🔊 TTS Settings
chapter 41
It all happened during a morning when everyone was desperately trying to act like it was a normal day.
The dining room was instantly swallowed by a suffocating silence.
Lirian strode confidently toward Ilay.
“Ilay!”
The boy’s pupils trembled.
It was the first time they’d seen each other since yesterday’s incident—the meeting had ended abruptly afterward.
He opened his mouth slowly.
“…What.”
Then—
Thunk.
“Eat it!”
Lirian held out her tiny fist.
In that little fist, she was clutching a fork with a small orange carrot stuck on the end—clearly from a children’s set.
Ilay stared at the big orange piece of vegetable pushed in front of him with a baffled look.
“What is this.”
“Hurry. Eat it quick. There’s more.”
“Why should I eat yours? Don’t be picky—eat everything evenly.”
He frowned slightly at the stubborn girl pestering him, but—
“Come onnn! Ilay, you have to eat carrots if you want to grow tall. I’m trying to help you get big!”
“……”
In the end, he couldn’t win against Lirian’s relentless pleading and reluctantly took a bite.
Watching that, Jeryl’s fork dropped a carrot with a plop.
“Wow, he actually ate it. Guess he really likes her.”
“Mmm…”
“That’s love.”
Jeryl, Seran, and Yuri said one after another.
Everyone knew the feeling—except Ilay himself.
“Ah, it’s time for the puppet show! Bro, I’m going first!”
“Jeryl, don’t run!”
The boys each had their own plans, so they exchanged quick goodbyes and went their separate ways.
As Jeryl dashed out of the dining room, Seran followed right behind him.
Yuri bowed politely and followed his brothers out.
Ilay, meanwhile, had become Lirian’s “carrot disposal unit.”
Watching her daughter use such tricks to make someone else eat vegetables, Resa shook her head.
“If you keep indulging her like that, she’ll get spoiled.”
“You have to, at that age.”
Though she said that, she bit back a smile at the conflicted look on her husband’s face.
It was another morning in the new Ersioni household.
“Daddy’s going now, my little princess! Mwah!”
After breakfast, the members of the Ersioni family—busy as ever, each working in the shadows of the Empire—scattered in different directions.
“Ilay, please look after Liri.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Among them, Lirian puffed up her cheeks as she watched her mother go out of her way—again!—to leave such earnest words with Ilay.
“I’m the one who takes care of Ilay!”
She protested loudly, and for a moment everyone who’d come to see them off looked at her—
“Especially if she tries to sneak off somewhere, don’t let her. And if she reaches for something dangerous, stop her. Sevyr will be watching, but I’m counting on you too.”
“Don’t worry.”
They went right back to their conversation as if nothing had happened.
Lirian’s puffed cheeks swelled twice as big.
“It’s going to pop,” Ilay muttered, looking down at the little girl once the carriage carrying the duke and duchess disappeared down the road.
Lirian jumped in surprise.
“Really? Will it really pop?”
Because of the air puffing up her cheeks, her words came out funny.
Ilay barely managed to suppress the smile tugging at his lips.
“Ilayyy, is that true?”
“Who knows.”
Lirian, unsatisfied with his answer, followed Ilay closely back into the mansion.
The servants watching the two couldn’t help but smile quietly to themselves.
With sheer determination, Lirian kept chasing after Ilay until she finally managed to stop him.
“Answer me!”
She demanded furiously just as the silver-haired boy opened the library door.
Creeeak. The old door opened slowly, letting out the faint smell of aged paper.
Warm orange sunlight streamed through the window at the back.
In that peaceful, tranquil atmosphere, Lirian’s eyes widened.
His hair shimmered in the sunlight, his eyes—always beautiful to her—gleamed brightly, and—
“No.”
That mischievous grin of a boy his age appeared.
Ilay’s eyes glowed like blue comets drifting through the night sky.
“You actually believed that?”
He said it casually and disappeared into the library.
Lirian blinked a few times, then pressed a hand—small like a maple leaf—against her chest.
Her heart was pounding hard.
“Ow.”
