Chapter 172
The headmistress had seen eyes like those before.
Children who had learned to give up far too early.
Children whose cries and laughter went unheard by anyone around them, until they stopped speaking altogether.
Those were the kind of eyes that child had.
The headmistress was frozen, unsure what to do, when the innkeeper’s wife — half of the married couple who owned the place — came over and tugged at her arm.
“Hey, do you have any idea how much money’s on the table today? The guy’s drunk out of his mind and bet a huge sum! If you’re going to ruin the game like this, go do it somewhere else. Go on!”
The wife yanked her toward the door.
“If you pity the brat so much, you can pay for it and take it yourself.”
Her gaze gleamed with thinly veiled expectation.
Still lying face-down, the trembling child caught her attention again.
Normally, no matter how much the kid begged, they would eventually get up and head into the forest. But today — today the child was strangely defiant.
This has never happened before. That kid’s never talked back this much.
Usually, just the threat of being thrown out would send the child scurrying toward the woods in terror.
That difference weighed on the wife’s mind.
It’s true the brat’s been getting thinner lately.
At an age when other children would be growing rapidly, this one was only wasting away.
Even their strength seemed gone — just yesterday, while scrubbing the inn floor, the child had coughed constantly, pausing again and again to catch their breath.
Usually, a single warning to “get out” would make the little hands move faster. But yesterday, the child had just crouched there silently.
At this rate… that kid really might die.
It wasn’t like other children, never babbling nonsense.
And if what she said came true — if the child really were eaten by wolves tonight…
The loss of a servant wasn’t even the issue; the large wager at stake today weighed heavier on her mind.
But if this woman would pay to take the child away…
That’d be perfect for both of us.
The kid had gotten too weak to work properly anyway.
Honestly, they could dump the brat behind the inn and it wouldn’t even count as a loss.
But if she could sell that useless thing for as much as the money bet tonight—how good would that be?
The local lord’s started poking around too…
Even though a special law for war orphans had been passed ages ago, their local lord found it a nuisance.
So when the inspector came by, a few drinks and snacks had been enough to make him leave without writing the child’s name in the records.
But now that the lord was aiming for a position in the capital, he’d begun organizing every document in the territory.
Sooner or later, that child’s existence would be discovered.
Better to sell it off before then.
And this guest — ever since she saw the child, she hadn’t been able to look away.
There are always soft-hearted types like her.
Every once in a while, there were guests who were unusually weak to children.
She’d tried suggesting a few times that they could “buy” one and take it along, but no one had ever agreed — the price had always been too high.
Still… this one doesn’t look rich either.
That was when the headmistress spoke.
“How much do you want?”
The wife cheered inwardly.
Looked like she’d found a real fool today.
“Well, I’ve been raising it since it was just a baby. It only started working recently…”
That was a lie.
They’d put the kid to work the moment it could talk and understand orders.
“I suppose… about ten thousand should do.”
The headmistress flinched.
By coincidence, that was exactly the amount she had managed to recover today.
If she didn’t save the child and went back with the money instead, her orphanage’s children could eat well for two or three months.
Even without it, they wouldn’t starve — but lately the kids were eating better, and with winter approaching, she wanted to buy more supplies.
To save one child, she’d have to give all that up.
She thought of the other teachers at the orphanage sighing, saying, “We can’t save every child in the world.”
They weren’t wrong.
But still…
But still—
At that moment, the headmistress met the child’s eyes.
The child didn’t even beg for life, just stared blankly at her — a child who, if nothing changed, would be sent alone into the forest that very night.
The moment their gazes met, the headmistress bent down and lifted the child into her arms.
They said the child was five, but their body was lighter than a straw scarecrow.
“Here. Take it.”
She threw the purse in her arms to the innkeeper couple and walked straight out.
As she searched for another inn that night, she whispered gently to the trembling child in her arms.
“Come with me. Everything will be all right now.”
“……”
The child didn’t answer — only reached out tiny arms and wrapped them around her neck.
“…After that, it took a long journey to bring her to the orphanage in the city of Ellam,” the headmistress said.
“At first she was terrified of people, but soon she began to smile again, playing with other children her age.”
She was frighteningly bright.
A child who never forgot what she saw once, who understood ten things after being taught just one.
No one had ever taught her to read, yet after hearing a few fairy tales read aloud, she deciphered the letters on her own and soon learned arithmetic.
The headmistress had wanted to send her to school, but circumstances didn’t allow it.
Even though the teachers praised her brilliance, the postwar conditions were harsh. She had to pay her tuition by cleaning classrooms.
Then one day, the girl came running, breathless, holding something in her small hands.
“What’s that?”
“A candy! Strawberry flavor!”
It was her favorite thing in the world — the very first treat she’d ever eaten at the orphanage.
“Someone bought them for us! I wanted to give this one to you, Headmistress!”
Then she clasped the woman’s hand tightly.
“You saved me! I like you the most!”
