"Dirty and filthy thing!"
Thud.
The boy's head turned to the side.
"You're as arrogant as your mother, aren't you, you bastard!"
The boy who had been hiding behind the Duchess poked his head out. His small eyes gleamed with malice from the corners of his eyes that were bruised and bloodshot.
"You're ruining this precious and handsome face! You, a rat born from a lowly bastard, dare to be my son!"
Dante straightened his head and curled his lips.
"You should speak properly, Ma'am."
".... W, what?"
"It's your problem, not mine, that you gave birth to a bunch of guys who would fight and beat me up if all three of them attacked me."
"T, t...... you lowly bastard!"
The Duchess trembled all over at the insult she had never heard before. The Duchess, who was shaking so much that it seemed like she might fall over, shouted at the top of her lungs while slapping the boy.
"Beat that crazy bastard right now!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
As soon as the Duchess left, the sturdy servants came over, giggling.
"Why do you keep irritating your master, Youngest Master?"
"If you're an illegitimate child, you should just live like an illegitimate child, breathing like you're dead, and then take a share of the wealth. Isn't that right?"
"You son of a bitch!"
The boy finally approached and kicked Dante, who was tied up, after confirming that he couldn't resist the servants' beatings.
"You half-assed bastard! You son of a bitch! You feel like you've become something since your father praised you a little. You're the youngest knight, and you're being supported here and there, and now that you're even going on a campaign, do you think you've gained some recognition?"
"..."
"Going on a campaign, asshole. Your father abandoned you! He can't send a legitimate son like you to the battlefield, but as a noble family, he has to set an example, so I sent you, an illegitimate child, to die!"
The boy shouted in anger.
"You're just a thug who knows how to beat people up! When you grow up, you'll be nothing more than a murderer? A knight? Don't make me laugh! You'll just be a human butcher who's used by true nobles like us! You won't be able to do that, and you'll be killed by barbarians soon enough."
The boy, who had been venting his anger for a long time, gasped and spat on the floor.
"Hey, you guys! Throw that kid in the river right now."
"... Huh?"
The servants who had been watching the third young master vent his anger from afar made indifferent faces.
"What! He's going to be killed by barbarians anyway, right? I don't want to see that kid's face even for a day!"
The body that had not yet fully grown tilted over the cliff.
"Oh my! Third Master!"
"Damn it!"
The boy's bewildered face quickly moved away.
"Two-faced."
Dante sneered as he felt the resistance of the air with his whole body. His stupid stepbrother probably didn't really intend to push him away. He probably just wanted to watch himself being slaughtered.
However, he had pushed away his stepbrother who was officially recognized as an illegitimate child after falling for a provocation, so he had committed a terrible self-destructive act. It was on a different level from the Duchess beating him in the name of discipline. He was so stupid that his position in the already narrow Senate might have been destroyed.
"Should I pretend to be missing for a day or two?"
Dante thought as he felt the blue river swallowing his body. Of course, he had to deal with the rope that tied his wrists together first.
"A knot like this will do it in no time... Hmm?"
The two wrists that had been rubbing against each other flinched. A strange sensation touched his fingers. A soft, fluttering, damp thread-like texture. This is...
'Hair?'
Dante's head slowly turned. It was true that he had trained to kill countless times, as his stepbrother had said. However, he had never actually seen a real corpse. Let alone a drowned body.
"..."
When he turned around a beat later, an unrealistic sight was floating down. The figure of a girl who was too small to be a water ghost, but too pale to be a person...
"Ugh!"
A scream burst out for the first time from the corner of his mouth that had never let out anything other than laughter even during the beating.
"Hey, come to your senses. Hey!"
Surprisingly, what Dante pulled out was not a drowned body. It was on the verge of becoming one, though. The girl's small, thin body flopped around like a rag doll whenever he shook it.
'How can someone be this weak?'
Dante was perplexed. Even his pitiful stepbrothers weren't in this state. If he had pressed down on the stomach to make it vomit up the water, he would have worried that he would have dealt the final blow to this fragile life.
"Damn it. Damn it..."
Dante cursed as he faced the dying small body.
'You're just a thug who only knows how to beat people! When you grow up, will you be nothing more than a murderer?'
In fact, there was nothing wrong with what the stupid third one said. Dante had only learned how to beat and kill people and had never learned how to save them.
She was an unlucky child who had been given to him. Her life would have been extended by a few minutes, but her fate would not have changed in the end.
'How could such a small thing have wandered around to end up in a river like this?'
He could not think of many reasons why such a weak girl would have fallen into the strong river. Maybe it was the same reason as his own. An illegitimate child, jealousy from a step-brother, bullying. Stories that were so commonplace and so prevalent.
However, unlike himself, who was born with a disgustingly strong body, this girl was not given that kind of luck. If the price for that was being thrown into the river and drowning, it would have been quite harsh. She was a young body that had not even been given enough time to make a serious mistake. At best, the only sin she had committed was not being born in a proper, correct boat.
"... If you don't want to die, open your eyes!"
Before he knew it, Dante had been shaking the girl vigorously. Then, Dante experienced a certain moment. It was a minor miracle. But it was a strangely dazzling sight that made him doubt his vision. Her pure white cheeks fluttered, her eyelashes that were like butterfly wings fluttered once, and her green eyes were revealed beyond them.
Blink, blink.
The stepmother had her maids carefully polish the emerald brooch that was worth the price of a castle, and her eyelids were covered several times before she finally made eye contact with the boy.
***
"Cough, cough, sniff."
"..."
"I'm, sorry. It's still a little cold..."
Even though he hadn't said anything, the girl glanced at Dante and whined.
Haa.
When Dante let out a sigh without realizing it, her small body visibly flinched. Why was she so afraid of her savior as if he were a scoundrel?
The girl's body shook and trembled without warning as if to assert with her whole body that this was the first time she had ever suffered this much since she was born. In the midst of all this, seeing her even look at him made him feel like a really bad villain.
'What's an illegitimate child?'
Dante snickered as he looked down at her with his narrowed eyes. The thought he had for a moment before that girl woke up was funny. The girl who opened her eyes was a girl who had been loved and raised with a plump body. Her pale cheeks, her white, beautiful arms without a single scar, her well-groomed hair. The evidence of her affection oozing from every part of her body. Strictly speaking, the girl was much better suited to the role of looking down on the illegitimate child her father had acquired by playing around with outside, rather than having a stepmother. Of course, he can't imagine her abusing her stepbrother with those small, shabby hands.
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