The Softest And Cutest Of The Dukes - Chapter 67

CHAPTER 67

The next day.

Because my father announced it was my birthday yesterday, the birthday cake was prepared a day late. 

When I saw candles on the rice cake cake, I made a disappointed face. When told to blow out the candles, I did so with a dry “huff” and finished. What was this rice cake cake among all the cakes?

With a slightly disappointed expression, I looked ahead, and the Eastern nobles hurriedly offered something to me.

“It’s a birthday present for young lady Panteur.”

I stuck my head out of my father’s embrace and smiled when I realized it was a gift.

“Rafi, you’re drooling. Who do you take after to be so greedy?” 

“Am I like father?”

“Hmm? You do take after father. That’s right. Let’s say you take after Father.”

Seeing the precious things the nobles offered, I expressed great satisfaction.

“Thank you. I’ll treasure these gifts.”

That day, I roasted ham until it started to burn and fell asleep exhausted.

* * *

After our trio’s birthday celebration ended, about a month later, my sister and brother-in-law had their wedding. Holding my father’s hand, my sister walked down the aisle, her eyes filled with tears, a departure from her usual confident self.

As my father walked alongside her, holding her hand, my brother-in-law, dressed in a handsome suit, joined them.

“When my daughter cries… you’ll know when to let go of the spoon, right?” 

“She’ll only cry at night, so don’t worry too much…”

“You won’t even see my Rafi.”

“She absolutely won’t cry at night.”

My brother-in-law, who had been answering with a grin, quickly changed his expression at my father’s second remark. A master of changing stances, my brother-in-law took my sister’s hand from my father.

“We should have had the wedding earlier, I’m sorry it’s so late.” 

“It’s okay. We never planned on having a wedding anyway. But Father insisted…”

Coming forward with a happy smile, Colin and I became the witnesses and showered flowers on their path.

My sister and brother-in-law, walking down the flower-strewn path, safely reached the wedding officiant. Seeing this, my grandmother suddenly had a tearful expression in her eyes.

“Our daughter… we should have seen her wedding…”

Grandfather, who had become a lifelong sinner for not attending the opposing wedding, sat beside the tearful grandmother and lowered his head in remorse.

“Our daughter was so beautiful…”

“Yes, she was truly beautiful. If you’d like, I have a painting of the wedding. I can show it to you.”

Upon seeing my grandfather and grandmother, my father quietly said after sending his daughter off to her husband.

“Is that so? You have a painting from back then?”

“Yes, just in case… I thought this day might come someday, so I deliberately hired an artist to capture the moment and keep it in the warehouse as a painting.”

“Oh? Then show it to me next time. I want to see it.” 

Grandfather, due to his extremely stubborn nature, had even discarded all the paintings that existed at the time, saying that his daughter didn’t follow his wishes back then. So, I had heard that there was only one painting of Uncle with Mom from their very young days in the Tigris estate.

Now, with tears welling up in their eyes, the elderly couple, upon my father’s words, smiled with a revived expression.

“Even though she’s already married and even had a child, it feels fresh to hold our daughter’s hand and walk down the aisle.”

“You’re lucky to have walked down the aisle holding your daughter’s hand. I missed out on my fortune.”

Grandfather, who had missed out on the experience of a lifetime, tried to hold back his tears as he looked at me. Then, he embraced me tightly.

“When our Rafi gets married, if I could walk her down the aisle…”

“That’s a bit tricky, please don’t make a sad face. I can’t yield on that either. She can’t walk with her Grandfather when Father is perfectly healthy. It’s just not possible.”

Father firmly refused and turned his head. 

“You can be quite cold at times like this.”

“We have to think rationally when it comes to matters involving our children, don’t we?”

Father, with a subtle smile, observed my sister’s wedding. Meanwhile, I stuffed an orange into my mouth.

This wasn’t a wedding; it felt more like a torture session. Especially the officiating part. Preaching under the scorching sun for over an hour when it should have been a brief sermon made everyone’s concentration waver.

With my hungry stomach roughly filled with oranges, I clapped my hands as I watched the exchange of rings after the marriage vows.

“She’s beautiful. She’s so pretty.”

“Usually, the bride on her wedding day is the most beautiful.”

Father also agreed with what I said, but my brother shook his head with a smirk. After briefly seeing the siblings who remained unchanged no matter where they went, I was about to eat an orange when something flew towards me, and I instinctively caught it.

Looking at the bouquet I caught with a bewildered expression, Colin quickly ran over.

“Aunt, are you getting married now?”

“Uhh…”

“They say you have to get married if you catch it.”

I didn’t ask where he heard that phrase. Instead, father replied.

“That’s right, Rafi will get married when she grows up. With me.”

Meanwhile, watching my father and his five-year-old grandson engage in what seemed like a verbal battle, I sighed softly.

Meow, meow.

Although my brother-in-law claimed to dislike animals, Ciel, invited on this special day, leaped into my arms. Then, he curiously poked at the bouquet with his soft pink jelly-like paw pads.

“Ciel, this isn’t food.”

Ciel, who was at the age of intense curiosity, scratched the bouquet with his paw and made meowing sounds as if he were smelling it.

Suddenly, I felt my body float. Ciel glanced at me cautiously and quickly jumped down from my arms, landing neatly on the table and roasting a piece of bread.

