Chapter 3

chapter 3

Raynard, who had lived as Tom for 12 years, faltered and glared at the approaching maids.

“Don’t come any closer!”

“But….”

The maids who came to help him take a bath were now looking at each other with perplexed faces.

No one would ever tolerate such a dirty and smelly child in this noble mansion. And much to their dismay, this boy right now was vehemently refusing to take a bath which brought them to their wit’s end.

If they could, they would’ve left this child alone long ago, but they couldn’t because it was an order from the young lady herself.

The most experienced maid out of the three gathered her courage and grabbed onto the child’s slender arms. At that moment, Raynard swung his arms around. Despite how frail he looked, he was able to push the maid strong enough for her to fall on her butt.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Just take a bath and stop making such a fuss about it.”

As soon as she entered the room, Yurina scowled. The maids bowed down and witnessed their faces lit up at the sight of her.

They were hoping that maybe her presence could lessen Raynard’s vigilance who just ran into the corner while clutching his clothes.

You’re not a rat being chased by a cat.

Yurina gave a weary sigh and gradually approached him.

“Ray.”

His body stiffened as soon as she called out to him. With his back glued against the wall, Raynard’s shoulders continued to tremble.

“Rest assured that nobody in this mansion is going to hurt you.”

“But they groped my body!”

Yurina turned her head to the maid who quickly shook her head right away.

“You didn’t?”

“They did! They even tried to strip me off my clothes! What are you adults planning to do with a child like me, huh?!”

And what on earth did he think? What’s going on in that little head of his? Seriously.

Yurina barely swallowed the words that were threatening to spill out.

“I’m not sure what you were thinking they were planning to do, but trust me, they were just trying to help you take a bath.”

“What? A bath?”

“Yes, they’ve already prepared a tub filled with hot water. Don’t tell me you don’t have any plans on taking a bath and simply staying like that, do you?”

Even after she gave him a gentle explanation, Raynard still suspiciously looked at the.

“Then why take my clothes off?!”

“To wash your body, of course.”

“But why do I need to be washed by them!”

“That’s what everyone here does.”

He snorted at her answer.

“What, the nobles don’t have any hands or feet? Or do they enjoy being scrubbed by others so much? Is that it?”

“Well, you better refrain from saying such things really. There’s a limit to how much I can protect you. The nobles that you speak of are also the ones who believe that commoners like you can live without a tongue with no trouble whatsoever. In reality, if a noble gets even a single scratch, it’s quite easy for them to simply put all the blame on the people who are beneath them, you know. ”

Yurina spoke with such a mellow voice. If you didn’t know the contents of what she said, you would’ve thought she was saying something like there will be steak, boiled asparagus, and grilled eggplant for dinner.

Luckily, Raynard was quick to sense the meaning in her words so he immediately kept his mouth shut.

Ah, but wasn’t it too quick?

Then again, if he was not really sensitive to these things when they first met, she was sure he would’ve died already before she was able to take him in.

This might be harder than what she expected. Not long after, Yurina waved her hand at the maids and they promptly left the room.

Raynard immediately crossed his arms across his chest in a form of an X to cover it. Yurina can’t help but roll her eyes at his silly appearance.

“What are you going to do with me!?”

“Just get in there and take a bath.”

Yurina pointed at the bathtub with her chin. He stubbornly shook his head in response.

“You said you don’t want the maids to help you clean, so shouldn’t you wash by yourself?”

“Why are you here then?”

“I’ll be taking my leave too.”

“But if you do that, what if someone comes in while I’m taking a bath!?”

Yurina’s head suddenly ached.

His reaction was rather normal considering the environment he grew up in that was described in the novel.

“Charrion” was born as the son of a hostess in a bar. It was a bar where they sold their bodies. And that being the case, he grew up without knowing who his father was.

His prideful pretty face, unfortunately, didn’t help his circumstances in that kind of situation.

He had to work himself off of the bunch of perverted men who drooled at the sight of him.

Her mother was supposed to protect him, yet she didn’t do anything and instead pushed him back to get more tips.

When he refused, he hid himself in the corner of the room. Suddenly, his mother’s hand came flying in and slapped him across his face. Oh how much he wanted to escape from that dreadful place. However, he was still too young and ironically, he had no one else to rely on but his mother.

At the age of 12, when he was old enough to escape from the house, he ran away to the orphanage. But it was no different from that damned place. Day by day he was beaten up and tortured mercilessly in that hellhole of an orphanage.

So it was no wonder why he looked like a cautious hedgehog with their quills raised and pointed in all directions. Also, it seemed like if she ever left him alone, he would stir all over the room.

That scene played in her mind for a short moment and then she sighed deeply.

It’s not like I don’t understand.

But she just could not sit around and wait until he dropped his guard down.

“I, Yurina Carthia, swear upon my name that no one here will ever lay a single finger on you. As long as you don’t want to, nobody will ever enter your room nor be able to touch you. You might not be able to understand what it means to swear upon one’s noble name, but this is considered a very serious deal for any aristocrat.”

“How can I trust your words?”

“Didn’t you believe me and followed me here in the first place? If not, then why’d you follow me here if you never believed in the same words I said just now?”

“That’s…”

Raynard blurted as he avoided her gaze. Yurina unconsciously raised one eyebrow at his actions.

What’s with your reaction?

When Yurina offered to sponsor for him, Raynard said he pondered about it for a long time and nearly didn’t accept her offer.

