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Chapter 6: “What Do You Mean My Ex-Boyfriend Had My Child?”
Mom?
Mom…?
I stood there with my mouth wide open, floating in the air like a piece of laundry hanging from a clothesline.
Then a strong arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me closer.
I didn’t need to check who it belonged to.
I heard a very familiar voice beside my ear.
“That’s enough.”
Leon Voltane held my waist with one arm. With his free hand, he casually snapped his fingers.
Everything that had been floating in the air slowly came back down, as if what had just happened had never happened.
Tap.
The tip of my old shoe touched the ground.
The sound was as loud as a judge’s hammer.
The people who had suddenly experienced this disaster began whispering and looking around, trying to figure out what had happened.
Leon clearly didn’t want to get involved.
He calmly started walking away from the area, still holding me with one arm and practically dragging me along.
His face looked the same as it had a few days ago.
Dark circles under his eyes.
An unusually pale complexion.
But Leon didn’t care that I looked completely stunned.
He simply asked,
“Lu. What did I tell you about using magic?”
The little boy hurried along beside Leon.
He was still looking up at me with sparkling eyes.
Only then did he realize what he had done.
He quickly covered his mouth with both hands.
His already rosy cheeks became even redder, as if red paint might drip from them.
“But Mom…”
“She isn’t your mom.”
The boy’s eyes became even wider.
He looked back and forth between Leon and me.
His eyes soon filled with tears, and he grabbed onto my robe.
“She is Mom.”
“Not yet. We still need to have the wedding.”
Leon answered casually.
Then he bent down and picked the child up with his free arm.
He lifted the boy completely with one arm.
That was impressive physical strength for a mage.
Still, I couldn’t say he was holding the child safely.
I quickly pushed Leon away.
“Don’t do that. At least hold the child properly—”
“Huh?”
Before I could finish, my legs suddenly lost their strength.
I dropped onto the ground.
I tried several times to push myself up, but my legs shook like those of a newborn deer.
Leon looked down at me and casually said,
“You really are easy to fool.”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“There was a paralysis drug on the flowers.”
“What?”
Now that I thought about it, the girl who had offered me the flower basket had already disappeared without a trace.
She must have realized something had gone wrong and run away.
Leon Voltane acted as calmly as if he dealt with things like this every day.
“It isn’t a common trick, but they were clever. You were basically walking around announcing, ‘I just won a lot of money.’ Isn’t it obvious that something like this would happen?”
He wrapped an arm around my waist again and pulled me closer.
My weak body was dragged toward him, and I ended up leaning completely against him.
I had experienced some light physical contact with Leon during our time at the Magic Tower.
But we had never been this close.
It felt uncomfortable.
“Mom.”
My unbelievable reality kept hitting me again and again.
The child in Leon’s arms blinked sleepily and reached toward me.
His soft little hand touched my hair.
It gave me a strange feeling that I couldn’t describe.
My chest felt ticklish.
But I was also completely confused.
Honestly, the child did look somewhat like me.
But why was he suddenly calling me Mom?
There has to be a limit to being given responsibility without getting any pleasure out of it!
Leon looked down at the red-cheeked child and casually said,
“If you’re sleepy, go to sleep.”
“No…”
“I won’t leave. You can sleep.”
“Really?”
The child’s large olive-colored eyes turned toward me.
“You won’t go anywhere?”
Oh my goodness.
I absolutely wanted to go somewhere.
I wanted to run away immediately and escape from all these ridiculous problems.
But my mouth betrayed me.
“I won’t go.”
After hearing my answer, the child smiled brightly.
His eyes were half closed with sleep, but he was still trying to stay awake.
He looked so adorable that I wanted to bite his cheeks.
Soon, he fell asleep with a smile still on his face.
Huff… huff…
He breathed softly, the way little children do.
Leon slightly lifted his chin.
A group of people dressed in simple clothes approached us.
They took the child from Leon’s arms.
Then they pointed toward me, as if asking what they should do with me.
Leon shook his head and gestured again.
“Take good care of the child. And prepare another carriage.”
His servants nodded without saying a word.
Then they disappeared as quietly as they had arrived.
