Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty: Immature Child
The scene was in the parlor inside the annex. It was called a parlor, but the expensive furniture and valuables had all been put away. In their place was perfectly ordinary, modest furniture suited to commoners—a lounge for the children, arranged so that stains or breakage wouldn’t matter. Karen and the Ehlertt side wouldn’t have minded, but the children would have.
Nearly all the children had gathered in the lounge, and at the center of them stood one girl, clutching a stuffed animal and weeping. The one crying aloud was a small girl. She was clearly under ten years old, and if Karen’s memory was correct, she was five. The other children had formed a ring around her.
The expressions on the faces of the surrounding children held confusion and uncertainty, but the dominant feeling was a hard, settled anger.
Lily was the first to move. She pushed through the ring of children and rushed to the crying girl, wrapping her arms around her.
“Who made this child cry?! Ganging up on such a little girl like this—aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?!”
Lily glared at the surrounding children. Ottilie, who had been following quietly behind Karen and Lily, spoke up as though she could no longer hold her tongue:
“…I would imagine there are circumstances we are not yet aware of.”
Ottilie’s expression was pained. Michael was among the children who had formed the ring, so she had good reason to object to Lily’s one-sided verdict.
Michael was in the minority among the surrounding children, and he appeared more bewildered than angry. He had been glancing around restlessly, and when he spotted Karen and Ottilie, his face launched into a full pantomime of expressions. Whether he was glad to see his sister or desperate to explain himself, his face was doing an enormous amount of work.
“I agree with you, Lady Ottilie.”
“Just Ottilie.”
“…Yes, yes, Ottilie.”
Karen sighed, dropped the “lady” part, and continued:
“Even I can look at this situation and tell that there must be something behind it. Young as they are, clever children can be quite cunning. Even when they’re little, if they’ve done something wrong, I can’t help feeling they should be corrected.”
“… ‘You can’t help thinking that,’ is it?”
Ottilie caught the nuance in Karen’s phrasing and repeated it back. She had not only grasped exactly the part Karen had wanted her to catch, but seemed ready to let it settle in. Karen smiled and nodded.
“Yes. But Mrs. Lily is remarkable. She’s wonderfully soft-hearted, and she believes with her whole heart that every young child, whatever they’ve done, deserves to be loved and protected.”
Although Karen retained memories of her previous life, she had also grown fairly accustomed to the ways of this world. Though she upheld lofty ideals, she was not naïve enough to think every one of them would come true.
But Lily did not strive toward lofty ideals—and yet she lived within them.
If all Karen needed was someone to care for children, there were plenty of people in the Ehlertt household she could rely on. Even so, there were few who could show the same unconditional affection that Lily could. That was why she had wanted to ask Lily to look after them. If Harald was responsible for the children’s learning, she had wanted Lily to take charge of their daily lives.
“When it comes to Mrs. Lily, it doesn’t matter whether a child has magical power or not. She wants to protect the weak, she can’t help herself when someone is in trouble, and she despises people who throw their strength around.”
“Having someone like that by Michael’s side would certainly put my mind at ease.”
Ottilie, a sister to a brother like Michael, spoke with deep feeling.
Lily had been born and raised in the adventurers’ district, the beloved daughter of a tavern where adventurers gathered—and yet she had never become someone who believed strength was everything. Both she and her father possessed a respectable amount of magical power. Her mother had been an active adventurer, as Karen recalled, and Lily had been close with her too.
How she had grown up the way she did—Karen was still turning that over in her mind when the person in charge of the annex appeared.
“Lady Karen? What brings you here?”
Harald emerged from the back of the room, completely overlooking the small girl surrounded by the other children right in front of him, and looked at Karen with wide eyes.
“Something seems to have happened. I was curious what was going on.”
“This child was being bullied!”
“Hmm.”
Harald looked down at the emotional Lily with an entirely composed expression.
“One child had not appeared for my lesson, and afterward, the children said they were going to check on her. That is all I know. Let us hear from both sides. Michael—what happened?”
“Me!? Um, uh, let me think…!”
Harald didn’t give Michael any special treatment simply for being Ottilie’s brother, but perhaps because he held the highest rank among those present, Harald treated him as the representative. Michael struggled to find his words, and beside him, Mark raised his hand hesitantly.
“I can explain it, if that’s alright.”
“Very well, Mark, please do.”
“Yes.”
Michael let out a visible breath of relief—the gesture was almost comically obvious. Mark caught it out of the corner of his eye and gave a wry smile, then turned to face Karen rather than Harald, who had asked the question. Harald gave an approving nod, so apparently that was fine.
“My apologies for causing a disturbance, Lady Karen. But we were not bullying her—not bullying Lena. She said something she should never have said, and we were simply reprimanding her for it.”
Before Karen could ask what those words had been, Lena—who had stopped crying in Lily’s arms—cried out:
“Lena doesn’t want to be here anymore!”
Lily’s arms were warm, and Lena had surely felt safe in them. Found courage in them. There was something about Lily that made you feel it was all right to let yourself be held. That was what made Lily wonderful.
It was also what made her dangerous.
“Lena hates it here! Lena wants to go home! Take Lena home! Lena wants Mama! Lena wants to play with Papa!”
From inside Lily’s arms, Lena glared at Karen. Young as she was, she apparently understood who held the most authority in the room.
“Take Lena home, you kidnapper!”
As Lena glared at Karen, Lily hugged her protectively, almost shielding her with her own body. It was likely because every other person in the room—everyone except Karen and Lily—was looking at Lena with eyes that had gone very cold.
A weak person surviving solely through the compassion of the strong was never permitted to bear a grudge against the strong—not even if that weak person was a very young child. Such was the brutal nature of this world.
That was why Karen had wanted to leave the children in Lily’s care. And that was the reason why this was only half special treatment.
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