After holding Shushu tightly like that for a long while, Callix collapsed right on the spot.
Fortunately, because he fell backward, Shushu didn’t get hurt at all.
“Hey! Stop it! Let me go.”
The muscular, chain-hardened arms refused to release him.
Struggling and fussing, Shushu barely managed to wriggle his way out of Callix’s embrace.
What if Callix regained his senses and came looking for him to drag him to the guillotine just like in the original novel?
He was so terrified, and he missed his mother terribly.
He had to run away immediately.
Fortunately, since not a single person in the castle paid him any mind, it seemed he would be able to leave easily.
Shushu wandered around the bedroom looking for anything of value, but finding nothing, he simply left the bedroom empty-handed.
Though he occasionally crossed paths with passing attendants in the corridor, they walked right past him with indifferent eyes.
Having seen which direction the castle gates lay while welcoming the Grand Duke and Callix, Shushu headed straight for that spot.
“Eh? Pink hair?”
“Aren’t you young master Damian? Where are you going?”
“Jush a lil’ shroll.” (Just a little stroll)
“Get inside. It’s dangerous out here alone.”
“Hey, someone take the young master back to his room.”
The guards watching the gates called out to another colleague.
Shushu stamped his feet in anxiety, knowing he had to escape before Callix woke up.
Just in case, he pulled a bribe out of his trouser pocket.
The guard gazed blankly down at the chocolate chip cookie.
“What is this?”
“A bribe.”
“Even so, it’s a no.”
Thinking of his own child back home, the guard irreverently patted the young master’s pink hair.
Despite supposedly bearing the ruthless bloodline of the Vespers, Damian had hair as lovely as cotton candy and delicate, well-defined features—a remarkably cute child.
When such a child wanted to go play outside and held out a chocolate chip cookie as a bribe, the guard simply couldn’t resist patting his head.
Struggling and kicking as he protested that he didn’t want to go back, Shushu was ultimately hoisted onto the guard’s back and carried back to his bedroom.
‘Sob, am I going to die now?’
Pulling the blanket up over the very top of his head, he cried himself to sleep.
After some time passed, waking up, Shushu kicked off the stifling blanket, deeply self-reprimanding for how he could possibly fall asleep during such a moment of crisis.
Judging by how pitch-black it was outside the window, dawn must have already arrived.
‘Why is it strangely quiet?’
Right, in the original novel, Damian’s stand-in was only killed after turning twenty.
Therefore, what happened today was nothing.
The original novel was written the way it was for a reason, wasn’t it?
“Phew, I survived death. I can live for another 13 years.”
With his lifespan extended from seven years old to twenty, Shushu headed into the bathroom to wash his face, which was swollen and puffy from crying.
Drawing warm water in the bathtub and soaking in a half-bath made him feel like he was finally alive.
Being a noble certainly had its perks.
To live a life where warm water simply poured out just by turning a tap! Commoners had to trek all the way to the well just to fetch water.
Yet it made his heart ache to think that while he was living such a luxurious life, his mother was still struggling in a cramped room.
‘When will I be able to escape on my own strength? I can change my destiny, right?’
Fortunately, the guards had just written him off as young and let it slide this time, but next time they would definitely report to a superior that the second young master had tried to run away.
And once Meiyou found out about that, she would never let him off.
The mere thought of her sent a cold shiver down his spine, causing his shoulders to shudder violently.
Climbing out of the bathtub, having no other clothes to change into, Shushu put back on the outfit he had worn earlier.
With water dripping steadily from his wet hair, he stepped out of the bedroom.
Confirming there were no servants in the corridor, Shushu walked on tiptoe and scurried forward swiftly.
Since no one had bothered to prepare his meals, he had to forage for himself.
Arriving in the dark kitchen, Shushu was dismayed to find that, unlike earlier, no prepared food was sitting out on the prep counters.
The chefs must have cleaned everything thoroughly as they left for the night.
He rummaged through wooden stacks piled in a corner of the kitchen.
There were dirt-caked potatoes and carrots, looking as though they had just been dug up from the fields, and eggs resting upon straw.
Figuring the carrots would at least be edible, he grabbed one.
Clutching a carrot the size of his own forearm, Shushu scurried straight back to his bedroom.
Sitting in the bathroom, he washed the carrot clean and gnawed away at the tough vegetable with his front teeth like a rabbit.
“I’m so hungry.”
He missed his mother.
“Sob.”
‘He who has not eaten a tear-soaked carrot cannot discourse on life.’
Coining a grand aphorism as though he were a great philosopher, Shushu felt a wave of dizziness wash over him and collapsed onto the bed.
Perhaps because he had been starving for so long, he didn’t even have the energy left to eat.
He figured he needed to rest a little.
Clutching the carrot tightly to his chest lest someone steal it, he closed his eyes.
In his dream, his mother had baked a mountain of bread and handed it to him, telling him to eat.
[My baby, aren’t you hungry?]
Tears welled up and rolled down the corners of the sleeping Shushu’s eyes.
Regaining consciousness in the corridor, Callix felt in peak condition thanks to getting a solid night’s sleep for the first time in forever.
His entire body should have been shredded to ribbons by the rampaging mana and soaked in blood, but for some reason, though a few specks of blood stained his clothes, his garments were otherwise spotless.
It had been a very long time since he felt this refreshed and pleasant.
“Could it possibly be thanks to that Gem?”
He remembered up to the point where he grabbed the naked Gem’s hand in the Duke’s bedroom. After that, his memories had completely blanked out.
He had returned to the Duke’s bedroom to look for the Gem, but no presence of anyone else could be felt.
Moreover, the bedsheets were ironed crisp and flat by a servant, showing no signs of having been used. Yet how could this be?
“As though she were my name.”
‘Could my name have manifested?’
Hurriedly entering the bathroom, Callix stripped off his clothes.
He reflected his body in the mirror and inspected it thoroughly, but no one’s name appeared like a tattoo.
Still, he wasn’t disappointed.
He didn’t doubt for a second that that Gem would turn out to be his name.
Nobody knew when or how a name would manifest.
Therefore, all he had to do was wait for “that Gem’s” name to appear.
