Episode 119
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 119
Chapter 9: Y:\DECPCORP - Game\Destined\Character\Kain Rorre\Side story\\!error!
The sound of his mother wailing in a crumbling house, abandoned by his father. The back of his stepfather, who’d taken in a woman with a child for her pretty face, now screaming that she looked like death every day as he raised his hand to her.
And that night, the chilling voice of his mother—her hair the same color as his—asking through clenched teeth.
“Why did you have to look like me?”
Of all Cain Rorre's memories, this was the first.
Cold moonlight glittered on his mother’s platinum blonde hair. The little boy silently looked up at his mother’s face, haggard and worn from the agony of betrayal.
The woman rubbed her red, swollen forehead with the back of her hand and gave a resigned smile.
“It would have been better if you looked like your father.”
Duke Rorre had whispered words of love to her, a commoner. The naive woman fell for his sweet-talk, giving him her body and soul. After all his sweet promises, the Duke abandoned her without even making her his mistress.
He even feigned ignorance of the child she bore, claiming he couldn’t be sure the boy was his since their hair colors were different. To add insult to injury, he shamed her, asking who knew what other men she’d been with.
Misery flickered in his mother’s empty blue eyes.
“Why do you look like me…”
His mother stroked the cheek of her son, who was just as beautiful as she was. The child read the worry, the concern, and the affection in her fingertips.
He didn't realize until much later that a faint hatred and a deep weariness had also been laced into that touch. That realization came only after he watched them pull his mother’s body from the river—she had thrown herself in the moment he’d fallen asleep.
The boy stood in the middle of the murmuring crowd that had gathered by the river.
“That’s what happens when you sleep around.”
“I mean, why the Duke… She was just too greedy, tsk tsk…”
Holding his mother’s cold hand, Cain grit his teeth in anguish at the crowd’s attitude, turning his mother into a cautionary tale. No, my mother wasn’t the kind of person you can just gossip about like that…
Betrayed by a love for which she had given everything, the woman had endured ten long years out of a sense of responsibility for her child, only to finally crumble and vanish. Yet the people’s reaction to this woman who had held on for as long as she could was nothing but cold.
“Damn it, I’ll have to get remarried.”
His stepfather spat on the ground before his mother’s grave and turned away without a second thought. Cain lowered his head, shivering as the cold wind chapped his tear-soaked cheeks.
With no gloves to wear, the boy wiped his tears with the back of his hands, raw from the biting wind, and clasped them together in a habitual prayer.
‘Oh God, if you exist, please kill that man. Please make him suffer the greatest pain imaginable. And please let my mother…’
The prayer faltered. Ask for her to be brought back to life? Her son knew all too well that life had been nothing but pain for her. Hesitantly, the boy forced himself to finish.
‘Please, let my mother rest in a good place. A place where there is no cold, and no man who raises his fist…’
In the end, the boy could not bring himself to wish for his mother’s return.
A week after the night that was too shabby to be called a funeral, the Duchess, whom he had never seen before, paid him a visit. The woman, her middle age hidden under a thick layer of makeup, asked.
“So you’re my husband’s son.”
Her eyes were so indifferent it was chilling. Her face, as if judging his worth, stared intently at Cain.
Presently, with a jingle, a few gold coins fell onto the table. Following the Duchess, who gestured for him to come, Cain climbed into the carriage.
As the boy cowered in the luxurious carriage—the first he’d ever ridden—the Duchess delivered her verdict.
“You will be adopted into the House of Rorre.”
As if she couldn’t care less about a reply, the Duchess simply stared out the window. She let out a small, dry laugh and shot Cain a look one might give a filthy rat.
“To think all the children I bore would be struck down by an epidemic.”
“…”
“My husband is too old to father new ones… and I have no desire to be held by a body that’s been rolling around with some bitch from God knows where. I’m truly sick of it all. So it’s only wise to make use of what’s available.”
Having finished her unkind explanation, the Duchess met Cain’s eyes for the first time. Only the clatter of the moving carriage filled the space. Staring into the boy’s red eyes, frozen with tension, the woman scoffed.
“By the way, for him to say a child who looks just like you doesn’t resemble him… my husband has quite the conscience. You look exactly the same, except for the hair.”
In that moment, the boy came to hate his own face.
