Chapter 235
‘I have to find it!’
Chasing the sound, Rubens ran for a long while until he reached the annex. This was the very estate where the real Rubens Krygen had stayed when bedridden.
‘That boy died, and since then Arzena never allowed anyone to stay in this house. So why do I hear a baby crying here?’
The crying grew clearer as he approached, confirming it was no hallucination.
“Oh, is that the sound of a baby crying?”
“Can you hear it now too?”
“Yes, very clearly.”
After confirming with Kronen, Rubens boldly flung open the old front door.
The crying abruptly stopped as if it was all a lie.
‘What the hell?’
Inside, the house was cold and silent, proving no one had been there for a long time.
Yet, that sharp feeling that something was there did not fade at all.
“Find where the baby is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rubens ordered Kronen and himself started searching the house thoroughly.
If it was a space big enough for a baby, whether a wardrobe or a trash bin, they searched it all.
He couldn’t rationally understand why he was so obsessed with finding the child, but he felt compelled to do so.
In his dream, he had wanted to enter a place he could never allow himself to enter.
He wanted to see the face of the baby who had just cried.
Bang!
At that moment, he opened the second door on the second floor and felt a warm, inviting heat unlike any other room.
Inside, it was clean and cozy, as if someone had been constantly caring for it with no dust in sight.
In the center stood a cradle for a baby.
Rubens was breathless. This was impossible. Was he dreaming?
Such a scene resembling the dream. He took cautious steps forward.
To his surprise, the distance to the cradle did not stretch endlessly like in the dream. The closer he got, the more the baby’s form became clear.
‘What is this…’
He saw tiny fingers moving and soft, chubby arms.
The baby had sky-blue eyes and brown hair.
Those sky-blue eyes were so clear and pure that they reminded him of someone.
“Abbu.”
The baby smiled brightly as if it had never cried and reached out to Rubens. Its voice and smile resembled the woman Rubens longed for so much.
Just as he was about to raise his hand to grasp the baby’s,
“Who are you?”
A strange voice pierced the moment, and Rubens’s gaze shifted slightly aside.
A woman entered from the door connecting to the baby’s room.
“Who… are you perhaps Duke Krygen?”
She was dressed as a maid, with brown hair and brown eyes. It was not Macy.
Without a word, she stepped closer and cautiously lifted the baby from the cradle.
“How did you know to come here?”
“And who are you?”
“I am Maria, a maid serving at the Krygen estate.”
A maid?
Rubens looked back and forth between the baby and the maid.
“And this baby?”
“She’s my child. Madam once owed a favor to my mother and helped me raise the baby in this annex.”
If the ‘Madam’ at Lettern estate was Arzena Krygen, this made sense.
“What kind of favor?”
“That, I’m not really sure… that’s all I heard from my mother.”
While Rubens was pondering what was going on, a rolling sound came from upstairs.
The maid looked somewhat troubled and explained the noise’s source.
“My mother is quite ill and is also staying here.”
“Show me there.”
“Pardon?”
“Take me there immediately.”
“……”
“Is that too much to ask?”
“No, I’ll show you.”
After a brief pause, the maid led the way.
Rubens thought back to the young Arzena he knew—who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
If someone owed her a favor in that process, she’d likely have considered it a weakness and either killed or driven them away.
‘But Arzena lent out an entire annex and even to a maid?’
Something felt strange—a subtle discord.
The maid’s ill mother also stirred Rubens’s heightened nerves.
The noise just now sounded like a wheelchair.
Was this a patient so ill they couldn’t walk?
“Is this the place?”
“Yes.”
The maid stopped at the last room on the top floor of the annex.
Without hesitation, Rubens opened the door.
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