WeTried Translations x Flame Comics
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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Chapter 132: Tilles’s Autumn (3)
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* * *
“Moooom!!”
Isabelle shrieked, then ran over and threw herself into a woman’s arms. The woman, with soft blonde hair and a gentle face, wrapped Isabelle in an embrace.
“You’re all grown up. Don’t be so embarrassing.”
“You’ve been well, right?”
“Same as always.”
Isabelle’s mother and the Hero Maximilian’s wife, Maria de Itouale, looked like Isabelle herself after another ten years of growth.
She looked as though she had only just entered her early thirties, more like Isabelle’s somewhat older sister than her mother. Aesidis stared blankly, wondering whether Tilles cosmetics might actually be good for one’s skin.
“Lady Itouale, I trust you have been well.”
“Oh my, Young Lord Etakrikh. Please, don’t be so formal with me.”
“How could I? You are my godmother, Lady Itouale.”
“Doesn’t ‘godmother’ make us sound a little distant? Hehe. It makes me realize how much time has passed.”
After warmly answering Oscar’s greeting, Maria opened the door and gestured inside.
“Please, come in. We were just preparing dinner.”
“Excuse us!!”
* * *
As a maid set out the pre-dinner tea, Maria smiled at the group before suddenly speaking.
“So, Bella. Why are you here in the middle of the semester? Have you decided to drop out after all?”
“Drop out? Mom, I’m an excellent student.”
“Then why didn’t you bring last semester’s report card?”
“What university student has their mother check their grades?!”
Isabelle grumbled as she sipped her tea. When Aesidis began nibbling on the finger food, Elphihara smacked her hand and whispered.
“Don’t eat too much. Aren’t you going to have dinner?”
“I can eat it all.”
“If pigs walked on two legs, they’d look pretty similar to humans.”
“Sorry, but I only gain weight in certain places. Can you see?”
“H-How shameless...!”
Elphihara looked at Aesidis’s “certain places,” then reflexively lowered her gaze to inspect herself and bit her lip tightly.
“It’s not the s-size that matters. Shape is more important.”
“Oh my, did you sleep through Introduction to Economics? You must not know about economies of scale. Small countries that lack scale usually say things like that. Hehe.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m starting to feel embarrassed.”
Eugene’s words were ignored. As Aesidis and Elphihara began growling at each other, he sighed and looked around.
‘Maria de Itouale. The Hero’s wife.’
A commoner from a small farming village. She was said to have helped the Hero who had “appeared from the heavens,” teaching him the language and culture and helping him realize his calling.
Strip away some of the propaganda, and yes. She was probably a billboard.
Four years had passed since the Hero vanished.
The missing Hero was no longer Maximilian the individual, but a symbol. As with all symbols, he was treated as something closer to an idea than a real person.
The Hero was a symbol of peace who had marked the end of a bygone age. He had become some superior concept, no longer perceived as a person at all.
That was why the Tilles Royal Family must have placed that ordinary woman in his stead. So they could say the Hero had truly existed, that he was a man of Tilles, and that his home and family remained in the capital of this nation.
It would have a powerful advertising effect, both for the country’s prestige and the royal family’s authority.
‘That must be why they built her mansion here, where ordinary citizens can see it, instead of inside the royal palace.’
Was there really no place for that woman within the palace? Yet they had built this grand, lavish mansion in the middle of a bustling district. Naturally, it would draw attention.
It was too great a burden for an ordinary woman who would want to quietly fade away, living simply while mourning her vanished husband. Eugene clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘I transmigrated into a world rotten at its foundations.’
Did this world really need to be realized in such detail? Being dropped into the middle of a vicious struggle for power, crawling with political animals, was making him think more and more like his older brother.
It even gave him thoughts like this.
No wonder that man had ended up that way after living in a world like this for thirty years, right in the middle of a war zone.
Only four years had passed since the Hero saved the world. Just four years. For someone like the Hero, it would make more sense to assume he had gone on a brief vacation than that he had disappeared.
Yet in that short time, the Hero’s wife had become a billboard for royal authority, while the nations he had protected were trying to split open the peace and lick at its entrails for greater profit.
What a lovely place to live. With or without the Demon King. Maybe that was simply human nature.
He took a sip of tea as he thought that.
“So why did you come to Tilles?”
“Ah, we don’t know that either. The person who does hasn’t arrived yet...”
“Who? You haven’t gotten caught up in something, have you?”
“...I’m not sure how to put it. Whether we’ve been caught up in something, or whether we’re about to be...”
Isabelle furrowed her brow and tilted her head. It did seem as though they were about to get caught up in something, but she had not been told exactly what was happening.
