Episode 85
Translator : Missme Editor : Aru
There was such an accident when Ash turned 4 years old. He was playing tag with his sister in the garden of the mansion. His sister Lydia tried to catch him and climb the tree then fell in the middle. Ash was surprised. Quickly, he jumped off the tree.
“Noonim.”
Lydia fell and didn’t move. He shook her, but no response came out.
At this time, Ash was suddenly frightened.
“Are you dead?”
In the 4 years since he was born, Ash has realized that there are too many weak things in the world, whether living or nonliving. The inanimate object was easily broken, and the living thing died easily.
So easily.
Except for himself, everything was weak.
Around that time Ash knew roughly what death was.
To die means to disappear, which means that he will never see it again. Forever.
The world seemed to turn black.
Ash burst into tears on the spot with unbearable fear, a sense of loss, and a great deal of despair.
Fortunately, Lydia jumped up as soon as Ash cried to calm him down, but that day’s accident gave Ash some deep commitment.
His sister is weak. So he has to protect her if he doesn’t want to lose her.
Since then, Ash has decided to protect his precious and favourite sister with his own hands.
And after a little more time, Ash was already seven years old.
Ash slowly realized that he was different. The others were weak while he wasn’t. There was another difference in this simple fact.
And he was amazed by the people. They easily tried to cherish and protect things that had nothing to do with them. For example, they said that flowers blooming on the side of the road are also precious. And while seeing small animals that they do not know of their existence, they said that they should protect them from death or injury.
Ash always didn’t understand those words.
What does it matter? Whether the flowers on the roadside are broken or trampled and crushed, or a small animal, such as a bird or a rabbit, was run over by a carriage and killed.
He didn’t care. He didn’t feel the need to.
Someone said to him if he didn’t feel pity for the weak and he needed to protect the pitiful ones.
Well. Everything was weak in Ash’s eyes when it came to that. Whether it’s a person, a small animal, or a flower blooming along the road.
All three were not very different in that, since they were weak. It was always like that in Ash’s eyes.
Then should he feel pitiful for everything around him and protect them?
No.
Ash didn’t want to. Being weak was weak, and it had nothing to do with him, whether it was weak or not. Both before and now, there was only one person Ash wanted to protect for any reason.
His sister.
Other than that, he didn’t know anything about it.
So to be honest, he was really surprised and upset when his sister Lydia, on her eleventh birthday, hit him in the head when she received the gift he had carefully prepared.
“Ouch!”
“Ouch? Is ‘ouch’ coming out now? What the hell are you doing?”
“Why are you angry?”
“Then do you think I shouldn’t be angry?”
It was a gift that he prepared with all his heart.
At first, he tried to get something like the doll of his sister, which was destroyed by a maid in the mansion, but he couldn’t find it.
So he thought about what to do and decided to give the maid as a doll.
He thought she’d like it. His sister usually cared about the maid quite a bit. To the point where she forgave ‘the doll case’ without punishment.
The process of making a maid into a doll was simple. First, the doll was gagged because it was not allowed to talk and tied the whole body because it could not move.
He didn’t kill the maid. When they die, they disappear over time. The doll couldn’t have disappeared.
So he put out a ribbon and a dress just like the doll and put it out with confidence. And the angry Lydia beat his head mercilessly while he felt falsely accused.
“Is it because you don’t like it?”
He asked in wonder, but the answer he got was a bigger scolding, standing against the wall while keeping his hands up.
After that, the sermon followed. His sister Lydia said something long, but in the end, there was only one conclusion.
Life is precious.
‘Why is life so precious?’
Ash couldn’t understand. Life is life. That was it. It wasn’t very precious.
‘Though my sister is precious.’
It was his sister’s words, not anyone else, so he nodded for now.
A few days later, he made the doll with more care and took it to her.
He also changed his gender after much consideration. From a maid to a servant.
“You like this doll, don’t you?”
“Why aren’t you talking, noonim?”
Got hit again. Similar things have been repeated ever since.
