The Guardian Knight of Affection-Starved Young Ladies

91 – Blood-Linked Family (03)

092.

Laris’s room was small.

To put it nicely, it was modest.

To put it plainly, it was doubtful whether this young lady was truly the second daughter of the Plache family.

It was hard to believe that such a shabby space existed in this luxurious mansion.

There were no valuables or luxury items that a noble lady might collect.

A small room where all the structures and furniture could be seen at a glance.

If compared, it might be the kind of room a girl of baronial rank would have.

To say that everything in the room could be seen at a glance was, in simple terms, to say that there was nothing particularly special about it.

Laris approached the old dresser as if she were familiar with it.

The dresser was old and plain, with a total of four compartments stacked vertically.

Laris reached for the very last compartment, which seemed to be the only one locked, and opened it.

Click.

The sound of the lock engaging was heard as the drawer opened.

Laris reached deep inside and took something out.

Then she approached Kalen and carefully showed him what she had in her hands.

“This is…”

What lay in her small, delicate hands was none other than a necklace.

A necklace with a single small pearl embedded in it.

Other than that, it didn’t look much different from any other necklace.

“Is it a necklace?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

However, Kalen quickly realized that it was not just an ordinary necklace.

Laris was holding the necklace carefully, looking at it with a sorrowful gaze.

A request to bury her mother.

A somewhat unusual attitude for the family.

Laris had taken out the necklace as her answer.

And Kalen could soon grasp the story entangled with the necklace and the current situation.

“…Is it your mother’s keepsake?”

“You are perceptive, as expected.”

There was no emotion like sadness in Laris’s voice.

As if she had already gone through such things countless times and had become accustomed to it.

“It’s also the last trace I have to remember my mother by. Now, this is the only item related to the mother who gave birth to me and my sister in this family.”

Her voice was rather close to resignation.

A resignation that, blocked by an enormous despair, desperately hoped to achieve at least this much.

“Did I tell you that my sister abandoned the family name?”

“Yes, you did.”

“My sister gave up because she was exhausted. She was probably older than me and, being the ‘sister,’ she must have suffered more harassment.”

“Harassment…”

“Yes. Bullying.”

It seemed similar to the young ladies I first met.

Eliana, who couldn’t overcome her illness and was waiting for the day she would die.

Selacia, who couldn’t escape the endless swamp of distrust and eventually hid behind a mask.

Sinat, who couldn’t overcome her sad memories and couldn’t dream of the future.

Each of them had a big wound.

If Kallen hadn’t healed it, many things would have been different.

“After my mother passed away, my father had to find a new partner. My sister and I didn’t stop him. Until then, my father was strict but warm, and the position of the matriarch of the empire’s four great families could never be left vacant.”

Laris’s voice.

No, her eyes resembled that.

Unable to find a solution no matter what, repeatedly making unwanted compromises.

The eyes that had been robbed of what they first wished for, to the point where they couldn’t recognize its shape anymore.

Those eyes turned to the necklace with a small pearl.

“My father changed… probably from that time. No, looking back now, maybe he was always like that. Do you know about the Lyle Merchant Guild?”

“I know.”

The Lyle Merchant Guild was originally one of the two super-large guilds that divided the empire.

There was nothing they didn’t handle, and they dealt with cheap and easily obtainable items rather than luxury goods, quickly standing shoulder to shoulder with the Navig Merchant Guild.

“Yes. In a word, they were upstarts. They weren’t originally nobles, so they were obsessed with bloodlines, and thus they connected with my father, the head of one of the four great families, through a strategic marriage.”

Perhaps it’s a common story.

Those who suddenly come into a lot of money forget their place and become greedy.

Such a common and obvious story.

“Maybe it was that inferiority complex, but the Lyle Merchant Guild started to interfere more and more with the family. They wanted to be informed of everything my father was doing, and they kept planting their people in the mansion and the estate.”

Laris kept fiddling with the necklace.

As if to protect it, even though it couldn’t disappear.

“At first, my father was reluctant, but he eventually allowed it. The reason was probably because of my younger brother.”

“Step-siblings?”

“Yes. Anyway, they were married, and they had a son, so he must have had a lot on his mind.”

Was this the reason why she didn’t include her father among those who remembered her mother?

