Chapter 255
A small death
A doll modeled after a woman fell into the lake with a soft plop.
“My doooll!”
But unlike the clear sound of it sinking into the water, Nova screamed in shock, clutching both her cheeks.
If the child hadn’t looked quite so devastated, Izar might have thought he could look at her face for days and never grow tired of it. How could someone carrying his blood show such a wide range of emotion?
‘I’d better get it out for her.’
Aside from the fact that her shocked expression was adorable, he never wanted to see her sob like the first time they met again.
He gestured to the attendants who started to step forward behind Nova to stand down. There was no need for such a commotion, he could easily step in himself and retrieve the doll. The water wasn’t deep.
The only awkward part was handing the doll back to someone so small. He had always barked orders at knights. What was he supposed to say to someone this tiny and delicate?
“Here.”
So in the end, Izar spoke stiffly, as if shy, but stopped mid-motion as he was about to offer the doll to his sniffling daughter.
Now that he got a better look, he realized the doll she always hugged in bed bore a strong resemblance to Freesia.
The moment he realized it, his eyes softened completely.
Even though his daughter had grown up beside Freesia, she had most likely come to understand longing as a kind of lullaby.
“This looks like your… mother.”
“Yeah! It’s my Mama doll.”
As expected of a child, Nova proudly puffed up with pride, forgetting to be on guard. She had even dressed the doll in new clothes today, so in truth, she’d been wanting to show it off.
That desire to show it off momentarily overpowered her urge to drive him away.
“Pretty, right? But my Mama’s even prettier.”
Izar nodded silently at those words. The child’s innocent pride stabbed into his heart, and without realizing it, he murmured an old memory.
“Your mother fell into a place like this too.”
“Hmm? Mama fell in too?”
“…Yeah.”
He nodded slightly at the child’s response, a beat late. Now that he thought about it, it reminded him vaguely of a fairy tale—the kind you’d find in one of the books Nova read.
A shepherd girl who never tried to get out of the lake. And himself, at eighteen, who secretly watched that girl, not even realizing what he was feeling.
The same fool who swore to forget everything in hatred, even though he’d once searched for her desperately enough to wipe sweat from his brow.
‘Canopus…’
The moment he thought of his half-brother, his mouth stiffened reflexively.
The bastard was dead. His corpse had never been recovered, since it had died in some grotesque form, but others had witnessed him being cut down by a sword. So the hatred should have ended there.
And yet, why did this uneasy sense of dread keep crawling up his legs?
Just then, he flinched at the tug of a small hand at his clothes.
“Did you save Mama too?”
“Huh?”
“Mama. You said she went splash into the lake too.”
Nova stomped her foot in frustration at his slowness. She had been terrified of him at first, but now he was suddenly sluggish no matter what she said, and it annoyed her.
‘If Mama went splash too, then she should’ve told Nova… so that when Nova drops her doll, it’s not such a big mistake!’
Watching his daughter puff up her cheeks in a sulky pout, Izar smiled faintly with tenderness.
“That’s right.”
If it counted as having saved her.
The woman herself… might regret having ever accepted his help that day.
But hearing Izar’s answer, Nova grinned so wide her dimples popped.
“Hehe…!”
‘So Mama falls in the water sometimes too! And this scary man saved her that time!’
But then Nova suddenly gasped and jumped back.
‘N-No, wait, that’s not it!’
This scary man wasn’t ‘Papa’, she couldn’t smile at him. Just because he saved Mama once didn’t mean she would like him just like that. Nova wasn’t that easy.
Still, because he had saved Mama, she’d observe him like a guard dog from one of her storybooks.
Clutching her now-soaked doll tightly, Nova scolded him in her most dignified tone.
“This. You’re not allowed to open it.”
“That’s right.”
“Nova will be watching. Like… this.”
Nova widened her eyes as far as they would go, glaring fiercely at Izar. But in Izar’s eyes, it looked exactly like how Freesia used to stare at him with her big round eyes.
All he could do was smile in defeat.
She was unbearably lovable.
‘Thank goodness.’
Her heart, her inner self, clearly resembled Freesia more than him.
That meant she probably wouldn’t make the same agonizing mistakes he had.
And that, in the end, was surely why Freesia never gave up on this child.
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