CH 2

I stood up at the appearance of a stranger, no, a child. But the moment I saw the child’s face properly, I was surprised. His face, like mine, was wet with tears.

He was skinny and was about an inch shorter than me. His cheeks were splattered with blood; I wasn’t sure whether it was his or not.

His hair looked disheveled, as if he hadn’t showered in days. Apart from that, his white shirt and brown pants were soiled and wrinkled.

The fabric looks good, but it’s not in perfect condition.

In the midst of his overall dirty and pitiful appearance, his blue eyes were beautiful. If he washed and fed himself properly, he would have an attractive face.

Me and the child looked at each other for a few seconds. It was me who spoke first.

“……How did you get in?”

For a brief moment, I was mesmerized by his gaze.

I shook my head and looked at the boy. 

The boy remained still and continued to cry.

Why did you keep crying and didn’t answer? 

When he didn’t reply, I blankly stared at the child’s dripping tears. 

Seeing him crying made me remember the reality of my situation again.

‘It’s my birthday today. I didn’t hear them say happy birthday and I was kicked out again.’

I frowned and fought back tears.

“W-why are you crying?”

My voice trembled too much to convey what I had to say. I nearly cried again. But it’s embarrassing to cry in front of a child I don’t know.

However, my eyes trembled and tears flowed again.

“I……”

The boy’s cracked voice came out. I tried to stop crying because the child was trying to talk. However, I became even more sad when I couldn’t stop crying. In the end, I cried alongside him.

* * *

The fifteen-years-old Daikin came down to the Lizziana Territory due to his father’s illness.

He had come down as soon as his father’s health deteriorated. He was panicking, but what made it even more worse was the doctor’s words.

Daikin peered into the room through the crack in the open door. There, his frail father lay down and his mother was looking at the doctor with a serious face.

“… … If he goes on like this, there is a high probability that he will explode due to overcapacity. Doing so could hurt not only the master, but also everyone within the radius.”

From afar, Daikin looked at his father, Dale, the Archduke of Blanche.

It felt as if he would wake up at any moment.

It seemed that his father would wake up casually and act like nothing’s wrong, but it won’t be like that this time. There were no signs of movement.

Daikin’s face filled with melancholy.

“Then what should I do?”

“……I think you need to prepare yourself. It’s nearly time for the power to reach its peak.”

‘Father…….’

Daikin repeated in his head what the doctor had said.

‘Overcapacity……’

An explosion of power.

It refers to a phenomenon that occurs when the power is significantly stronger than the body’s ability to accept it.

It wasn’t very common. 

But it’s not like that within the Blanche family. If they inherited their blood, they could not escape the possibility of explosion.

The power that has been passed down from generation to generation from the Blanche family will eventually explode. Although the power is small, it will accumulate. The explosion would be a problem then.

A joke circulated around the empire that the Blanche family would make the empire explode one day. That was half-true.

Daikin overhears the doctor’s words through the crack in the door, and in the end, with a face that looks like he’s about to cry, he trudges out.

He leaned against the wall and sat down. Now that autumn was approaching, the whole place was covered with fallen leaves.

“They must be joking.”

Daikin didn’t want to accept the reality.

He slowly lifted his head and looked up at the walls. 

His father was lying in the largest of the windows up there.

Daikin spoke to himself in a louder voice than before.

“Is he pretending to be sick to get attention…?”

Daikin stared quietly at the window. But the voice he had hoped for was not heard.

Originally, his father would say, “I’m truly sick. I’m not pretending to be sick. Sniff…”

And he knew he was joking. But the expected answer was nowhere to be found. Rather, the surroundings were quiet.

Daikin was willing to wait for him. Originally, he would tell his father to stop faking it and get up now.

‘My father is sick. I’ll be patient this time as well.’

This time, he decided not to be sarcastic when he replied to him.

When Daikin was about to get up,

“Ugh… … .”

Suddenly, his head felt like it was going to explode. It felt like someone was hitting him in the head with a sharp object. The pain felt like a woodpecker had pounded thousands of times in his brain. He gripped his head tightly with his hands.

