CH 116

“Is it a secret? Then I’ll hide it. I have a tight lip.”

Nathaniel smiled. He remembered how upright she was despite being criticized at the banquet.

[I know. I know that well.]

Kyrie gently blushed her face. She belatedly covered her face with her teacup.

“The soldier…..What do you mean? Is my father trying to rebel against the royal family?”

[This is not a story for children.]

“But I am Buchanan.”

[And young.]

“However……”

[There comes a time when you have to hear a story that is difficult to hear. That is not now.]

Kyrie stared at him silently for a while. The child Kyrie, and the adult Kyrie, looked tired as if they were the same.

“But that’s why Dad and Mom don’t come to see me……”

Nathaniel paused.

[Did she say she was divorced?]

“Not yet!”

Kyrie shouted out in an angry way, but she was startled by my actions and made a tearful face.

“I’m sorry, I’m not polite……”

[If there is an adult who asks a ten-year-old to be modest, step on their foot.]

“…..Even if that’s my father?”

[It’s easier if that’s your father. He won’t be difficult to deal with.]

“Are you a bigger adult than me?”

[There is nothing special, so let me step on it later.]

“pfft!”

She giggled and smiled broadly.

“Nathaniel-sama is a bit special!”

Knowing that what was inside her was ten years old, Nathaniel grew a little farther away.  It was that smile when she received the jacaranda flower.

“Nathaniel?”

When he didn’t say a word, Kyrie reached out her upper body and waved her hand.  Nathaniel lowered his gaze. After a little hesitation, he opened his mouth.

[Kyrie.]

“Yes.”

Kyrie answered with a more mature and confident response.

Nathaniel couldn’t see the clear, good eyes that were looking at him, and in the end he said the same thing again like a dodol.

[Is there anything you want?]

“You mean one? well. uh…….Ah! There is something I want to do.”

[What do you want to do?]

“It’s a secret, but I’m going to give you something special in return for punishing my father’s toes.”

She walked over to Nathaniel with her hands and whispered in Nathaniel’s ear.

“I want to play with Mom and Dad……”

***

Nathaniel immediately summoned Zhenya Hartwood. It was before the day was over.  Zhenya, arrogantly entering Buchanan’s mansion with a smoker on, saw Nathaniel and Cesar standing next to each other, and handed the pipe to the attendant next to her.

“I didn’t expect to see you again.”

She spoke confidently, but seemed to be wary of Nathaniel. Nathaniel, who was used to it, smiled faintly.

[Kyrie wanted it.]

Zhenya raised her eyebrows as if puzzled.

“Does that kid want me? She never did  Except when she was very young. Didn’t the telegram say that she regressed to the age of ten now?”

Nathaniel laughed softly. Her parents don’t know her as much as he does.

[Let’s pretend it was when she was very young. It’s not going to be hard.]

“Is this a family play this time? Lord Nathaniel has a very bad hobby.”

“Zhenya.”

Cesar looked down at Nathaniel’s eyes and shook his head.  He glanced at Nathaniel and spoke low and fast.

“Don’t gossip and do what you have to do.”

Zhenya’s eyebrows curved like a bow again.

“Did you just order me right now?  Did you think that I came here to listen to you?”

“You know that the maternal love that didn’t exist would suddenly happen.”

“So what about you? Are you relieved to become a duke by paying for your daughter?”

“Is that what you want to say here!”

“Shut up, 990 points.”

“What?”

When Nathaniel was silent, Zhenya and Cesar began to point fingers at each other.

Listening to their conversation, Nathaniel felt tired. If it had been like before, he would have encouraged the fight by saying it was fun, but now he can only think of Kyrie, who is waiting in the room for a surprise gift.

Still, he had one thing.  It was the realization that no one in this family thought about Kyrie properly.

[Stop.]

Nathaniel said with a bit of intimidation. Zhenya and Cesar stopped talking at the same time.

[I’ll give you what you want later, so come and show your daughter good acting now.  So that I don’t have to use bad words.]

Cesar and Zhenya stared at each other and turned their heads at the same time.  As the two of them shook their heads to move, Nathaniel opened his mouth as if a sudden thought crossed his mind.

[Oh yeah. Buchanan.]

“Yes?”

The moment Cesar reacted, his staff slammed down on Cesar’s toes.

“huek!”

Cesar crouched down on his body, grabbing his feet, Nathaniel said, throwing a few gold coins over it.

[Someone ordered the assassination of your toes.]

***

The three of them sat around a table with the sunset and a half-collapsed Buchanan mansion in the background.

Kyrie laughed as if she had the whole world.  Cesar was good at acting, and Zhenya felt like she risked her life for acting.  It didn’t matter.  If it was for Kyrie.

Nathaniel leaned against one of the ten porches overlooking the table in the garden, as he watched Kyrie quibble. Her flushed cheeks were pink, and whenever her mother or father stroked her hair, she could be seen clenching her fists in helplessness.

In the end, Nathaniel couldn’t make Kyrie laugh with anything he had. The more Kyrie laughed, the more his heart broke. Jacaranda was just a coincidence. A coincidence that happened at the right time, perhaps only once in a lifetime.  

I couldn’t do something that didn’t exist at all,

I couldn’t.

Nathaniel took a step back after confirming that the three members of the family got up after tea time.  A familiar shade of cold greeted him.  It was when he left himself in the still chilly evening air.

There was a loud squeaking sound from behind.

“Nathaniel-sama!”

At Kyrie’s voice calling out to him, Nathaniel turned his head again. Kyrie, who ran in a hurry, gasped for breath a little, and smiled broadly.

“Where are you going?”