I looked around in the direction where the child had gone.
“He seemed to fall into a very deep sleep. Isn’t it because he used too much mana?”
Leon glanced over his shoulder at the square, which was still half in chaos.
He answered calmly.
“Of course. He used a large-scale spell without even using a proper magic formula.”
“You’re telling me you taught a spell like that to such a young child? Are you insane?”
“You’re noisy.”
Leon bent down and picked me up with both arms.
It was the classic bridal carry.
“People are looking!”
“Let them look. If you’re worried about what people think, why did you put recognition-blocking magic on your robe?”
Right.
I had done that.
I awkwardly stopped struggling.
Then I suddenly realized something.
“…Wait. How did you recognize me?”
“A simple recognition-blocking spell from the Magic Tower? It doesn’t work on me.”
Leon confidently walked through the crowd while people stared at us.
I covered my face with both hands and endured the embarrassment.
Once I felt safe, I finally realized what had just happened.
If someone had stolen the check from me, I might genuinely have been unable to recover financially.
I should thank him.
That was the proper thing to do.
But something about the whole situation was bothering me.
I peeked at him through my fingers.
“…But wasn’t your timing a little too perfect?”
“I had been watching you from the beginning.”
“When did you start watching me?”
“Since you were running around the pawnshops.”
He tilted his head slightly and met my stunned gaze.
His smile was annoyingly beautiful.
Getting into the Duke’s carriage was only half my decision.
The other half was because I had no choice.
The paralysis drug made it difficult for me to move.
And I was also afraid that someone else might attack me from behind and steal everything I owned.
Was I worried about Leon Voltane?
Not at all.
He was a man who earned enormous amounts of money every year through his territory’s taxes, port fees, market taxes, mines, and other sources.
He didn’t even have a proper business under his own name.
Compared to his wealth, the huge amount of money I had just won was basically pocket change.
It wasn’t even worth thinking about.
Leon laid me down halfway across one side of the carriage seat and sat on the other side.
Then he took a bottle of water from a basket and handed it to me.
The bottle was warm.
It seemed there was some kind of magical treatment inside the container.
As I slowly drank the warm water, the numbness in my legs gradually began to disappear.
Leon complained like a child.
“This all happened because you didn’t come. I even left you an invitation.”
“You never said when I was supposed to come.”
“The child wanted to see his mother, but you didn’t come. So I had to use this as a last resort and go find you.”
He tapped his temple with one finger.
He thought of all this?
How?
“Your thoughts are too predictable.”
“Stop acting so proud.”
“You didn’t want to owe me anything, right? But you needed money. So you planned to use the major events you remembered from the future to make a huge amount of money, didn’t you?”
“Urgh.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead…”
“I’m the one who used the regression magic. Didn’t you ever think that profiting from knowledge of the future would mean you owed me something?”
Of course…
I had thought about it.
I absolutely had.
“You thought it would be fine as long as you made the money secretly, right?”
Urgh!
I was so embarrassed that he had seen right through me that tears actually appeared in my eyes.
This felt almost like a physical attack.
Leon Voltane was beating me to death with facts!
He watched me struggle with my thoughts like someone watching a toy spinning around by itself.
His voice had a hint of laughter, but it felt cold around my neck like a snake.
“You didn’t even know what kind of game you were getting yourself into.”
“…What kind of game?”
“That rabbit.”
“…The unknown monster?”
“I was the one who captured it and handed it over.”
“Wait. Don’t tell me that even in my previous life…”
“The person in charge asked me for help.”
If Leon was talking about the person in charge, there was only one possibility.
The royal family.
“W-Wait. Are you saying the royal family was running a rigged gambling game?”
“Not exactly. I had been saving up its strength for today.”
Let me explain this again.
In my previous life, nobody had bet on the unknown rabbit.
It looked weak.
It was simply an “unknown” monster.
Nobody thought it could win.
So nobody bet on it.
All the money that had been placed in the arena went into the royal treasury.
In other words…
This had been a royal-sponsored rigged gambling game!
And I had just become the bomb that won the money the kingdom had planned to swallow.
I had unknowingly taken the royal family’s money right out from under their noses.
