Whenever he started to lean and fall while riding smoothly, Callix would quickly grab his waist and steady the bicycle.
Reassured by the fact that he was being protected, Shushu’s fear of riding gradually dissipated.
Power poured into his pedaling feet, and his posture on the bicycle grew bold.
Seeing that, Callix naturally released the hand he had been keeping on the back of the bicycle.
Watching with a fond smile from behind as his younger brother rode the bicycle well on his own, the older brother beamed.
“Ah-oh?”
Realizing that Callix had let go, Damian panicked and squeezed the brake levers.
The bicycle lost its balance and toppled sideways.
“Shushu!”
Startled, Callix rushed over to his younger brother to check if he was hurt.
However, Damian picked himself up energetically from the ground and righted the bicycle.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No, I’m fine. I was worried I’d get badly hurt if I fell, but now that I know that’s not actually the case, I’m not scared anymore. Big Brother, I think I can ride a bicycle really well now!”
Climbing back onto the saddle, Shushu declared he would try riding on his own.
Once his fear vanished, Shushu found it much easier to ride the bicycle than before.
“Big Brother, you should ride too! It’s so much fun!”
Curling his eyes into crescents as he watched Damian smiling brightly under the warm sunlight, Callix hopped onto a bicycle and quickly caught up to him.
“Shushu, let’s take a spin around the vineyard.”
“Yes, Big Brother!”
The brothers rode their bicycles side by side, racing through the fields hung heavy with clusters of grapes.
The clean air, soft soil, the green leaves of the vineyard, the sweet fragrance exhaled by the ripe fruit, butterflies and bees—everything was absolute perfection.
After having a blast riding their bicycles, they asked the manager for some chilled grapes.
Cain spread out a picnic mat beneath a cherry tree.
Wiping the sweat beading on his forehead with a handkerchief handed to him by Melissa, Shushu lay flat on the mat.
Callix lay down diagonally right beside him.
Every time a gentle, soft breeze blew, pink petals poured down like rain.
Callix fed Shushu grapes embedded with fine crystals of ice, placing them right between his lips.
They were cold and sweet.
The sweat he had worked up while moving cooled down in a delightfully refreshing way.
“This is so delicious.”
“I knew you’d like it.”
Every time Callix popped grape after grape continuously into his mouth, Shushu simply opened his lips and accepted them like a baby bird.
When he suddenly chuckled at how absurd that felt, Callix laughed along with him.
Startled by the sound of their laughter, a bird flew out of its nest built in the cherry tree, sending a cascade of flower petals raining down.
Startled in turn, Callix instinctively threw himself forward to protect Damian.
Beneath him, the sweet scent of grapes drifted from between the lips of the young boy trapped underneath.
He looked down at his younger brother from above for a long time—long enough for Cain and Melissa to find it peculiar.
Brushing a pink petal off his beloved younger brother’s peach-tinted cheek, the older brother picked himself up.
He felt a lingering sense of regret that his little brother had grown up so much he could no longer carelessly pepper him with kisses just because he was cute.
Having enjoyed their picnic at the vineyard, Shushu returned to Wintergarden while cherishing the joyful mood.
After taking a half-body bath in warm water, Shushu—flushed and glowing with residual heat—was sitting in a chair while Melissa brushed his hair when she suddenly dropped a question on him.
“Shushu, how do you think it would feel if you became a person with a secondary gender?”
If he did, he would probably be able to stay in the ducal estate a little longer and keep playing the role of the fake Damian.
Driven by the greedy desire not to lose the happiness he had right now, he answered, “I think it would be nice.”
At that, Melissa carefully pulled a single medicine vial out of her apron pocket.
“I threatened Joseph and managed to get an awakening potion that turns someone into a person with a secondary gender. Even though he’s Meiyue’s minion, since it would spell trouble for him too if it were discovered that Shushu is a beta and merely a stand-in, he wouldn’t have dared to hand over a fake medicine.”
Shushu’s eyes widened at this development, which diverged from the original novel.
In the original story, the fake Damian was definitively a beta.
Pondering how things had changed this way, he realized that his decision to make his mother get off the carriage during the kidnapping must have altered the present.
In the original novel, his mother would have ridden together in the carriage, arrived at the ducal castle alongside the child, and died at Meiyue’s hands.
Instead, because she had rejoined them later and survived, the plot had shifted so that she procured an awakening potion for her own child.
The tiny medicine vial contained a liquid that was unpleasantly dark.
If he drank this medicine, he would be able to continue living happily with his beloved father and older brother until he turned twenty.
In exchange, he would keep on stealing the real Damian’s life.
Even while feeling the pricks of a guilty conscience, driven by the greed to keep living as Damian, he drank the potion.
The taste was oily, heavy, and repulsive, making Shushu want to spit it out instantly, but he clamped a hand over his mouth and forced down the overwhelming nausea.
Saying he mustn’t throw it up, Melissa handed him a cup of water.
He forced himself to drink the water, swallowing down every last trace of the medicine left in his mouth.
“Melissa, my stomach feels weird.”
“I’ll go get some candy. Lie down on the bed.”
Shushu waited for Melissa, lying quietly on the bed.
Suddenly, however, a searing pain stabbed through his stomach like a knife, causing him to scream out.
“Aah!”
It must have been poison.
How could he have been foolish enough to trust Joseph and swallow the medicine he prepared?
Regretting his own foolish and naive actions, he curled his body inward while wrapping his arms around his twisting, writhing stomach.
Though he had just stepped out of a bath, sweat poured off him like rain, soaking his pajamas completely.
Shushu shivered violently and pulled the quilt all the way up over the top of his head.
Just when he thought he was going to die right here, he heard the frantic voice of Melissa returning with the candy.
“Shushu!”
She forcibly yanked the quilt down to check on Shushu.
“Where does it hurt? Huh? Tell Mom.”
In her panic, Melissa forgot she was supposed to be acting as a mere nanny and slipped up, calling herself ‘Mom.’
It was a mistake that would have completely blown their cover if Cain hadn’t already finished his shift for the day.
“You bastard. I’m going to kill you!”
It was a voice so eerie and bloodcurdling that it was hard to believe it came from someone so affectionate.
Melissa assumed Joseph had given Shushu poison.
“Wait just a little. Mom will go call a doctor.”
“M-Mom. I guess I’m being punished for being greedy.”
“No, why would you be punished? This place belongs to you!”
Rushing out of the bedroom, she sprinted at a run, unmindful of the fact that the hem of her skirt had ridden up to her thighs.
Oh…. Poor Shushu