CH 17

***

‘Don’t answer.’

It was the coldest, most haunting voice he’d ever heard from Belinda.

Leo assumed she was very angry with him for speaking out.

If he hadn’t felt the tremor in her hand as she clutched his, he wouldn’t have thought to look at her face.

An expressionless face as cold as marble. Fierce eyes staring straight ahead. A cold, stark air that showed no sign of vulnerability.

There was no sign of Belinda’s anxiety or fear anywhere. 

Except for her hands, which trembled faintly. Suddenly, Leo realized he hadn’t misheard.

‘You haven’t even killed me yet.’

Belinda’s voice was barely audible.

Leo couldn’t fathom the complexity of the situation, but he understood at least one thing.

That Belinda was in some kind of danger.

And it was probably…….

Leo glanced behind him, but Sybel was already gone.

Suddenly, Toma’s advice echoed in his head.

‘Doing what you’re told, and sometimes protecting your master, is what it means to be a servant.’

Protecting your master.

He felt like he had found his place here.

‘I want to protect you, Belinda.’

Leo’s small hand tightened around Belinda’s.

***

It rained relentlessly all afternoon and didn’t stop until the evening.

Leo couldn’t concentrate on his writing studies. And it was no wonder.

Everyone would be nervous when a woman who had just beaten a man was sitting right in front of them, holding a test and saying, “Let’s start the exam.”

Of course, my smart Leo received a perfect score of 10 out of 10 and got a sweet dessert as a reward.

Anyway, Leo looked very uneasy, so I deposited some cleaning tools, his healing item, into the child’s hands and left.

My hands shook as I recalled what had happened in front of the library this morning.

Wow, even thinking about it now, I felt a little nervous.

For a moment, I didn’t know if I was Belinda or Belinda was me. It’s like I’d found my calling in life.

‘I can’t believe I’m a video game villain.’

I spoke, savoring my new realization.

“Quest window.”

The word ‘new’ was glowing brightly.

I double-checked to make sure there were no people around.

This was the backyard of the annex, a graveyard that looked even more dreary in the rain. I had purposely come here to find a secluded spot, not knowing what to expect when I claimed the reward.

I walked past the row of tombstones and stopped near one that looked like it hadn’t been there long.

“A fragment of Belinda’s memory.”

The name alone gave me an idea of the reward. What I was more excited about was the special reward for obtaining the fragment.

I whispered ‘obtain’ with a light heart.

Immediately afterwards, my vision went black, as if someone had hit me on the nape of the neck.

***

The rain that had been falling steadily since dawn didn’t stop even in the afternoon.

Young Belinda, dressed in a new dress, was avoiding the annoying adults and heading towards the annex. Then she discovered something.

The back of a middle-aged man squatting in the corner of the garden without an umbrella.

Although the sound was muffled by the sound of the rain, it seemed like he was sniffling.

He looked so pitiful.

Belinda approached him and asked, “Mister, are you crying?”

“Eek!”

The man fell on his buttock in surprise, soaking his clothes in mud.

The man looked pensive, pointed at Belinda, and shouted, “Gh-gh-gh!”

“There are no ghosts here. You all believe in things that even children don’t believe in.”

The words sobered him, and he stared at Belinda’s face for a moment, then turned away and squatted on the ground again.

Then he mumbled a lame excuse that even a child wouldn’t believe.

“It’s not, uh, tears… it’s rain.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for it,” Belinda responded curtly and glanced at the wet back of the sobbing adult.

Belinda knew who he was.

The general manager of the Blanche family’s biggest business, the casino.

No one had said anything about the man’s origins, but the clever Belinda had recognized it early on. That he was her father’s half-brother.

How could she not have known?

He looked so much like her father and had all of the Blanche family traits.

After standing around for a moment, Belinda tilted her umbrella towards her crouching uncle.

Then she said something she would never have said under normal circumstances.

“Uncle, don’t cry.”

The man looked back at Belinda, startled.

His gaunt face stared at her for a very long time before he broke down and began to cry.

“Heuk, hic, brother. How could you leave this little one so soon…….”

This time, the rain did not muffle his sobs. She had never seen an adult crying so openly like this before. 