That day, the headmistress had placed the candy on her desk and cried for a long, long time.
How could a child who’d suffered so much still think of others before herself?
After that, the headmistress continued telling small, everyday stories from the orphanage without stopping.
Clois listened to every single word, not missing a thing.
They were stories about his daughter — stories of how she’d grown up without him.
To him, they were more precious than anything.
“…And then she was accepted into the academy for gifted children, which is how she came here.”
The long tale ended, and the headmistress took a sip of tea.
A warm, heavy silence filled the space between them.
Clois brushed a hand over his face, trying to digest everything he had just heard about Ivi’s past.
Both their eyes were red.
After a long pause, Clois finally spoke in a hoarse voice.
“I… I was going to end my life.”
The headmistress looked up in shock.
Clois — young, handsome, praised as the most capable emperor in the empire’s history.
Under his rule, the nation had recovered from war and reclaimed its place as the continent’s strongest power.
And yet, the man who had led them all was saying he’d wanted to die.
“Since the day I became emperor, there hasn’t been a single day I didn’t think about it.”
Even as peace returned, that thought never left his mind.
He had no reason to go on living anymore.
The woman he loved — and the one he should have loved most — had long since left his side.
Once he chose a successor to inherit the throne, the ministers who had supported him would handle the rest.
But he could never carry out the thought.
He had no reason to live — yet one reason he must not die.
Every time he visited the graves of his wife and daughter, he remembered what the priests had said.
“They say those who take their own lives fall to the very bottom of the underworld.”
Clois didn’t believe in gods. But he wanted to believe in an afterlife.
Because then… he might see his wife and daughter again.
“But… if I gave up on my own… I felt like I would never see them again. My child would be calling for me, and I’d never hear her voice…”
His throat closed up, and he couldn’t continue.
If he had made that choice back then… what would have happened?
Ivi had once told him the real reason she came to the capital — to find her mother and father.
If she had arrived after he’d already given up everything…
Just imagining it made the ground beneath him feel like it was collapsing.
His daughter, searching for him in a world without him.
Clois lowered his head, unable to hide his reddened eyes.
“Thank you. Truly… thank you. If not for you, Ivi would not be in this world today.”
“No, Your Majesty. Ivi is alive because of you.”
The headmistress shook her head firmly.
“This isn’t modesty. The money I paid for Ivi that night — that was the same amount I had recovered from a merchant who’d scammed us. Even after reporting it, I’d thought we’d never see it again. But because that money was tied to the orphanage, the local lord handled it immediately. When I thanked him, he told me something.”
She recalled the lord’s words.
‘You’re lucky. The Emperor himself just issued a decree to prioritize all matters concerning orphanages. If not for that, this would’ve taken ages.’
If not for that imperial order, she never would have gotten the money back — and never could have taken Ivi away that night.
The headmistress stood and bowed deeply to Clois.
“Truly, thank you, Your Majesty, for the grace you’ve shown to the children. Because of it, even if it’s not much, they no longer go hungry in winter. They have warm clothes, and now they can dream about what they want to become.”
She bowed lower.
“Thank you for saving Ivi — and so many other children. Your Majesty.”
She swallowed her tears.
People had said the scars of war would last for decades — how many children must have struggled in those years?
But because the emperor had devoted himself so fiercely to rebuilding and protecting the poor, the empire had found stability quickly.
There was food, there were warm homes, and people learned to share.
Life was still hard, but there were always those willing to help.
If anyone else had been emperor, such kindness would never have existed.
As the two shared their gratitude—
Creak.
The door opened, and light spilled into the room as Ivi entered.
“Headmistress!”
Tears were already streaming down her face before she even stepped inside. She ran straight into the woman’s arms.
“Teacher! I—I missed you so much! Hic—!”
“My dear Ivi, have you been well?”
The headmistress pressed her tear-streaked face against the girl’s cheek.
Seeing Ivi cry for the first time filled her with indescribable pride.
Now, this child could cry — because she had people beside her to share her sorrow and listen.
Watching them, Clois suddenly asked, as if remembering something.
“Come to think of it, she didn’t have a name back at the inn. Why did you name her ‘Ivi’?”
It was quite a coincidence — the name “Ivi,” a shortened form of her original name Evevien.
“Oh, that…” The headmistress smiled through her tears.
“All the teachers and I spent the whole day trying to come up with a name. We couldn’t decide, and the next morning, when I sat at my desk, someone had already written ‘Ivi’ on her papers.”
A strong, neat handwriting — as if the name had always belonged to her.
“So the new child became Ivi.”
“The window had been open, and leaves were scattered all over the floor… yet the paper didn’t move, even in that wind.”
She had asked everyone in the orphanage, but no one admitted to writing it.
Then who had?
“…It was truly mysterious,” she said softly.
At her words, Clois turned toward the window.
The wind brushed the leaves outside, making them rustle together.
And faintly — in between those sounds — he thought he heard a bright, familiar laughter.
