Chapter 25
I had put off going to bed and was walking down the hallway.
I was carrying a tray.
On it sat a cup of freshly blended red strawberry juice.
Kara had suddenly woken up craving strawberry juice.
‘She must be hungry after all that dancing.’
If Yeppi wanted some, what choice did I have?
As it happened, we still had ingredients left over from making counterfeit Frost Strawberries.
I had also learned how to make juice from the cook I’d befriended while he brought Kara food for her morning sickness during the day.
I was on my way back after using my modest skills to make a chilled glass.
But then.
“Aaaaargh!”
A desperate scream echoed through the hallway.
“That startled me!”
I nearly dropped the tray.
The sound was coming from Lonas’s office.
‘Could this be an enemy attack?’
I tensed for a moment, but the sound that followed was even more horrifying than an enemy assault.
“Why is this receipt still here?! Where did it get missed?!”
A wail.
It was the desperate scream of an office worker drowning in a sea of overtime.
I knew that feeling all too well.
‘Lonas, you seemed to be pushing yourself too hard when you were dancing earlier.’
I looked down at the tray in my hands.
Then I returned to the kitchen and took out another cup.
I scraped together every last bit of the remaining ingredients, added ice, and ground it all in a mortar.
Pound, pound, pound—.
In an instant, I had made another glassful of strawberry juice.
‘That’s right. There’s a sense of solidarity among fellow sufferers working overtime.’
I placed the two glasses of juice on the tray and headed for Lonas’s office.
Creak.
When I quietly opened the office door, I saw Lonas with his head pressed against the desk.
“......?”
Lonas lifted his head.
A huge figure stood in the doorway.
It was me.
I was holding a tray, and two cups filled with red drinks sat on it.
“M-Mr. Varg...? You’re not asleep....”
“Kara suddenly woke up craving strawberry juice. I was already going to the kitchen, so I blended an extra glass.”
I stepped inside and set a glass of freshly made strawberry juice on Lonas’s desk with a soft thud.
“Drink it. Sugar is the best thing for working overtime.”
“Ah....”
Lonas’s eyes trembled.
He accepted the juice as though it were the elixir of life.
The sweet-and-sour scent of strawberries tickled his nose.
“Th-Thank you....”
“Hang in there. I’m sorry I can’t help with anything.”
“No, it’s fine. Your thought alone is more than enough.”
Lonas sniffled as he gulped down the juice.
He looked so pitiful, and yet so grateful, that....
“...Um, Mr. Varg.”
“Yes?”
“Would it be all right if I called you ‘Big Brother’?”
I gave a quiet laugh at his sudden confession.
“I’d be the younger brother, though....”
“My father called Mr. Gorgon ‘Big Brother’ too, even though Father was older than him....”
“Then... I won’t object, but not in front of other people....”
“Anyway, thank you, Big Brother.”
Lonas shed tears of emotion and picked up his pen again.
I turned toward the door, leaving Lonas behind.
Then a letter set aside in one corner of Lonas’s desk caught my eye.
An old-fashioned envelope that stood out among the mountains of official documents.
Unlike the other papers, it bore Count Eisen’s personal seal in clear relief.
And the recipient was....
「To. Young Master Kairon von Northgard」
‘Huh?’
I stopped short.
I had heard that Lonas handled all official reports from the territory and correspondence sent to the Grand Ducal House.
But had the count written that one himself?
‘It could simply be a letter from a teacher checking in on his student, but....’
I felt a strange sense of disquiet.
It wasn’t that the letter itself seemed suspicious. Rather, it felt as though a piece of a puzzle was missing.
An instinctive feeling that I was overlooking something important sent a shiver across the back of my neck.
‘...It feels like I’ve missed something.’
Just as I narrowed my eyes and stared at the letter.
The thin layer of ice in the strawberry juice I had prepared for Kara had already begun to melt.
In an instant, all the complicated thoughts in my head vanished.
‘Kara comes first right now.’
I shook my head vigorously and hurried back toward the bedroom.
The scratching of a pen—the laborer’s song that woke the dawn—sounded like a lullaby.
* * *
Morning sunlight streamed through the window.
“Mmm....”
Kara opened her eyes as she stretched.
Whether it was thanks to yesterday’s dancing or the strawberry juice she had drunk late at night, her face was glowing with health.
I gazed at my lovely wife, then lightly kissed her lips.
Smack.
“Good morning, honey.”
“Mmm... Good morning. Your breath smells like strawberries.”
Kara mumbled as she rubbed her eyes.
