The Emperor’s Daily Nitpicking - CH 46

For as long as Oswald could remember, he had hardly ever dreamt of his parents, and the few times he did, he only heard such insignificant words like “Master Pache” and “Madam” from one of the servants in his dreams.

The reason for this, in the end, was that the Pache were not very good parents. They were more like hosts than parents. Apart from an old manor house, an old butler, and a few servants with their eyes above their heads, they did not give Oswald anything that an average parent would provide, such as affection and attention, comfort, and instruction.

Let alone all that, even the rod and scolding were non-existent.

He could still recall what Master Pache looked like when he thought about it. After all, when some festival came along, Pache would occasionally remember he had a son in the old manor and bring someone over to visit. However, although he nominally came to see his son, in reality, he only asked Ian, the butler, for information and had little to say to Oswald.

Oswald couldn’t even remember what Madam Pache looked like. After all, Madam Pache had been ill and bedridden for so many years. He had minimal contact with her and could count on one hand the number of times he met her, the longest being her funeral.

But even so, Oswald had no hatred for them. After all, hate required deep affection as a prerequisite, and he had none of that. It was just as a child he would occasionally wonder a little why the Pache family treated him the way they did. He didn’t have more heads or fewer eyes than the rest of the children in the Pache family, so why was he the only one who was treated differently?

Children could not analyse love and hate, and it wasn’t easy to distinguish the subtle differences between feelings. But he could see by instinct that the Pache family did not treat him like a son.

If they had treated him like a son, whether they liked him or hated him, they would have expressed themselves a little more straightforwardly. Unlike the Pache family, always with a sense of hesitation and reluctance.

It was only later when Emperor Knor dispatched someone to take him into the Wujinxuan Palace, did he realise what the Pache’s attitude towards him was–it was the attitude toward a hot potato, not daring to throw it too far or hold it too close, as was humanly possible.

At first, when he heard the royal visitor say that he was the son of Emperor Knor, his first reaction was that the man and Emperor Knor had gone mad!

In his perception, Emperor Knor was not someone to be liked or admired. Rumours of the emperor were abundant, and Oswald had heard bits and pieces of them from the servants, even though he had lived in the old manor in near isolation.

In his youth, the emperor was a flirt, overly energetic and scum who changed women as if they were clothes. Of course, the emperor never admitted to being a scumbag, always emphasising that he was in love with every woman in question.

Except his love rivers were always the size of gutters, reaching the end in three jumps and disappearing into the Jianghu once on shore. When he jumped into the next gutter, he would always say he was too young to understand his feelings.

After more than thirty years of being “young,” he was finally too lazy to pull the love flag anymore and became even more wanton after middle age than before.

Whether it was because heaven had opened its eyes or something else, when he finally got tired of playing and started thinking about the next generation, he suddenly realised that he hadn’t left many children behind. Tragically, those children left behind died young, and only one daughter was eventually left.

Unfortunately, the emperor had an almost insane paranoia about his children and decided that a daughter was not enough to inherit the entire Jinshi Empire. So, at fifty, Emperor Knor embarked on a flamboyant career again, working diligently for several years to no avail.

He finally began resigning to his fate, thinking back on the sins of his youth and trying to find more sons.

After some thought, he came up with only one–Oswald, whom he had asked the Pache family to raise for him.

Oswald did not like the emperor who claimed to be his father and had no desire for a place like the Wujinxuan Palace, which represented power and status.

To be precise, those were two of his worst years–First, when he learned that Kevin Fassbinder, the Bronze Army’s commander, had died on the battlefield and would never see him again. Then the Pache family was wiped out, and his old estate, where he had lived for many years, was destroyed. If he hadn’t brought Ian to the palace, all the people involved with his childhood and adolescence memories would be gone.

It was as if all his past had been wiped out.

Oswald’s relationship with Emperor Knor would have been far from good in such a situation. Oswald, who was only a teenager then, devoted his days and nights to pissing off the emperor and doing everything he could to get out of the Wujinxuan Palace, as far away from the damned emperor and place as possible.

When Emperor Knor discovered his attempts, he nearly turned the place where he lived into a prison cell, keeping it guarded at every level.

During those days, Oswald taught himself all sorts of skills in picking doors and slipping locks. People would always find an end run around the rules.

Unfortunately, the palace was a palace, and it was not easily accessible but even more challenging to get out of.

At that time, Oswald would barely care about anyone except for the occasional conversation with Ian, the old butler by his side. He didn’t like anything in the Wujinxuan Palace except his half-sister, Sarah, Emperor Knor’s only daughter.

Sarah was almost the only person in the palace with no ulterior motives or concerns but cared for him.

It was probably because they shared a father like that and resonated with each other in some ways that Oswald could not look at her with disgust. His only sister, almost ten years older than he was, sometimes took more care of him than the elders and was the gentlest person he had ever met since he was a child.

Because of Sarah, he vaguely understood what the care and closeness of family were like for the first time.

When Oswald had first come to the Wujinxuan Palace, Emperor Knor only mentioned that he was his father and didn’t even tell him who his mother was or what kind of person she was. Of course, Oswald suspected that the emperor himself probably couldn’t even remember.

Only later, when Sarah secretly asked around with the elders in the palace for him that he get a result.

“I heard her name was Baihill, and she was a big, tall beauty! With clear, pretty eyes, just like you.” Sarah told him and secretively pulled out a roll of parchment: “I sneaked around St. Andis and got a folk painter to help you draw one. Well…..although it’s based on a description, it may not be accurate.”

