The Extra Decided to Be Fake

Doubt and anxiety, I was sick of myself shaking helplessly in it.

Cedric muttered his wife’s name inwardly, out of habit.

“Agnes.”

If you were alive, would you consider me pathetic? Me who doesn’t recognize my daughter properly.

I’m still easily swayed when it comes to you…

“… Anyway, treat the child well.
She is indeed the most likely one at the moment.”

“Your Excellency, are you thinking of not accepting the young lady?”

Stefan’s face showed a sad expression, but Cedric took a firm stand.

“I just want to be careful.
To be honest, there is no resemblance to me.”

She was neither dark-haired nor blond nor blue-eyed nor green-eyed.

Brown hair and brown eyes.

Cedric might have had a slightly different opinion if the child had resembled even one of the characteristics of Cedric and Agnes, but the child’s excessively disparate appearance prevented the accident.

“Is that so? I thought the eyes looked alike.”

“Eyes?”

“When I look at the lady’s eyes up close, they are greenish.
They were brown when seen from a distance.”

Stefan pointed to my eyes and smiled kindly.

“Didn’t His Excellency always have that kind of eyes when he was young? As he grew up, he lost his color and became greenish as he is now, but this Stefan still remembers the brown-eyed boy.”

“… you remember everything.”

“Let’s wait a little longer.
If you go through it, won’t it be revealed whether or not the young lady is your Excellency’s real daughter? It is not necessarily her appearance alone that is hereditary.”

“… Yes, you are right.
We’ll wait and see.
First, keep it a secret that the child is back, and leave it to Cosmo to investigate if she’s a fake-”

Knock, knock.

A sudden knock cut off Cedric’s words.

“Excuse me, Your Excellency.”

“What’s going on?”

Interrupting the conversation, Cedric’s voice jumped out even more sharply.
Even so, his not-so-nice nature had been sharpened on the battlefield, so his voice was blunt as if he would draw a knife at any moment if someone said nonsense.

Thanks to that, the nervous maid struggled to open her mouth.

“Ah, the lady has barely lost her fever.
The doctor said the hurdle was over, so I came to inform you… Would you like to take a look at the condition of the lady?”

Rattle!

As soon as the maid finished speaking, Cedric jumped up.

“Do I have to ask you that? Show me.”

He asked the maid to guide him, but he was leading the way.
Thanks to this, the maid who was reporting had a bewildered look on her face, and she hurriedly ran after her master, followed by Stefan’s laughter.

“Hehe, it looks like spring is coming to the mansion.”

A very late spring.

***

After collapsing, Lillian had a dream.

It was the dream of the dead Swan.

The events of a certain spring were slowly replaying in my unconsciousness.

The day when the forsythia on the fence was in full bloom.

Lillian and Swan picked forsythias and talked while making pressed flowers for bookmarks.

“Lily, what is the first thing you want to do when you find your parents?”

“… Well, then ask you if they missed me.”

“Hey, can’t you tell by just looking at them?”

“I can’t do mind reading.”

As Lillian said, she gathered small scraps of paper and placed them in her palms before blowing them.
Swan, who was holding the flowers pressed with newspaper when the rain of paper and flowers blew by the wind, let out a small laugh.

“I’m not asking you to do mind reading, Lily! It’s just that you will see all the reactions.”

“Well, if you say so, my question feels very useless.
Because my parents won’t find me.
I don’t think I’ll miss it.”

“Don’t say that.
They might be looking for us somewhere, right?”

“That sound again?”

“I’m telling you, if you’re a family, you’ll love us, so, of course, you won’t look for us?”

It’s love

Instead of answering, Lillian looked up to see Swan sitting on the window, still humming.

The loose spring sun was streaming in, and Swan’s pretty face looked even more lovely in the light.
Unlike my words, whose roughness is no different from that of a piece of wood, her gentle and cheerful voice always seemed to make her look like that.

