Chapter 270
“Why are you drawing?”
Neilla suddenly said that. The imperial man she had been watching paused at those words, stopping his movements for a moment.
“I have to save my father.”
“Father? If it’s your father…”
Is he talking about that person? Neilla looked at Count Icardo in front of her. He was closing his eyes as if in a deep sleep, surrounded by magic stones. At first, she was surprised, but Neilla thought it might actually be a relief that the Count was in this state. It would have been scary if he were alive and moving. Of course, she didn’t wish for anyone to die.
“Is Count Icardo your father?”
There was no answer to that question. He was just silently moving his hands.
“If you finish this painting, will he come back to life?”
“Yes.”
He answered simply. Neilla made an oh… sound and looked back and forth between his painting and Count Icardo. Judging from the paintings scattered around him, which were similar to Count Icardo but different, perhaps because his painting skills weren’t that good originally, there were hundreds of them discarded.
“…Does he only come back to life if you draw him exactly the same?”
“…Maybe.”
He said without certainty. He also seemed tired and helpless. Perhaps the repetitive painting wasn’t such a pleasant task for him. But he kept painting.
Neilla watched him draw intently.
“That’s not how you draw it. Here, this part is different.”
Before she knew it, Neilla was teaching the man. Looking at the paintings scattered around him, he had been drawing the same part of the painting wrong continuously.
Camillo said that calmly, her lowered eyes filled not with resignation, but with blazing anger.
“If I die, you’ll be king.”
Ethan couldn’t say anything to those words. It was because he knew what that anger, that stubborn decision, which was prepared for death, was. She seemed determined to burn everything she had to stab Icardo. There was no future after that.
In his view, his older sister was the more stubborn one.
* * *
“Why do you want to save your father?”
In that place where only the sound of brushing could be heard, Neilla, who had been squatting down and watching the painting before she knew it, spoke. Within that short time, the man’s skills had improved remarkably. It seemed that continuously drawing the painting, even with the wrong method, had been helpful.
“……”
The man glanced at Neilla. It was a question he wouldn’t have answered normally, but Neilla had asked this question almost ten times whenever it came to mind. He, too, was not tireless, so he wanted to stop her question. That method was the answer. The man opened his mouth.
“Does there need to be a reason to save my father?”
“Well, yes. It might not be a natural thing.”
Neilla said, thinking of her own father. She had done her best to escape from her father. To be precise, it was the fate that her father had set. Even so, her father said that he loved her.
His love was something she couldn’t understand. If it was a love that only came when she fit perfectly into the daughter he imagined, could that be called love for Neilla?
“I have a father too, you know.”
“I suppose so.”
He answered curtly and began to draw the painting again. It was obvious that he wanted her to go somewhere else now.
“I thought my father loved me?”
“……”
“But my father told me to give up the painting I liked and marry a terrible person. I also took bride lessons, learning a lot of things I didn’t want to learn.”
At Neilla’s words, the man stopped his brush for the first time. He seemed to be thinking about something.
“Was what my father liked the real me, or the good daughter me? Or was it the image of a kind father who loves his daughter?”
She still didn’t know the answer to that. Perhaps she would never know unless she met her father again and talked to him.
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