In This Life I Will Be The Lord Novel - Episode 3

“Pfft!”
A laugh burst out of me before I could even try to hold it back.
The one who called me was Bellesac, Viese’s son.
A man with brown hair and brown eyes, who didn’t resemble his mother, Selal, in the slightest, but looked exactly like a complete copy of Viese.
His face had a rather ill-tempered look, but he was a notorious playboy, with women constantly around him, simply because he was the Lombardi’s eldest grandson.
“Puhaha!”
But what stood before me now was merely a young boy, barely ten years old.
He was the kind of guy who committed all sorts of disgraceful acts, leaving me to clean up his messes, so his face always made my blood boil. Yet, as a child, he actually had a rather cute appearance.
“He’s laughing at me?!”
That temper of his, however, was not cute at all.
Still, since I had laughed first, I thought he might be upset and was about to apologize.
“How dare this filthy half-breed laugh at me!”
But again, that irritating phrase popped out.
It was slowly coming back to me.
The term my cousins, including Bellesac, used to disparage me because my mother was a commoner.
“Brother, looks like that half-breed is angry.”
I looked over at the voice egging Bellesac on, and next to him was Astaliu, my second uncle’s eldest son.
If Bellesac had given me headaches with his messy private life and violent incidents, Astaliu was a constant source of trouble with his gambling addiction.
A simple-minded, muscle-brained fool, whose thoughts were easily seen through—he was nothing but good prey for gamblers.
Eventually, Astaliu nearly got himself kicked out by Grandfather, and he gambled away several buildings before finally joining the Lombardi Knights as a late-blooming trainee.
Right, these two always stuck together and tormented me.
“What’s she going to do if she’s angry?”
“Is she going to cry and pee herself again?”
Around this time, I was incredibly afraid of those two.
Even for children’s pranks, their bullying was exceptionally malicious.
As the saying goes, children can be more cruel, and I was too young and powerless to stoically endure their pure malice towards me.
So, at this age, whenever I encountered them, I would tremble, unable to even run away, and just prayed for everything to end quickly.
Sometimes it would end with just ridicule and insults, but on days when Bellesac was in a bad mood, I would end up covered in bruises.
If Father got angry about it, Viese and Laurels would usually scold him instead, saying, ‘Children grow up, don’t make such a fuss.’
“Phew.”
But I calmed my anger. And asked.
“Bellesac, how old am I right now?”
“What?”
Bellesac looked at me strangely for asking such an unexpected and irrelevant question.
“I asked how old I am.”
Originally, I wanted to lower my voice and sound more menacing, but being in a child’s body limited how much authority I could project.
“You don’t even know that?”
When I spoke with a slight hint of disdain, Bellesac retorted, irritated.
“You’re seven! I know that!”
Oh, so I’m seven, am I?
“Right. I’m seven. And you’re ten, and Astaliu is eight.”
There was roughly a three-year difference with him and a one-year difference with Astaliu, so I could calculate their ages.
“You’re old enough now, so how long are you going to keep acting so childishly?”
Children usually think they’re all grown up.
“You shouldn’t keep calling your cousin ‘half-breed’ and teasing them.”
I tried to coax them nicely, gently.
What do these kids even know? It’s all the adults’ fault.
But Bellesac’s demeanor turned hostile.
“Cousin? Childish?”
It seemed he had already been in a bad mood from somewhere.
Turning me around was merely because he needed someone to vent his frustration on from the beginning.
Bellesac approached, huffing, and looked down at me threateningly.
“Is this crazy girl insane?”
And he raised one hand high.
But for some reason, he didn’t strike and waited for a moment.
As if expecting me to be scared and fearful.
However, it was Bellesac and Astaliu who were flustered when they didn’t get the reaction they wanted.
And that confusion manifested in rough actions towards me.
“Ah!”
The raised hand roughly grabbed my hair and pushed me with all its might.
My knee and scalp stung from the hard fall.
When I looked up, a few strands of my brown hair were torn out and in Bellesac’s hand.
“Haha! Serves her right!”
The face that pointed at me and sneered was the same face that, whenever I occasionally encountered it in Grandfather’s office, treated me like a maid, telling me to go do laundry, knowing my place.
Ugh.
Rage surged through me, overpowering the calm I had tried to maintain, thinking of him as just a child.
“You low-born half-breed. How dare you try to teach me?”
Bellesac pushed my head with his foot as I lay on the ground.
“Just because we share the same surname, you think you’re like us, huh?”
Astaliu was smirking maliciously behind him.
