Edric rose from his seat. Instead of standing tall with his large, sturdy frame that had been looking down at everyone, he slowly knelt on the floor to meet the child’s eye level.
He raised a trembling hand and gently stroked the child’s golden hair. The feeling on his fingers was exactly the same as he had felt with his own hair.
“I am…”
“I know.”
As Edric tried to say something, the child looked alternately at two eyes identical to his own with bright blue eyes and said,
“You’re my father, right?”
“…Did aunt Louisa tell you?”
Edric asked, feeling an indescribable emotion.
“No.”
The child shook his head and held up the glass of water. The child, who had only spoken about half of what he wanted to say, seemed to want to say this:
‘Aunt Louisa only told me to bring this to you.’
“Then how do you know?”
Edric asked again with a puzzled expression. Jade replied.
“Mom did.”
“…”
“Mom told me.”
The child added with a bright smile.
“Every single day.”
[This is the timeline separator]“That child and his mother almost didn’t survive.”
“…”
“It was a terribly difficult birth.”
As some children went home and Jade and a few others played together in the yard, Mrs. Louisa spoke while watching them with Edric.
“The child wouldn’t come out even after two full days of labor, and the mother was nearly exhausted. The midwife said that at this rate, the mother would die before the child. So she suggested giving up on the child.”
Mrs. Louisa wiped her tears with a handkerchief, as if the memory of that day was still vivid before her eyes.
“But the child’s mother absolutely refused. She begged to sacrifice herself and save the child instead.”
“…”
“And if by chance the child was born and she died, she left a will asking to send the child to the address she had put in the drawer. Fortunately, Jade was born before I saw that address. It was heaven’s blessing.”
Edric listened silently.
Suddenly, Melly’s image overlapped with Jade, who was playing with the other children and occasionally glancing at him.
At last, he understood her changed strong and solid appearance.
That child had been her source of strength.
“The child grew up healthy, and Melly was deft-handed and diligent. The two of them were a gift to our lonely couple who had lost a daughter long ago. We didn’t have much, but those were peaceful days.”
A shadow suddenly fell over the lady’s face as she calmly recalled the past.
“Until my husband passed away from a fall accident.”
“…”
“About a month after my husband died, Melly said.”
‘I want to work, ma’am.’
“Melly said she had seen a nice shop in a village she stopped by on her way back from delivering my husband’s last wishes to a distant relative instead of me. She said she would open a tea house there. And…”
“She must have said she also found a house good for the three of you to live in.”
Edric finished her sentence for her. Mrs. Louisa bowed her head deeply, as if feeling ashamed.
“I still feel like a sinner when I think about it. Thinking of Melly struggling far away, leaving behind that young child. I should have done something instead…”
Mrs. Louisa wiped her eyes with her handkerchief again, blaming herself.
But Edric’s ears did not hear her self-reproach.
He thought it was truly like Melly.
She must have thought it was right for her young self to take responsibility for their livelihood rather than making the elderly lady go out to work.
With that sense of duty, she must have jumped into the harsh world, even separating from the precious child she had risked her life to bring into the world.
And he, not knowing any of this, had tried to trample on the foundation she had built with all her might. All because of his own selfishness.
Edric felt as if his heart was being torn out.
He couldn’t waste any more time. He had to meet Melly.
“I should go to my wife now.”
He stood up. Jade, who had been playing tag with the other children, came running with round eyes.
“Where are you going?”
The child asked, looking at him with bright eyes. Edric lowered himself again to meet the child’s eye level and said,
“To your mother.”
“…”
“I think I need to go see your mother, Jade…”
Edric’s voice trembled slightly as he said the child’s name. He wasn’t sure if he had the right to say that name to him.
“Oh… Goodbye…”
The child said. Even as tears welled up in his eyes, the child didn’t plead to go with him or ask to be taken to his mother.
In that behavior, Edric could glimpse the child’s deep inner feelings.
The child knew how difficult it was for his mother every time she left home. He was clearly trying hard to endure it, knowing that.
A pitiful feeling stirred an impulse in Edric.
“May I hug you once?”
The child’s eyes, which had been looking at him in bewilderment for a moment, soon curved into crescent moons.
“Yes.”
The child said bravely, then spread all ten fingers wide.
Edric immediately understood what the child wanted to say.
