#59
After leaving the bedroom, Lucas and Noah walked silently down the long corridor and entered the small reception room that Loren loved most. Looking at Lucas’s broad back as he entered the room first, Noah couldn’t easily say anything.
Was it his imagination that Lucas’s broad back looked unusually feeble today? Lucas had always been confident and ambitious. The man who never hesitated or feared anything now looked so lonely.
“Dad.”
Before Lucas could turn around, Noah approached him closely from behind and embraced him. The moment he buried his face against that broad back, the tears he’d been holding back poured out. Everything will be fine. Both Loren and Lucas will be fine. Still, Lucas would probably insist on marriage as soon as he turned 19, but that was a concern for later. Right now, he was the only one who could comfort Lucas.
After all, Loren was as precious to Noah as she was to Lucas. But Noah couldn’t successfully comfort Lucas. How many people could console someone while streaming tears themselves?
Eventually, Noah turned in Lucas’s broad embrace and cried out loud like a child. When he hadn’t known anything, he’d disliked being endlessly pushed into strange ballrooms. He’d disliked the commanding tone, the cold gaze that looked at him.
But not anymore. Now he could read the emotions hidden in those cold eyes, and understood that his brusque manner of speaking came from his unsociable personality.
“Noah.”
“…Yes.”
Noah inhaled deeply to stop crying at the rough touch of the hand stroking his head.
“You’ll soon be sixteen. When did you grow up so much…?”
Noah let out a small laugh at Lucas’s words. True, when he was younger, he’d clung to Lucas’s pants leg and wailed loudly. And there were many times when he’d laid on the floor to express his wishes, only to be effortlessly picked up by Lucas’s one hand. He remembered how Loren would soothe Lucas and make him put Noah down each time.
Even now, he was smaller than others his age, with his head barely reaching Lucas’s chest, but in a way, it could be considered remarkable progress.
“Have you made many friends at the academy?”
Although he couldn’t say he’d made many friends, since he could at least match faces to names for many students, Noah nodded slightly.
“I mean reliable allies who can help you anytime.”
Caught trying to gloss over it, Noah swallowed the saliva pooled in his mouth. At least Raymond and Derik would help him, wouldn’t they? So this time, though hesitantly, he could nod.
“Do you have someone you could spend your life with?”
Though indirect, Noah immediately caught the meaning behind Lucas’s words. For this question, he could neither nod nor shake his head. He was past the age where he could boldly say “Let’s get married!” to someone he liked.
If he approached Derik or Raymond now saying “Let’s get married!” he would obviously be treated as a socially inept person.
“I wish you’d come back.”
Until now, Noah had been burying his face against Lucas’s chest and expressing his thoughts with small movements of his head, but at these words, he abruptly raised his head to look up at him.
“Perhaps you want to study more?”
Who wants to study? At first it was exciting and enjoyable because it was new, but the academy also had tests and rankings, and of course things got more difficult as time went on.
When he honestly shook his head, Lucas smiled slightly.
“It’s because of Mom, right?”
Although Noah tried to speak as brightly as possible, his voice was unpleasantly cracked from sobbing just moments before.
“Thank you for understanding before I had to explain.”
“Is it going to be okay?”
“If there was something physically wrong, we could treat it, but if it’s a matter of being born weak, there’s nothing we can do. Both doctors and healers say the same thing—that she needs to stay in a warm place. And since we can’t change the weather here, I was hoping you could help.”
Even the same message can be delivered so differently.
Compared to the first words he’d heard after transmigrating—”Get married”—Lucas was now explaining as much as possible to him.
“I don’t want to marry.”
“…You’re not old enough to marry yet, are you?”
“When I turn 19, you’ll say, ‘Now you’re old enough to marry, so find an alpha or beta, get married, and properly inherit this territory!’ Right?”
Noah saw that Lucas couldn’t readily deny his words, so he closed his slightly parted lips. He now knew with certainty that this was the most appropriate solution unless omega rights improved, but he really didn’t want to do it.
