/
Of course, the owner of the hand was an old acquaintance of Lillian.
However, it was not the face of the director who gained weight well. Rather, he was skinny and always talked about as a raven among children.
‘Curtis!’
A chill ran down Lillian’s spine.
‘How did this person get here?’
“I heard you went to see the director without fear, you stupid bastard. Did you think the director would come alone?”
Curtis’ mean face gave way to an eerie grin.
“Since you won’t be able to enter through the front door, I thought you must be looking for another corner. You’re as good at catching things as I thought.”
“Hey, let me go!”
“Shut up! You ruined all my plans, you know?!”
“Let me go! Let me go!”
Lillian bit Curtis’s hand to free it.
“Fucking bitch!”
“Ouch!”
Slap! Curtis wheezed and slapped Lillian in the face. Curtis raised his hand once again to see if that didn’t relieve all his anger. But this time it didn’t slap Lillian in the face.
Rather, he just tapped Lillian’s fierce stare.
“You should be glad that I caught you. The headmaster said he’d send you to Loubet as soon as he caught you. Huh?”
A place where children are treated like slaves, Loubet.
It was the name of a horror to the children of the orphanage. They said it would be a terrible place to be sent to Loubet after 15 years of age, but if Lillian, who was only 10 years old, was sent there, it was certain that she would die before lasting a year.
“I’m glad I caught you. I’m not sending you to Loubet. Hehehe, since it happened like this, I will hand you over to a slave dealer and leave with a hefty ransom. Huh? It would be better for you, too. I’m fed up with being beaten up by that monkey-like director, and being scolded
”
Curtis muttered something incomprehensible to himself and dragged Lillian away.
Of course, I couldn’t understand it, but I could feel that Curtis was swearing.
When the director got angry, he would break things or beat Curtis for no reason, and he probably had a grudge against that.
Even in the midst of all that, the arm holding Lillian and dragging her was very strong.
‘I can’t be sold like this!’
At best, I understood Swan’s wishes, but at most I came to Duke Maynard’s residence!
You can’t be sold without achieving half the life Swan wanted. Lillian became desperate as the crisis approached her.
I have to find someone to save me now.
It was lucky that the guards showed up just in time.
“Are you a child guardian?”
“Of course. This is a child from our nursery center
”
“No! It’s a lie!”
And then, I saw a man standing with his back to the garden.
His hair was black enough to contrast with the silver-haired man next to him, and the atmosphere resembled just that much darkness.
Lillian shouted instinctively. Anyone, please!
“I have a dad!”
The man who heard Lillian’s screams turned around.
The garden was still dark, but Lillian could see the man’s face.
You can’t tell if you don’t know. He had the clearest impression of anyone Lillian had ever met.
Why? At that moment, a tingling sensation surged up from the depths of her chest.
The moment our eyes met, Lillian shouted in a voice mixed with tears.
“Dad!!”
Like crying for the first time in your life.
***
Dad, of all the words, why is that?
I don’t know why that word came out. It was a name I had never used before.
The moment I saw Cedric, the words came out as if I was about to burst into tears.
And then a miracle happened.
“Come here, baby.”
Cedric came to Lillian. I thought it couldn’t happen.
Other times, she would have cared about the broken railings or the man with the dumbfounded look behind Cedric, but this time she didn’t notice those things.
Lillian shook off Curtis’ frozen hand and ran to Cedric.
As the child approached, Cedric could see what the child looked like.
Dirty and torn clothes, messed up hands, and even a swollen face from struggling while being dragged away.
“Oh, duke
”
Besides, the child was crying.
I did not see tears, but I do not think it would be strange if I burst into tears right away.
Cedric’s face twisted.
‘It’s a crying face.’
It was an expression I hadn’t seen before when she first came to the mansion. Stefan also smiled and said that the child had come to the mansion persistently.
―He said the lady threatened the guards. , to see the Duke.
―Threatened?
— Yes. She showed him a locket and threatened to swallow it and die if he didn’t let her see the Duke. Gale, who was guarding the guard, was so surprised that he called me.
Stefan laughed, saying that being bold is like looking at oneself at a very young age.
Cedric didn’t bother to reply, but he was fully aware of the fact that the child was precocious compared to her peers. Mary used to talk about her too.
―I don’t think the lady could live comfortably. Maybe it’s because she grew up in the nursery, but she seems to be trying to act like she’s a good kid.
―Why did you think that?
―She never says no.
Mary was a maid chosen by Agnes, the deceased Duchess of Maynard, during her lifetime, and she had four sisters who were younger than her. Thanks to this, Mary had to go out to earn a living at the age of less than adulthood, which was what Agnes liked.
Mary said that since she had taken care of four of her younger siblings since they were babies, wouldn’t she be able to raise the soon-to-be-born child well?
— Young children are stubborn. Even if you are 10 years old, if you don’t like something, your mouth will stick out. But the lady has none of that. Besides

Mary hesitated a little, then cautiously opened her mouth.
―She ate dessert until she vomited.
—
 what?
―At tea time earlier, the lady was so good that the other maids were excited and brought a lot. She ate three plates of it, but I just wondered if she had a good appetite, and in the end, she vomited.
Mary looked worried, saying that she knew it by chance.
Lillian had just finished a dessert that she could refuse and found a place where no one was there and vomited.
— I would not have known how thoroughly she hid it if she did not have traces of vomit on her socks.
Mary shed tears, saying, “The child should be like a child, but the lady doesn’t seem to be,” adding, “I feel sorry for her.”
It seemed that his heart was even more heartened as he noticed the part that others did not notice.
To that extent, Stefan and Mary both agreed on Lillian’s precociousness.
But then Lillian.
‘Are you crying and looking for me?’
Putting aside the question of why the child who should have been in the mansion was in the banquet hall, it was there that Cedric’s heart was firmly twisted.
Lillian ran to tears at best and couldn’t hold Cedric’s sleeve. The child’s empty hands were scratched as if they had rolled on the dirt floor. And she kept looking back and fidgeting.
Cedric’s bleak gaze turned to the skinny man, who had frozen in shock.
“What is the situation now?”
“The Duke, that’s
!”
“I asked what the situation was.”
“I’m sorry for showing you a rough look. This child is from our nursery school
”
Curtis’ servile eyes rolled around.
He even brought up the word nursery school child, but he was at a loss for words because he didn’t know what to say next.
‘Is that why you ran the Duke?’
No wonder she was wearing luxurious clothes. She stole something other than rockets from the director’s office, so I thought she sold it, wore it, and hid.
The moment the word “dad” comes out, and the Duke appears from the balcony.
Curtis realized that things were going to turn against him.
Anxiety ran up his spine.