shaking.

It was when Tie, who had begun crying too, stamped her feet without knowing what to do.

“….”

The woman standing behind Adeline approached Tie.

Then she took a single white handkerchief out from within her bosom and placed it on top of Tie’s hand.

The woman looked at Adeline with a sad smile.

As if asking him to hand the handkerchief over to her.

Tie hesitated, then carefully approached Adeline.

And he held out the handkerchief to her, as she sobbed.

“Big sister, this….”

Adeline looked at Tie with reddened eyes.

Then, the next moment, she stopped breathing for a short instant.

Upon Astie’s palm, thousands of tiny lights were gathering.

The light clumped together as if wrapping around something, then formed a single object.

“…Ha.”

A short gasp burst from Adeline’s mouth.

What the light gathered upon Tie’s palm had formed was a handkerchief.

The handkerchief she herself had placed into her mother’s hand on the day she left for the imperial capital to become the princess’s maid.

“Wh, what on earth is this.”

“She keeps crying while looking at big sister.”

“What…?”

“Because big sister is crying, I guess the ghost is sad too. Since a while ago, she keeps crying and crying while looking at big sister….”

Adeline’s face twisted without end.

With trembling hands, she grasped Tie’s small hand.

Warmth from the handkerchief was coming through between the child’s fingers.

“U, ugh….”

Her breathing quickened, and in the end she bent over and buried her face in the handkerchief.

“Mother, Mother….”

From the handkerchief came a familiar scent.

The unmistakable smell of her mother, as she remembered it.

* * *

Adeline remained crouched over for a long time.

While sobbing loudly and clutching Tie tightly.

At last, after stopping her crying, she asked in a hoarse voice,

“Mother, Mother really is by my side?”

Tie sniffled and nodded.

“I, I… didn’t know.”

She had thought only that it must be an assassin or a watcher.

So at one time she had even found it strange.

That trained assassins could fail that badly to hide their presence. Something about it had been odd.

But now she felt she understood.

‘It wasn’t that she couldn’t hide it.’

She had done it on purpose.

To let Adeline know that she was here.

Because it was her mother.

Adeline tightly gripped the handkerchief Tie had given her.

Then, after taking a deep breath, she asked,

“Can you hear what Mother is saying, perhaps?”

Astie looked behind Adeline.

However, he soon shook his head with a downcast face.

“I can’t hear it. Her lips move like this, but I can’t hear her voice at all.”

“…I see.”

“But since a while ago she’s been pointing with her finger over there!”

Tie gestured in a diagonal direction.

Adeline’s eyes grew serious as she turned her head that way.

“Toward the lord’s castle.”

The direction Tie had pointed was where the road leading toward the lord’s castle lay.

Adeline’s eyes cooled steadily.

She drew a short breath.

Then, after gathering her emotions in order, she rose from her seat.

“Let’s go. If we delay any longer, the interrogation will begin.”

Before coming into the room.

She had roughly overheard Agabert’s conversation in the hallway.

If Reginald ended up interrogating Veil, Agabert might really be exiled from the imperial capital.

“Let’s rescue your companion before the interrogation begins.”

Enzo rose to his feet after her.

“Would that be possible?”

“Whether it is possible or impossible, don’t we have to try first?”

The Agabert members exchanged glances.

“…Thank you. Sincerely.”

At Raul’s words that came next, Adeline shook her head as if it were nothing.

“It’s all right. I intended to help from the start anyway.”

“Yes?”

“To be honest, when your companion punched Reginald, it felt satisfying.”

Basto let out a short sigh.

That was because the sight of Reginald’s two teeth flying out at once flashed through his mind.

“First let’s stop by the underground prison. If your companion is not there, then we’ll have to go up to the top of the tower….”

“No, she says!”

But then Tie, who had been looking at empty air, gave a little hop.

For some reason, the child shook her head from side to side.

“Pretty auntie says it’s not the top and not underground either. She shook her head like this and like this.”

Adeline’s eyes narrowed.

“Neither the spire nor the underground prison?”

But aside from those two places, there was nowhere suitable for confining someone.

However, she soon let out a short gasp.

“No way.”

“Do you have any idea where it might be?”

Adeline looked at Nordix.

“There is. A place Reginald showed interest in when he first entered the lord’s castle, saying it would make a good makeshift prison.”

It was the stable located in the back garden of the lord’s castle.

The place where her father had personally raised and cared for the horses he treasured while alive.

“The stable. I think it’s the stable in the back garden of the lord’s castle.”

* * *

In the dim forest.

Basto walked while keeping his body as low as possible.

That was because she was worried that branches might touch Tie’s face, with the child on her back.

“The path is rougher than I expected.”

At Raul’s words from the front, Adeline beside him nodded.

“This is the only back route to the castle that Reginald doesn’t know about. It can’t be helped.”

They were deliberately going the long way around in order to avoid the soldiers’ eyes.

The forest path repeated steep ascents and descents countless times.

Because of that, Nordix, who had followed them for the first twenty minutes, gave up midway and returned to the village.

While the members rescued Veil, he intended to gather the luggage and prepare the carriage.

So that if anything happened, they could leave the village at once.

“We’ve arrived. It’s that wooden fence over there.”

Enzo, checking the place Adeline pointed to, nodded.

Far away, between the thick weeds and bushes that had grown as high as a grown man’s waist.

There was a fence that looked as though planks had been attached together.

“If you just follow that fence, you’ll reach the back garden right away. There are likely to be guards, but….”

“We’ll deal with them. Don’t worry.”

Adeline nodded unwillingly.