“I never thought my sister-in-law would catch the bouquet.”

“I caught it because I wanted to!”

With a bright smile, my brother-in-law confidently stood in front of my father and then walked over to my sister’s side. He was wearing a traditional Korean robe, and despite that, tears welled up in my sister’s eyes as she smiled.

“Sister, congratulations on your marriage.”

“Yeah, thank you, Rafi.”

My sister lifted the corner of her robe slightly and gave me a peck on the cheek. Then she hugged me tightly.

“I think I’d believe you if you told me my sister-in-law was yours, Erica, honey.”

“Well, if father weren’t here, I’d want to put her in our family registry. Rafi, you’re so cute and lovely.”

As my sister playfully squeezed my cheeks after the peck on the cheek, it became evident that her beauty couldn’t be enhanced or concealed by heavy bridal makeup.

“If my tastes will be like father, I’ll be like you, too.”

“Oh my, what are you talking about? Sis is so happy that Rafi takes after her. If Rafi took after father too, she might have been disappointed.”

As the newlywed couple, it was time to greet the groom and the guests. But instead of Colin, I was held in their arms while they greeted everyone. Thanks to this, I quickly became exhausted.

“It seems like our little angel is melting in the heat.” 

“Hmm, now that I think about it, Rafi takes a good nap time during the day.” 

“Shall we put her to sleep with Colin?”

“I’m coming, too!”

My half-closed eyes widened at his words and I shook my head from side to side. He wanted me to take responsibility for sleeping with him twice. I’d had a hard enough time calming him down, but sleeping with him a third time would mean he’d be following me around.

“Did Colin get upset with his aunt?” 

“Yes, he did. He kept saying he wanted to sleep together.”

He had just turned four years old. But I felt too young to take care of my nephew, who was only one year younger than me.

“Our Colin must be feeling disappointed about this.”

Colin seemed to have heard what I said, as he pouted his lips. Even though he was my nephew, I didn’t sleep with him; I went back to my father’s arms and dozed against his broad chest.

* * *

My sister’s wedding went off without a hitch. After the wedding, my sister cried her eyes out in front of our father and even pulled me into an emotional moment.

I was already deep in slumber and couldn’t recall that moment. My older brother, who was sitting next to me, told me what he had seen and heard.

“Big brother, bye-bye!”

My older brother had taken a legitimate absence from the academy due to my sister’s wedding. Today was the day he was returning. While he usually used the carriage, my brother boldly stood in front of the warp gate.

It seemed like he preferred risking magical motion sickness to spending a long time in the carriage, as he could arrive in the blink of an eye.

“Our Rafi, since I’ll be in touch often, don’t cry because I’m not here. You understand, right?”

“Yes, I understand!”

After giving my brother a farewell kiss on the cheek, I walked over to my father, bouncing on my feet.

“Take care, and you only need to come during the vacations from now on.”

If my brother could solve his magical motion sickness, he could come here every week. Keeping that in mind, he shrugged as if to say that the inconvenience of it was worth it.

“I’ll work on overcoming my magical motion sickness through lots of practice.”

With those words, implying that he would come here often in the future, my father’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. However, he didn’t outright tell him not to come frequently.

So, after my sister’s wedding, when my brother returned to the academy, Panteur’s mansion was once again filled with silence.

Father tirelessly grappled with the growing stack of paperwork, which was cute and endearing. Besides meals and bedtime, he was nearly impossible to find. 

“Hmm, I miss grandpa already.”

It was nice to have the quiet, but at the same time, it was quite lonely. There were limits to learning magic on my own. I could have asked the resident magician in the house, but I didn’t want to bother the top-level mage unnecessarily.

“You want to go to the northern region?” 

“Yes.”

I want to go!

I told my father before bedtime, and after a moment of contemplation, he nodded.

“Alright, since you’re their granddaughter, it’s okay to go occasionally.”

As soon as I got my father’s permission, I woke up the next day and packed various things into my backpack. Most of them were colorful candies and caramels. Laughing to myself, I had stocked up on emergency rations.

“You like going to the northern region, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. I love Grandma and Grandpa there.”

In other words, there were plenty of idle hands eager to play with me. Of course, I wasn’t just going there to play.

With a big grin on my face, I blinked my eyes as I stood in front of the warp gate. My father was there, too. It seemed like he had come to see me off.

“Father, I’m going now.”

“Well, Father is thinking about going with you.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Well, to me, it’s still my in-laws’ house, is it? Your grandmother said she’s going to catch some silkies, so she told me to come.”

It seems the son-in-law’s love comes from the mother-in-law. The grandmother who lured him by promising a meal fit for a duke seemed quite impressive.

“Who’s going to work if you go?”

I had seen him for a few days struggling with paperwork and getting things in order every time he left this place. That’s why I was worried that if he went again, he would be buried under paperwork and wrestling with it.

However, to my surprise, Father smiled very ominously, contrary to my worries. 

“Don’t worry, we have a very, very capable assistant. Even now, there’s a fluffy and efficient presence like a soft cotton candy, taking care of the ballooning paperwork and child contacts, so don’t worry.”

As father spoke, he looked somewhere. 

When I shifted my gaze in that direction, I saw Vance and Max inside the building, tearing apart curtains with sobs. I made a silent prayer to the documents and the wrestling match that they wouldn’t hurt them from now on.