Chapter 7: 7

"I won't be seeing you out."

Leonia bade her farewell to the guests after finishing things up. 

 

"It was terrible knowing you, let's never meet again. I hope you'll end up in hell."

Instead of waving her hands, she raised her middle finger high up in the air.

Despair filled the guests' faces as the knights escorted them down to the mansion's cellar. 

In case they tried to take their own lives, the knights also had their mouths gagged. 

After saying her goodbye, Leonia took her music box and darted to cuddle in Paul's arms.

"Gosh, that felt good."

With a bright smile, Leonia said to Paul that her accumulated stress from the past ten years had been washed away to nothing. 

"You're only 7 though?"

"…..Don't take it too literally." 

She scolded him for not understanding the saying. Then, out of nowhere, Paul handed the child a strawberry milk candy.

Leonia looked at him in confusion upon seeing the candy.

"I didn't do anything cute today though?"

"You did."

"You mean what I did earlier? Torturing the orphanage teachers?"

"You behaved like a true Voreoti."

Leonia covered her face in embarrassment at the unexpected compliment.

Her small, round pair of ears poking from behind her black hair started turning red. 

Although Leonia had always been precocious and brazen, in truth, she got embarrassed very easily. 

What's more, when she felt embarrassed, she had a habit of covering her blushing face. It was a very important observation Paul had made in the weeks he'd brought her in.

The young father and daughter conversed happily with candies in their hands.

Although it was a heartwarming sight, Loupe, on the other hand, was shocked at the scene in front of him.

"Are you going to torture them yourself?"

Leonia asked, rolling around a piece of candy in her mouth.

The candy in her mouth was another piece Paul had fed her. She pocketed the one he gave her earlier to store in her glass jar later. 

"Of course, since they're your guests."

"You're so cool, old man!"

It wasn't a normal conversation between a normal father and daughter at all.

"You have potential as well."

"In torturing?"

"Yes. Do you want to learn how to later?"

"Stabbing them with a sword?"

She pretended to stab someone. Loupe grabbed his stomach, feeling as if he had been stabbed himself. 

"Come to think of it, you should learn some swordsmanship."

"Hm, I don't wanna torture using weapons though."

Leonia didn't like doing it with weapons because the screams would be loud and the blood would get everywhere.

'No! Please stop!'

Loupe thought desperately, begging for the two of them to stop their violent conversation. 

'Please, have a normal conversation! Who would say something like that to a kid?!'

It made sense that Paul would say such stuff, since he wasn't normal to begin with.

However, Loupe was starting to think that the child was quite strange as well. She should hate even the thought of torturing others, but far from it, she was in fact only concerned about the most trifling matter for very trivial reasons.  

'Is she actually the Duke's real daughter?'

By that point, he was convinced that the violent father and daughter duo were truly connected by blood.

At that moment,

"Lady Leonia!"

"That was amazing."

A few of the maids complimented Leonia with applause.

The servants looked at Leonia in awe, praising her bravery for punishing the guests.

Leonia covered her face with her hands and leaned against Paul's shoulders.

'……Am I the strange one here?'

'Am I the only one who isn't touched by this? I'm the only one who finds this strange?'

Loupe stared at all the servants cheering for Leonia, dumbfounded. 

The butler even had to take her round glasses off to wipe his tears.

Loupe wanted to understand why everyone was so touched, so that he could cry with them.

Then his eyes met Meles'.

She was one of the few people within the mansion Loupe could say was rather rational. 

However, instead, he saw Meles gasping in so much awe she had to cover her mouth with her two hands. 

"Don't kill them immediately, okay?"

"I won't do something like that."

"Yeah. Let's drain their blood till the very last drop." 

"Where did you learn to say such a thing?"

"……The orphanage?"

Due to Leonia's words, the future of the guests had become significantly bleaker. No doubt, they'd be tortured even more severely then. 

"Ah, I have a good idea. Tie their bodies up, and push them off a cliff. Then they'll fall, and spring back because of the rope, then fall down again, and spring back, then fall down……."

Leonia motioned her hand up and down—like bouncing a ball—as she explained.

"Then, when it finally comes to a stop, you can just leave them be until the rope breaks on its own."

Paul nodded after listening to her explanation.

"That's worth a try. There's a cliff behind the mansion we can test it out on."

"Don't overwork yourself."

Of course, Leonia was telling Paul and knights to not 'overwork', not the guests.

"You need to stay healthy so you can torture these people for a long time." 

Leonia gave Paul her pinky, forcing him to seal the deal with a promise.

The two intertwined pinkies and the daughter's whisper of threat, "I'll flick your forehead if you don't keep your promise," painted a very warm picture of a father and daughter relationship. 

Loupe, on the other hand, wished for all of it to be nothing but a dream.

* * *

"……She's not his real daughter?"

Loupe finally heard the truth from the butler, Kara.

