I Live With My Villain Uncle Chapter 1

Prologue. I Am Aika. Aika de Vallier!

I am Aika de Vallier.

I possess a mysterious ability.

 

***

 

I had been sitting on pins and needles for several days.

And it was a cushion I had climbed onto all by myself.

“Phew……”

At the sound of the sigh filled with irritation, my shoulders flinched involuntarily.

“The old man seriously expects me to take care of this? Is he out of his mind?”

At the fierce glare directed at me, I subtly turned my head toward the window.

Even after avoiding his gaze, my cheeks still prickled.

Could he please stop staring at me? If he was going to keep looking, he could at least look at me with pretty eyes!

I desperately wanted to say it out loud, but I only screamed it in my head.

Because this was the scariest person among all the people Mother had told me about.

She even said he was more frightening than His Majesty the Emperor, the Sun of the Empire.

“Hey.”

“……”

And on top of that, I was sitting on the carpet while he was lounging alone on a soft sofa.

He called out to me in a delinquent-like manner and crooked his finger.

I glanced at him before slowly turning my head away and pretending I hadn’t seen him.

That was the bravest rebellion I could manage.

But still,

What good was having a handsome face if your personality was trash?!

Waaah, Moooom…….

No, this wasn’t the time for that.

I couldn’t forget why I had come here.

I tried to flash him a cheerful smile, hoping to smooth things over between us again, but my expression quickly crumbled.

“Hey, Peanut.”

“I’m not a peanut!”

In the end, I couldn’t hold it in anymore and shouted back in a huff.

“Then, three-heads-tall. Come here.”

“I’m not three-heads-tall either!”

“Then.”

Ugh, did he really have to make me say it?

I looked down at my own body.

No matter how much he looked at me with those hateful eyes, I was definitely not three-heads-tall.

Mother said I was the prettiest and coolest person in the whole world!

“Four…… heads-tall?”

I’m at least four-heads-tall, aren’t I? I’d accept that much!

I clearly heard him snort with ridicule.

Huffing angrily, I turned around completely and sat with my back to him.

“You’d better come when I’m calling you nicely. You’ll regret it if I go over there.”

Jeez, seriously.

The threats this man made didn’t feel like ordinary threats.

I pursed my lips, puffed out my cheeks, and stood up with a thoroughly disgruntled expression.

Then I walked over to him and glared at him with narrowed, triangular eyes.

Even when I lifted my head as far as I could, I barely reached below his waist, but I wasn’t intimidated in the slightest.

“I have to live with you from now on.”

“……”

“I have no interest in raising a child. So stay as quiet as a dead mouse, okay?”

“……”

Hmph! As if I have any interest in raising an adult, either!

Regardless, I continued to hug my doll while pouting and staring at him sullenly.

“Answer me.”

He was eighteen years older than me, yet he was completely mean.

An adult who was eighteen years older was threatening someone eighteen years younger than him.

How ferocious. Absolutely ferocious.

Sigh, but it wasn’t as though I could refuse to live with him.

Even if I really wanted to tell Mother about this, I couldn’t anymore.

“……Fine.”

My head was a mess from all the thoughts racing through it, but for now, I obediently answered him.

“If you understand, go ask for some food. And stop loitering in front of me.”

“But I already ate……”

“Eat some more. You’ve apparently stopped growing halfway through.”

He abruptly stood up and roughly ran a hand through his hair.

Then he shoved his hands carelessly into his pockets, strode past me, and left.

“Phew……”

I slumped back down.

It felt like a storm had just blown through.

I wouldn’t have lived with him either if it weren’t for Mother’s dying wish.

Grandfather liked me much, much more, anyway.

He was destined to die young without me, yet this was how he treated me.

I’ll have to put him in his place someday!

Even if he regretted it later and begged until his hands and feet were worn out, I wouldn’t forgive him.

Even if he begged me to live with him then, it would be useless. Hmph!

“Jeez.”