*
His father, whom he had never seen before, was older than he’d expected. The Duke flew into a rage, demanding to know if they were truly planning to make the son of some street woman with no background the heir to their prestigious house.
Listening from the side, Cain couldn’t help but let out a dumbfounded laugh. If his pride was so important, he should never have met his mother in the first place. He should never have let him be born.
“Then you can be the one to tell everyone. That the master of the ducal house that runs this country is now too old to father a child.”
“That’s a problem with your body!”
“Is it? Then perhaps I should let another man hold me and place his child in your arms?”
The Duchess’s lips formed a thin, dry line, silencing her husband before he could explode.
“All men have bastards. You are so noble, isn’t any child you father, regardless of the mother, worthy of being the heir? I can even embrace this bastard of yours, so don’t be ashamed. Be proud.”
Once he was officially part of the ducal family, life became ridiculously easy. He no longer had to spend his nights shivering in the cold, and warm bread was served at every meal. But every night, the boy prayed, yearning for salvation.
The Duchess dragged Cain to every social event, repeatedly parading him around like an exhibit.
In public, she was the benevolent wife who loved even her husband’s mistakes, but the moment they were out of sight, she instantly turned cold. There was no abuse, but there was no interest, either.
At first, Cain thought she hated him, but he soon realized her behavior stemmed from the fastidiousness of the upper class.
She hated even touching him. Her face was a mask of disgust, as if she feared the product of infidelity and his lowly blood would rub off on her.
The surprising thing was that, despite all this, she was the only sane person in the Duke’s mansion. At the very least, she was someone who knew how to stop Cain with a stern word when he did something wrong. She had no affection, but she had common sense.
The Duke, on the other hand, was so cheerful and affectionate that he seemed nothing like the man who had coldly abandoned Cain’s mother.
At first, he avoided the product of his own infidelity, but he changed his attitude when his son began to show promise in various areas during his education as an heir.
The discrepancy made Cain sick. There wasn’t a shadow of guilt on the face of the father who personally taught him to ride and shoot.
“It’s nice to have a young son.”
“…Yes.”
“I’d like for us to get along from now on. Please make some time for me often.”
The boy was thrown into confusion. It was strange that the man who had driven his mother to her death could be so kind to him. But for a boy who had never received such kindness, it was difficult to feel nothing but disgust for the man.
He was the murderer who killed his mother, and at the same time, the only person in this desolate mansion who treated him with warmth.
I want to hate him. But I can’t.
If he hated this man, his father, who treated him so warmly, he felt as if he would be the one in the wrong.
The Duchess was indifferent to him, only paying attention when he misbehaved. The only person with whom he could share any emotional connection was his own mother’s killer.
The inability to be true to his own feelings, to hate with all his heart, was slowly killing him. His misplaced anger found a strange outlet.
“Y-Young Master…!”
The servants discovered the little duke snipping away at the pet parrot’s wings with a pair of scissors.
The Duchess was furious. Or rather, she was about to be. She turned to the boy, who had been cutting the wings of the bird as it writhed in pain, his own expression innocent.
“You…! Why on earth would you do such a thing?”
“I want to play with it, but it keeps trying to fly away.”
Just as the Duchess opened her mouth to give the grumbling little duke a sharp reprimand, the Duke, sitting beside them, burst out laughing.
“You’ve got real talent!”
Instead of scolding the boy, the Duke sat the child on his lap and whispered in his ear. If you want something, go after it by any means necessary. The one who will inherit the House of Rorre has a duty to be greedy. The long speech ended with these words:
“Because you are very, very special…”
Ah, so it wasn’t really wrong. Having come to this realization, the boy nodded as if in a trance. The Duchess opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. A mumble escaped her twitching lips.
“I don’t know anymore.”
Those were the last words she ever spoke to them. The Duchess then walked out of the room.
Thud. The sound of the door closing. With that sound, she never again exchanged a word with the father and son. On the rare occasion they crossed paths in the hall, she would only look at them with contempt.
But it was okay.
“You are a very proud and special being.”
It was okay because, from the day he’d torn the parrot apart, the Duke’s favor had only grown.
And so, he learned to gain affection by harming others. It was important to him, even if that affection came from a father he loathed so much he wanted to kill him. To keep from withering away, he had to accept his father’s affection.