WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Malfoid
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◈ I Don't Need a Family ◈
Episode 21
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Late afternoon on the day Vivette’s carriage departed.
Harris, already in a foul mood, received a visit from someone sent by the Duke.
“I was ordered to bring Young Master Harris to the Plaford residence before supper.”
“Why me?”
“It is New Year’s Eve. You must attend the New Year’s Eve Festival.”
Looking down at the aide’s round head, Harris asked reluctantly,
“What about Vivette? She went out and hasn’t returned yet. Shouldn’t you check on her too?”
He only said it because he wanted the aide to interfere with the two women’s outing.
But the aide said something else.
“Miss Vivette will not be attending.”
“What? Why not?”
‘Vivette likes social gatherings.’
She seemed especially fond of attending imperial banquets where many people gathered.
‘Hmph. Of course she does. It’s full of people without abilities like her.’
Vivette was extremely popular there. She even received the occasional marriage proposal. Turning down dance invitations was practically a job in itself.
The Duke rarely took Vivette to banquets because he feared all sorts of riffraff would cling to her.
However, the New Year’s Eve Festival, where every family member over the age of twelve attended together, was different.
A powerful noble house was expected to attend the New Year’s banquet together and enjoy their family harmony.
If even one person was absent, the family was incomplete. And incompleteness was a sin, or had the Duke not said so countless times?
That was why Vivette had been hated, too.
“Miss Vivette will no longer attend any family gatherings. It would be troublesome if she were to lower the family’s standing for no reason.”
“What? You little bastard, are you done talking?”
Harris grabbed the aide by the collar.
Unlike gentle Vivette, he could not hold back his rising anger. Nor did he know how to rebuke someone coldly, like his noble brother Gillian.
All he had learned was how to crush people with authority and use magic, so the room’s temperature rose sharply, as though flames had erupted within it.
“It is not my opinion! His Grace the Duke said so!”
Lifted high into the air by Harris’s height, the aide could only flail his feet as he protested.
But Harris, already worked up, did not listen.
“It’s true Vivette is a little lacking compared to Gillian and me. But that doesn’t mean trash like you gets to say it.”
“I-I’m sorry.”
“Don’t talk about the family’s standing. I know you are far more worthless than she is.”
When Harris released him, the aide choked with tears in his eyes. Harris did not find it pitiful in the slightest.
Harris went into the dressing room, refused even his attendant’s help, and grumbled as he dressed himself.
“From now on, it’ll just be the three of us? That’s ridiculous. Do you really think that’s possible?”
Harris knew. The center of the four members of House Ashwilt was not the Duke, but Vivette.
They all added a complaint or two, yet in the end, they did as she said. What else could that be but the center of the group?
Above all, without her as the lubricant, he did not think this household could run properly.
“House Ashwilt with only three cold people? Who would envy a family like that?”
No matter how he thought about it, his family had been best as it was. Before Vivette started acting strangely.
In the end, even as he blamed Vivette for causing all this, Harris obediently finished preparing to leave.
He hoped Vivette was shut in her room, feeling depressed. But she had gone out to have fun with that woman.
So he did not feel the slightest guilt about going to the imperial banquet with only the three of them and leaving her behind.
No, he had never felt guilt in the first place. It had always been that way, even when they attended magic societies and gatherings with relatives as children.
Vivette had always been the one who stayed home and waited for the family to return, and just knowing she was there gave him a sense of security.
Yet now that she had grown a little older, she intended to leave home and spend time with other people too.
It felt cruel, and disappointing.
Praying that Vivette’s outing would be incredibly, terribly boring, Harris entered the banquet hall.
In his foul mood, he did not say a word to the Duke or Gillian about Lady Fadde regaining her senses, or Vivette leaving home with her. House Ashwilt would be thrown into an uproar over it somewhat later.
* * *
“Y-your Grace! Your Grace the Duke! Miss Vivette has disappeared!”
The moment the Duke entered through the central entrance, Greg, the head steward, rushed over as if about to tumble. Greg repeated the message sent several times through the communication device, looking as though tears might spill at any moment.
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
A slow, low voice laced with arrogance crept from the master’s lips.
“Exactly that. She has vanished! Ah, without any sign at all.”
“Speak properly. I cannot understand a word you are saying.”
But the head steward, overcome with panic, only repeated disjointed words.
Bang! The Duke set his half-finished glass of water on the desk as though throwing it down.
“Enough. My daughter has gone missing, not yours.”