Laris bitterly stroked the necklace.

“The Lyle Trading Company was obsessed with noble bloodlines, right? That connection is my younger brother. They granted him whatever he wanted, and gradually began to erase my mother and us sisters from this family.”

Laris is a daughter of the Flache family.

In other words, she is the daughter of the head of the Flache family.

If you look at it that way, this room doesn’t make sense.

How could the daughter of the head of the family live in such a shabby room in the Flache family’s mansion?

Even receiving such treatment from a mere knight.

There wasn’t a single servant to welcome her back from the capital.

“Even my mother was a slave. My father saved her. Yes. Perhaps… they had a fateful love.”

Kallen’s gaze turned to the not-so-tidy desk.

He looked at the bookshelf on the left.

There were no difficult cultural books or hard-to-understand history books.

It was filled with scripts of plays that seemed easily obtainable from the marketplace, fitting the description of third-rate.

“That was the problem. My father had to bear many issues because my mother was a slave, and his remarriage to the Lyle Trading Company was far from such problems. It wouldn’t have been difficult to erase my mother and us sisters.”

A slave.

It certainly seems to explain things.

Kallen didn’t know until he heard from Laris that the mistress of the Flache family had changed once.

The fact that the head of one of the four great families remarried would have been famous enough to be hard not to know.

But in reality, no one would know.

Because there had never been a word about such things happening in the Flache family.

“In that way, the Lyle Trading Company erased my mother’s traces not only from this mansion but also from the territory. There are hardly any people left who remember the kind mistress of the Flache family.”

It’s a bleak story.

The head of a noble family, who fell in love with a slave he met by chance and dreamed a brief happy dream.

He grew weary of difficulties he couldn’t handle alone and eventually found new love.

But it’s also a story that doesn’t sit well.

At least as long as Laris exists in front of Kallen.

Because her mother and her sister, Laris, became victims.

“We wanted to hold a funeral for our mother, but the family didn’t accept it due to issues of face. They burned all her belongings, so they don’t know I have this necklace.”

“Is it because she was a slave?”

“Yes. And as long as my sister and I remain here, it’s impossible to completely erase those traces. It’s also impossible to fully have my father’s heart. In the end, my father abandoned us sisters, so it’s no different.”

In short, that’s how it is.

The Lyle Merchant Guild desires noble blood through the head of the Plache family.

In that plan, the Laris sisters and their mother were obstacles, so they tried to remove them.

Laris’s sister endured everything in place of Laris and left, exhausted.

Now, only Laris remains, wanting to hold her mother’s funeral.

It wasn’t much different from what was expected.

Kallen could almost understand the hidden side of the Plache family.

Except for one thing.

There was one thing that bothered him.

“I understand. But I don’t know why you need the mental image.”

Mental image.

Laris had said she needed a mental image.

She said she could trade her life for it if she could awaken the mental image.

Now that it was revealed that her wish was to bury her mother, it was natural to assume that the mental image was needed in that process.

Laris listened to Kallen’s words and smiled bitterly.

Her eyes, which were gradually looking at the necklace, began to tremble.

“They told me… that if I kept holding on, they would force me out. The head of the Lyle Merchant Guild, my new grandfather, said so.”

“…”

“I seem to have a talent for magic, but they said it’s not strong enough to overcome it alone. So I need the mental image.”

And at the same time, her eyes became clear.

As if the turmoil in her heart was temporary.

Laris, who held her head high confidently, looked anxious but did not seem like someone who had given up on everything.

“At least if I have the mental image, I would be valuable enough to be used by the family. Anyway, people think I’m the biological daughter of my stepmother, so in exchange for being used as I wish with the mental image, I will hold my mother’s funeral.”

However, the following words were a bit shocking.

She considered herself a pawn, willing to sacrifice herself.

Did she mean that she could trade her life to obtain the mental image?

“This is the most sincere I can be, Kallen. Will you help me?”

Laris looked at Kallen, feeling a bit relieved.

It was evident that she had never revealed her true feelings to this extent before.

For a moment, there was even a hint of expectation in her eyes.

Was that expectation because she could finally hold her mother’s funeral?

Or perhaps it was for another reason, but it was hard to tell.