“You do too. I guess we swallowed an entire strawberry farm yesterday.”
“...We did, technically. I guess we danced too hard yesterday.”
“We did. We danced until dawn.”
We looked at each other and snickered.
On the bedside table sat the empty glass of strawberry juice from the previous dawn.
There was exactly one dried streak of red juice around the rim.
I wrapped an arm around Kara’s waist and asked with deliberate exaggeration.
“Now then, what would our queen like to eat today? Just say the word, and I’ll have it served.”
Kara pretended to listen to her belly for a moment, then giggled.
“Hmm... Yeppi says Daddy should get some rest after working so hard to make juice in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, our Yeppi is such a good baby. Already thinking about Daddy.”
“But Yeppi says they’re sulking because Daddy always kisses Mommy and never kisses them.”
Kara stuck out her lips and complained.
I burst out laughing, pulled back the covers, and kissed her lower belly with a smack.
“I’m sorry, Yeppi. Daddy just loves Mommy so much. Come here, have a kiss to make up.”
Kara stroked my hair and smiled happily.
I wished this peaceful morning could last forever.
Meanwhile, the days cruelly flew by.
Two weeks remained until we entered the academy.
Eisengard was bustling with final preparations.
Eisen was running all over the place trying to solve the dormitory problem.
Since a married couple enrolling together was unprecedented, he was apparently looking for a special-exception clause or screening potential roommates.
Kara and Alina were devouring childcare books in the study or learning practical parenting tips from the head maid.
Alina had become Kara’s shadow, following her around like a guard knight and attending to her.
“Sis! Drink this! They say you need to drink lots of water!”
“Thank you, Alina.”
And me.
“Aaaagh! Lord Varg! Knife work isn’t done with brute force! Use a snap of your wrist...!”
“Why won’t this thing cut?!”
Bang! Bang!
In the mansion kitchen.
I was taking cooking lessons while wearing an apron far too small for my frame, making it look like a bib.
The cutting board was covered with pitifully crushed chunks of radish.
The kitchen knife in my hand looked like a toy.
The strawberry juice I’d made at dawn had been easy—just mash the ice and strawberries together by force and strain it—but....
“Phew....”
I wiped the sweat from my brow and gripped the knife again.
‘I have to do this.’
The food at the academy dormitory might not suit Kara’s taste.
I needed to know how to cook basic dishes in preparation for her morning sickness.
Besides, if we were going to raise a child, I would have to make baby food too. I couldn’t rely on other people forever.
Thinking of the food Kara would eat, I focused with all my might.
But every time I tried to concentrate on cooking, memories of the previous dawn kept tormenting me.
The hand cutting the radish faltered.
The letter I had seen in Lonas’s office the previous dawn.
「Recipient: Young Master Kairon von Northgard」
It could simply have been a personal letter from a teacher to his student.
But....
‘......’
The 「Red Apparition」 I had seen when Gorgon had nearly been assassinated in the past.
The same chilling, ominous sensation I had felt then had returned, faintly, when I saw that letter envelope.
Back then, I had seen it clearly because I was standing on the stage of the tragedy about to unfold before me, but now there was no specific image or apparition.
There was only a queasy sense of disquiet.
‘Am I overreacting? Or... did the future I changed create another variable?’
One thought led to another.
Tap. Tap.
The sound of the knife cutting radish rang out irregularly.
“Varg, might I ask for a cup of tea?”
Just then, a familiar voice came from the kitchen entrance.
It was Count Eisen.
He came in with a deep sigh and sank into a chair.
Unlike his normally immaculate appearance, his tie was slightly loosened, and he looked utterly exhausted.
“My head is throbbing.”
I set down the knife and put water on to boil.
“What happened? You look even worse than when Kara first suffered from morning sickness. Is the academy causing trouble again?”
“Good heavens, Varg. You’ve improved considerably at starting a conversation. In the past, you would have simply asked what was wrong.”
Count Eisen gave a small laugh as he accepted the teacup.
“...As expected, it’s the dormitory issue.”
He took a sip of the hot tea and continued.
“The men’s and women’s dormitories are strictly separated, so they’re balking at letting even a married couple live in the same building. They say there’s no precedent for it.”
“That’s what I expected.”
“But that’s not the only problem. They even argued that ‘if she’s pregnant, wouldn’t it be better to defer her enrollment for a year?’ It isn’t an entirely unreasonable point, so I was at a loss for words.”
My expression hardened at that.
“Defer enrollment...? That’s not an option.”