The head steward had no choice but to clamp their mouth shut at that leisurely attitude.
Even Greg’s fingertips trembled at the disappearance of the Duke’s child, though Greg was merely an employee. Yet the girl’s own father looked utterly unmoved.
“You said she left yesterday afternoon and has not returned.”
“Y-yes!”
“Then she simply has not returned yet.”
“...Pardon?”
“Have you become stupid too? That foolish girl is just returning late because she made a reckless display of bravado. Did she think I would look for her even once?”
“Ah...”
All strength drained from Greg’s limbs. Deflated, Greg could not think of anything to say.
“Has that child’s foolishness ever been anything new? Then why are you so determined to tell me about it?”
“Well...”
“Are you taking an indirect jab at my daughter, saying she is stupid and nothing but cheerful?”
“Absolutely not! I was only worried about Miss Vivette...”
“It has only been one day.”
Vivette had spent only one night away from home.
There was nothing at all to worry about in Erenston, renowned for its good public safety.
She was the Duke’s daughter. Surely she had taken plenty of money with her. What was there to worry about?
“She had been quiet for quite some time, and now she causes an incident like this. During the busiest period of the New Year Festival, no less. Is that not right, Head Steward?”
“Well, the truth is...”
“Enough! There is no need to hear more. If that child truly intended to escape me, would she have chosen the start of the new year? It is as though she is advertising it so I will notice. There is no need to pay further attention to it.”
“Then you mean Miss Vivette’s running away is merely for show?”
“Is that not the one thing she is at least somewhat good at?”
As if he had no further interest, the Duke took out a pen and began turning through documents without concern.
“It offends my pride that I have seen through that child’s false performance. Pretend not to know until the end, Head Steward. I have heard nothing about that child.”
Greg wanted to withdraw at this point. If this could be treated as though nothing had happened, there could be nothing better for Greg.
But the Duke, who had begun his work, asked a question.
“Come to think of it, what happened with sending Fadde Ashwilt to Velmaden?”
“It failed.”
“What?”
A wrinkle formed on the Duke’s forehead, though he had remained calm even at the news of his daughter running away. Greg quickly said what had been prepared.
“We had no choice because Lady Fadde regained her senses! She refused to go and even used force...”
“She regained her senses? That woman?”
Suspicion spread across the Duke’s face. Unless Vivette had used some trick, there was no way to return an old woman who had gone senile to normal.
The Duke deliberately tried not to think about his daughter. The same went for Fadde, that woman.
He had accomplished countless achievements in his life, but there were bound to be matters left unfinished.
Those two women were the most troublesome of them, and he wanted to put them down now.
“Yes, well. If she regained her senses, that woman would never willingly leave. So is she in the annex now?”
“No.”
“Do not tell me she is in the main house?”
“No. Lady Fadde left with Miss Vivette.”
“She left? The two of them together?”
“To be precise, they went out together yesterday afternoon and have yet to return.”
“Are you insane? You let them go?”
The Duke sprang up from his desk.
Objects fell noisily and scattered across the floor, but this was not the time to care about that.
Fadde and Vivette Ashwilt.
The two were practically mortal enemies who should never have met.
Both had lost the rest of their lives because of the other. The Duke himself had kept them apart for seventeen years, fearing the consequences.
And now, despite all that effort, they had met of their own accord. They had even left home side by side. It was impossible.
“You need not worry! The two got along well.”
“What?”
The Duke frowned.
“How could those two possibly get along?”
“I-I do not understand it either!”
The Duke anxiously tapped his fingertips against the desk.
‘If Fadde Ashwilt is involved, could this truly be a simple outing? What is she plotting?’
The fact that Fadde had left this estate of her own will was at least good news.
But what if she was planning something with his daughter?
She had discovered his plan to send her to some backwater countryside, so with that dreadful temperament, there was no way she would sit quietly.
His thoughts grew quite complicated. But only briefly. The Duke soon reached a conclusion.
“Ignore it.”
The eyes of Duke Ashwilt, Arion Ashwilt, returned to their emotionless state.
“Whatever it is they have gone off to do, simply ignore it. It is only their final desperate struggle. Afterward, they will lose their strength and be unable to do anything foolish.”
“Your Grace, are you truly certain this is all right?”
“What would not be all right? I know that child will be infuriatingly safe. I guarantee it. At most, she will crawl back within three days, crying as she begs for my forgiveness.”
Yet one day passed, then two, then the three days he had guaranteed, and they did not return.
It was around then that Vivette’s brothers found a note in her room.
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