I’m the Future Crazy Male Lead’s Mother Chapter 19

With the mystery surrounding Ruben still unresolved, some time passed. Now, it was time to seriously prepare for growing rice.

I brought the Black Hawks with me to a mountain a little way down from the Siastor Ducal Residence.

Since it was halfway up the mountain, the clearing wasn’t as large as a flat plain, but it was still a suitable size for experimenting with rice farming.

Apparently, during the previous duke’s time, they had planned to build something like a villa here. Because of that, the foundation of the land had already been somewhat prepared.

More importantly, there was a large lake on a nearby mountain peak, and a valley had formed from there, with water flowing down below.

The valley was right beside us.

It was practically the perfect land for making a rice paddy.

I stood at the entrance and looked over the area before giving the workers an order.

“Now, first, let’s make the dikes!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The workers, who had become obsessed with rice cakes, shouted at the top of their lungs while gripping their shovels like weapons.

Then they charged forward at full speed before screeching to a halt.

They looked at me in confusion and asked,

“Big Sis, but what’s a dike…?”

“Ah.”

I realized that I hadn’t properly explained rice paddies to them.

I called them over and had everyone squat down in a circle.

The sight of a group of enormous men sitting around me, each holding a shovel, was rather intimidating, but I spoke with a serious expression.

“To make rice, we need to grow rice plants. And to grow rice plants, we need rice paddies!”

“Ooh.”

“A rice paddy is also called a wet field. We fill it with water and grow rice there. There’s a valley nearby, right? We’ll make the water flow from there to here and have it collect on one side. Then we’ll let it flow into the rice paddies.”

“Ooooooh.”

“But before that, we need to find a place where the water can collect. Then we’ll pile up soil around the land that will become the rice paddy to make something called a dike. That way, the water that flows in won’t escape.”

“So the piled-up soil is the dike!”

I pointed at the bald man who suddenly raised his hand and shouted, then nodded as if to say he had done well.

“That’s right.”

The bald man’s cheeks flushed. Apparently, he was embarrassed by the praise.

Since his appearance was rather unpleasant to look at, I quickly turned my head away and continued speaking.

“That’s why I gave each of you a shovel. Half of you will dig from the valley, and the other half will make the rice paddies here.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

They really were knights, after all.

There were a few who occasionally staggered around with hangovers, but most of them dug the ground without any problems.

They were much better than Carl after ten servings of crucian carp juice!

That fact alone was enough to raise my expectations of them from rock bottom.

‘Oh, they’re actually pretty useful.’

There seemed to be about twenty Black Hawks in total.

Judging by the ten people making the dikes in front of me.

‘Do they not have squires?’

I thought knights normally had squires.

Then again, now that I thought about it, the Siastor Ducal Family was quite an isolated place, considering that it was located deep in the mountains.

I had heard that they barely brought in outside personnel, either.

The Black Hawks were also treated as a rather unusual group in the original story, so it made a little sense that they didn’t have squires.

I had been supervising them for quite some time when I suddenly heard a familiar voice from behind me.

“Your back looked so familiar that I wondered if it might be you. And sure enough, it’s Cilia!”

“!”

“So you’re the one developing food at the Siastor Ducal Residence! Wow, what a coincidence!”

I stiffly turned my neck around, creaking it from side to side.

There stood the man I had encountered at the mill last time.

Soft, fluffy pink hair, a kind-looking face, and round glasses.

He was the sort of man whose face seemed to have the words, ‘No matter how much you bully me, I’ll never hate you,’ written all over it, and he was smiling brightly at me.

“I’m the person the Imperial Family sent here to receive training. Cedric Eihartz. It’s been a long time, Cilia.”

Right. His name was Cedric.

I awkwardly lifted the corners of my lips.

“Long time no see.”

I could almost hear the sound of him crying, “Waaaaah!” when he saw me after I had smashed his glasses when we were children.

 

***

 

“Wow, when I ran into you at the mill in Sui last time, I really wondered if it was actually you. You hardly ever leave your house.”

Was Sui the name of the city I had visited last time?

Instead of answering, I simply smiled.

“Haha.”

“This is the first time we’ve met since graduating from the academy, right? It’s been so long. Almost seven years, I think. You’ve changed too, I suppose.”

The pink-haired boy from the memories had now grown into a full-fledged adult.

Well, they were memories belonging to the body I had possessed. They weren’t mine.

Cedric carefully observed and recorded everything I did while making the rice paddies.