Daikin knew that the pain would soon subside. But even though it was a pain he had experienced once or twice, he was scared this time. Like what he had heard earlier, it felt as if he would never be able to open his eyes. It seemed that this pain would last forever.

“Ah… … .”

Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

No, it hadn’t happened yet.

Daikin was dazed, even though the pain had ceased. 

It felt as if he had been in an unfamiliar world and came back just then. 

His forehead and hands were damp with sweat.

Daikin looked at his hand with unfocused eyes. He had been through this kind of pain once, so he knew what to expect. He took a long breath.

* * *

But his expectations were wrong. The next day, the pain was so intense that he couldn’t open his eyes.

Also the next day, and the day after that.

Whether fortunate or unfortunate, everyone was preoccupied with the Archduke, leaving no attention for Daikin. His servants had always been paying attention to him, but couldn’t do so this time. Because he insisted on being alone.

“I want to be alone.”

“Master, that’s dangerous.”

The servants could not stop him. He had come dangerously close to losing his father, and they could only leave him alone when he requested it.

Symptoms such as seizures and pain occurred when Daikin was alone, and no one noticed because he quietly struggled with pain alone.

‘Am I going to die?’

He was born with more power than his father. As he was still young and weak, it was not unreasonable that the symptoms appeared so quickly.

‘I might die.’

He felt pity for her mother who might have lost her son and husband in an instant.

But this was something he couldn’t help. His head started to hurt again, and nosebleeds dripped from his nose.

‘I don’t want to die.’

The blood dripped on the floor.

‘I don’t want to die.’

His eyes gradually lost focus and his face turned pale. While his mind was clouded, he was filled with thoughts that he should go far away so that no one could be impacted.

‘I have to get out of here.’

He never knows what will happen if there is an explosion here. If it was small, only this room would explode, and in the worst case, the entire territory might be blown away.

The Lizziana Territory is a province quite far from the capital where the Blanche mansion is located. 

The reason why he had to come down here in a hurry was because of his father’s health. As he was quietly and secretly recuperating, his father’s condition was still top secret.

If it was revealed that he had collapsed, the whole family would be impacted, and his father’s condition could be revealed. 

Daikin ran out of the house with a hazy mind. He had to get out of here.

Since the Archduke had collapsed, the mansion was tightly guarded, but it wasn’t as difficult as  Daikin thought to break through the gap and sneak out. 

Usually, when Daikin did not want to attend classes, he often escaped from the mansion.

As he descended to the Lizziana Territory, he saw knights on guard duty but it was fine.

There were also reasons why the inexperienced boy could sneak out before, because the knights closed their eyes once or twice. 

It was because he had insisted on going out secretly, and Mineva, the Archduchess and Daikin’s mother, gave the order to leave him alone a few times. 

She thought he needed to explore the world too. 

Thanks to this, Daikin was able to run out of the mansion without too much trouble.

* * *

My mind was clouded throughout my escape.

I have to go as far from home as possible. I just remember repeating those words.

As I was wandering, I suddenly felt a warm energy from somewhere. The energy seemed to entice him. I ran frantically looking for the source of that feeling.

And when I arrived, it was here.

I don’t remember how I arrived here. Did I dig a hole? What kind of superhuman strength and animalistic sense did I get on the verge of death? I only remembered struggling to get through the gap so narrow that my whole body was covered with dirt.

And I met a girl wearing all white. She was wearing an ivory-colored dress that was close to white. The only thing with color was her purple eyes that were wide open.

‘Is she a fairy……?’

At first I thought it was a fairy living in a hut in the woods. Her purple eyes and bright eyes were the appearance of a fairy I had read somewhere.

But no matter how I looked at it, she had no wings on her back. She looked like a fairy, but she wasn’t.

‘She smells sweet.’

The girl had a nice scent that contained the warm energy I had never felt before. 

The more I smelled the scent, the more my mind became clearer. My throbbing head was relieved. I usually get a headache again after it subsides for a while, so I was afraid of having another seizure, but strangely, I didn’t have that fear.

‘I was taught that there is no such thing as an antidote to my power.’

But seeing that child just puts my mind at ease. The pain in my body also slowly subsided. As I realized it, I was astonished.

‘What happened……’

The energy that flowed from the girl made all of his pain disappear.