“…If I stay here, will you two go south?”
Just lie and say no. I see that your stubborn, narrow-minded, frustrating sweet potato personality hasn’t changed. After a fairly long silence, it was Lucas who broke it.
“That’s right.”
“Don’t visit too often.”
“What?”
“You’re going to leave this place to me, right? So stick close to Mom and don’t leave her side. You two be happy in the south. Don’t worry about things here. Whether it’s once a month or once every two months, if there’s anything that absolutely needs Dad’s signature, I’ll go south.”
Honestly, I can only do what I’ve been thinking about if you two aren’t here. My original plan was to graduate from the academy with excellent grades and use that as leverage to pursue my dreams. Please help me. But that’s what he should have said. Now, even if not officially, he had become the manager of Austen.
“You seem confident from what you’ve learned in the business department. But actual management is…”
“Ah, Dad. I’ll give it a try! If it really doesn’t work out, you can kick me out. Surely I won’t ruin the Austen region? Honestly, aside from the mines… you know? By the way, if Mom isn’t that critically ill, why did you call me suddenly in the middle of the night…?”
Thwack—
Having cried enough and now having a proper conversation, Noah had moved out of Lucas’s embrace, but before he could finish speaking, he quickly covered his head with both hands.
How can such a sound resonate so loudly? Did it punch a hole in my skull? Why did you flick my forehead when I was talking?! With tears of pain welling up in eyes that had just stopped crying, Noah rubbed the spot with both hands.
“You left the academy without permission in the middle of the night and had fun in the village?”
Wow, Lucas. I didn’t see you that way—you’re scheming? So if I had said, “I don’t want to. I like the academy. I want to go back to the academy!” were you planning to use that as an excuse to keep me in Austen?
“Ah, that’s why I was punished by the Dean…”
“I’ll keep it secret from Mom.”
At Lucas’s words, Noah pressed down and suppressed the rising words inside him. If Loren, who still thought of him as a little child and overprotected him, found out about this fact, he would have to listen to her nagging for hours.
As the conversation went on a bit longer, Noah sipped the warm milk placed in front of him while watching Lucas take out alcohol from the bar on one side of the reception room. Should he thank the maid who only provided warm milk because it was late at night, or should he feel disappointed? Above all, Noah wanted alcohol now, not this silly milk.
“If you become the lord here, what would you do first? It seems you have some ideas since you’re responding to my proposal.”
Noah buried himself comfortably in the chair opposite and focused on Lucas who was drinking.
“Can I do anything I want?”
“If it doesn’t cause ethical problems, generates profit, and benefits the territory, you can do anything.”
Noah’s lips twitched upward at Lucas’s words. Let’s do it right away. It’s autumn now and winter is coming soon—autumn is just a nice term, as the fireplace in the reception room was making crackling sounds as the logs blazed fiercely.
“So what do you want to do? Since this is my son’s first challenge, I think I should know.”
Where to start? He had countless thoughts, but since he hadn’t organized the tasks sequentially, Noah rolled his large eyes and quickly began to organize his thoughts. Honestly, all his ideas were close to impossible, so he had dismissed them as fantasies, and if he were to bring up the biggest one, it would probably take months just to explain it to Lucas.
Think. Think.
What could be done at the age of fifteen, sixteen?
Something that Lucas would think isn’t a bad idea even if he mentioned it now.
What could that be?
While looking at the blazing logs, Noah repeatedly opened and closed his fingertips.
“If you don’t have anything, we can talk next time…”
“Sweet potatoes!! Potatoes!! Corn… corn.”
Not wanting to miss the opportunity of a lifetime, Noah blurted out whatever came to mind.
“Agriculture doesn’t suit this region, so I think something else would be better.”
“No… I want to sell fire-roasted sweet potatoes, sugar-sprinkled roasted potatoes, and buttered grilled corn.”
A heavy silence descended on the reception room that had been warm and lively until just a moment ago.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
