Epilogue
Epilogue 6. Sebastian’s Day (2)
—Knock, knock.
“Butler, are you there? An important guest has arrived from the Imperial Palace.”
Just as Max was about to speak, a knock and the call of a servant looking for Sebastian was heard.
“Go ahead.”
With the former Duke’s permission, Sebastian rose. As he headed toward the door with his customarily neat gait, Max’s voice, briefly interrupted, gradually faded behind him.
In the afternoon, as the sun tilted westward. While Sebastian was taking a moment to catch his breath after bustling about due to the Emperor’s sudden and secretive visit:
“Sebastiaaaan!”
“Butler! Butler!”
The two children, appearing from who knows where, clung to Sebastian’s legs like koalas and chattered away.
“Say you’ll come! Okay? Say you’ll come!”
“Come with us, please come with us.”
Sebastian calmly stroked the heads of both children, who seemed encouraged by this and poured out even more words.
“You have to say you’ll come! Grandfathers just laughed and said no! It’s unfair! Unfair grandfathers! Always fighting but pretending to get along at times like this!”
The child, who had lumped together the former Duke Bolshevik and the former Emperor as “grandfathers,” spouted endless words, and the fox-eyed child followed, puffing his cheeks like a blowfish:
“That’s right. And Max too! Max, who’s always wandering around aimlessly, just held his stomach and laughed this time!”
Though he couldn’t understand what they were talking about, just like in the morning, when the child’s blue eyes sparkled like the reflective surface of a lake and the fox-eyed child gripped his pants tightly enough to wrinkle them, Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to refuse.
“Very well.”
“Great! Now we can relax!”
“Relax!”
The children, who had come running silently, disappeared as silently as they had arrived, and Sebastian moved to prepare for the morning.
After morning preparations were complete and just before departing for the opera house:
“You want me to come along?”
“Yes. I’d like Sebastian to accompany us to the opera house as well.”
Despite Riina’s unexpected words, Sebastian showed no surprise beyond a slight twitch of his eyebrow and asked:
“The children have been insisting that the head butler must accompany them because of rumors about a ghost at the opera house.”
Sebastian finally understood what the two children had been so adamant about when they pleaded with him not to refuse.
He bowed with a warm smile, one he rarely displayed.
“I would be delighted to accompany you.”
“You’re too close; it’s difficult to walk. Step back a little.”
“What are you saying, brother? I’m staying this close because I love Sebastian.”
“Me too!”
Despite the red-haired boy’s words, which were tinged with a faint sigh as he neatly swept his hair back, the two children clung even closer to Sebastian, firmly holding his hands.
The boy shook his head at the children, and Einar patted his shoulder and smiled brightly.
“Leave them be. They say the ghost is so frightening.”
No sooner had his words fallen than the children’s shoulders flinched dramatically, and the son, immediately grasping his father’s intention, wore an identical smile to his father’s.
“I see. I hadn’t even thought of that.”
The children pouted at the perfectly synchronized father-son exchange but didn’t move away from Sebastian.
They had decided that being called cowards was better than being enchanted or captured by a scary ghost.
Riina couldn’t help but laugh as she watched the two children who remained attached to Sebastian, suppressing both their childish pride and instincts.
She wondered who they took after to be so honest and susceptible.
Upon arriving at the opera house, the group took their seats in the box that the family always used.
How much time had passed since the opera began?
“There, there, there, gh—!”
“That’s just the background reflected in the lighting.”
Einar answered as the child pointed frantically, and the child stuck close to Sebastian, pressing her lips tightly together.
“If you worry too much, even things that aren’t ghosts will look like ghosts. Try to forget about it.”
The boy lightly flicked the forehead of the child, who had already become alert like a cat with raised fur several times, claiming to see a ghost.
How much more time passed?
The boy’s words seemed to have had an effect, as the two children were more focused on the opera than before.
Then the child irritably brought her hand to her cheek, which kept tickling.
She had tied her hair up tightly before coming, yet she kept feeling her hair moving.
“…Huh?”
The child involuntarily exhaled in surprise as she rubbed her cheek vigorously and found her hand full of dry, sticky hair.
As the child’s blue eyes gradually turned toward her ticklish cheek, the fox-eyed child looked at exactly the same spot.
But their eyes didn’t meet.
