The Girl's First Love (Part One)
The towering citadel of House Bayorn held within its walls a history written entirely in blood—cruel, unrelenting, and absolute.
And somewhere inside that fortress lay a garden so desolate it scarcely deserved the name. The retainers of Bayorn had, in a half-hearted nod to nobility, carved out a space for one. Yet they were barbarians at heart, and so they neither tended it nor cared to. The place had simply been abandoned.
In vulgar terms, it was a wasteland.
— Pat-pat-pat.
Into that forsaken ground a tiny girl came racing as though the very act of running meant freedom at last. Her steps were light, almost dancing with joy.
“Euaah!”
But her eagerness had clearly outstripped her caution. Eyes fixed straight ahead, she never saw the sharp stone jutting from the earth until her foot caught on it and she went sprawling.
Thud-scrape. Even as her body skidded across the rough soil, the girl clutched the precious burden in her arms with desperate strength. Those slender limbs held on as if she would rather die than let a single scratch touch what she carried.
“Ka—Kael!”
The moment she hit the ground she snapped alert and looked down at the little one nestled against her chest. Not even a toddler, really—barely a year had passed since he first drew breath in this world.
“Huu…”
Thankfully the baby she had called out for so frantically was unharmed. He beamed up at her, soft fingers tugging gently at his mother’s cheek.
“I’m sorry. Mommy’s so sorry…”
This empty garden was the only place Darin could truly let her guard down. And today was the one day of the week she was not required to spend the night with her husband. Small wonder, then, that a girl who still dreaded her lord’s bed would be so giddy with relief.
Still, excitement was no excuse for putting her child in danger. Fully aware of her own carelessness, the girl bowed her head and offered the baby a sincere apology.
He could not possibly understand the words, yet the depth of her feeling for him was unmistakable. Perhaps Kael sensed it after all—judging by the bright smile with which he answered his mother’s remorse.
“Hehe… Kael…”
Love for the child overflowed from the girl’s soft eyes. Kael was only one year old, yet already he possessed features so lovely and finely shaped that anyone in House Bayorn would turn to look twice.
But that was not why Darin loved him. After being cast alone into another world and left an orphan, he was the only blood relative who had ever stood on her side.
“Wow… your hands are so tiny.”
Her slender fingers carefully, wonderingly, traced the even tinier ones, as gently as if she were stroking a fragile flower bud.
“…You’re just too cute.”
She saw him every day, yet the one-sided adoration she felt for her own flesh and blood only swelled without end. Darin’s love for Kael was so vast that even the simple flutter of his blue eyes felt unbearably precious.
— Glance left, glance right.
Whether she meant to do something improper or simply to shower him with affection she could never voice aloud, the girl’s head began to swivel, checking every direction.
No one around?
The instant she confirmed it, she struck.
— Smack, smack.
She rained kisses upon her little angel’s cheeks. And that was not all. She nuzzled her face against him, breathing in the sweet baby scent, then pressed her own flat nose to his and rubbed them together.
To a stranger it might have looked like an older sister doting on a much younger brother. Darin was only sixteen, and her face still looked even younger than that.
No matter how big he gets, he’ll only be a little taller than me, right? He’s so small and adorable…
The young mother entertained the silly thought and let the corner of her mouth curl upward, never once imagining that one day this child would tower a full head above her husband.
……
The baby gazed, entranced, at the woman smiling down at him with such radiant beauty. From the day he was born, Kael had often looked upon his mother this way—watching her smile for him like a flower in full bloom.
Even as her own son, no one could regard Darin with complete indifference. Her beauty was so renowned throughout the viscountcy that the Viscount of Bayorn himself—famous for his exacting standards in women—had courted her for a full seven years.
Yes. From the time this girl was only seven years old, long before she had even begun to blossom.
“I’m so glad our Kael is gentle, unlike Daddy.”
It was both a quiet resentment toward the husband who mercilessly claimed her body and a baseless murmur of relief.
“Will you grow up just like this for me?”
Hoping her son would become a gentleman utterly unlike his father, Darin gently stroked the baby’s soft lips. The pliant warmth that yielded even to her delicate fingers, the living heat of an infant’s body—it was a miracle of life that could turn any mother foolish with love.
“Baby, baby. Listen to Mommy for a moment.”
A smile bloomed at the corners of the vermilion-haired girl’s mouth. Joy was not the only thing it held. Today she meant to confide her dream to the only blood she had left in the world.
