Volume 5 Chapter 196, The Middle Siblings’ Assessments and Past Stories_5 (:Lavender)

Translator: Nonon

Proofreader: Silavin

 

POV: Violet

 

I am weak.

I have only now understood that fact.

As the Daughter of a Duke and a future Queen candidate, I have received every kind of education since childhood to not bring shame upon myself. Despite this, I still had a fragile mentality and acted selfless, but I never thought I would be this weak-hearted.

No, to begin with, I used to get worked up when it came to anything related to His Highness, and it even resulted in me being kicked out of the academy. It seems that when it comes to someone I like, I lose sight of my surroundings.

Or I become inflexible… but in this case, it’s both.

 

“…Would you like to hear old stories about Clo?”

“Yes!”

“That was a very enthusiastic answer, Lady Violet.”

 

Anyway, I couldn’t resist Lord Gen and Lady Sumi’s temptation, those old stories of my beloved.

When you hear old stories about somebody who’s not present, you can hear different stories than when they’re told in front of them. On other hand, I understand that… while this might not be a bad thing, it’s not a good thing either.

However, it’s a temptation that’s hard to resist. A past that not even people like Gray, Cyan and Apricot, who live in Shiki, know about. I want to hear stories from before Lord Clo enrolled at the academy.

Lord Clo did say that it was okay to talk about actual facts, so it should be fine to hear them out… Yeah, he definitely said that, so I’m going to listen. Alright, I’m going to hear them out.

 

“You see, Clo has always been… a strange child.”

 

I would assume so. After all, he’s the kind of a person who would even accept me.

Also, he treats people in Shiki normally… hmm, but in that case, I’m also. Okay, let’s not worry about that right now.

 

“A long time ago… I can’t remember when. He got a fever and was bedridden for a day

“It was when Clo was three years old, Gen. I remember it because it was a day after my fifth birthday.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, after that he refused to eat for about two weeks and became very thin.”

“Huh?”

 

At first, I thought I would hear some innocent stories from Lord Clo’s childhood, but Lord Gen brought up a topic that was different from what I had imagined.

That being said, Lord Clo refused to eat?… Now he’s in such good health that he can destroy a tree of a certain thickness with his bare hands, without using strengthening magic, but maybe he was actually fragile as a child?

 

“He spoke in a language we didn’t understand, and would become confused when Father, Mother or Sumi spoke to him. He calmed down after a while, but his personality changed after this. He was originally a child who liked to run around, but even when he was restless— strangely enough, he also had a calm side to him.”

However, from what I heard, he was always a healthy child. That was the only time he was unnaturally weakened, and after recovering, he lived a healthy childhood.

Apparently, he would mumble strange things to himself from time to time, but he was a very curious child, and he would often sneak out to play with commoner children, or secretly sew things. His Father seemed to have gotten particularly angry with him.

Lord Clo’s Parents showed an unusual obsession with Noble ranks and a desire to rise to the top, and it seemed that their marriage was also a result of his Father pulling various strings to marry a noblewoman from a Viscount Family … however, the other Family had subsequently fallen into decline.

From what I’ve heard, he was a Baronet, who wanted to use his children to rise in rank, and all his seven children were conceived in order to curry favor with promising Families.

Furthermore, they were educated in a manner that was close to brainwashing from a young age, and while Lord Gen and other Siblings seemed to have fallen under its influence, Lord Clo was the only one who had managed to avoid it. Therefore, the only expectation his Father had for Lord Clo was hoping for him to become a Knight with his physical abilities.

As a result, after the incident involving Prince Carmine, he was essentially disowned.

 

“Haha, but thanks to Clo we went from being a Baronet Family to a Baron, and we’ve become Lords of various lands, so while I don’t like it, we might be living up to our Father’s wishes.”

 

By the way, the reason why they were promoted from Baronet to Baron was because Prince Carmine promoted the Heartfield Family itself to a Baron rank.

For a second I wondered why he would promote somebody he hated, but a Baronet and a Baron make different contributions to the Kingdom. In other words, it was nothing but harassment.

As for his Mother, she was apparently dissatisfied with the life of a Baronet, but after her Family fell in decline, she became desperate and wanted to start her life over. However, after her children were born, she started to think ‘this child can do it instead of me…no, this child is me…?” and would throw a fit if the child did not live up to her idea of what it meant to be a Noble.

… Huh, Lord Clo lived a life exposed to a good amount of malice and selfishness. I’m surprised he didn’t become jaded.

 

“Yes, honestly, I think so too. Without Clo, Gen and I would be like Raven and Royle… ah, please excuse me.”

 

Lord Raven is the Oldest Son of the Heartfield Family who has inherited their Father’s will, while Lady Royle is the Oldest Daughter who has inherited their Mother’s will. They don’t seem to get along with Lord Clo.

Why did they adopt their principles?… I wondered, but I myself was influenced by the education of the Valentine Family, so I’m not the one to talk.

 

“Anyway, Clo was shrewd enough to avoid the influence of Mother and Father. However, he didn’t have the composure of an adult, and he had friends both among the Commoners and the Nobles with whom he would play without thinking about the benefits or losses. He had a childlike quality to him that enjoyed playing around.”

 

Lord Clo is often busy dealing with things in Shiki, but outside of that, he still has some fun.

Sometimes I see him chatting casually with the pervert (Khaki) like a regular male friend, sometimes he talks to the injury lover (Ivory) about the books they’ve read over tea, and sometimes he chats about medicine and plants with the poison lover (Emerald).

Even now, there are times when he has an adorable expression on his face, so I’m sure he must have been cute back then too. That must be it. There is no doubt about it. So Lord Gen and their siblings must have such cute expressions on his face? Ugh, I’m so jealous. Still, I guess I can see those expressions now. In that case, I’ll calm myself down by looking at that expression.

 

“… However, there were times when I thought he was scary.”

“Scary?”

 

Times they thought Lord Clo was scary, huh?

It doesn’t seem to be the case of—he was scary because he managed to maintain his individuality despite how others were influenced by their education.

 

“Yes. To be honest, when we were at the academy and Clo started attending tea parties, somewhere in my heart, I thought that he was ‘selfish’ because he wasn’t Noble-like. I took a step away from him at that time.”

 

That’s… something I might have thought when I was at the academy and obsessed with the ways of how Nobles should behave.

Lord Gen and the others were together in the past, but at a time when they thought that they could not escape the curse of their Parents, this was how they ended up thinking about Lord Clo.

And,

 

“… When we saw Clo’s malice, which didn’t even hesitate at murder, we thought he was scary. However…”

 

At the time when they thought that Lord Clo was scary, they also realized how fragile he was.

However, that fragility was something Lord Gen and the other Siblings had lost, and it was also the trigger that led them to being able to live the lives they have now.

 

“…I’m sorry, Miss Violet. I know you want to hear this from Clo, but please let me tell you what happened back then.”