Because right next to the child, a ghost with long, flowing hair was smiling with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear.
“Gh… gh… gho—!”
The child couldn’t finish her words and only opened and closed her mouth, while the fox-eyed child froze as if he had fainted while standing.
Despite the child’s voice, which sounded as if she might lose her breath at any moment, the others, who had already been fooled several times by false alarms, were simply focusing on the opera.
But the situation changed when even the boy, who had been carefully observing whenever the child made a fuss, spoke up.
“Father, Mother. I can see it too… it’s a gh-ghost.”
The boy’s face was extremely calm, but his cheeks were completely drained of color.
Sebastian pulled the two children very close to him and continued:
“I can see it too. It’s definitely not human.”
“Indeed. Not human. But it looks like something that can be touched? Aren’t ghosts usually able to pass through things?”
“Not all ghosts are the same. If there’s this kind of ghost, there must be that kind too.”
Not only Sebastian but also Riina and Einar showed neither fear nor surprise or confusion.
Perhaps because they had seen all manner of strange occurrences during the period when absolute “luck” had manipulated them, it was difficult for a mere ghost to cause significant emotional disturbance.
“More importantly, how dare it frighten my children.”
Riina, blooming with a radiant smile, gestured toward Einar while looking at the ghost.
“Darling, can you handle this?”
“If it’s what you want, I’ll make the impossible possible.”
While speaking, Einar simultaneously clenched his fist lightly with an utterly composed face.
At the moment when the opera reached its climax and the actress playing the female lead was singing an aria in the highest note—
—Crack.
The ghost, which had not only frightened people at the opera house but had also physically harmed them, took Einar’s punch squarely to its face, which crumbled with blood trickling down.
The next moment, the ghost, with a somewhat stupefied expression, turned to dust starting from where Einar’s fist had made contact, then scattered like dust in an instant, disappearing without leaving a trace.
The children and the boy, who had been watching the scene in a daze, were snapped back to reality by Einar’s nonchalant voice.
“So I’ve learned that even ghosts are susceptible to punches.”
“Let’s consider that information that might be useful someday.”
Riina, responding just as indifferently, opened her arms to the two children and the boy.
“Come here.”
As if they had been waiting for just those words, the two children rushed toward Riina with tearful faces, and the boy didn’t hesitate to be embraced by her as well.
Since her outstretched arms seemed barely enough to hold them all, Einar wiped his fist with the handkerchief Sebastian handed him, then embraced everyone at once.
“What are you doing?”
At Riina’s casual yet warm gaze, Sebastian, who had been calmly standing in place, smiled brightly and embraced them all with his arms spread as wide as possible.
“You must be quite tired after dealing with the children’s stubbornness today. Go rest now.”
At Riina’s words, Sebastian bowed his head, not a single strand of his hair out of place.
After seeing Einar reach out to Riina, Sebastian calmly closed the door and headed toward his room with composed steps.
“That was quite an interesting story today!”
“I heard the butler was there too!”
“Hahaha! A real ghost, where else would we hear such a story!”
“The Duke’s husband took down a murderer with one blow, and a ghost with one blow too! I wonder what he’ll take down with one blow next!”
After briefly chatting with the servants who were laughing heartily, he returned to his room and immediately approached a drawer in one corner.
—Click.
Taking out a small notebook from the first drawer, he slowly turned the pages from the beginning.
This small notebook was filled with records left by previous generations of Sebastians, and the records of the current Sebastian—him—also occupied a portion.
“Let’s see, ghosts.”
As Sebastian searched for the word “ghost” in the records, he found an entry about a young lady who had suddenly become a member of the Bolshevik family through dimensional travel sometime in the past.
As he slowly traced through the records, Sebastian shook his head.
“This isn’t about a ghost but an adultery scandal. As for real ghosts… There’s nothing.”
Sebastian picked up a pen and calmly recorded the ghost incident at the opera house.
Finally, with only the last sentence remaining, he lightly tapped the pen for a moment before unhesitatingly completing it in one breath.
[Whether on days with special events or ordinary days, I hope days like today continue, where everyone shares their warmth with one another as they fall asleep.]
<THE END>
Moople
Epilogue 1 seems to be a copy of Epilogue 6.
But either way, thank you for the wonderful translation. It’s been a joy to read.