Rather than being a tearful ache, he was heartbroken and discouraged, and while eating a honey chestnut, Ash diligently took the doll and held it out to win Lydia’s favour.
Then, when he realized Lydia didn’t really like dolls, he stopped.
And there’s one more thing Ash learned during the time: people were afraid of him.
“I, to be honest, am a little scared of young duke Ash…….”
“Hey, don’t say that.”
“But I do. Did you see what the young duke said about dolls?”
“That’s because the young duke was still young, so he doesn’t know anything…….”
“Not just that. Yeah, the young duke has been scolded so much by the lady that he doesn’t do that anymore. But do you know what he used to say to me?”
“What did he say?”
“I used to secretly bury a dead bird bitten by a cat in the yard, and he asked me if it was my family. He asked me if I buried the dead bird because it’s my family member and if people and birds can be a family. The young duke, at least he doesn’t really understand why I take care of a corpse-like that if they aren’t family-related.”
“That’s……”
“It was a bird at the time, but frankly he would have said the same thing if one of us had died and made a grave and honoured the spirit. You know. You guys really didn’t feel that way?”
“……actually, when I see the young duke, I sometimes feel creepy.”
“It’s true that the young duke feels different from us.”
“I’m getting goosebumps. I’m scared, what the hell will happen if our master and his wives leave the young duke like that…….”
“Shh, shut up, and what can you do if they don’t leave him like that? Let’s stop talking about this in case anyone hears it.”
Then Ash could see why people often look down in surprise when they see him, and when they come near him, they always make a reluctant face.
It didn’t really matter even if he knew anyway. It didn’t matter much whether they were afraid of him, reluctant or avoiding him. He’s not interested in that.
But he was worried about this one thing.
“Noonim.”
He’s afraid his sister will do the same.
“Am I scary?”
“Huh?”
Lydia looked up while painting Ash’s face on a white canvas.
In their break time, she was trying to make a painting with Ash as her model. Lydia had a serious look on her face and answered.
“You asked, are you scary?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re not scary, but your face is scary.”
“……my face?”
“Because you’re so pretty. I’m not sure if I can move your face to this piece of paper, I should have not made a mess. Oh, this is so scary. Yeah. It’s really scary.”
Then Lydia narrowed the middle of her forehead, measuring Ash’s face from side to side with a brush in her hand.
He blinked at the sight.
“You’re saying I’m not scary, are you?”
“Why are you scary?”
“Because I’m weird… I’m different.”
“You’re pretty different with everyone else. But why is that scary? By the way, stay still, Ash. Don’t move. I’ll do my best to draw your beauty close to reality.”
The portrait Lydia completed on the day was so terrible that it was not good enough even in empty words.
If she didn’t say it, no one would know that the model was Ash.
Lydia stared bitterly at the results of her own hands and lamented incomprehensibly, “If I had a photoshop, I would have saved it.”
But the painting eventually became Ash’s long-standing treasure.
Ash stole the painting from Lydia, who was heading for the fire-stove seriously, saying she had to burn it right away.
Then he put it in a frame and secretly kept it in his room drawer.
Later, Lydia was surprised to learn the truth belatedly, but she couldn’t help it because it had already become his memory and treasure.
Ash liked Lydia. It got deeper and deeper. He also has a growing desire to protect her in proportion to that.
Fifteen years old, when his parents died side by side from the illness, Ash thought that he should have power.
As Ash grew up, the power he learned was largely money and force.
The more the two, the better. The more so, the more likely he could protect his sister in any situation.
Ash firstly visited the Dark Knight organizations, killed the leader, absorbed them, and carried out business at random to enrich his fortune.
He grew the organization, got more money and used the organization to run projects that were not publicly revealed.
The work was smooth as he hung on day and night without taking care of himself. He was lucky that there was a competent partner.
Then it was one day. It was a place where he celebrated the success of his new business with his partner.
Perhaps excited, the partner drank heavily that day and was really drunk.
Then he talked.
“Your sister. Princess Lydia. I think it’s time to find out her marriage partner, hiccup, why don’t you hand her over to me?”
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