So, who was this good-for-nothing human who treated me so poorly—the family member I would have to live and struggle alongside from now on?

He was Cassel de Vallier.

Well, in other words, my one and only uncle.

 

***

 

The Mad Dog of Vallier.

That was what people called Cassel de Vallier.

He was also known as Cassel de Reguier.

I first met my uncle at Mother’s funeral.

It had been a sudden accident.

Mother was an extremely busy person.

She had more days at work than days off, and even after giving birth to me, she continued working for the Imperial Family.

There were countless mornings when I woke up to find that Mother had already gone to work.

She had never told me exactly what she did, but I knew that Mother was the Prime Minister of this Empire.

“Prime Minister, here is the report.”

“Please help us, Prime Minister!”

I heard her subordinates calling her that quite often.

Even so, I had never once resented Mother. I had never even felt neglected.

Mother was the person who loved me more than anyone in the world, and I loved her more than anyone in the world, too.

I didn’t know who my father was.

Mother had never told me.

“Mom, what kind of person is Aika’s dad?”

When I once asked about my father, Mother merely said that he was someone who had important things he needed to do.

Since he had never once come to see me, he probably wasn’t a good person, at least.

After that, I couldn’t bring myself to ask again because I was afraid it would make Mother sad.

Anyway, my incredibly busy mother once had to leave the capital and travel to the provinces for a while as part of her work.

When she said she’d be gone for fifteen days, I begged her to let me come along and climbed into the carriage with her.

Normally, I was perfectly fine staying with the maids without Mother and was good at playing by myself, so I didn’t mind even when she was away from home for more than a week.

But for some reason, that day I had an overwhelming feeling that I absolutely had to go with her.

“Mom! I want to go, too.”

“Do you want to go with Mommy, too, Aika?”

“Yeah. I’ll listen to you, Mommy. I’ll be good and stay quiet, so can’t you take me with you?”

“Hmm……”

“Just this once! Mom, please grant me one wish!”

Once Mother gave me permission, I went on a trip with her for the first time.

On our way home after Mother’s work had ended safely,

we were suddenly attacked while I was looking at a storybook Mother was reading to me inside the carriage, causing the carriage to overturn.

“Aika!”

Mother held me so tightly that she could barely breathe, so I wasn’t seriously injured, but I hit my head and lost consciousness.

And when I opened my eyes again, Mother had already left my side.

Grandfather told me that I had been found in a nearby forest, rather than inside the carriage where I had been with Mother.

But I have almost no memory of what happened immediately after the accident.

My memories were jumbled together, as though pages had been torn from a book, leaving even the fragments I could remember incomplete and disjointed.

The Imperial Palace said they were investigating the truth behind the carriage accident, but I couldn’t hear anything about it.

The only thing I heard was that the Emperor had been absolutely furious.

I think I also heard that he had lost his composure completely.

I could guess why His Majesty the Emperor was angry.

I had been told that His Majesty and Mother were longtime friends.

He must have been terribly angry because he had lost an old friend.

And Mother was incredibly smart and good at her job, so he must have been deeply saddened by that as well.

Mother’s funeral was held on a grand scale.

I was too busy crying to properly look at the people there, but Grandfather later told me that almost everyone who worked at the Imperial Palace had attended.

As well as many other nobles.

And that was where I first met my uncle.

“Mom……?”

The same red hair as Mother, golden eyes, a slightly more prominent jaw, and stronger, sharper features overall—but his face was so similar to hers that they could have been mistaken for twins.

I thought Mother had come back to life.

Rather than crying and grieving like the many people at the funeral, my uncle stared at Mother’s coffin and the people around him with eyes that looked capable of killing several people.

“Mom……”

I stopped crying and clung to my uncle, who looked exactly like Mother, refusing to let go for several days.

But while I was exhausted and asleep on the final day, my uncle disappeared.

And so, after my first meeting with my uncle, I spent several months living with my grandfather at his house.