[……I’d like to talk to some unkind neighbors outside your mansion.  It’ll be easier than that, but talk more with your parents.]

“No, both of you have to work now. You are going to come back.”

Kyrie picked up her dress and answered. She immediately looked into Nathaniel’s eyes and smiled.

“Did you help me?  Because I wanted to meet them….”

Her smiling purple eyes gleamed in light purple shade. It was towards him, but anyway, it was a sparkle he couldn’t have.  Nathaniel lowered his gaze, suppressing the rising emotions.

[Do you like them?]

“Very well. Originally, this was the period of contemplation for divorce.  So I decided to stop by regularly, but she didn’t come….”

Kyrie shrugged her shoulders.

“Thank you.”

Nathaniel looked at her face with an expressionless face, then spit it out.

[You don’t look very happy about that.]

Kyrie stopped. Her white cheeks twitched slightly, and she soon grimaced her face as if she had bitten a lemon.

“How did you know?”

[I can see it now.]

Kyrie didn’t say anything for a long time.  With her clear, clear and subtly glare, she just stared at Nathaniel.

Then she said as if tossing.

“Actually, they are already divorced.”

You must be crazy.  

Nathaniel covered his mouth not to say that.  Her murderous intent slowly soared.

[……I think that bullshit belongs to Hartwood.]

“Yes……Because my mother is cold.  She is also smart.”

[It would be fine.]

“She didn’t say anything wrong.  Maybe I didn’t like the two of them getting a divorce, so I was being too soft. She told me to wake up from the dream……”

Kyrie laughed softly. Nathaniel didn’t answer and looked sullenly, Kyrie, who stopped laughing awkwardly.  Before long, tears welled up from her eyes as she smiled faintly.

“……Because I am not enough.”

[Kyrie.]

“I haven’t mastered all manners yet……, and the maids still treat me like a child……”

[……]

“I should have worked harder…….”

Kyrie soon closed her mouth straight and opened her eyes, and began to weep small beads of tears.  Even in the midst of it, he felt that she gave strength to her expression like a person who had learned to cry beautifully like a portrait. That made Nathaniel a little sadder.

He felt that she had not been loved because of her own lack of effort. Even though it’s not. Sometimes things are beyond human control, but Kyrie Buchanan was too young to know.  And sometimes some wounds only deepen over time.

Nathaniel walked gently like a ripple and approached the crying Kyrie. He stood in front of her, and stretched out his hand quietly.

As his cold fingers touched her cheek, Kyrie rubbed her skin like crazy.

“What should I do…….?”

[You know, it’s not your fault.]

“I do not know…….Everything is like a mirage, it seems like it will disappear, and if I don’t try, it will disappear…….”

[Kyrie. It’s okay to call my name  You worked hard enough.]

Nathaniel didn’t know how to comfort people.  He had never comforted anyone, so he kept quiet and told the truth.

[Your parents’ job wasn’t something you had to do, and it’s not that they didn’t love you because you weren’t good enough.]

“But the other house……”

[You must be happy. No one gave you a chance to choose it, so it’s not your fault.]

Kyrie let out a louder cry.

“Then who loves me?”

As the young Kyrie Buchanan said so, she wept loudly as if she could bear it no longer.  The raw cries of an expressionless face sounded like the screams of a baby beast.

Nathaniel felt his heart heating up. In Nathaniel’s head when he saw her, the image of Kyrie waiting for him in the golden field spread.

Then Kyrie Buchanan threw everything away. It was really everything, since humans lose their lives even when their arteries are cut off.

But at that time, he couldn’t believe in Kyrie. The time before meeting Kyrie was tightening him.

‘You don’t age. I’m scared…….’

‘I don’t know what you are thinking.’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know! I’ve never communicated with a devil!’

‘Okay, can you give me some more money?’

‘You know too much. I have to do something before you reveal it.….’

People of the past.  The humans he cherished who coveted power and greed for wealth.  Those small, insignificant, yet precious human beings who seemed to have no intention of giving up on anything.

Nathaniel was not always on their heart.  The ending they gave was always the same, and Nathaniel couldn’t remember how many times he was stabbed into his chest. If time was the sun, he was a person sitting in the shade where sunlight could not reach forever.

But knowing that everything would repeat itself again, he had no choice but to give his finger to another little bird. He hoped that someday someone will be with him.

And at this moment, Nathaniel realized.  That the whole process was not meaningless.  He knew that he was waiting for her to drop into this vast universe for this moment, the wounded Kyrie Buchanan in front of his eyes.

[…….do not worry.]

Nathaniel slowly knelt in front of Kyrie on one knee.  He kissed the tip of Kyrie’s fingernails as if touching something very precious, and Kyrie looked at him with tears shining like stars.

[Don’t worry, in the very distant future, someone will appear who will give you even what you didn’t receive now.]

Kyrie’s eyes trembled.  Her wet eyes gleamed like pearls.

“Is there really such a person…….?”

[There is. You haven’t met yet, but somewhere.]

“Really?”

[of course.]

Nathaniel sighed and placed his lips on Kyrie’s four fingers.

[That someone will love you no matter how hard you try or not.  That person will go to rescue you wherever you are, and if you wish, he will burn with you in that hell.]

“…….”

[You will become someone’s world.]

Kyrie slowly blinked her eyes.  In the wind, the tears that had been finely hanging from her eyelashes fell like starlight.

“…….Can I believe that?”

Nathaniel smiled faintly as the night wind flew through her lavender hair.

[Perhaps you can.]

Slowly, he kissed Kyrie’s fingertips once more.  To the King of the crown of thorns who made him submissive on his feet.

[Because someone will give you what you’ve been waiting so long for.]