She was taken aback, and Belinda started to cry too. She was finally able to accept the reality.

That her parents were really gone.

They would never come back. This was not a nightmare but a harsh reality.

“Heuk, hic, hic. Mommy, hic, Daddy!”

“Brother…”

That day, they hugged each other and cried for a long time.

After that day, Belinda didn’t see her uncle for a while.

Relatives, whom she had never seen before, forbade her uncle from even attending the funeral because he was an illegitimate child. Then they flocked to Belinda, who had become the only heir to the Blanche family, and whispered sweet words to explain how fit they were to be Belinda’s guardian.

‘Pfft, maggots. You think I don’t know you’re trying to crawl all over my family like mosquitoes?’

Unperturbed by the various platitudes, Belinda calmly laid out the situation.

‘I need someone who will be nothing but my guardian.’

Someone sturdy, fearless, and compassionate. Someone weak enough not to steal her property and give it back to her.

‘And someone who likes my parents and will be nice to me too…….’

As soon as she started to list her requirements, the right person came to mind.

‘The only person who ever cried for my parents was my uncle.’

And he did it secretly, by hiding in the grass.

And so, Belinda chose her uncle.

“I want my uncle to be my guardian.”

Looking at her uncle, who was so overwhelmed by the pressure that he felt like throwing up, and in fact ended up doing so, Belinda knew she had made the right choice, she was sure.

As it turns out, Belinda was right. Or maybe she was wrong.

It was a sunny summer day, the anniversary of her parents’ deaths.

Belinda turned to her uncle, who had taken time out of his busy schedule to have dinner with his niece.

“Uncle, I want you to be my legal father.”

Clank.

As he was cutting Belinda’s steak into bite-sized pieces, her uncle lost his grip on the knife.

“Uh…….”

At a loss for words, but dutifully shoving the steak into Belinda’s mouth, he broke out in a cold sweat and shook his head.

“Don’t say things like that carelessly.”

He even glanced around, as if afraid someone might hear her.

Fortunately, no one seemed to have heard anything.

Breathing a sigh of relief, the uncle spoke soothingly to Belinda.

“Belle, I’m happy enough with you calling me uncle…….”

“No, I hate it, I hate it!”

Suddenly, Belinda shouted in protest. Ordinarily, he would have given in to his young niece’s foolishness.

However, he couldn’t take this request lightly.

He quickly dismissed the servants, then shook his head with a stern expression.

“No. Belinda, this is not a simple matter. My becoming your legal father means that the succession of this family will change to…….”

“Please, please, please, be my dad instead of my uncle!”

Belinda started to throw a tantrum, flailing her arms and legs on the ground.

It was a method she used as a last resort to get what she wanted when her parents were alive.

……While her parents were always busy summoning the nanny to take care of her with a look of annoyance on their faces.

But it seemed to work on her uncle.

He stood by her side, unable to help himself.

Belinda squirmed even more, until her arm slammed into the table leg.

“Belinda!”

Her uncle spoke up for the first time. Belinda was too frightened to cry out.

“What if you’ve hurt yourself? Let me see, you don’t have any bruises, do you?”

He helped her to her feet and sat her down, examining her arm carefully.

“It’s dangerous to do it like that, so next time, you should do it on the bed.”

Her arm ached from the blow. Belinda bit down hard on her bottom lip, feeling like she might actually cry.

“I’ll wait until you’ve calmed down and feel like talking to me. 

But, Belinda, I’m afraid I can’t do you this favor.”

Her uncle’s kind words hurt more than the blow to her arm. Belinda dropped her head and whimpered.

“……Do you mean it?”

“What?”

His young niece looked up quickly, her fierce eyes brimming with tears.

“If you’re going to do this, why were you nice to me!”

Why did you stay with me all night when I was sick?

Why did you always try to have dinner with me? Why did you kiss me on the forehead every night to say goodnight? Why, why…….

“Why did you make me so weak? I– I was fine on my own without you!”

Belinda knew what it meant to become part of his family.

Her uncle had a son, which meant her right of succession might be pushed back.

But it didn’t matter.

If she could call him “Dad” and be willingly accepted as a member of his family, she didn’t care about her position as the heir.