TBMRB 02

Chapter 02

‘What was a core exercise again?’

Sometimes, moments like this happened.

Moments when you tried to remember something that your body was thoroughly familiar with, yet when you searched your memories, you realized you had never actually heard or seen it at any particular point.

Moments when you could explain something naturally, yet couldn’t quite remember what that thing actually was.

Mariella tilted her head to the side and tried to think more deeply about what a core exercise was.

But before she could do that, Ralph held out the candy he always carried in his pocket.

“Candy!”

“I secretly brought it because I wanted to give it to you when I saw you, my lady. It’s a secret from the butler and your nanny, all right?”

“Okay. Waph choo good!”

“Our little lady really is adorable.”

The three-year-old couldn’t even wait patiently for the few seconds it took Ralph to unwrap the candy, impatiently bouncing her feet.

Ralph grinned at her adorably excited appearance before popping a strawberry-flavored lollipop into Mariella’s mouth.

As the sweet taste spread throughout her mouth, Mariella instantly forgot all about her thoughts concerning core exercises.

“Is it delicious?”

“Mhm. But how can I eat it all by myself? You don’t have one, Ralph. Sowwy. I ate this one.”

Just as Ralph was about to say something to comfort the suddenly dejected Mariella, a loud crashing sound erupted from inside the kitchen, cutting him off.

Ralph quickly stepped in front of the startled Mariella, whose eyes had gone wide, grabbed the broom standing by the entrance to the pantry, and peered into the kitchen.

“Oh, goodness! Young master!”

A complete disaster had unfolded before Ralph’s eyes.

The door of one of the upper cabinets used to store spices had fallen off, and judging by the pungent smell stinging his nose, a pepper jar must have broken.

The filthy floor, covered in all kinds of powder, was an added bonus.

Dietrich, his head covered in powdered sugar, sneezed several times before getting back on his feet.

“Why is this cabinet door so weak?”

“Young master, what kind of strength did you think that thin wooden door had to begin with? Why were you hanging from it? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Well, I’m so agile that I didn’t get hurt.”

“No, seriously, why do you keep hanging from cabinet doors? If the butler finds out about this, I’m a dead man. And you’ll get scolded too, young master.”

“I—I was only trying to eat some sugar! The cabinet door just fell off all by itself!”

Dietrich had always preferred snacks to proper meals.

However, after his two front teeth had changed from baby teeth to permanent teeth, his nanny had reduced his snacks, saying that he couldn’t let his teeth decay now.

So, suffering from sugar withdrawal, he had come down to the kitchen to steal some sugar.

And because the cabinet door was too high for him to reach, he had jumped up and hung from it to open it.

Which was how he ended up like this.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. Good grief, when are we going to get this door fixed? At least none of the expensive dishes were broken.”

Dietrich’s conscience began pricking him.

He had a history of throwing discs all over the house while claiming he was demonstrating how to throw one.

And whenever he remembered the time he’d broken an expensive set of dishes in the kitchen, causing the butler to become absolutely furious, he got goosebumps.

“I really wasn’t playing around this time!”

“Yes, yes. I understand. There are pieces of broken glass around, so go over there and play for now.”

Ralph merely said yes, yes with his mouth, but he didn’t believe Dietrich at all.

And understandably so. Dietrich had caused accidents like this and then claimed they hadn’t been intentional so many times that they could no longer be counted on both hands.

At least no one had been injured today.

Dietrich realized that Ralph didn’t believe him.

As Dietrich pouted, his eyes fell upon Mariella, who was sucking on a lollipop.

‘Everyone hates me! They only love Mariella!’

Dietrich’s lips protruded even farther.

They had reduced his snacks from two slices of cake to one, saying that he needed to cut down on sweets from now on!

‘And they’re even secretly giving that ugly girl candy!’

Come to think of it, they’d done the same thing last night.

He hadn’t been able to sleep, so he’d begged his nanny to have a pillow fight with him.

She had seemed willing to play for a while, but the moment Mariella, who had been sleeping alone, woke up and started crying, the nanny had abandoned him and rushed straight to his little sister’s room.

‘The butler, the nanny, Ralph… everyone only cares about Mariella…’

Rubbing his heated eyes roughly with the back of his hand as though he were about to cry for no reason, Dietrich glared at Mariella.

