Chapter 168

He had asked Dad only once.

Why Tie didn’t have a mom.

That day Dad did not answer him.

Instead, he changed the subject by saying something irrelevant.

But Tie had seen Dad’s expression clearly at that time.

That face that was smiling as if it were fine, but was somehow full of a lonely air.

After that, Tie never asked Dad again.

So he had not known.

That Tie too had other family.

It was when Tie, with a complicated face, was repeatedly gripping and releasing the hem of her cloak.

“……Tie?”

Three pairs of eyes appeared through the crack between the cabinet and the wall.

Tie, startled, raised her head.

Without his knowing when they had come, Edmund, Leonardo, and Alexander were looking at Tie.

“Unc……”

As always, Tie, who had been about to call them uncle, closed her mouth.

Until now he had called them that just fine.

But now that she knew they really were Tie’s uncles, the word came out less easily instead.

“What were you doing here. Hm?”

Alexander held out his hand.

After hesitating, Tie took that hand and came out.

Right away Leonardo brushed the dust stuck to Tie’s clothes off for him.

Tie looked hesitantly at the three of them and mumbled.

“Well, Tie was trying to find where everyone went……”

“We were in that end room the whole time. More than that, weren’t you just here earlier……”

Leonardo gave Edmund a light shove.

Edmund closed his mouth and stared hard at Tie.

“Why does your expression look so tearful? Were you that upset that we knocked Vice-Captain out? We only knocked him out, we didn’t hurt him.”

Tie shook her head from side to side.

Of course, when he had not known the four of them were brothers, he thought that behavior was a very bad thing.

But in the end the three young masters were Dad’s older brothers.

And if they were older brothers, it was a thing where they could hit a younger brother about once.

That was what the older sisters and older brothers at Hanbit Kindergarten who had younger siblings always claimed.

“Then why are you like this. Are you hungry?”

Tie shook her head again.

And answered weakly.

“I don’t know……”

In truth, Tie didn’t know either.

Why his body felt this heavy, like cotton soaked full of water.

On one hand, finding family he hadn’t known made his heart pound hard.

But on the other hand, it somehow felt strangely sad too.

As Tie kept her lips tightly shut, Leonardo pulled out a chocolate wrapped in paper from his pocket and handed it over.

“Eat.”

Looking at the chocolate placed in her hand, Tie slowly blinked her eyes.

But the next moment.

Before he knew it, thick teardrops rolled down his cheek.

“……Tie!”

Alexander, gone pale, lifted Tie into his arms.

Sniffling, Tie buried her face in Alexander’s chest.

Alexander placed his palm on Tie’s forehead and checked his temperature.

Then, after even checking the child’s complexion, she said to the other two,

“He doesn’t have a fever, but……!”

At the sight of them worrying about him, even more tears than before flowed out.

In the end Tie began crying, making a “Huheeng” sound.

Even though his runny nose was getting all over his chest, Alexander was busy soothing Tie.

“Tie, could you tell Uncle what you’re crying about?”

Edmund, who had been at a loss, came over and asked.

“Huu…… hic!”

Tie, even hiccuping, hugged Alexander’s neck.

As Edmund brushed aside the baby hairs stuck to Tie’s forehead, he scolded Leonardo.

“I told you not to knock him out. In front of the child.”

Fidgeting, Leonardo wiped Tie’s tears with a handkerchief.

Tie thought as he buried her face even deeper into Alexander’s shoulder.

‘They really, truly are Tie’s uncles.’

Tie was not someone who had no family besides Dad.

Though he had not known it until now, he had as many as three cool and kind big uncles.

In truth, that fact was so good that tears kept coming out.

Of course, for now she could not say that Tie was the uncles’ nephew,

‘If they do again at the academy here, then Tie will draw everyone that time.’

He would not draw only two people set apart on the paper by themselves.

Dad, and the big uncles, and then……

“What are you all doing.”

A familiar face revealed itself from the far end of the corridor.

“Father.”

Valentis walked over in long strides and took Tie from Alexander.

“The child would cry when you’re holding him so uncomfortably.”

