"They made it out, huh?"

"Yes, Lord Luke it seems."

Lord Luke and I were tailing the Young Lord, Sir Mael, and Lady Ramia on their way to the Lower District.

When Lord Luke arrived at the castle two days ago to bring Lady Ramia back to their castle, the Young Lord instructed me to summon Lord Luke in his room quietly.

I was expecting him to bring up his mother’s whereabouts, but that wasn't the case. Instead, he told us about his project to venture with Lady Ramia and Sir Mael to the Lower District; when we asked him why he wanted to go there, he just said he simply wanted to visit the place; I, having lived there for a small part of my life, didn't know exactly what could be interesting there.

Allowing underage noble children to venture unattended in the Lower District was obviously not a good idea, but with Lord Luke and I stealthily watching over them, they should have had the same level of security as if they were tightly escorted by guards, and the young Lord was well aware of that fact, which is why he was bold enough to venture it, Lord Emilien.

As expected of the Young Lord.

I could tell by Lord Luke's expression that he was hesitant to allow their short trip, but he was in no position to refuse one of the Young Lord's first personal requests. At the end of the day, he had no choice but to accept, and thus we found ourselves, tailing them.

"I must say, I wasn't expecting him to be this way. He doesn't resemble anything you and Mathilda described in the letters. From what I've read, I expected him to be as reserved as the young Mael. "

Since we arrived at Edouard's castle, I've discovered many sides of the Young Lord that I hadn't expected to see, or to be exact, sides that were so normal that they became abnormally unexpected coming from him.

"Maybe it's the influence of having friends his age range around him, but back when he was in the Rosetta Manor, he was as we described in the letters."

I must admit that I didn't like the Young Lord at first.

I had a very respectable position in the Ducal castle just before being assigned to the Rosetta Manor at the time; the only people I still had to bow to were my Lord, his family members, and other members of the nobility.

I could confidently declare at the time that I had reached my pinnacle as a commoner, that I had attained a position that a person with no background like myself could only dream of.

But everything changed when Lord Luke told me he needed me to go to the Rosetta Manor to look after his son, and that only Mathilda and I were the ones he could trust with that task.

I wasn't told who the mother was at the time, so I assumed the young Lord had an affair with a noble girl and kept the child's birth hidden, but as I arrived at the manor, and saw the child, I realized how wrong I was.

The child was a carbon copy of a young commoner girl I'd seen several times as Lord Luke's former valet; the only thing he'd kept from Lord Luke was the Aubrecht family's crimson eyes.

I didn't know what was going on, but I knew what I was supposedly expected to do: take care of the Lord's child to the best of my ability.

And, as horrible as it may sound, the fact that I was caring for my Lord's only son didn't make me feel any better about being sent to the Rosetta manor, a place in the middle of nowhere and, more importantly, a place so close to the barrier;

After the five hellish years I'd spent in the legion, I wanted to keep the greatest distance possible between myself and the barrier, and yet I somehow managed to be stuck in that place so close to it.

Despite being told to look after the child, I did my best to keep a safe distance from him at the time for three reasons:

First and foremost, I didn't want to, and with Mathilda nearby, I didn't have to interact with the child in the first place.

Second, the child was strange, downright creepy. He almost never cried, which was very disturbing given that he wasn't mute or had any kind of deformation that could explain his silence.

Finally, I didn't want to grow too attached to the child because, at the time, I believed he could die at any moment.

The Young Lord was frequently afflicted by unexplainable fevers during his first two years of life, and each time they occurred, they never failed to bring him to the brink of death. These fevers have been occurring at a recurring rate of about once every two weeks for the past two years.

Even though I hadn't experienced it myself, I could tell how painful these fevers were for him; after all, it was only during these fevers that we could occasionally hear him crying, making the whole thing that much more unpleasant and even painful to witness, even to the uncaring soul.

The most perplexing aspect of those fevers was that they would always disappear after a day, leaving no trace or aftermath; the following day, the child himself didn't seem to remember anything from the previous day.

His periodic fevers ended abruptly when he turned two, and he never had them again.

When he fainted on his birthday, it reminded me of the fevers he had before his two years, and it seems I wasn't the only one who thought so; Mathilda was also concerned it would be the case when the young Lord told her he had fainted.

On the other hand, the Young Lord doesn't seem to remember anything of these fevers, which makes sense; after all, it's normal for someone to have no memory of what happened before his first two years.