‘You can hug me ten times.’
He slowly embraced the child.
Afraid he might break if he hugged too tightly, he embraced the child very carefully.
The soft touch and warm body temperature. The cute little heart beating against his chest. And…
“Come see Jade again. Father.”
The child’s small whispering voice.
A heart-wrenching sensation blurred his eyes.
How could he have thought he could just pretend to love such a child?
Edric could not understand his past self at all.
[This is the timeline separator]“I wonder if they met well?”
Melly muttered, pacing around the darkened shop in her nightgown.
My everything that holds the past three years intact. My son, Jade.
The newborn baby was so lovely. Enough to make her forget even the body-breaking pain of childbirth.
Golden hair shining like pure gold. Clear sea-blue eyes finally revealed after painfully lifting eyelids swollen with amniotic fluid. Even the straight nose bridge and stubborn lip line.
‘Mom.’
Just like the child who had called her that in a dream once, the born child resembled Edric exactly.
Melly was certain.
That the child she had carelessly lost somewhere had surely come back to her after a long journey.
She thought about going to Edric at every moment.
When she realized she was pregnant, when she suffered from morning sickness, when she felt the first movement. When she got scared as her belly grew day by day, when the birth was imminent, when the child was born. When that child succeeded in taking his first steps without holding anyone’s hand. And…
‘Dad!’
When the child said “dad” without being taught.
Countless times, Melly considered going to him. But each time, his cold words held her back.
‘I thought it was love back then.’
She thought that he, who valued succession, might only accept the child and drive her away. The divorce papers in the desk drawer were proof of that.
She couldn’t let that happen.
The child was her whole life. Rather than have the child taken away, she intended to raise him as her own child, not his.
Melly Enwood’s child, Jade Enwood.
But.
‘Mom, why doesn’t Jade have a dad?’
Jade asked one day.
The child seemed to wonder why he was the only one without a father when all the neighborhood children had one.
Melly told him about his father so that the child wouldn’t be confused about his identity.
‘Your dad is the most handsome and smartest person in the world. He’s tall, gallant, good at swordfighting…’
She only meant to let the child know he had a wonderful father, but that time grew longer and longer.
Melly talked about Edric every day, and her way of expressing became more subtle and complex.
‘Your dad is actually a very kind person, but he doesn’t know it himself. He lives with an obsession that he must always be cold and rational. I wanted to break that shell for him, but mom failed. So…’
When she caught herself and looked back, there was Jade tilting his head as if he didn’t quite understand.
Melly would smile and kiss the child’s cheek and hug him. And she continued the unfinished story in her heart.
‘So mom left. I just couldn’t stand your father anymore. But if I had known I was pregnant with you, I should have endured a little longer. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry for making you grow up without a father.’
Melly sighed wistfully as she looked back on the past.
What on earth had she done?
After observing Edric for such a long time, how could she have thought he was such a vile person as to take a child away from her?
How could she have kept two blood relatives apart for so long, not even knowing of each other’s existence, due to a wrong judgment?
How would he react? Would he be angry? Would he be upset that she told Francis but not him?
‘That’s not it.’
Francis Adel had only guessed with his keen intuition and unnecessarily vivid imagination. I certainly didn’t tell him first.
I hope he understands at least that.
Melly turned around with mixed feelings. That’s when it happened.
Knock knock−.
The sound of someone knocking on the shop door stopped her pacing steps.
There was only one person who would knock at this hour.
“…”
Before she could decide how to face him, she heard the sound of the lock being undone behind her.
The shop door opened, ringing the chime bell, then closed.
But Melly didn’t turn around.
She was afraid to see his face.
The cool, dry night air made her keep interpreting his intentions negatively.
‘Will he reproach me?’
Feeling anxious, Melly apologized with her back to him.
“I’m sorry.”
“…”
There was no word from him. Trying to break the heavy silence that had fallen with the darkness, Melly apologized again.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was pregnant either. After I found out I was pregnant, I thought you would only…”
But before she could finish her words, a large, broad body that had quickly approached from behind embraced her tightly.
“Melly.”
A deeply suppressed voice flowed from him.
“I’m the one who’s sorry.”
His chest, pressed against her, heaved with rough breaths.
Melly felt one of her shoulders becoming damp.
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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