It was the first time Oswald had heard of anything to do with his mother and the first time he had seen what his mother might have looked like.

The woman in the painting had a gentle smile, and her brow did bear a slight resemblance to his own, which was probably what gave him a sense of familiarity as if he still had some memory of her.

After that, he dreamed of Sarah handing him the parchment scroll several times, but he could never form a three-dimensional image of the beauty called Baihill.

So when he saw a tall beauty in his cold, feverish, dizzy dream, he almost didn’t even react to who it was.

The woman in the dream was just as Sarah had described her, with almost transparent eyes that were crystal clear. Her hair was long and voluminous, but the colour was very different from Oswald’s light platinum colour. Her smile was not so gentle as in the scrolls but had a girlish liveliness and brightness as if she were capable of some mischievous joke the next moment.

“He’s so small. It’s fun to squeeze his fingers.” Oswald saw her leaning down to look at him and smiled, rubbing his face, “Why is he so dumb and not even very good at crying? I’m trying to make him cry.”

Oswald: “……”

He tried to open his mouth to speak but found that his mouth felt like it was sewn shut, and no sound could come out at all.

Everything in the dream seemed to be separated by a layer of fog, and everyone’s faces and voices were unclear. He vaguely heard a middle-aged woman scolding in a rude tone, “Bai, don’t always pinch him, be careful with your hands.”

This woman’s voice approached, and as the words fell, Oswald saw a gentle, kind middle-aged woman also appear above him, appearing much shorter and smaller than Bai, with a slight resemblance of a smile.

“Won’t you come and see him, Dad? He’s smiling.” Bai shouted with another smile as she turned back around.

“Can he smile?” A low voice came from a distance, followed by a much taller than average figure appearing in front of Oswald. The middle-aged man, whose shoulders were so broad that he could almost enfold his daughter and wife in his arms, frowned as he came over and said, “Why didn’t you put a blanket on him, it’s almost winter, and he’ll get sick from the cold.”

Oswald stared at them in awe, and the next moment he was covered by a warm blanket, except he didn’t know if it was too small, and the warmth only stayed halfway up his arm.

He was suffering slightly from the cold and couldn’t resist trying to reach out and grab twice, stubbornly pulling that warm blanket into his arms and wrapping his arms around it in a death grip so that he could get warmer……

“Hey–wake up! Hiss–my ribs!”

Oswald was awakened by the struggle of the blanket in his arms and vaguely heard a few whines close to his ears, sounding familiar, unlike any he had seen in his dreams, but rather like –

Kevin Fassbinder!

The emperor’s eyes snapped open, and he was startled out of breath by the nearness of Kevin’s face.

“…… Finally awake?” Kevin sighed and wept, “I know you’re cold, but will you stop strangling me so tightly? I’m going to break a rib. Don’t you know you have a scary strong hand, dear Majesty?”

His whole body was strangled in Oswald’s arms, and the arms around his old waist almost creaked his bones to the point of being unbearable.

Not knowing whether the young emperor was stunned by the reality of the situation or whether he hadn’t fully detached himself from the dream, he remained frozen in his original position for a few moments as if he hadn’t understood Kevin’s words before releasing his strength marginally.

Kevin let out a long breath, saying he could finally catch his breath. But as soon as the exclamation was over, he felt Oswald tighten his arms again, and his cold nose and cheek suddenly pressed into Kevin’s shoulder, rubbing against his warm neck.

Kevin: “……”

The two touches made the hair on his back stand up, and goosebumps raced up his neck, spreading almost to the top of his head.

“Do you …… even have to warm your face?” Kevin asked, stiffening all over.

Oswald pressed himself against his neck and gave a low ” hm”, making Kevin even stiffer, before letting go of his hand and lifting his head, “I’m freezing to death, so I’ll take a breather from the warmth of your neck.”

Kevin: “……”

He sat back down uncomfortably and straightened his clothes before asking as if suddenly remembering something, “Why is your dream talk just now in beast language? What were you dreaming about?”

Oswald frowned and thought back for a moment, then suddenly opened his mouth with some hesitation, “I don’t know if it was just a fantasy I conjured up, or if it had happened …… I dreamed of my mother and her parents when I was supposedly so young that I couldn’t even speak yet. ”

He remembered the extraordinarily tall, middle-aged man in the dream and hesitantly said, “In the dream, my maternal grandfather was a…… Giant Beastman?”

“What?!” Kevin was stunned, and the ambiguity he had just felt was instantly thrown out of his mind. “A Giant Beastman?”

If it was a Giant Beastman…… if he had the blood of the Giant Beastman Clan……

Kevin suddenly remembered what Ben had said earlier – it was the end of June and had reached Bettan Days. All Giant Beastmen would be forced back into their beast forms this week. What about the half-blood ones?

He seemed to understand what Oswald’s current physical reactions were all about. “You used to– what are you looking at?”

Kevin was about to ask him if he had experienced this before when he noticed Oswald staring blankly at the fingers of his left hand, not knowing what he was staring at.

“Here-” Oswald moved his ring finger with an expression of uncertainty. “Why is there suddenly a small patch of white hair?”

Kevin, interrupted in his thoughts, didn’t even look at it and said smoothly, “Who knows? Must be mouldy.”

Oswald: “……” Who’s going to fork this bastard out?!