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Chapter 21
Chesa looked up at Kieran with a slightly bewildered expression.
He let out a small sound of recognition and began rummaging through his ‌‌‌pocket.
"My dear Chesa, my precious one. Would you like some candy?"
After a ‌‌‌leisurely search, he produced something small.
"You like this, don't you?"
It was a cookie, the kind one might impulsively ‌‌‌purchase from a bakery.
The cookie, wrapped in pretty packaging, had a crumbled ‌‌‌corner.
Kieran, placing the cookie in Chesa's hand, wore an expression of immense satisfaction.
This allowed Chesa to reach a definitive conclusion.
'He's drunk.'
Now that she thought about it, she had ‌‌detected the scent of alcohol since they ‌‌‌left Count Rudin's Residence.
'Yet he showed no signs of intoxication before Count Rudin.'
He had appeared only slightly more languid than usual, moving with perfect clarity.
He had mocked ‌‌‌and ‌‌manipulated Count Rudin's mind, even orchestrating the man to slip the noose around his own ‌‌neck.
It was a method so cruel that even Chesa, who had ‌‌‌witnessed countless atrocities in the Underworld, found herself in awe.
Without spilling a single drop of blood, he had arranged it to appear as suicide, ensuring Kieran would never be suspected.
'I had merely intended to feed him to the carnivorous flower.'
Though the matter had been handled cleanly regardless. ‌‌
Throughout the entire ordeal, she had never sensed any drunkenness in him.
Perhaps he had kept himself sharp and vigilant, only to relax once he believed himself safe at home.
'He doesn't seem to have a ‌‌‌weak tolerance for alcohol.'
What had he been doing before he came to kill Count Rudin?
It likely connected to the reason he had been venturing out every night recently.
Chesa made various conjectures while rustling the cookie bag in her hands.
When held in Kieran's hand, the bag had seemed small, but in hers, it appeared slightly larger.
She offered him ‌‌a belated ‌‌response.
"I love cookies."
"Right? Father brought them because he was thinking of you."
Kieran, giggling with delight, appeared genuinely happy.
She recalled the words Kieran had spoken to Count Rudin.
"My young daughter waits for me at home."
She had not expected him to refer to her as his daughter even in her absence, let alone care for her this way.
Even in his drunken state, he had remembered to bring her cookies.
The man who had been a terrible executioner to Count Rudin was nothing but ‌‌‌soft before Chesa.
His demeanor stirred an unfamiliar sensation within her once more.
It resembled what she had felt when comforting Belzeon in the study.
A ticklish, tingling sensation deep within her ‌‌heart.
"I'm glad you like them."
Kieran, wearing a loose smile, exhaled a sigh heavy with the scent of alcohol.
"Ah, I'm exhausted...."
He carried on like a man who had worked through the dawn because there was so much to do today.
'Well.... I did work, after all.' ‌‌‌
Killing people ‌‌‌was ‌‌certainly exhausting.
I hadn't expected him to come kill Count Rudin himself.
I thought he was so absorbed in resurrecting his ‌dead wife that he barely paid attention to House Basilian's affairs.
'So he does look after things while pretending not to care.'
The moment the children ‌‌‌were insulted, he came rushing over ‌‌‌and swiftly snuffed out Count Rudin's life—it certainly seemed that way.
'Well, he worked hard for it.'
Chesa patted his forearm gently as she spoke.
"Go to sleep quickly."
"Yeah, okay."
Kieran yawned and set Chesa down ‌‌‌‌on the bed.
Then he slowly changed into his nightclothes.
In the meantime, Chesa carefully placed the cookies she had received beside her pillow.
It would be nice to eat them together with the twins during tea time after breakfast tomorrow.
Soon Kieran climbed into bed.
Stretching out his long frame on the mattress, he casually scooped up Chesa and placed her on his chest.
Chesa settled atop him like ‌‌a small loaf of bread.
Amused by ‌‌‌how she clung flat against him, Kieran's lips curved upward in a smile.
Despite claiming exhaustion, he showed no sign of falling asleep soon, instead running his fingers through Chesa's hair and teasing her.
Then he even began to touch her eyelashes gently.
When she scrunched her eyes at the tickle, he ‌‌‌‌let out a soft laugh.
"To dare insult House Basilian. I killed him far too easily."
Though the words came suddenly, Chesa had no difficulty understanding he was referring to Count Rudin.
He stopped chuckling ‌‌and suddenly exhaled a long breath.
"Father was a bit strange today.... I'm sorry. I should have drunk more moderately. Coming home, the alcohol ‌‌‌hit me all at once."
