A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 99

Chapter 99

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Translated by Sylph

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Around the time Adeline suffered her second poisoning attempt in the lord’s castle.

Her mother blindly wrote and sent Adeline’s name to one of the princess’s close attendants who was said to be looking for a maid.

A few days later.

“My lady, a letter has arrived from the imperial household.”

The head maid, whom they had bribed, quietly brought a letter to Adeline’s mother.

The imperial seal was stamped clearly on the envelope.

When they opened it, the letter paper contained only a single question that seemed entirely like a riddle.

[Write down and present your thoughts and decision regarding the situation I present.

A young lady is aboard a small boat, and the boat is sinking.

Nearby there is a small plank that can support only one person, but a young child is trying just as desperately as the young lady to seize that plank.

What choice will the young lady make?]

Adeline, reading the letter, let out a hollow laugh.

Her mother at her side, on the other hand, had a serious face.

“She is testing your loyalty toward Her Highness the Princess. Hurry and write that you will sacrifice yourself and save the child. Hurry.”

In front of her mother’s eyes, Adeline began writing the reply.

[I offer my answer to the noble princess.

When based on moral values, I think the child is always the one who should be protected first.

That is also because the child’s life holds more time and possibility than my own life.

Therefore, I will gladly yield the plank to the child and meet death.]

After writing that and placing a period, Adeline’s mother nodded with a satisfied expression.

As if proud, she patted Adeline on the back and left the room.

But Adeline did not seal the letter as it was.

Instead, she took out one more sheet of paper and began writing further.

[In truth, up to this point is the answer my mother wished for me to offer to the princess.

But if I dare to tell you my true choice, I would seize that plank myself.]

Adeline knew that if she continued writing like this, she would not become a maid.

Because every other maid candidate would write as her mother wanted.

They would openly imply that they could even give their lives for the princess.

But Adeline did not want to do that.

If she became a maid and fled to the imperial capital, then from that point on her mother would remain alone in this lord’s castle.

[My life is mine. No one else can take my life in my place, can they?

I have the duty to choose myself for my own sake.

Yielding the plank to the child may be noble, but it is nothing more than deceiving myself.]

Having truly finished the letter, Adeline sealed it while holding back tears.

She had written that her own life was the most important thing, and yet in reality there she was, deliberately writing an incorrect answer because she could not stop thinking of her mother.

In truth, Adeline knew as well.

From the moment her foolish father left behind such a will and died, the chances that she and her mother would survive had become markedly low.

To her uncle, Adeline was the highest-priority target for elimination.

And her uncle would probably achieve his goal.

One could tell that much just from the fact that, as soon as he received lordly authority, he brought in a fairly skilled magician as the lady of the castle.

The letter safely reached the princess through the head maid’s hand.

And then….

“Adeline! Well done, well done!”

A few weeks later it returned as an acceptance reply saying she had become the princess’s maid.

“Now at last I can breathe. At last, at last….”

Looking at her mother, who was shedding tears of joy, Adeline could say nothing at all.

She had clearly written the wrong answer.

She could not understand why the princess had chosen her.

But once the princess had called for her, she had to go.

This time, not even her uncle, who held the authority of the lord, could stop her.

“…You have done something interesting, sister-in-law.”

“Indeed, haven’t I? Still, the fact that our Adeline has been summoned by Her Highness the Princess is truly a joyful thing. I was just worrying about what clothes to dress her in three days from now. Would you pass it on to Lecia that she should choose together with me?”

But Mother was unlike Father, who had been too foolish to see even one step ahead.

Mother always dealt with Reginald with a smiling face, continuing a perilous balancing act.

And on the night before Adeline left, she came to the bedchamber and spoke with serious eyes.

“Do not worry about this mother, Adeline.”

She stroked Adeline’s hair and added,

“You only must never come back from there. Once this place is settled, I too will follow.”

“….”

“If it is to save you, I can do anything. As for what Reginald wants, all I need do is hand it all over.”

That day, before her endlessly strong mother, Adeline collapsed.

No matter how bright and clever she might have been compared to others her age, she was only fifteen.

Fifteen years old, with Father having died after only a short while, the family taken into her uncle’s hands, and every day spent trembling under assassination attempts.

She had only not shown it, but inside she was already charred black.

“Do not cry. Smile. And if you cannot do that, then at least remain silent.”

But Mother, wiping away Adeline’s tears, exhorted her again and again.

“The harder things are, the more you must do that. So your enemies do not know what is inside you, and thus let down their guard.”

Do not be swayed by emotion, but look at reality.

If you do that, a way to survive will appear.

And so she came to the imperial capital.

The princess was a person completely different from what Adeline had expected.

After only a few months of watching the princess, Adeline had no choice but to realize.

Why the princess had chosen her.

“Always remember the answer you gave, Adeline. There is nothing in this world more important than yourself.”

The princess Adeline saw inside the imperial palace was shockingly different from what had been made public.

She was just like Adeline when she had been living in the lord’s castle.

Every few days there would be an assassination attempt, and the people approaching her each carried their own blade.

“…Every house has its own circumstances. Why should the imperial house be any different.”

On the days when she happened to end up treating the princess’s injuries, the princess would say that.

“I won’t live long. So if things go bad, you absolutely must run away.”

While smiling very evenly.

Unlike when she had first arrived, Adeline gradually came to like the princess more and more.

She even came to think that perhaps truly abandoning Caldenvine Ridge and settling down in the imperial capital might be the better choice.

So she began looking for a house in the center of the imperial capital where she and her mother could live.

She designed the garden and hired and assigned servants.

Because even if she herself would live in the imperial palace, her mother still needed a place to live.

But at just around that time, a letter came flying from her hometown from her uncle.

It said that Adeline’s mother was in critical condition.

That she probably would not last more than a few days.

* * *

Adeline said with a smile,

“I knew it. That Uncle, or Lecia, had done something to Mother.”

Enzo and Raul listened to her words with rigid faces.

Tie too was equally entranced by Adeline’s story.

‘Big sister Adeline….’

The words of big sister’s mother, who had said to smile all the more when things were hard, came to mind.

Maybe that was why, even now, the smile hanging at the corners of Adeline’s lips kept pricking at his heart like thorns, stab, stab.

“I told Her Highness the Princess that I thought I had to return to my hometown.”

The princess looked puzzled by Adeline’s sudden request.

But she soon readily permitted Adeline’s retirement.

‘Yes, because you are a child too precious to be trapped in the imperial palace.’

That very day, Adeline packed her things and returned to her hometown.

She had not even been able to think of sorting out the townhouse the princess had arranged for her in the imperial capital.

Only after arriving in Caldenvine Ridge was Adeline able to discover it.

The enormous quantity of ornaments and gold coins that the princess had secretly tucked into Adeline’s baggage and sent with her.

But she did not even have time to feel strangely about that.

“I pounded on the castle gate like mad. Then the door opened only after a long while, but I couldn’t go in.”

Adeline, recalling that time, smiled slightly again.

“Because right before my eyes, Mother was being carried out. Already dead.”