Maria’s expression hardened as she watched her. She had sent Isabelle abroad so she could study in peace and spend time with people her own age. Of course she would worry when her daughter came home in the middle of the semester and said something like this.
“Who is it? Count of Orléans? Count of Grandmartel? Or Baron Gramont?”
“...I think I know who’s been troubling you lately, Mom.”
“Or are they Krasilov nobles? I hear every one of those nobles is a thug. If there’s any problem, you can come home whenever you want.”
“That’s surprisingly accurate.”
Isabelle snickered before continuing.
“It is a Krasilov noble, but I think you know him too.”
“I don’t know any nobles from Krasilov... Who is it?”
“Dad’s friend. Ah, it would spoil the surprise if I told you now. He said he’d be here before dinner. Just wait a little.”
Your father only had enough friends to count on one hand.
As Maria swallowed those words, a maid approached and whispered to her.
“Madam, a guest has arrived. Shall I show him in?”
“Who is it?”
“He says he is Viscount Yermof. Do you know him...?”
“I’ve never heard that name before.”
Maria’s expression turned cold. Some idle noble had approached her young daughter claiming to be her father’s friend, and now he had the nerve to come directly to her home?
After gesturing for the maid to make him wait, Maria quietly rose and followed the maid toward the reception room.
* * *
A large portrait of Maximilian, Maria, and Isabelle hung on one side of the lavish reception room.
The man called Lord Yermof stood with his back to the entrance, looking up at the portrait.
Broad shoulders. A sturdy build. The build of a soldier. A powerful metallic reek suddenly struck her, the scent common to veterans of that war.
Maria quietly closed the door and faced the man. This was her home. Whoever this man was, someone who had deceived and lured Isabelle in, she could not show weakness.
“You’ve come.”
A low voice rang out. It was deep, like rough steel being polished. Maria tilted her head at the somehow familiar voice.
Then the man slowly turned around.
-Clatter.
A picture frame fell to the floor and rolled away. Maria had slipped while bracing herself against the shelf.
With trembling eyes, Maria looked at the man standing before her.
“Lord Petrovich...?”
“Maria.”
He was not the young man she remembered, but she recognized him from his blue eyes, unchanged from then.
The young man in her memories, who had always worn a cold expression, had become a man with eyes as dry as a winter sky.
“I heard... you had died.”
“It was necessary.”
“Krasilov is no different from this country, then.”
“Every place people live is probably the same.”
Ivan stepped closer with heavy footfalls and supported Maria. His gesture was careful and courteous. Maria trembled as she laid a hand against Ivan’s gaunt cheek.
“I’m glad you’re safe. I was worried after hearing what Bella said. She said someone had dared claim to be Max’s friend...”
“If there is such a person, they will die.”
Maria let out a small laugh at Ivan’s words. Even his humorless jokes were exactly the same as they had been then.
Had it been ten years? Perhaps a little less. Her memory was unclear, but it must have been around that long.
She had cried for two days when she heard he had died. She thought there were no longer even a handful of friends left who remembered Max.
There were almost no friends left who could see that brilliant man as a person, who could remember Max the person with her.
And she thought that in the peace that had finally arrived, he too had been buried by nobles eager to consign the heroes of the past to history.
“You have been looking after my daughter.”
“It was what I had to do, Madam.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I always seem to be indebted to his friends. To the Duke of Etakrikh, and to you as well.”
“It is only proper, Madam.”
Maximilian had saved the world. Everyone who lived in this world should feel indebted to that man.
At Ivan’s words, Maria smiled weakly.
“We live in a world where what should be natural isn’t.”
Considering the implication in her words, Ivan spoke quietly.
“That is why I came here. Madam, what exactly is Gilles Ver doing while you are treated like this, living in a house like this?”
“The Duke of Etakrikh has done all he could. But as you know, he is also a member of the royal family. It could not be helped.”
“Gilles Ver is the Defender Duke. The royal family’s wishes cannot compel him. If he did not act, it simply means he chose not to.”
“No. That is not true, Lord Petrovich.”
Maria smiled sadly.
“Many things have happened over the past four years. Tilles is no longer one country. The royal family is so frightened that they need even the influence of a common woman like me, forcing me to live as a canary in a cage.”
She opened the reception room door and gestured. The fragrant scent of food drifted down the hallway.
“Let us eat. It is not a pleasant story to hear before a meal. And there will be far too much to discuss over dinner.”
“Gladly.”
Ivan quietly nodded, and a maid approached to take his coat.
Maria glanced back at Ivan as he followed her, then stopped walking.
Their eyes met for a moment. Maria smiled softly and asked,
“Will you help?”
It was a question without context. She did not specify what she wanted help with, or how.
Still, Ivan nodded as soon as he heard her words.
“Gladly.”
That was why he had come from Krasilov.
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Footnotes:
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