Unlike my eyes, which were torn to the point where they looked like they would shed even if I rolled my eyes just a little, round eyes, beautiful nose and lips, and round and soft cheeks like a child.
Even the unknown songs she hums.

And even that fleeting moment when those blue eyes turned their backs on the light and turned toward her.

Swan was lovely.

Lillian couldn’t figure out why her heart was so inexplicably thrilled every time she met Swan’s eyes.
Of course, I wasn’t old enough to think deeply about her.
She could only guess that those things made her fall in love with Swan.

A child who had no choice but to love strangely, like facing a shower on a summer day.

No wonder, she had a knack for making everyone she met fall in love.

So the god of death couldn’t help but love her.

In any case, it was the moment when Lillian first questioned herself about her love for Swan.

Why did you love that child so much? Many other children came in on the same day, so why was it Swan to you?

Why did you become my family and my life?

Maybe it’s because you guessed that one day it might be like this.

I wish I had loved you a little less, Swan.

“I miss you…”

Tears ran down my cheeks.
Lillian opened her eyes involuntarily at the sensation of a stroke on her cheek.

I saw black hair.
His eyes were full of concern for herself.

The detail was hidden by tears, but Lillian could immediately recognize whose it belonged to.

Because there was only one person in the world who could care about her.

Swan.
I said I wanted to see you, and you came.

Lillian held Swan’s hand tightly as if hugging it, and closed her eyes again.

Only then did a faint smile bloom on the lips of the sleeping child.

It was a calm face, unlike the confused face of Cedric, who held her hand.

***

She said the fever had gone down.

‘Was it a lie?’

The body was like a ball of fire.
Where the heck did the fever drop?

Cedric grumbled like an excuse, leaving one of his hands in Lillian’s arms.

It would be natural to be hot because it was the arms of a child who was sick.

It was an excuse for myself that jumped out like an arrow as soon as I heard about Lillian.
How long has it been since he vowed to be wary of Lillian, that he is being manipulated again like this?

‘I can’t help it this time.’

She’s sick Even if Lillian wasn’t my daughter, I couldn’t let her die here.

Yes, that’s it.

By that time, Cedric’s inner conflict had finally come to an end, but there was a problem.

It was the part where Lillian, who had fallen asleep again, seemed unlikely to let go of his hand.

A moment ago Lillian opened her eyes dimly, and I could see the brownness of her eyes in the heat of her face.

However, it didn’t look as green as Stefan said.
It was not because of the lack of distance, but because of the tears that kept flowing from the blurry eyes.

— I miss you…

A faint muttering was heard.

Cedric panicked.

Both the crying of the child and the muttering that they miss each other was because they didn’t know how to respond.

On a battlefield, if someone is injured, you can roughly apply ointment and bandage it, but what should I do with a child?

It was the same when I opened my eyes, but the child who closed her eyes was really small.

Cedric’s hand was the size of a child’s face, so it must be shocking.

How should I treat such a small child? It was an overly difficult problem for a man who had been rolling on the battlefield for a long time and had only influenced the decision of whether to kill or not to be killed.

‘Sigh… I’m going to go crazy.’

Cedric slightly moved the hand that the child was holding tight.
As expected, the child was fluffy.
Perhaps, if Cedric brushed her hand just a little, Lillian would almost fly away.

‘Are children like this?’

Or is this child just this fluffy?

What the hell is a child doing? For Cedric, adjusting his strength to deal with Lillian felt more difficult than practicing cutting tens of thousands of people without cutting anyone.

I don’t know what possessed me…

Surprisingly, he did not kill the child by hugging her.
Cedric was thinking about how to remove his hand while reflecting on how strong he was at the time, but he felt a pulsation at his fingertips.

Pounding, pounding.

It was the small but obvious beating of Lillian’s heart.

‘Even though it’s so small… the heart is beating.’

It’s a natural fact, but why does it feel so strange?

Why does it… make the inside of the chest tickle so much?