I Want To Be Your First – R19 - Chapter 88

The place where he stopped in front of was the room that he had used in his childhood. It was a room used by the successors of the Janssel family for generations, but now it was nothing short of a warehouse, with cribs, wooden toys, and small items like mobiles stored within. It was the perfect hiding spot for Ariel, as even the maids didn’t enter this room, except for weekly cleaning.

“Wife?”

Berthwald entered the room, softly calling out.

A crib, a small bookshelf, a low desk, as well as a children’s ladder were all covered in white cloth and affixed in the flow of time. Berthwald observed the furniture carefully and stopped his gaze at the crib located at a corner.

It was a cot large enough for adults to use. Unlike the other clothes, which had a light layer of dust on them, there wasn’t a single speck of dust on the cot, and was extremely fluffy.

“Ariel.”

When he called her name again, the white cloth covering the cot twitched. It was both amusing and absurd. Berthwald bit on his lip lightly and approached the bed.

“I didn’t know that there was such a big baby in the mansion.”

“……”

“Do you want me to hug and pat you?”

The sound of a small sigh brushed past his ear. A moment later, the white cloth in the middle of the bed suddenly moved. Holding back his laughter, Berthwald pulled the cloth away from the side. As Ariel’s gaze was darting around, she looked at Berthwald at a loss.

“Wow. How did you know that I was hiding here?”

“Isn’t it obvious that this is a good place for you to hide? Now, take your medicine.”

Taking the tray from Vieta,  Berthwald lifted the bowl of soup. The thick black liquid looked disgusting at a glance. Ariel mumbled that she didn’t want to drink it while chewing on her upper lips, before drinking all of the medicine at once as if she had made up her mind.

Swallowing the medicine with her eyes tightly shut, Ariel’s upper body trembled while she was grimacing. Berthwald took back the bowl and stroked Ariel’s head.

“Well done. If it wasn’t medicine, I would have consumed it in your stead.”

While stretching the tray out, he gave Eva a look. As such, Eva took out something from her skirt pocket and handed it to Berthwald. With an inaudible voice, Eva whispered something to him, before retreating with Vieta.

Berthwald shook the item that Eva had given him insincerely, before pulling a candy out of the box. While looking at him with a puzzled look, Ariel sniffed and exclaimed, “That’s! That’s!”

“Ah, try it.”

“That’s licorice can…dy…Nyam”

“It’s a present from a maid. Do you like it?”

Ariel nodded her head excitedly. Berthwald faced her and smiled, asking if she wanted another, before shoving another one into her mouth. Afterwards, he turned his head and looked down at the candy with a displeased expression.

Even if it was nice, the black candy had a strong scent and didn’t seem appetising. Even taking into account the never ending potatoes, Berthwald thought that she had quite a unique taste, before placing the box in Ariel’s hand.

“Eyes. Didn’t you say that you wanted it to get better? You can only get better after eating medicine, so why are you running away whenever you have to eat your medicine?”

“…Umm, that’s…”

“I tried it a little, and it didn’t taste good… That’s what medicine is supposed to be like, so you have to understand.”

“No, it’s not because of that.”

Ariel hesitated, and after chewing and swallowing the candy, she started to speak, “Actually.”

“Collecting things that are good for the eyes only… This is a medicine made of precious ingredients. Just because I said that I wanted to see what’s in front of me…whether it’s the medicine that the Count had bought for me, or the medicine and charms that everyone had come forward to give me.”

Ariel chose her words carefully with her head tilted, and continued with a displeased expression.

“…It reminds me of my childhood. It had a similar atmosphere in the Ducal castle. Be it family members or employees, they gathered together and brought all kinds of medicinal herbs, and even sorcery books and strange magical tools..”

It was nothing short of tedious, to bring the ashes of an unidentified animal, and even the blood of a deer to consume. A fishy taste seemed to appear in her mouth along with her recollection, and Ariel frowned. But she couldn’t reject their goodwill. As each and every item contained their worry and anxiety for the First Young Lady.

“It isn’t hard to take medicine at all. However, it’s just…”

It wasn’t difficult at all to consume herbs that took much effort to locate and make. However, the matter on Ariel’s mind was something else.

“…Just think about it. If I don’t get better even after trying so hard, others would be more upset than I am. That’s a little…as such.”

Looking downwards at Ariel with his arms folded, Berthwald asked, “Are you doing this because you’re afraid that you can’t meet the expectations of others?”

“…That seems to be the case.”

When he stared at her, Ariel squirmed with an embarrassed expression on her face.

“Oh, well. It’s silly of me, even though I was the one that said I wanted to get better…”

Ariel pulled on the white cloth and covered her face, embarrassed. Concerned that she would be covered in dust, Berthwald pulled the cloth from the side quietly. At her embarrassed expression, his fingers reached out to her dishevelled ebony hair and started to brush it slowly.

“I understood what you were trying to say.”

“……”

“But the expectations and disappointments of others are their responsibility, and not my wife’s. So take your medicine. Even if it’s for me. Understood?”