“Indeed.”
Count Eisen nodded.
“The truth is, the two of you were strongly encouraged to enroll by His Grace the Grand Duke of Northgard... Hmm, it wasn’t pursued out of pure goodwill alone. If we let this opportunity pass, the grand duke might change his mind.”
The grand duke wanted to take our tribe hostage.
Unlike in the original story, his stated justification now was friendship, but if our enrollment were delayed, the grand duke would look for another pretext to make trouble.
No matter how absurd the pretext, it was still a pretext.
If we fell out with him, it would become a troublesome variable.
Count Eisen looked at me with a serious gaze.
“And speaking frankly, once the baby is born... you’ll effectively have no time to attend the academy because of childcare.”
“......”
“Seeing how affectionate you two are, one child probably won’t be enough... If younger siblings start arriving one after another, this year may be your only chance. But even that argument doesn’t get through to that stubborn dean.”
He loosened his tie as though frustrated.
The academy’s walls were so rigid that even the Empire’s greatest administrator was left clicking his tongue.
‘The dormitory problem....’
I folded my arms and fell into thought.
We had to find a way through it.
For Kara and our child.
And to prepare for the future that was coming.
Just then, an idea flashed through my mind.
“Count.”
“Yes?”
“If we can’t change the regulations... couldn’t we find a way around them?”
“A way around them?”
“Then we only need somewhere that isn’t classified as a dormitory.”
Count Eisen’s eyes widened at my words.
“Don’t tell me... you’re planning to live independently off campus? The academy requires all students to live in the dormitories.”
“No. I mean a place that’s inside the academy but isn’t a dormitory.”
I grinned and said,
“For example... faculty housing.”
“......!”
Count Eisen pushed up his glasses.
His eyes began to gleam sharply again.
“...That’s an interesting idea. A student living in faculty housing....”
He thought for a moment, then slapped his knee.
“There may be a possibility. As it happens, there’s an empty annex on the academy grounds. It used to be the caretaker’s residence, but it’s been left to languish as a storage building. If we change its designation to 「Special Research Student Housing」....”
It was as though I could hear a calculator whirring rapidly inside his head.
“The intuition of the Revered Peoples is sometimes sharper than the logic on an administrator’s desk.”
But Count Eisen’s expression soon darkened again.
“However... the problem is still the roommate who would share a room with Miss Kara. It would need to be a double room for a married couple to live together, but the academy regulations say we can’t simply hand over a room just because we trust the husband, not when this is supposedly an academy....”
“So you mean we’d have to assign another student.”
“Unless they’re from the Grand Duchy, I’d feel uneasy assigning her some scion of another territory whom I don’t know well... And if they took issue with Miss Kara’s status and spread rumors, it would cause trouble.”
“I see.”
“If there were at least a trustworthy member of the faculty, I could ask them to serve as a dorm supervisor... but that rascal Lonas has no connections among the faculty.”
Count Eisen let out a deep sigh.
“He dropped out while attending the academy, saying that ‘practical work matters more than theory.’ As a result, he lost the marriage connections he could have made through the academy and became disliked by the professors who had taken an interest in him.... Ha... Why did he have to inherit his stubbornness from me?”
He muttered something that might have been either praise or criticism of his son and set down his teacup.
“Then are you saying there’s no way?”
“No. That’s why, while sending the young master a letter asking after his well-being, I’m thinking of requesting help from Carl von Northgard, the Grand Duke’s eldest son.”
“......!”
‘Carl von Northgard.’
The instant that name came from Eisen’s mouth, my expression turned cold.
“Unlike Lonas, Carl graduated at the top of his class from the academy. He’s a genius with close ties to the faculty, so I intend to ask him whether he knows any trustworthy female professors or dorm supervisors.”
Count Eisen spoke hopefully, unaware of my expression.
But I heard nothing he said.
An alarm was ringing in my head.
I had found a clue to the queasy sense of disquiet twisting in my gut.
‘Carl von Northgard....’
In the original novel, <The Bastard’s Snowflower Path>....
Kairon’s older brother, Carl....
was the person who provided the decisive catalyst for Kairon’s personality to break down.
Just before Kara and Kairon entered the academy in the original story.
Carl, driven to despair by his circumstances—
his paralysis from the waist down and his father’s cold treatment—would, in front of his younger brother Kairon....
commit suicide.
This shocking incident became the decisive trigger that drove Kairon into twisted perfectionism and a neurotic personality.
‘Wait. The timing right now....’
Two weeks before enrollment.
That was right now.