“Friends…?”

“The bad guy ahjussi said that! He said you were friends from a long time ago.”

Friends. It was a label he had never once attached to their relationship.

“So that’s why the ahjussi saved me.”

Ib chattered, spilling out the events that had occurred yesterday.

The scary ahjussi had hit Ib, and Sched had rescued the child.

And because her mom was in danger, he stayed with Ib in a safe place until her mom arrived…

Ib firmly believed that Sched had not kidnapped her, but protected her.

“But Ib, you were crying out of fear yesterday, weren’t you?”

“He said mom died…”

As if recalling the sad memory, Ib snuggled close to Louise’s side.

“Why would mom die, Ib?”

“The ahjussi said so. He said dad told him mom died.”

“What are you talking about, Ib? Mom’s not dead.”

Louise held Ib’s hand tightly and spoke.

“I know. The ahjussi said mom came. She really came!”

It seemed Ib had come to firmly trust Sched because of that incident.

So this is how child abduction cases occur.

Louise felt a bit frightened in the face of the child’s innocence.

“Ib, what if mom didn’t come?”

When she asked her pure, unsullied daughter, a shadow fell over Ib’s face.

“Mom, you’re not coming to see Ib?”

“No, what if the ahjussi was lying? What if he wasn’t really mom’s friend?”

“No. The ahjussi knows mom well!”

Ib’s eyebrows pointed sharply in determination.

In the midst of confusion, those slanted eyebrows were so cute that Louise couldn’t take her eyes off Ib.

Placing her small hands on her hips, Ib itemized the reasons why she trusted the ‘bad guy ahjussi’.

“The bad guy ahjussi knows mom likes lemons. And that she likes reading books too!”

When Sched’s words tumbled out of the child’s mouth, a corner of her heart trembled.

Ridiculously, she had momentarily forgotten while raising Ib.

That she liked the lemons abundant in Ideana, and that she enjoyed reading.

It felt strange that he remembered things about her that even she had forgotten.

“Mom, did you really eat a lot of cauliflower soup too? Ib eats a lot of it, right?”

“…Yeah. That’s right.”

Louise smiled and swallowed a bitter sigh.

Ib excitedly kicked her feet, saying she had talked a lot about mom with Sched.

Louise stared blankly at the child overflowing with energy since morning.

Behind Ib’s chattering voice, the boat creaked and swayed, rocking this way and that with the waves.

“Still, Ib, it’s dangerous to trust strangers carelessly. You shouldn’t follow them either.”

Louise said while smoothing Ib’s messy hair from sleeping.

Ib stopped talking for a moment as if lost in thought, then nodded.

“You know, is the bad guy ahjussi a bad person?”

“It’s not that the bad guy ahjussi is bad, per se…”

“Then is he a good person?”

The round, green eyes resembling her own blinked.

An answer to the child’s question did not come quickly.

Everything was ambiguous.

Was he a good person? Or a bad person?

A victim? Or a perpetrator?

Good or evil?

Happiness or misfortune?

Love or hatred?

He stood on a line that could not be defined as one thing.

Perhaps, if it had not been ‘Louise Ideana’, he might have remained just a kind person.

If there was one thing that could consistently define his existence, it was the fact that he was Ib’s biological father.

“Mom doesn’t know either, Ib.”

So Louise could not give the child any answer.

She was unsure if it would be better to introduce him as evil or good to Ib.

Ib then looked at her mom with surprised eyes.

“There are things even mom doesn’t know?”

Ib was astonished that there were things her mom, who seemed to know everything, did not know.

Louise let out a small laugh.

“Of course. There are many things even mom doesn’t know.”

That she was wandering like this because she didn’t know.

That she was at a loss about what to do going forward.

“Then Ib will find out and come back!”

“What?”

In the blink of an eye, Ib sprang up from her seat and dashed out of the cabin with unbelievable speed for a young child.

“Ib!”

Before Louise could stop her, Ib disappeared in a flash at a pace hard to believe for a child.

As soon as she ran out onto the deck, a cool and refreshing sea breeze wet her small, soft cheeks.

Ib, who had been trying to find the bad guy ahjussi, was captivated by the vast blue sea and the sound of the waves crashing into white foam.

The sky was so blue that even her eyes felt refreshed.

Over the blue sea where the sunlight shattered like jewels, silver dolphins leaped out of the water like rainbows and disappeared.

“Dolphins! Dolphins!”

Amazed by the scenery, Ib ran towards the deck railing but tripped over a thick rope lying on the deck.