Afterward, he came with me to the annex, where we were having tea.

Cedric smiled warmly as he watched Carl pour black tea into the teacups with a gentle trickle.

“It’s nice to see you again too, Carl.”

“It has been quite some time since we last met, Lord Cedric. Have you been well?”

Perhaps because they had been childhood friends, the two seemed to know each other quite well.

They chatted cheerfully with each other, completely leaving me out of the conversation.

Then Cedric suddenly looked at me and said,

“Even for you, isn’t it frightening being with the Siastor Ducal Family?”

“Hm?”

There was concern in Cedric’s expression.

“What do you mean?”

“I knew it. To you, it’s nothing special after all.”

“No, what are you talking ab—”

“You’ve always been brave and strong since you were young, Cilia.”

“……”

Ignoring my questioning, Cedric’s pink eyes grew hazy.

They were the wistful eyes of someone searching through memories of a distant past.

There was such a solid wall around him that it felt like he wouldn’t hear a single word I said.

“I was a crybaby and easily frightened, so I was always relying on you for help. Sigh.”

“So,”

“You should be fine. You don’t need to worry. Even if the Siastor Duke is a murderer who brutally killed his own father and older brother.”

“……?”

“And even if people call him the Monster Duke behind his back, despite how dignified he looks.”

Eek?

Excuse me? I feel like even I should be worried about that!

I thought Cedric was about to tell me the same thing Elston had said a few days ago!

‘It’s a rumor known only to those in the know. I hear that among Transcendents, there are occasionally people who remember their past lives.’

I stared at Cedric, who still had that wistful look in his eyes, then at Carl, who was reminiscing about the past alongside him.

My eyes were darting faster and faster, but neither of them paid the slightest attention to me.

‘Dazar killed the previous duke and his older brother? What does that even mean?’

Ah. Could this be the bloodbath Elston had mentioned back then?

‘It’s because of the bloodshed that once swept through the Siastor Ducal Family.’

No matter how hard I searched through my memories, I couldn’t remember anything. Which meant it must have happened while I was completely absorbed in farming, or perhaps when I was very young.

“Well, even putting His Grace the Duke aside, this is still that Siastor.”

“‘That’ Siastor, what—”

“Ugh, it’s scary. So when they told me to come here to learn the work, I was horrified.”

“No, I—”

“Even if I only come here occasionally, you’re here all the time… You really are amazing, Cilia. Sigh.”

“……”

As I stared at this brick wall of a man…

I was beginning to understand Cilia just a little bit.

‘Putting that aside, the more I dig into him, the stranger he gets.’

Dazar Siastor.

I had been trying to feel a little kinship with him because he remembered his past life.

But in an instant, that sense of distance had returned.

 

***

 

A spotless, completely white space.

The owner of the room, where everything from the desk and chairs to the floor and ceiling was entirely white, was holding a letter while sitting on a white sofa.

“So that’s how things progressed.”

It was the reply to a letter he had sent some time ago.

After reading the reply again from its first sentence all the way to the final period, Elston slightly furrowed his brow.

Thinking of the person who must have written the reply with a perfectly drawn smile, Elston muttered,

“Dazar must have betrayed God after all.”

His expression turning cold, Elston casually placed the reply on the table. Then he leaned comfortably back against the sofa.

“Considering that he kept Ruben alive even though he must have recognized him.”

Ruben.

It was the name of the being Cilia had discovered in the library earlier.

Elston twisted his lips slightly.

“Considering his abilities, there’s no way he failed to notice.”

Among the Transcendents, the Siastor family’s unique ability was particularly special. They were people who, by birth, could never be separated from Ruben.

Elston burned the letter lying before him with magic, erasing all traces of it, and stood up.

“Just as you said back then, it was a good decision to send a demon to Dazar. Thanks to that, I discovered that he might have betrayed God.”

A demon.

It was quite an ill-fitting word for Elston, the timid Tower Master.

“Then now, just as Cilia said, shall I try playing my role as the ‘mastermind’?”

Elston hummed as he pulled out another letter.

Unlike the ordinary letter from before, this one bore a symbol that seemed to possess an air of divinity. It was a special letter created specifically for direct correspondence with its owner.

“I don’t particularly want to contact this strange woman, but I can’t help it. This is my role, after all.”

Come to think of it, Elston thought, he seemed to be the only normal person around him.

He failed to consider the golden rattle tucked inside his clothing.