Became the Hated Illegitimate Son of the Duke in Romance Fantasy

3 – Episode 3

An old man in a suit and nose glasses picked me up and started carrying me to the carriage.

Yes, I lifted it as if I were moving a pillow on a bed.

The inside of the carriage was bigger than expected.

No, it seemed to be wider than the shack I used to live with my children.

A soft-looking sofa and a small black table in the middle.

There is a small lantern on the top to keep it bright at night, and there is a large window with ornate decorations and gold and silver jewelry on the side.

A woman whose right face is bright and her left face is dark in the sunlight coming in from the window sits calmly, lifts a teapot, and pours tea into a teacup.

And he handed it to me.

“Drink.”

I nod my head once, smell the incense once, then drink the tea.

Perhaps it was still a child’s body, the bitter taste was stronger than the scent.

“How can it be that just looking at the face is the same?

You look just like your father.”

“… ….”

“Shouldn’t I have just killed your mother rather than drive her out?

I didn’t know how to treat a baby like this.”

What kind of answer should I answer?

The woman just threw up a story that I didn’t know anything about and that it would be difficult to answer.

Even so, as if recalling the past, his eyes were looking at me, but he seemed to be looking at something else.

“He resembles my mother even in the absence of an answer.”

You should know something.

I don’t have much memory left.

Aside from the memory of calling me Eric and spilling a bowlful of tears and leaving it on the street.

I wasn’t too resentful.

I don’t know the name, I don’t know anything, and it’s not like we were affectionate.

“Don’t you want to stay in an orphanage or something like that?”

The woman asks a question with a little expectation, as if she would put me in that terrible place again if I said yes.

But, of course, I deny it.

“Who would want to stay in a place like that?”

“You didn’t answer, so I couldn’t even say a word properly, but you seem to be doing well.”

I look outside through the window on the carriage.

I was making my way out of the slums very slowly.

The woman said that my answer was funny, so she slightly raised the corner of her mouth and gave an affirmative answer.

“Hey, who wants to stay in such a terrible place?”

What a terrible place.

Isn’t that harsh?

Because it’s just a fact.

Rather than answering, I looked out the window to see if I wanted to check the facts one more time.

I see miserable people.

If they remain in the slums until they become adults, they are miserable people who cannot even do decent work.

Even if their bodies are fine, all they have in their heads is the wild life here.

A man rips off passers-by or people who use the window.

Women are exposing their bodies and struggling to please buy themselves.

Pillars stand next to it and promote their wives.

Perhaps if I had stayed in the orphanage, I would have been similar to him.

I would have lived as a pillar, clinging to Belita’s side.

When you receive a customer, you check their face and collect money… A life you don’t want to live.

Luckily it was off.

Perhaps it was fixed from the time I landed here.

To be honest, I had a premonition about half of it.

Eric, I knew that Eric was my name.

She used to call me Eric when the woman who seemed to have abandoned me appeared in her dreams.

So I also called myself.

My name is Eric.

And then news begins to come in.

The big news that comes from a decent neighborhood, saying it’s a mess.

And then something flashes in my memory.

The novels I read before I ended up in this f*cking slum.

No way, it must be a coincidence, I deny it with the same words.

In the end, he said that it seemed like he was in a novel, and ended up affirming it without hesitation.

And I think about whether there was a person named Eric.

Something was caught in my head, but I wasn’t sure.

The name Eric must be so common here.

If this is the case, how nice it would have been if it had been dropped here at least when I was getting on the carriage.

In the cold winter last year, 26 children tried to sleep together, but all six children near the wall froze to death because they could not stand the cold.

Also, we had to bury the frozen children, but the ground was frozen so even a shovel, let alone a hand, could not go in well.

In the end, when spring came and the rotten smell came out of the corpse and the maggots grew, they dug up the ground and buried the children.

And there were no children crying while looking at it.

Because it was a very natural routine that we go through every winter.

Perhaps only a few who were close to the dead children shed a few tears.

The director has never seen anything helpful, except for the occasional moldy bread.

I heard that the money coming down from above is quite good, but why does the bread they bring always look like that?

I never did anything really helpful.

It was us who dug up the ground and buried it, not the damn director.

“… Where am I going now?”

“Then I will go to the family mansion.

And there you will meet my father, in other words, your father.”

“Mmm.”

“You are not surprised.

When I chose you, when I told you your name, when I asked you to go see your father.”

“…… I don’t know what to answer.”

I was surprised.

When the woman took me away, she was obviously surprised.

The first time I saw the article, the time when the butler suddenly picked me up and put me in the carriage.

But it couldn’t be revealed through the expression.

Maybe it became a habit.

“It has been done.

Once you return to the mansion, change your clothes, wash your body, and cut it.

Because now you have a smell that is hard to even describe as a stench.”

I look at my hands and legs here and there.

When was the last time you washed it?

When was the last time you washed your clothes?

Black swarms clung to her whole body as if it were her skin, and it had been a long time since her clothes that were supposed to be white had become too close to black.

My hands have calluses and I can’t cut my nails, so there’s a lot of black swarms underneath them.

It’s a relief that I’m wearing shoes.

I don’t know what’s going on under my feet.

It’s been three weeks since I haven’t taken off my shoes.

Ah, yes.

At least more than living in that doggy neighborhood… It will be better

It must have been almost three hours since I got on the carriage, and the scenery outside began to slowly change.

It is not a city where people are gathered, but a plain, and farmers who farm there are wandering around.

Even if it wasn’t a smile on his face, he didn’t seem dissatisfied with what he was doing.

Seeing that even the humans who hoe themselves have a little bit of flesh, I think it must be a really good place to live.

Seeing the children running around and playing in the distance, I felt like I was letting them hang out with their peers rather than helping them with their work.

Because it looks like they are up on a hill digging plants, picking flowers, and playing tag.

“Do you want to play with those kids too?”

I didn’t answer.

As if the woman didn’t really want an answer, she just looked out the window again.

As the carriage goes further, you can see a garden with all kinds of flowers blooming along the winding road.

I think first of all, how much money will I have to spend to create a place like this?

And after passing the garden full of flowers, you start to see a building that could be called a large palace.

“Baby, stop looking out the window and get ready to get out.”

“Yes.”

It was much more comfortable than riding a horse carriage.

Did the wheel have some kind of magic applied to it that only the famous aristocrats use?

The carriage stops even though the mansion is far away.

Then the door opens and the woman steps down the stairs, holding the hand of one of her knights as in front of her orphanage,

Since I am still a mean orphan, no one seems to want to touch my body.

I don’t know what to do on the inside, but on the outside, they look like children. Do these people have no sympathy?

The threshold of the carriage door was higher than I thought, so even if I tried to get out with my legs carefully, it was too high compared to my body.

If I go down like this, I feel like my ankles are about to break.

I wish I could drop you off.

The stairs are also removed, so what is this?

“Butler, instead of the main building, take him to the annex building to wash and change his clothes before bringing him back.”

“Yes, I understand. Lady.”

Fortunately, the woman ordered her butler, and he lifted me from the wagon and put me on the floor.

And the knight standing next to him looks at me like a bug.

“Bocchan, let’s go this way.

First of all, I need to clean myself before meeting my master.”

He held out his right hand to me as if asking for his hand before walking away.

But I’m reluctant to catch it.

Because there was a lot of soot, dust, and all sorts of dirty things on the calluses.

“Oh, don’t mind the dirty stuff.

You’ll be washing yourself soon anyway.”