Chapter 155

“Red is r-e-d, and yellow is…”

“It’s y-e-l-l-o, dummy!”

“You missed a letter, stupid.”

The kids bickered as they peeked at each other’s notebooks.

The basement Helios had brought me to — it was filled with six small children, each looking between the ages of six and ten.

There were desks scattered haphazardly and a chalkboard on the wall. With the kids chattering away, the place felt more like a school than anything else.

“Your Highness… those kids are…?”

“They’re the ones I’m teaching.”

Leaning against the doorway, Helios looked at them with surprisingly gentle eyes.

“So when you said ‘education,’ you meant actual studying?”

“Yeah. What else would it mean?”

Helios let out a short laugh, as if he still found all of this strange.

The chattering children turned their heads as they recognized the visitor. A look of wariness and curiosity flickered in their large eyes, then quickly vanished.

“Mister! It’s been so long.”

A little girl with her hair in two pigtails ran up and clung to Helios’s leg.

He frowned and gently shook his leg. Her tiny feet lifted off the ground and dropped again with each shake.

“Off, runt. And how many times did I tell you? I’m not ‘Mister.’”

“Kyaaa, but you are Mister! You’re as big as a door!”

Despite his sharp tone, the girl just giggled brightly. With an exasperated click of his tongue, Helios pried her off with both hands.

“Miiiiisteeer! Did you bring snacks again today? Lots of them? How many?”

This time, another kid came running. Helios ducked behind me before he could be tackled.

“If you brats keep bothering me, the nice doctor here is going to give you all shots!”

At the word “shots,” their eyes grew wide. Frozen in place, their gazes darted around the room, but their mouths kept going.

“Are you really a doctor?”

“That stuff takes a lot of studying, right?”

“Where’s the shot?”

“I heard shots really hurt.”

“Are you the doctor lady who saved Mister? He said you were an angel. Where are your wings?”

“Hey! If you’re pretty, you’re basically an angel. She is pretty.”

“Is your face the only thing you’ve got?”

The questions that had been hurled at me turned into a squabble between the kids.

Wow, they really are loud, but also ridiculously cute.

I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up.

“See? She is an angel. She’s literally glowing!”

“You’re right! But where are the wings?”

Kids these days, seriously. Such sharp eyes.

Their compliments kept lifting my spirits higher and higher.

No, my mood had already soared the moment I realized that what Helios meant by “education” was truly just teaching children.

It felt like flying through the sky.

At the same time, I started to feel a little guilty.

Just from reading the novel, I had doubted him and even made up my mind to stand in his way. That truth weighed heavily on me.

I leaned my head against Helios’s shoulder. He’d been listening to the kids’ ridiculous chatter, but now he looked down at me. I spoke to him softly.

“Your Highness.”

“Hmm?”

“I believe in you.”

“What’s this all of a sudden?”

“I’ll believe in you for the rest of my life.”

Today, once again, I realized something. That the world the author created isn’t everything. That what the author described isn’t the whole truth.

“You’re acting weird today.”

Helios muttered that under his breath, but a smile crept onto his lips. That smile was so beautiful, I couldn’t look away.

***

After saying goodbye to the kids, we headed back up to the second floor.

We were delayed a bit because the kids wouldn’t let go of Helios, begging him not to leave. Their tiny hands were surprisingly strong, and it wasn’t easy to shake them off.

In the end, Helios had to toss each child into the air once before he could escape.

“Where did you find those kids?”

“The slums.”

“The slums?”

Helios hesitated, then took my hand.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but listen.”

Despite saying we were short on time, Helios began to explain gently.

The reason the children ended up here was because of me.

Not long after I became Helios’s personal physician, he had me investigated.

Naturally, he also sent people to the slums where I had grown up.

At the time, he hadn’t learned much about me, but he did come to understand the devastating conditions in the slums.

However, back then, Helios didn’t really care about the slums.

When you’re in so much pain you think you might die, you don’t have room to care about someone else’s suffering.

Then, as my treatment began to show results and he regained his health, he said he couldn’t stop thinking about the slums.

“I started wondering what if someone had helped you during your childhood? Would you have found happiness a little sooner?”

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