“You’re not a Lombardi. So get back to that commoner village, you half-breed.”
“I told you not to.”
“What?”
“I told you, don’t call me a half-breed.”
Still lying down, I lifted one leg and kicked Bellesac squarely in the shin.
It wasn’t a strong kick, but the shin is a sensitive spot that hurts with even a slight bump.
“Aargh!”
Bellesac screamed loudly, fell backward, clutching his leg, and rolled around.
I immediately picked up the book that had fallen nearby and stood up.
“Eeek!”
I felt Astaliu, who had retreated in surprise, take a step closer, as if intending to help.
I turned my head towards him without a word and glared at that Astaliu brat.
Flinch.
That alone was enough to scare the timid Astaliu, and he stopped in his tracks.
I glared at him once more, signaling him to stay put, then approached the still-fallen Bellesac, book in hand.
“You ill-behaved puppy.”
It wasn’t a wrong statement.
His father, Viese, behaved no better than a dog, and his son, Bellesac, was also the kind of brat who frequently heard insults like ‘son of a dog’ as if it were dessert after a meal.
A puppy indeed.
A young dog who doesn’t know to fear a tiger.
I’ll teach you some manners.
“You, you crazy bitch!”
He was groaning in pain, but his mouth was still alive and flapping, so he clearly deserved more.
I began to strike Bellesac’s shoulder and arm with the book I was holding.
It was a pretty thick book, so it would definitely hurt.
“Ow! Ow!”
“Keep! Calling me! Half-breed! And you’d better! Be prepared to get hit! By an angry half-breed!”
“A-Astaliu! What are you doing! Ow! Get this low-born off me! Ow!”
Bellesac desperately called out to Astaliu, but the big, cowardly boy was just trembling.
There was nothing an eight-year-old child could do.
“Do you! Know! How much I’ve suffered! Because of you!”
Ignoring his pushing hands, I clung on tenaciously, continuing to hit Bellesac with the book.
“Huff, huff!”
I hadn’t swung many times, but a child’s body quickly became breathless, and my arms lost strength.
If Bellesac had resisted more, I might have been pushed off, but fortunately, I was safe.
He had started crying.
“Waaaaah! Hng, help me!”
His voice was so loud it made my ears ring.
It was then.
The office door burst open, and a loud roar was heard.
“What is all this commotion?!”
A middle-aged man of immense presence, his neatly styled white hair and beard resembling a lion’s mane.
“Gr-Grandfather.”
Looking at the fallen Bellesac and me, straddling him and hitting him with a book, with furious eyes, was Rulac Lombardi, the patriarch of this Lombardi family and my grandfather.
“Bellesac!”
Viese, who had rushed out of the office shortly after, screamed his son’s name and ran over, roughly pushing me away.
“Ack!” It was an incomparably stronger force than when Bellesac had pushed me earlier.
The book flew far away, and my palms and wrists ached from bracing myself to avoid hitting my head.
“Tia?”
It was then that I heard a welcome voice.
Father, who had come out of the office belatedly, had seen me and rushed over in shock.
“Heavens! Tia, you’re hurt!”
I was probably a mess right now.
Bellesac might have been the one crying, but outwardly, my condition would appear much more serious.
“Hng, Father! Father!”
But Bellesac’s crying next to me was so loud, it sounded like he had broken something.
“You! Apologize to my son right now!”
He told me to apologize immediately, without even hearing the full story.
His face, red and huffing with anger, was so repulsive that I spun my head away.
“You, you insolent wretch!”
Then Viese reached out a hand, as if to do something to me right then.
“Brother!”
I felt Father embrace me, protecting me.
But judging by the wild look in Viese’s eyes, it seemed he might even hit Father who was blocking him.
“That’s enough!”
But the volatile situation was paused by a single roar from Grandfather.
Viese was still huffing but couldn’t say anything more, only glaring at me as if to kill me with his eyes.
Only Bellesac’s intermittent sniffling echoed in the quiet hallway.
Me? I quietly kept my eyes down in Father’s arms.
To be honest, I was embarrassed.
I needed to make a good impression on Grandfather, but here I was, caught in a brawl right from the start.
And with that foolish Bellesac, of all people.
After briefly looking back and forth between me and Bellesac, Grandfather looked at Astaliu.
The boy was clutching his uncle Laurels’ pant leg, completely shriveled in fear.
“Astaliu, what happened?”
Grandfather asked.
Astaliu briefly looked up at his father, then replied.
“M-my brother Bellesac and I were just walking, when the half— no, Florentia suddenly hit us.”
Hah, look at that puppy talking nonsense!