But still, even after the illness baffling vanished, I still tried to keep a certain distance between us, not because I didn't appreciate him or because he was strange or anything, but because of guilt. As the years passed, I realized how selfish and detestable I was for blaming an innocent child for the way things went in my life.

I used to leave everything related to the child to Mathilda, but when she was summoned to assist in the birth of Lord Luke's second son, I was forced to take care of him myself.

And it wasn't even two or three days after he was in my care that he was caught in an accident that resulted in a dislocated shoulder.

What follows may come across as cruel, downright detestable, but if I could go back in time and avoid that accident, I would not, for the young Lord and I were able to open up to one another as a result of that accident; we weren't as close as he was with Mathilda, but we had our own way of interacting with one another.

As strange as it may sound, to me, it was thanks to that accident that I was promoted from being Syrius the Ex-Head Attendant to Syrius, the Young Lord Ronandt's butler.

And for the time being, I thoroughly enjoy this position.

Later, in the plaza

"Look, they're talking to a suspicious old man; are you sure we shouldn't get involved?" Lord Luke pointed to the man behind the stall the children were checking.

Well, the man was indeed fishy, or, to be somewhat more precisely, drunk.

"They just jumped from the highest windows of an enormous castle; I doubt this old man poses any danger to them."

"Syrius! Syrius!" Luke exclaimed. "Look, the old man has been replaced by a boy."

The child exchanged some words with the trio before the young lord paid him for some fruit.

The Young Lord had never purchased anything in his life, yet he looke-

Actually, never mind.

Once they got what they wanted, they left their ways. I let Luke go ahead and follow them while I approached the stall where the young boy and the drunk man were.

"What can I do for you, my good Sir?" the child said, proving how experienced he was with handling customers.

"How much for the Lamoty?" I stated, while pointing at the fruit the trio earlier brought.

"It’s only for one medium Sato Sir."

"It's odd because I swear I saw and heard you earlier selling these for three medium sato to your previous customers."

"Guh… that was… "

It seems that my Young Lord still doesn’t have a firm grasp of the real value of money.

"Be it the last time I see you scamming people as you did before. The next time I see you doing it, I will personally take care of bringing you to the city prison. "

"I won't make that mistake again, Sir," the boy said, apologitically, head bowed.

I knew deep down that everything he said was a charade. But I had no time to waste with him, I soon caught up with Luke, who was still closely tailing the trio.

They were passing through an alley that had been transformed into a bazaar selling more or less everything.

Like the children they were, they were curious, inspecting every booth and shop until they came to a halt in front of a woman-owned stall.

"Syrius, take a look! Look at their faces, I think the woman said something strange. "

While looking at the woman, the trio openly displayed disgusted expressions.

The woman looked at them with amusement while they were talking, then burst out laughing. She then said something to the three of them before they hurriedly resumed their journey.

As soon as they were gone, Luke emerged, heading straight for the woman.

"Did you say anything to the kids earlier?"

"Huh?"

"What did you say to the three children earlier?"

"Ah, they thought Dog-hot was really made of dog meat," the woman said before bursting out laughing once again.

After confirming that she had not said anything unusual, Luke breathed a sigh of relief before we resumed our missions.

Someone appears to be very enthusiastic about his babysitting session.

After following them from a safe distance for quite some time again, we noticed that they eventually ended up in a location that both Lord Luke and I were very familiar with.

It was a square with a massive tree in the center.

The tree is a well-known symbol of the culture and heritage of Beaufort.

The Hazo is known as the "Eternal Tree."

Even in the dead of winter, the Hazo never loses its leaves, nor do its leaves turn brown.

The commoners of Beaufort and even some nobles believe that Kiady the Eternal blessed this tree and that bringing your child to play under it at least once a year will ensure him one year of good health.

Once, when Lord Damian became ill and Lord Emilien was absent from Beaufort, Mathilda decided to bring him here, and miraculously, he recovered a few days later. After that incident, Mathilda made a habit of bringing Lord Damian, Luke, and Phillip beneath this tree each year.

For the old man that I am, seeing Lady Ramia, Sir Mael, and the Young Lord sitting on a bench under the shade of a tree was a lovely, nostalgic, and melancholy sight.

Lovely because that's how they appeared to me.

It made me nostalgic because it reminded me of a time when their parents were in their place beholding that great tree.

Melancholic because I knew, like their parents, there would come a time when they wouldn't be able to come here together.