A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 77
Chapter 77
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Translated by Sylph
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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‘Please kill me now.’
Meanwhile, Grand Commander Luminen, Valentis, was standing before the railing, sunk in thought.
‘How much more are you trying to make me ruin? Do you wish to lose even what little remains?’
When he heard that the association had summoned Trevaga for this incident, he should have realized it.
That he might end up meeting Tesetan here.
‘But I thought that child would not come.’
Recalling Tesetan, who had shown him his back once more after their long conversation, made his head throb.
But even if he shut both eyes, the apparition before him did not vanish.
‘Please, let me go.’
Eyes that had once been full of spirit.
‘At this point, there is nothing left to regret, lament, or be devastated over, is there?’
But now only dry obsession and remorse remained.
‘Teseos Luminen has already disappeared.’
The hand he had placed on the railing began to tremble.
‘But how.’
How could one kill one’s own child?
When he was alive.
When he was breathing normally somewhere in this world.
Valentis slowly lowered his head.
Into his head, which felt about to burst, one thought once again crowded in.
Would anything have been different if Eleonora had been by his side.
Then again, she surely would have known the answer.
Unlike him, clumsy and ignorant, Eleonora had been a woman too good for him and more than enough.
It was when Valentis clenched his fist tightly.
Suddenly, from above and to the right, he sensed an unfamiliar presence.
Gathering in his holy power, he raised his head and saw a pair of eyes shining with reflected moonlight.
In those green eyes holding the moonlight, Eleonora’s eyes briefly overlapped.
However, Valentis Luminen soon came back to himself.
“…Agabert’s little commander.”
It was not Eleonora.
What stood before him was the Agabert commander he had first seen in the conference room today, the Necromancer King.
The Necromancer King, who likewise had met Valentis’s eyes, flinched.
But the Necromancer King bowed awkwardly, then carefully began descending the stairs.
The way he gripped the railing tightly with one hand looked less like someone disguised as a child and more like a real child.
It was as Valentis narrowed his eyes.
“Grand Commander Lumineeen.”
The Necromancer King, scampering over, looked up at her with an unreadable face and spoke.
Then, carefully pointing at the area around Valentis’s eyes with his index finger, he asked,
“Are you sad? Why…?”
Only then did Luminen realize that tears had been falling, drip, drip, down his cheeks.
Turning his head, he could clearly see several drops of tears that had fallen on the railing and floor.
Valentis was silent for a moment, then turned his head toward the full-length window.
“I have personal circumstances.”
“Persornal circumstances…?”
In Tie’s head, a seafood thing she had only seen once before flashed past.
The child’s face soon turned serious.
He did not know what it was, but it was clear that Grand Commander Luminen’s circumstances were very creepy and pink.
Tie swallowed hard, then nodded as if it did not matter.
Then he pulled something from the pocket of his pajamas.
A handkerchief with a little baby bear embroidered in pale brown on white cloth.
“Wipe with this.”
Speechless, Valentis looked down at the Necromancer King.
Then, noticing something, he slowly crouched below the railing.
“Thank you.”
Taking the handkerchief, he lightly wiped the damp tracks on his cheeks.
After wiping away the tears, not the slightest sign remained on his face that he had cried.
When he returned the handkerchief, the Necromancer King took it and then hesitated for a moment.
Then,
“Here too….”
He dabbed, dabbed at the right side of Valentis Luminen’s chin, which Valentis had failed to wipe clean.
Valentis quietly watched as the Necromancer King folded the handkerchief twice and put it into her pocket.
His gaze then moved to the thing hanging from the Necromancer King’s wrist.
‘A relic?’
A bracelet of an oddly distinctive shape.
He could feel refined holy power from it.
He had read a similar energy from the sea magic stone fragment reported from Pearl City not long ago.
Staring hard at the Necromancer King, she said,
“Then why are you sad?”
The corners of the Necromancer King’s eyes were red too.
He had only sat there blankly the whole meeting, but whatever his circumstances, it was certain that he too had shed tears.
The Necromancer King grew visibly flustered and waved her hands.
“Tie didn’t cry. I only almost cried.”
“Is your true name Tie?”
The Necromancer King clamped her mouth shut, then after a long while slowly nodded.
“…Yeees. Necromancer King is a nickname.”
“Is it all right to go around revealing your true name so casually?”
Tie rolled her eyes in silence.
The truth was, it was not that he particularly had to hide his true name.
But until now he had hidden it whenever possible.
Partly to maintain some mystique, and because he did not think there was any reason to reveal his real name.
However,
‘Why does this person look so much like Dad….’
The problem was that Valentis gave off an atmosphere so similar to Dad that it was bewildering.
His head said to stay wary of the holy knight before him, while his body kept moving closer and closer to Valentis on its own.
His mouth was the same; for a while now Tie had been babbling on to Valentis about things he did not really need to say.
Suddenly worried, Tie looked at Valentis timidly.
“You won’t tell other places, right?”
“Your true name?”
“…Yeees. Come to think of it, I think it’s a secret after all….”
With an expressionless face, Valentis nodded.
“Very well. But if you wish to hide your true name, it seems to me that you are the one who must be more careful.”
Tie nodded awkwardly.
Then, like Valentis, he crouched down too and sat leaning against the railing.
Reflexively, Valentis stretched a hand toward the railing against which the child leaned.
Gripping the railing firmly, he saw Tie, who was looking at the ground, ask quietly,
“What makes a super super strong person like Grand Commander sad?”
It was, after circling around, again a question about the tears of Valentis that Tie had happened to see.
Still holding the railing against which Tie leaned, Valentis let her eyes sink.
“Are you curious why I cried?”
“Not that, but why you were sad?”
“To my ears, those sound the same.”
“Do they?”
“….”
In the end, a short hollow laugh slipped from Valentis’s stiff mouth.
After looking at the full-length window where the stars were shining for a moment, he said,
“As for why I was sad, well.”
Then he whispered softly,
“Because I met someone I had longed for after a long time, and he was no longer the person I had longed for.”
Tie stared blankly with her lips parted.
Then the child’s eyes grew wide.
“Tie knows that too!”
“Knows what.”
“Meeting someone you missed really hard, but that person not being that person.”
Just like Dad she met at the harbor was not the Dad Tie had known before.
Thinking of that time made his heart grow gloomy once again.
“Why do people have to die…?”
Dad, who returned as a box of belongings in Korea.
The time that had to be turned back because of that.
And even the house Tie had to leave because of that.
And even nights like today, when he could not sleep.
“Happy times always always have an end. And you always always have to say goodbye to people you liked.”
Valentis quietly listened to Tie’s words.
“Every time Tie has a hard day, it feels like my heart gets torn like this, like this.”
The truth was, everything that had happened throughout the day had simply been too much.
Should one say it felt like trying to stuff the entire sea into a small cup?
“…You know, mister, you look really really similar to the person Tie likes the most in the world.”
Tie muttered.
Watching the reddened tip of the child’s nose in silence, Valentis said as though it were of no importance,
“By the person you like, do you mean the knight you have quietly been trying to inquire after for the last several weeks?”
Tie’s eyes widened hugely.
Whether he did or not, Valentis slightly narrowed one eye and added,
“It has been quite some time since I received the report, so my memory is vague. I believe the name was somewhat foreign.”