Chapter 37: 37

“Why are you listening to anything that this brat is saying?” Kirsec demanded.

“The Grand Duke is currently busy. He doesn’t have the time to waste on such a minor issue.”

The butler stared at me as if it was his first time seeing such a fierce girl. From his behavior thus far, the source of this problem became clear to me.

“At this point, it is still only a minor issue arising from two immature children. At our age, it is easy for us to make reckless and emotional decisions. If we cause any problems, then it needs to be taken up with our guardians. Since it’s the adults’ role to correct us when we make the wrong decisions.”

Instead of looking at Kirsec, I stared coldly at the butler. The butler’s face hardened in anger. This was only natural, as he could surely read the criticism behind the words I had just thrown at him.

If I hadn’t been able to notice the truth by this point, then I would never have been able to manipulate the situation to my advantage as I had so far.

This man was a scoundrel.

If I had to pick one of the thoughts that I had most ruminated upon since I had been reborn as a child, it would have to be why people could act so cruelly and yet take it for granted that their behavior was acceptable?

Since the last memories from my past life had mostly lingered on the unjust situation I had suffered, I had pondered that thought over and over again.

Aftewards, I came to the conclusion that it was the influence of their environment. Children were something close to a blank sheet of paper. Unless they had some sort of disease like a hormone imbalance or a brain abnormality, or were a special type of sociopath from the very start, the formation of a child’s personality was greatly influenced by their environment.

So could Kirsec really have been born with such an inconsiderate and selfish personality?

That was impossible. So his personality was the result of having no one who would say ‘no’ to his thoughtless requests.

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If you looked at the genuine glimpses of personality that Kirsec occasionally showed, you could see that he wasn’t incapable of feeling empathy for others. He was just a little self-centred.

Without knowing that what he was doing was wrong, Kirsec was merely throwing tantrums. But because everyone around him just accepted his behavior as a matter of course, he had naturally come to think of his actions as acceptable.

It could be said that children are just as cruel as they are innocent. A child can rip the wings off a living dragonfly without feeling any guilt. This is because they don’t know that it is cruel to do so.

To put it simply, Kirsec’s current situation was approximately the same as giving a weapon to a child who didn’t know what the weapon was. The child then waves the weapon out of curiosity and ends up injuring someone. If there is no one around them who’s willing to tell the child that what they’ve done is wrong, then that child will believe that they can wave that weapon around as much as they want.

That was why Kirsec felt that he could levy excessive punishments without any restraint. Because he didn’t know that it was wrong to do so.

From what I could tell, Kirsec must have never even been seriously injured, let alone received corporal punishment. Because he had never experienced pain himself, he was even more insensitive to the pain of others, so he was able to order them to be whipped without any hesitation.

Now that this kind of situation had developed, rather than keeping silent as Kirsec gave such orders, it was better to stop him.

Even in this age, with its strict feudal system, there were still laws of decency. I had no intention of imposing my own preconceptions and notions that it was wrong to wield such authority onto anyone. I also wasn’t going to start preaching about human equality or saying that commoners should have their rights respected and be treated equally.

But even so, shouldn’t he at least be aware that the person he was punishing was a fellow human being?

It was true that the Grand Duke held the primary responsibility for raising Kirsec. However if he, like my father, was the type to be ignorant of anything outside the scope of his job, then the people around him should have pitched in instead. Just like how Helena helped to raise me, and how Haftery was always willing to point out my mistakes.

Among all the reasons for why Kirsec was so spoiled, his lack of a mother had to be a big one. Of course, that was only the case if Kirsec’s mother would have been willing to care enough to be concerned about correcting her son’s character.

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