“Get out of the way, ugly!”

“Mawiella not ugly!”

“Yeah, right. You’re the ugliest person in the whole world!”

Dietrich snapped at his little sister for no reason, even though she had been sitting there doing nothing, then ran out of the kitchen.

After a moment, he stopped and secretly tilted his ear toward the kitchen.

‘…Was calling her ugly a little too harsh?’

Her cheeks were puffed up as she munched on her candy, making her look just like a squirrel.

Come to think of it, maybe she wasn’t actually that ugly.

“Waph, is Mawiella ugly?”

“Of course not. Our young lady is the cutest young lady in the whole world. Young master only said that because he was upset, so don’t pay any attention to him. All right?”

“Ditty gets angwy whenever he sees Mawiella. Does Mawiella hate him?”

“Oh, no, absolutely not! Young master is just… ah, yes, he’s started teething recently, that’s all.”

It’s not because of teething! It’s because Mariella really is ugly!

Worried that Mariella might start crying, Dietrich nervously kept his ear turned toward the kitchen before finally spinning around and running down the hallway.

Ralph is an idiot!

No, all the servants in this house are idiots who only like Mariella!

After being called ugly by Dietrich, Mariella decided to return to her room while holding Ralph’s hand.

She trudged along, thoroughly dejected, when a loud voice reached her ears.

“What are all of you doing instead of properly standing guard?!”

Mariella, who had been especially afraid of loud voices ever since she was even younger, covered both ears tightly with her hands and hid behind Ralph.

“Oh, dear…”

So many things had happened to the little lady today.

Ignoring the pain in his back, Ralph picked Mariella up into his arms and gently patted her back.

Only then did Mariella seem to relax a little. She cautiously poked her head out from his arms and looked toward where the loud voice was coming from.

The source of the shouting was the mansion’s entrance.

The people standing there with their heads bowed as they were being scolded were guards whose faces Mariella recognized from seeing them around the mansion.

And the person standing before them, glaring fiercely with his eyebrows raised, was the old butler of the household.

‘Such a scary face!’

Mariella instinctively buried her face against the back of Ralph’s neck again.

Her heart was pounding.

There were very few occasions when the butler made such a frightening expression.

The last time had been when Dietrich had broken all the dishes in the kitchen and two maids near the dishes had been injured. The butler had become furious and made exactly that expression.

Remembering that incident, the three-year-old shuddered.

“Did Ditty do somethin’ bad again?”

The butler probably didn’t know about the cabinet door falling off yet.

Ralph had done his best to clean everything up himself, just in case the young master got scolded again.

After thinking it over carefully, Ralph shook his head.

“I’m not sure. Since he’s talking about the mansion’s security, I don’t think it’s about the young master.”

“Then why is the butwer angwy?”

Ralph was struggling to think of an appropriate answer when the butler’s roar once again came to his rescue.

“It’s already the third necklace belonging to the late mistress that’s gone missing this month alone! What are we all going to say if the master asks where her belongings are later?!”

Mommy’s necklace?

Mariella tilted her head to the side.

Her mother—the mistress of this mansion, Lucy—had died three months ago.

It had already been more than a hundred nights since her funeral, which had been held with nothing but an empty coffin because even her body had not been properly recovered…

Mariella seriously counted on her fingers before quickly acknowledging that she still couldn’t count higher than ten, then looked at Ralph.

“What are heiwlooms?”

The three-year-old still couldn’t easily understand the concept of belongings left behind by someone who had died.

As befitted a child who had grown up away from her mother’s arms since birth, Mariella had simply stood there with an unusually clear, innocent expression even at her mother’s funeral.

Feeling sorry for the little lady who knew nothing, Ralph held Mariella a little more tightly.

There was a reason why all the servants in the mansion, including Ralph, were particularly fond of Mariella.

She was a three-year-old baby growing up without even knowing what her parents looked like.

The more innocently Mariella behaved, the more pity they felt for her.

“Contact the guard unit immediately and report that the mistress’s belongings have gone missing! And from today onward, all of you had better keep your wits about you and stand guard properly!”

The guards, who had been keeping their heads bowed beneath the butler’s thunderous reprimand, raised their heads with slightly aggrieved expressions.