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Kara nodded as she fixed her glasses. She told Loupe to quiet down.

Thankfully, there were only the two of them inside the meeting room next to Paul's office. 

Paul had gone down to the cellar, while Leonia had returned to her room with Meles.

So Kara told Loupe about Leonia, just as Paul ordered.

"……Oh my goodness."

Loupe rubbed his forehead for quite some time, realizing that his assumptions were all wrong.

It wasn't too unusual for people unrelated to each other to be similar in some ways. However, the two were definitely too similar to be strangers—even if it was just a mere coincidence. 

'Particularly those black features and her personality…….'

Only those who had the Voreoti blood possessed black features. 

When Loupe finally saw Leonia for the first time since the week prior, she had looked so similar to Paul that it genuinely scared him.

In addition to that, the bright, lively energy from her torture session a few moments ago was proof that she possessed the Voreoti's violent nature as well.

To top it all, now that she had gained more weight and gotten healthier, anyone could definitely tell that the two looked related. 

'Perhaps…….'

Two particular faces appeared in Loupe's mind. However, he quickly banished the thought.  

'I saw it myself.'

He saw the destroyed carriage that fell into the river with his own two eyes.

After watching Loupe think for some time, Kara slowly opened her mouth. 

"……Don't you think she resembles Lady Regina?"

At those words, Loupe's convoluted thoughts came to a halt. Turning his head, he could see Kara's eyes full of sorrow. 

Loupe immediately realized what the old woman was trying to say.

He squinted his eyes at her.

"……It would be more realistic to say that she's the Duke's secret child."

When he first saw Leonia, her dirty, skinny, appearance did not remind him of 'them' at all.

Back then, she didn't look much different from a homeless kid, so it was impossible to see the resemblance with Lady Regina. 

Of course, the current Leonia he'd seen then had changed significantly—she had become a well-loved lady befitting the Voreoti name.

'Just like that person…….'

'Loupe!'

Her voice was still clear in his memories.

She used to call everybody's names energetically and brought about so much warmth to the mansion with her smile, just like Leonia then. 

'But they don't look alike.'

Yes, that was the biggest problem.

If Leonia had looked anything like her, her name would have immediately come to his mind—he wouldn't be there reminiscing over her. 

Loupe had to disagree with Kara's words.

"Lady Regina is dead."

It was raining that day. 

At that time, heavy rain had been unusually pouring over the Voreoti territory, and that was the day when Regina decided to run away with her lover. Paul and the knights, who went out to look for them, had returned to the mansion soaked. 

The raindrops on his cape, the dark clouds peering through the door behind him, and Paul's words as he took off his cape.

'Regina is no longer a Voreoti.'

With those words, Paul stopped searching for Regina altogether.

From then on, the name 'Regina' was never spoken again. The residents of the mansion acted as if she never existed to begin with. 

"Afterwards, I personally retrieved the carriage that was washed away to the bottom of the river."  

The carriage was speeding under the pouring rain and consequently fell into the river, sinking all the way to the bottom. 

It was destroyed to bits.

Though they called it a carriage, it was actually just a simple wooden box covered in moss.

The interior was all soaked and also scratched up due to the things thrown about inside. 

Truly, the river had carried them far, far away—as if granting their desperate wish to escape from the mansion.

"However……."

The butler lowered her gaze in hesitation.

"……You could not find their bodies."

Loupe lifted his gaze in surprise.

"Perhaps, they were able to safely get off the carriage and successfully escaped……." 

* * *

"Achoo!"

Leonia wobbled with her loud sneeze. 

Her sneeze was so big that it shook her entire body. The maids next to her giggled, fawning over how cute she was. 

Embarrassed, Leonia covered her face.

Although she was still very thin even after gaining some weight, she didn't look as pitiful. 

"No need to be shy."

"You were so cool earlier."

"……Really?"

Leonia's black eyes peered through her short, thin fingers.

Hearing her question, the maids exchanged looks with each other. It was only for a moment, but they hesitated before speaking. 

"Well, it was actually a bit frightening."

"But we mean it when we say you were cool."

Watching Leonia casually humming as she circled around the tied up guests was quite disconcerting.

Moreover, the sight of Paul looming over with a satisfied expression was even more so. 

That said, they didn't hate it.

The maids were used to such displays after working in the mansion for years. 

In fact, they were far from being normal themselves—most people working for the Voreoti weren't. 

After all, they were people of the Voreoti residence.

"Look at this."

Leonia brought the glass jar she kept next to her bed.

It was full of the strawberry milk candies given to her by Paul.

Leonia opened the jar and put in the candy she had received earlier. The child smiled at the sound of the candy falling into the jar.

"One, two, three……."

There were over twenty candies in the jar.

That was because Paul gave her some candies sometimes even when Leonia didn't complete her act of cuteness.

"You've collected a lot now."

Hugging the jar, Leonia nodded.

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