At his sweet words, Ariel blushed and answered obediently, “Yes.”

How could the ill person worry over guests? It was indeed a very Ariel-like reason. Although he knew that she was someone that always placed others before herself, Berthwald couldn’t help but worry for her.

But what could he do? That was Ariel.

Although he could easily dismiss it as a useless worry, he didn’t want to trample on her kind heart, so he closed his mouth quietly. Berthwald turned the conversation to another topic while tapping on the bed’s railing with his index finger.

“Thanks to my wife, I came into this room after a long time. Here. Do you know what room this is?”

Ariel rested her chin on the bed railing and her nose twitched. She then spoke with a confident look on her face.

“I know. This is the room the Count used when he was a child, right?”

“…Did Eva tell you?”

“No. I could smell the Count’s scent and the scent of a baby in this room.”

As her vision was dull, Ariel’s other senses were much more developed. From the moment she entered, Ariel immediately knew that this was Berthwald’s room. Ariel looked up at him with a radiant face. Berthwald looked downwards at her nonchalantly, before crossing over the railing onto the bed. The way his long legs stretched out on the bed was both languid and filled with playfulness.

“The baby’s scent should hardly be present. I was brought to the capital when I was two or three years old, and returned to Pahar when I was around eight.”

“Oh, is that so? You grew up in the capital’s mansion? Come to think of it, there isn’t a baby’s room like this one there.”

“It’s not the mansion in the capital. Before that, I was brought up by my mother.”

His response was overly calm that Ariel had naturally said, “I see.” After a brief silence, Ariel’s eyes then widened as she looked at Berthwald. The red silhouette contained within her gray eyes was as peaceful as usual without any ripples. As such, it was even more confusing.

Did the Count just say his mother?

Although Berthwald was now famous as the youngest consul, before his ability gained recognition, his nickname in society was ‘the Count’s illegitimate children’. In truth, it wasn’t fitting to call him an illegitimate child. He would have been considered an illegitimate child if he was a child a mistress had when there was a legal wife, but there wasn’t such a situation.

The previous Lord of the family, Richter Janssel, was unmarried, and suddenly brought the infant to the mansion one day, saying that he was his son.

That infant was none other than Berthwald.

There was a lot of speculation about whether he had the blood of the Janssel family and the identity of his mother. All kinds of rumours spread one after another, not only in the capital’s high society but also within the southern society. However, as was typical, the rumours weathered the passage of time, and now there weren’t any remnants left, so it was impossible to know what was the truth.

Ever since Berthwald became a consul, any conversational topics regarding him became taboo in society. Rather than him showing displeasure, it was more like the worldly wisdom of aristocrats to examine the mood of the chief consul. Accustomed to such an atmosphere, Ariel didn’t dare to broach the topic first.

“What was your mother like?”

Ariel raised her head cautiously. She had been curious all along, but she couldn’t ask. As such, Berthwald brushed a hand against his chin while frowning.

“Of all the people I’ve ever met, she’s the most…”

“…beautiful…?”

“She’s a ill-tempered woman.”

“…Ill tempered?”

When Ariel asked back in question, Berthwald laughed sneeringly and nodded. Berthwald tapped the joint of his index finger on his lips. His deep blue eyes were lightly filled with regret.

“If a child is treated like a child, he’ll always be a child, but if he’s treated like an adult, he’ll grow up, but she’d nonchalantly push a child to the limits. In the name of gifted education, she taught us how to use poison and how to write double bookkeepings.”

“Heok…”

“Although I had only realised that those knowledge were useful now, she wasn’t a kind person that could raise a child. She was originally free-spirited and ill-tempered, so I was disciplined over things that weren’t that significant.”

Woah. As Ariel expressed wonder that wasn’t like admiration, she replied with a puzzled expression.

“I can’t imagine the Count being disciplined.”

“…Even now, I still don’t understand it either. How did I put up such an ill temper like Mother’s? Mother had been the only one that hit me ever since then.”

His grumbling appearance was both unfamiliar and a little cute, making Ariel smile without her knowledge.

“I guess you don’t hate your mother.”

At her startling question, Berthwald raised his eyebrows slightly. He then laughed dryly and continued speaking.

“It’s not like I’m a child… I don’t hate Mother for things like that. When I think about the past, I think it was her own way of loving me. If she truly found me troublesome, she wouldn’t have dragged me to the capital.”

Most of his thoughts about his mother were settled with bitter and sad affection. How could he let go of his mother, a woman that always had venomous work on her mind yet managed to teach him this and that? Berthwald grinned bitterly and stopped his recollection.

“However, it wasn’t a peaceful childhood… If we have a child. I want to give that child a lot of parental affection that I had never experienced.”

As Berthwald grew up with parents that had strong personalities, he had never been spoiled before. Now that there were many vassals and Ariel was next to him, he didn’t care about having children, but if they had one, he wanted to raise the child differently from his own childhood, with a lot of affection.