Chesa looked at him.
The darkened bedroom, only the subtle moonlight dimly illuminating them both.
In the murky darkness of early dawn where everything was unclear, only those crimson eyes shone with clarity.
The blood-red eyes characteristic of House Basilian.
Those scarlet eyes, which radiated such oppressive force, made ‌one hesitate to meet their gaze ‌‌‌‌directly.
They were eyes that suited arrogant malice best.
Yet Chesa had seen a boy with those very same eyes weeping.
A boy who had endured everything with ‌‌unwavering resolve.
The cold boy who treated everything with indifference had crumbled at a single piece of comfort offered by an unknowing infant.
Those red eyes of the boy who wept while clutching the lily of the ‌‌‌‌valley....
Would it be too much of a delusion to think they resembled the eyes now before Chesa?
Strangely enough, the thought suddenly struck her that he, too, ‌‌‌seemed to want to cry.
After holding her gaze for a long moment, Kieran opened his mouth.
"Chesa."
His thin lips moved slowly.
"Chesa Basilian."
It was a name he repeated as if reminding both her and himself.
He let out a soft laugh ‌‌before pressing his lips to her forehead.
The motion of pressing down gently and then withdrawing was unexpectedly reverent.
Kieran released a self-deprecating laugh.
"What should I ‌‌‌do? Every time I see Chesa, I can't help but think of her. It's painful, and ‌‌yet it's wonderful...."
He paused for a moment.
It was an attempt to compose the surging emotions, but it ‌proved largely unsuccessful.
His lips, loosened by alcohol, uttered a lonely murmur.
"I miss her...."
At the glimpse of his true feelings laid bare, Chesa found herself holding her breath without realizing it.
She had forgotten to breathe, her body frozen in place.
Kieran's eyes slowly ‌‌closed.
The closed eyelids did not open again.
He had fallen asleep.
The moment Chesa saw him in deep slumber, she exhaled the breath she had been holding with a soft sigh.
'That startled me.' ‌‌‌‌
The suspicious man had not yet ‌‌granted her complete trust.
And yet, in this very moment.
He must have been suffering so greatly that he could not bear it without revealing his innermost thoughts to her and leaning on her.
There was no need to guess who he meant when he said he missed someone.
It was the deceased Countess.
Not a single trace of ‌‌‌the deceased Countess remained in House Basilian.
There were no portraits or personal effects, and the servants would not utter a single word about the deceased Countess.
She ‌‌was treated as if she were a forbidden existence. ‌‌
The three brothers rarely spoke of their mother, and Kieran was no exception.
Yet, only to Chesa.
He occasionally mentioned the Countess.
'Just like that time beneath ‌‌‌‌the flowering trees at the Imperial Palace.'
Chesa let out a small ‌‌huff and pouted her lips. ‌
'I wonder just how much they resemble each other.'
Still, it wasn't as if she felt any displeasure about it at all.
When he called her Chesa Basilian, it felt somewhat....
'Like I had ‌‌‌‌‌truly become part of the family.'
Chesa shook her head inwardly at the thought she had conjured.
Lately, spending so much time with the Basilian family, she kept forgetting that she was merely a temporary employee.
Chesa pinched her cheek with her own fingers.
She pulled and released, and all those unnecessary thoughts vanished in an instant.
Once Kieran had fallen completely asleep, Chesa carefully rose from the bed.
She descended quietly beneath it.
Tonight, she felt certain he would not wake.
Chesa summoned her power with a gentle touch.
Flowers and butterflies enveloped her form ‌‌‌as she moved toward Kieran's Study.
Since she frequented the place often, ‌‌‌‌she knew precisely where everything lay.
'I've already searched the desk.'
Both at Castle of Serpents and at the Townhouse.
Every likely location had already been examined.
Chesa fixed her gaze upon the bookshelves with a serious expression.
She had long suspected something, noticing how Kieran lingered unusually long in the Study, but had never found the opportunity to investigate.
Such a task would require considerable time.
She brought her hands together, then swept them outward.
Hundreds of butterflies materialized in an instant, their wings fluttering throughout the Study.
The butterflies clung to ‌‌‌‌‌the books three or four to each volume, simultaneously flipping through hundreds of pages in search.
After an agonizing wait, one butterfly brought a single book ‌‌to Chesa.
Tucked within the leather-bound tome were several ‌‌‌sheets of paper.
She cast the ‌‌book ‌‌‌‌to the floor and seized the papers, reading them intently.
"...!"
Her eyes widened in shock.
The contents written upon the pages were—
'About me?!'
A report concerning the witch Lichesia.

---------------
Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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