Valentis, wrapping around Tie’s back and steadily supporting even her bottom, quietly looked down at Tie.

“I’m sorry. I called you here and kept you waiting.”

Tie looked up at Valentis with reddened eyes.

Valentis was smiling calmly as if soothing Tie.

Tie knew now too.

Valentis was a frightening person.

He almost never smiled, and often even if you combined everything he said in an hour, it would not go over five sentences.

But not to Tie.

“You’re wearing pretty clothes again today. Did Marshall choose them for you?”

Looking at the yellow sleeves sticking out from her cloak, Tie shook her head from side to side.

“Today Tie picked them……”

“I see, chick-colored. Very cute.”

Tie’s cheeks reddened.

That was exactly the reason Tie had chosen these clothes too.

Because the color was cute like a baby chick.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

At Valentis’s question, Tie, her mood soothed, nodded.

Valentis laughed low and patted Tie’s back.

“Come, this Grand Commander has prepared piles of snacks that you like.”

Tie looked up at Valentis’s face as he started walking.

Then, before he knew it, he said,

“Grandpa……!”

Valentis froze stiff on the spot.

Her eyes looking down at Tie were wide in a way they rarely were.

Scenes Tie saw every day at kindergarten flashed through her mind.

‘Oh my, our puppy! Grandpa came to pick you up today!’

‘Grandpaaa!’

The grandfathers who came to kindergarten to pick up the friends after school.

Then the friends would go running over and fling themselves into those grandfathers,

smack.

and do a kiss like this.

“……H-hahaha.”

When Tie smiled hehehe, Valentis’s mouth gradually parted.

Unable to contain the corners of his mouth rising upward, he looked back at his sons behind him as if asking whether they had just seen that.

“Wow.”

“……I’m jealous.”

“Hahaha, Father!”

The three young masters were looking at Tie and Valentis with different expressions on each of their faces.

Chuckling, Tie lightly shook Valentis’s shoulder.

“Grandpa, but Tie is hungry.”

“Yes…… yes, yes.”

Valentis flurriedly began walking again.

“Ha, hahaha.”

A laugh as if he could not believe it kept leaking from his mouth.

It was then.

“……”

Valentis and the three young masters froze before the stairs.

That was because they had run into Tesetan, who was coming out of the room in the opposite corridor.

Seeing them, Tesetan narrowed his brow.

“……What kind of picture is this?”

I didn’t know that having a close relationship meant going around holding the Necromancer King in her arms every day and getting kissed.

Normally Valentis would have shut down his expression completely and left his place pretending not to hear.

But,

“Can’t you tell just by looking. Let’s go down. I know you want to get out of here as soon as possible, but it’s been a long time, so we should eat together.”

Valentis merely passed by Tesetan and went down without erasing the smile from the corners of his mouth.

Edmund tapped Tesetan on the shoulder two or three times.

“Sorry about earlier.”

Leonardo too tapped Tesetan’s arm, then brushed past him.

“Let’s go, Theseos, no, Tesetan. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

Alexander, as always, smiled kindly and took hold of Tesetan’s hand.

Tesetan, being dragged along unwillingly, looked at the Necromancer King held in Valentis’s arms.

For some reason, the Necromancer King was tightly hugging Valentis’s neck and wearing the happiest expression in the world.

‘……I get it. I get that he’s pretending to be a child.’

A hollow laugh leaked from his mouth.

‘He kisses our father’s cheek? And Father just stays still?’

He fell into careful thought.

His father was none other than the Grand Commander of the Holy Knights, Valentis Luminen.

That Valentis Luminen, of whom it was said that even if you toured the battlefield together for two months, it would be hard to see him smile even once.

Yet that father was delighted to receive the kiss of a necromancer wearing the mask of a child.

‘Strange.’

Without realizing it, Tesetan stopped on the stairs.

And for a long while he stared at the five people disappearing below.

Suddenly, the sight of the Necromancer King from the day of the duel, whose transformation never came undone to the very end, came to mind.

“……That’s extremely strange.”