But Yurina thought otherwise. Clearly, when he made that decision, he didn’t believe in her himself, not even the tiniest bit.

If there’s anything he believed in, it wasn’t her, but rather her money. Nevertheless, she still needed someone to protect her life.

Her one and only goal is to gain his trust, and this is what she should do next.

But right now, she couldn’t understand why he was being so stubborn when he never showed it when they first met. He should’ve been more cautious beforehand.

Yes, shouldn’t he have asked more difficult questions back then, and why was he avoiding her gaze right now?

She glanced at his face and it was getting more and more disgruntled by the second. Raynard dropped his arms from his chest.

“Yes, I do believe you. What about it, huh?”

“By the way, I didn’t want to tell you this.”

She hesitantly stepped back away from him.

“Honestly, you smell really bad right now.”

Even after everything that has happened so far, he had never looked so shocked before. He lifted his arms and sniffed his armpit.

“…Do I smell that bad?”

“Mhm.”

Even though his filthiness could not hide his impressive looks, his beautiful appearance certainly could not hide his stench.

She might have not shown it earlier, but Yurina thought she would die in the carriage from the pungent smell that permeated in the are and got stuck in her nose.

She wondered why the smell didn’t get any weaker even after she opened the windows. Perhaps by now, the servants are sweating bullets because of the smell left in the carriage.

Even with Yurina’s candid reaction, Raynard crept away from the bathtub.

He looks like an animal.

Just like a herbivore that tries to run away while stepping backwards and eyeing the enemy to avoid being eaten.

Raynard was always so full of himself as if he were the greatest man on earth, but right now, if you take a closer look, he was still a naïve child.

When Yurina took a step forward closer to him, Raynard immediately fled behind the curtain of the bathtub.

Yurina placed the boy’s change of clothes and towel just in front of him. A small voice suddenly leaked from behind the curtain.

“Aren’t you leaving yet?”

“I’m going to leave now.”

Yurina turned around and left the room without saying anything anymore. Soon, when the doors closed behind her, a faint sound of rushing water was heard.

After he heard the door shut, he took off his clothes and went into the tub.

Starting from his toes, the hot water that was slowly rising up felt weird.

He felt embarrassed as if there was a person directly looking at him, so he quickly submerged himself up to his shoulders.

It’s warm.

This was the first time he had bathed in warm water.

Never in his life could he have imagined experiencing such luxury before.

Perhaps even when he was a delicate newborn baby who needed extreme care, he had never used such warm water.

I’ve never seen such a huge bathtub before.

There was a little tub in his house, but compared to this bathtub, it was too small that it was barely enough for him and his stepmother to fit in.

When he was over 10 years old, he felt uncomfortable in it. So on a hot day, he would often go down the stream and splash around while washing himself.

In the orphanage, there was no place where several children can bathe together.

Raynard was sitting, hugging his knees as he remembered the shocking words of Yurina that was currently gnawing on him.

—Honestly, you smell really bad right now.

That’s just how bad he smells. He gulped.

To be honest, he didn’t even notice his bad odour.

But it wasn’t just him, it was the same even for the children in the neighbourhood who was eventually taken in by the orphanage. He thought that the children of the orphanage simply smelled like that.

However, for a noble lady who grew up in such luxury, the stench was undeniably dreadful.

And as it turns out, Yurina smelled nice. When he first met her, that was the only time he discovered that a person could have such flower-like fragrance.

She was a girl who showed various fresh new things to him in so many ways.

Yurina Carthia

Raynard closed his eyes as he tried to recall Yurina’s face. Unlike the darken and rough skin of children in the orphanage, the slightly visible skin on her neck and wrist were pure white and lustrous against her thick pinkish dark blonde hair.

And those blue eyes, oh how it seemed to beam at him right away during their first meeting.

Today was the first time he realized that a person’s eyes could be so shiny and pretty.

He had never looked straight into anyone’s eyes since no one had done the same due to his blood-red eyes.

Not even his father, his own flesh and blood, looked directly at him and even said to him that they were ominous.

Sometimes, he would look at him with such wistful eyes and cry out for a week that if it weren’t for him, his mother wouldn’t have died giving birth to him. So whenever his father was drunk, he would curl up hugging his knees and tremble in a corner.

He wondered why he followed her all the way here even after hearing such ridiculous words like having a talent for magic and wanting to sponsor him. It was probably because she looked directly into his eyes.

Although they weren’t made of gold, still, those sky-blue eyes twinkled like the stars, and it seemed to shine even more radiantly than the sun.

After painting a picture of Yurina’s face in his mind, Raynard suddenly dipped his face in hot water. He couldn’t tell whether the heat he felt on his face was because of the water warming up his body, or something else entirely.

When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he raised his flushed face and picked up the round soap on the table next to the bathtub.

It smelled so sweet that it couldn’t even be compared to the cheap soap his generous father gave to his stepmother.

He put the soap near his nose and sniffed at it.

It’s the same spring flower scent that was emitting from Yurina’s body.

As he he was thinking about it, he suddenly felt like something smacked him at the back of his head. Raynard had a strong feeling that he was thinking about something bad and it was going to a dangerous direction.

He quickly shook his head and submerged his face back again into the warm water. Not soon after, his cheeks started to heat up once more.

Can I really use this soap?

Raynard hesitated for a moment then he raised his face and started to scrub every nook and cranny of his body with soap.

He wasn’t going to stop until all of the smell was gone.