“Lately I’ve been thinking… if I just waste my days doing nothing, what will the future you think when you look at me?”
Having become a viscountess at so tender an age, the girl’s daily life was painfully monotonous. Six days of the week she spent dating her husband, ending each evening in fierce coupling; the remaining day she spent freely with her child in a separate chamber. That was all.
“At first I only despaired over my life, but I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Darin still could not fully accept that she was a woman. Forced to offer her lower body, day and night, to a man she did not love—how deeply must that have wounded her?
“Because a treasure named you came into my life.”
Yet with time she had arrived at a new resolve. If she continued living in such bitterness, how would her grown son look upon her? He would love her, yes—but he would also pity her. A common-born mother without dignity would become a stain upon her child. That much was certain.
And so Darin had decided, for her son’s sake, to become a true noble wife. Starting from this desolate garden.
— Step, step.
After surveying the grounds a few times and finding nowhere decent to sit, Darin simply settled onto a relatively soft mound of earth.
Perhaps the sudden drop in viewpoint ignited a little boy’s spirit of adventure; Kael began thrashing his arms and legs, eager to crawl across the dirt. Darin quickly gathered him back into her arms to stop him.
“No, baby—come to Mommy!”
The precious body of the future viscount must not be soiled with soil. Sitting on bare earth was something only a commoner girl like herself needed to do.
She settled her son on her lap and slowly stroked his back, helping his digestion after the recent feeding.
“Mommy’s going to grow oranges here.”
The child looked out at the withered flowers and thick weeds before them. He was far too young to speak, and could not truly understand, yet he seemed to grasp that his mother intended to do something in this place.
“Everyone else laughs at the idea. But your mommy, in this life and the last, was always the child of orange farmers. So I know a fair bit more about it than most people.”
Darin continued in a gentle, even voice, adding that even if no one else believed her, she hoped he at least would believe in his mother’s previous life.
“Hehe… when you think about it, your father’s tastes are pretty strange, aren’t they? What does he see in a woman who used to be a man…?”
To the people of this world the claim meant nothing and was impossible to believe. She was a woman now—what did past lives matter? Besides, she had died in middle school after eating an orange, so her life as a man had been short. And Darin herself was more feminine and refined than any other woman, her nature that of a gentle yet strong-willed ideal wife.
That was precisely why the Viscount of Bayorn had pursued her so fiercely. Had she been merely pretty, he would have made her a concubine and used her. He would never have seated her as his legitimate wife.
Yet gentle Kael only blinked and listened attentively to his mother’s words. Darin, moved by the pure gaze so different from his father’s, smiled tenderly and stole another kiss upon the baby’s cheek.
“Here, look at this. This is an orange-tree seed.”
She held out a single seed for the child to see. Her speech still carried a touch of awkwardness, yet she was clearly trying, even now, to adopt the manner of a proper lady.
The child was growing; for a foolish mother to keep thinking of herself as a man would be unforgivable. Parents must not confuse a child who needed to grow up straight and true.
— Fidget, fidget.
Not knowing what it was, Kael pressed the seed between his fingers and looked up at his mother. Of course a one-year-old could not follow the conversation.
There would be so much to teach him as he grew. Rather than fretting over the burdens of child-rearing, Darin held the baby close, filled with hope that he would grow up healthy and strong.
“Starting with this tiny seed, your mother is going to build an orange orchard right here. I want to make Bayorn a prosperous domain and leave you a rich land.”
It was a bold ambition for such a small frame—and all of it for her child rather than herself. Whether the farm succeeded or failed, Kael was truly a blessed child.
For his mother loved him with her whole heart.
“Will you cheer Mommy on? I’ll do everything I can so you never have to envy anyone. Yes—with these hands of mine, not your father’s.”
Perhaps he wished to answer the earnest wish written on his mother’s face. Kael reached up with his small hands and carefully cupped her cheeks.
“…Kael.”
It was surely a meaningless gesture. He simply liked his mother, and her skin was soft, so he wanted to touch it.
But to a girl standing at the edge of a cliff, it was comfort beyond price. Tears welled in Darin’s eyes over something so small. She cradled the child in return and continued her confession.
— Mommy will live looking only at you.
— And I will always be on your side.
— So will you keep loving Mommy from now on?
Overcome with emotion, the young mother carefully embraced the angel she herself had borne and offered one final gesture of affection.
“Thank you, Kael.”
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for becoming the single ray of hope in my powerless life.