She’d always been the one who struck first, shouting “Attack first, win first!”—but she’d never been caught off guard like this.
“My heart’s thumping…”
She murmured blankly, cheeks slowly puffing up again.
“Ilay!”
She’d just realized—he’d teased her!
Pouting, she stomped into the library after him. Between the shelves, the silver-haired boy was calmly flipping through a book.
Not this time! she thought fiercely, ready to retort—but Ilay spoke without even turning around.
“You’re supposed to be quiet in a library.”
He said it with the ease of someone who’d mastered the art of dealing with troublemakers.
“Eek!”
“Shh.”
With just that single word, he silenced her and began pulling out a few books before heading toward a desk bathed in soft light.
With no choice, Lirian followed.
“What are you doing?”
Though she was sulking, her curiosity got the better of her.
Hopping up onto the chair beside him, she whispered softly.
Ilay, glancing at her obedient posture, unfolded the parchment he’d received from the butler, Sevyr.
“Organizing.”
“Huh? Organizing what?”
“Things about the future. I might forget, so I’m writing them down.”
Lirian’s eyes sparkled.
“I wanna do it too!”
Though he looked doubtful, Ilay handed her an extra piece of parchment and a quill.
“Don’t overdo it.”
“Okay.”
“Stop if your head hurts.”
“Okay!”
And so the two of them began writing their “Future Diary,” side by side.
Ilay
[Imperial Year 980, Month of Flowers, XX Day. Holy Relic “Book of Revelation” appears at the Kunkart Auction House.]
Lirian
[Ilay caught a wild boar for me. It was so tasty!]
Scratch, scratch.
For a while, the only sound in the library was the movement of quills.
Ilay, flipping through books and recording place names, power relations, and notable dates, suddenly noticed the lack of noise beside him.
He turned.
Lirian had fallen sound asleep, face buried on the desk, still clutching her quill.
“I told her to write a future diary, and she actually wrote a real one…”
Ilay chuckled involuntarily before catching himself and clearing his throat.
He glanced through her messy handwriting.
Here and there, little doodles filled the page—sparkling stars, two people crossing swords, three random chicks, and—
A ring made of little flowers.
[Ilay gave me a flower ring, then took it back.]
[Ilay is mean ㅡ3ㅡ!!]
He stared at that part for a long time.
At the drawing of the ring woven from star-shaped blossoms.
“I really wanted to give it to you. These flowers look like your eyes, Ilay.”
“Thank you. I’ll take good care of it—and return it to you someday.”
Back before the regression—when the two had first parted ways as children—Lirian had given him a star-shaped flower.
A flower whose meaning was reunion.
In the end, I never gave it back.
He had promised the seven-year-old Lirian that he would return it,
but to the twenty-five-year-old who had forgotten those days—he could not.
It was a promise and a star that never made it back to her.
Ilay smiled faintly and read her “future diary” again.
[Ilay…]
[Ilay again today…]
[Ilay is busy, so I shouldn’t bother him.]
Every line was filled with his name.
And then, at the very end, one last line—written like a vow—made him realize something.
You were lonely.
You were so lonely.
Parents, siblings, servants, people near and far—
At five years old, Lirian’s night sky had sparkled with countless lights.
But at twenty-five, her world had only one light left—Ilay.
…It would be a lie to say that doesn’t make me happy.
He looked down at Lirian again.
“Mmm… zzz…”
Her cheeks squished against the desk, a little drool escaping—her sleeping face was pure innocence.
Suddenly, Ilay remembered a conversation with Caesar.
“Ilay, what was it that made you want to save the world?”
It was near the end of their talk, when they were discussing how to adjust plans now that the temple’s corruption had been revealed two years earlier than expected, and how Ilay would record and pass on future information.
Caesar had asked suddenly.
Ilay, taken aback, had replied—
“What do you mean by that?”
“Every human has a reason—ambition, money, emotion.”
“……”
“Some endure humiliation to take revenge on an enemy. Some risk their lives to save a loved one. So naturally, I had to wonder—”
The hero who once sought to save the world—
what was it that drove him to do so?