“Eek!”

In an instant, her falling body was caught by something and dangled in midair.

Suspended, Ib looked around in confusion, then her eyes met a pair of purple ones.

“Bad guy ahjussi!”

“Don’t wander around recklessly, it’s dangerous, kid.”

Sched’s brows furrowed slightly.

One would expect the cheeky kid to be intimidated by the cold warning, but she opened her eyes wide and grinned.

“…Why are you smiling like that?”

Somehow, seeing the child who resembled Louise smile… made Sched feel uncomfortable.

But then.

“Hehe, good boy, good boy~”

Ib, lifted up to eye level, reached out her small arms and patted his head.

As the maple leaf-like little hand brushed his black hair, the Duke of Lester’s face stiffened in bewilderment.

It was the first time someone had carelessly touched his head since entering the ducal house.

“What do you think you’re doing, kid?”

Sched hurriedly set Ib down on the deck like someone who had been touched where they shouldn’t be.

Ib then showed her white teeth and giggled.

Her cheeks, kissed by the sea breeze, were flushed with a lively pink, and her golden hair fluttering in the sunlight brushed against her white skin.

Over that face, Louise’s image kept overlapping.

“Because you resemble your mother…”

Sched deliberately turned his gaze to the distant sea.

Then a precocious voice pierced through the sound of the waves and stuck in his ears.

“No! I look like my dad!”

Sched’s gaze couldn’t help but return to the child at Ib’s bold response.

She looked like her dad?

Sched tried to find traces of Eclas in Ib’s face.

The child seemed to have astonishingly no resemblance to Eclas.

That was fortunate among misfortunes, one could say.

If she had resembled that sly scammer, this kid’s lifeline might have already flown away.

Because she was the spitting image of Louise, a modicum of mercy touched the blade’s edge.

“Mom said when Ib smiles, she looks just like dad.”

Ib deliberately grinned widely and looked up at Sched.

But Sched couldn’t see it at all.

He knew Eclas’s smiling face very well.

The eye smile that folded into a crescent shape whenever he smiled.

The red eyes that shone sharply while feigning kindness.

The corners of his mouth that seemed charmingly inscrutable, making it feel all the more sinister.

However, it was difficult to find even any subtle curves that Eclas’s smile possessed in Ib’s smile.

Rather, Ib’s laughter exuded a light opposite to Eclas’s smile.

An honest, plain, and clumsy yet pure-looking smile.

“You don’t resemble him at all.”

Sched blurted out his true thoughts as he blankly stared at Ib’s smile.

Then Ib’s cheeks, which had been full of laughter, puffed up like a frog.

“No! Our mom said! Ib and dad look exactly the same!”

“Looks like you were deceived. Your mom is good at lying, you know.”

Sched muttered cynically.

I once believed her too.

That face like a lake that had quietly accepted tears.

I had thought that if I gazed into that face, I could see through to the shallow bottom of that lake.

I had even thought that if I splashed water in the lake, the ripples would shake and change her.

There was a time when… I believed that if I dived deep enough, I would find where the bottom of that lake was.

But not anymore.

No matter how much I splash and stir the water, the depths of the lake remain still, deep, and dark.

What appears on the surface is nothing but a superficial representation.

Or just a pathetic projection of myself reflected on the surface.

He knew nothing about her properly.

“No! My mom is not a liar!”

Small cotton balls fiercely hit his shins.

It was truly a ridiculous act of violence.

“She is a liar.”

Amused by the fearlessly charging kid, Sched pointlessly refuted her words.

“No she’s not!”

Ib clung to his shin, grabbing the black leather boots he was wearing.

Even with the small body clinging, it was less than having a sandbag attached.

Sched lifted the leg Ib was hanging onto and slowly swung it.

The child’s expression quickly brightened again.

It seemed like hanging onto his leg and swinging felt just like riding a swing.

‘At this rate, she’ll ask me to keep doing it.’

Noticing the light entering the child’s face, Sched chuckled.

She had just been throwing a fit, but how could she be so simple?

He grabbed Ib with both hands, detached her from his leg, and lifted her up.

Dangling from large hands, Ib laughed again at the elevated view.

She really was a foolish child.

Sched thought about the future where this pure white innocence would one day be tainted.

A child so foolish and ignorant that her bright smile was pitiable.

“Come back when you’re a bit older if you want to fight me, kid.”

Someday, you too will want to raise a blade against me.

The day will come when this white smile will be darkly distorted.

Sched whispered softly while looking at Louise’s child.