The Tyrant's Terminally-Ill Childhood Friend (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 17

Count Hessen, Lowell’s father, genuinely loved his youngest daughter, born to him in his later years. He tirelessly sought out reputedly miraculous herbs and renowned physicians to save her life, and even built a massive glass greenhouse for his frail daughter who couldn’t run and play outdoors.

Many advised him to scale down such an extravagant greenhouse, given the enormous cost, but Count Hessen remained resolute.

[“My daughter is at the age when she should be discovering the world, yet her world is no bigger than a single room. What kind of father would I be if I couldn’t even give her a world this small, not knowing when she might leave us?”]

Count Hessen’s reason for wanting such a large greenhouse was astonishingly simple. He merely wished for Lowell to wander in as spacious a place as possible. It was a blind, almost foolish love—precisely the kind most parents give.

Thus, Lowell always spent her time in the greenhouse. She did so even before Peter arrived, and after he came, the two played all sorts of games together there.

So even if her parents rarely visited her, Lowell was fine.

She had Peter, and the ground beneath her feet was proof enough that her parents loved her.

And that proof burned away with the fire that consumed the Hessen estate.

‘I’d forgotten all about it until now…’

Lowell walked dazedly deeper into the garden. Unlike the cold air outside, the lukewarm air here was heated enough that she didn’t feel cold even without her coat. Like a fish that had forgotten how to swim and was sinking, Lowell sank into the past, forgetting even to breathe within this space where memories had been perfectly preserved.

‘The tea table and the fence are exactly as they were.’

The only thing that had changed was Lowell’s eye level. She was now an adult, and everything in the greenhouse had been arranged for a child’s height. The chairs and tables, once perfectly sized in her childhood, and the fence she’d once thought too tall—all now seemed small.

Yet even that felt achingly precious to Lowell, as if it might steal her breath away.

[“Wow! Anna, the newly planted flowers have bloomed!”]

[“Please don’t run, Miss! What if you collapse again?”]

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