ORPDRL Chapter 21

 Episode 21

Excited, Letty clapped her hands with a loud smack, and Lorik opened his mouth to speak.

"Anyway, miss, please enjoy yourself here for a while. I can't take you there myself, so I'll call Lilia to fetch you."

"Yes."

Letty responded quietly, and as soon as Lorik left, she toddled over to Grisys and bent down at the waist.

"Father-in-law, does your head hurt?"

There was still no response, but resting on a cushion was undoubtedly more comfortable than having his head pressed to the floor.

Letty grabbed a cushion from the sofa. Though he was small for an adult man, his head was still heavy for Letty to lift with both hands.

'Even after Letty's done all of this, he's just staying still...'

Lorik said Grisys was lazy, but to Letty, it seemed more like Grisys was sick rather than just indolent.

‘When Letty is sick, I don’t feel like moving either.’

There wasn’t much detail in [Panda Daughter-in-Law] about the curse of sloth Grisys suffered from, so there was no way to know exactly what was wrong.

Thunk—!

Letty adjusted the cushion and let Grisys’s head drop onto it. His perfectly smooth head sank into the soft goose feathers as if crafted by the gods.

“Isn’t that nice? It’s soft and fluffy, right?”

“……...”

There was no response to Letty’s question, but Grisys’s eyebrows twitched slightly.

Letty giggled and was about to pull a blanket over him.

“Huh? What’s this?”

Letty’s eyes widened as she noticed a black mist near Grisys’s neck.

The black mist coiled around Grisys’s neck like a snake, swirling in circles.

When Letty reached out her hand, the mist evaded her touch, hissing softly as if it had a will of its own.

"What is this!"

Frustrated by her inability to catch the mist, Letty assumed a more determined stance and focused on Grisys.

‘Think of it like hunting bugs, Letty.’

She recalled the times she went into the woods with her mother to hunt small birds and insects, holding her breath in concentration.

As the mist crept forward again, Letty didn’t hesitate and jumped up, grabbing the mist near its neck.

Though the black mist seemed intangible, it surprisingly felt solid and heavy, like lead.

Unable to bear the weight, Letty wobbled slightly.

“Ah!”

Reflexively, she tensed her body to avoid falling, and the mist in her grasp began to crumble.

Though only a portion of the mist, large enough to envelop Grisys’s neck, broke apart, the sunlight streaming through the gap tickled his chin.

"……......"

The sunlight pooled like dew on the thick eyelashes casting shadows below his eyes.

Letty noticed Grisys blinking slowly and suddenly leaned in closer.

“Father-in-law?”

Grisys slowly opened his eyes and met Letty’s curious, reddish-brown gaze. His lips parted slightly.

“What….”

Did this child do something?

Grisys, who was normally awake for only 30 minutes to an hour out of the day, realized his condition felt different. He narrowed his eyes.

Though his body still felt as heavy as waterlogged cotton, his mind, usually clouded as if someone had stirred his brain, was unusually clear. His vision, which was typically blurry, was surprisingly sharp today.

As if there was a crack in the curse that bound his body.

“Ugh….”

And through that crack, a sharp pain pierced through.

“Father-in-law? Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

Letty, startled by the pained expression on Grisys’s face, brought her face even closer to his.

Grisys furrowed his brow as he became acutely aware of the soft tufts of Letty’s hair tickling his forehead.

“You.”

What did you do to me?

Just as Grisys opened his mouth to ask, the door creaked open without so much as a knock.

No matter how arrogant Lorik’s subordinate might be, they wouldn’t normally barge in this rudely.

“Eep!”

Realizing who the intruder was, Grisys, who had been lying limp and unresponsive until now, suddenly sprang into action, swiftly pushing Letty under the sofa.

“Father-in-law?”

Before the surprised Letty could say anything, Grisys pressed his long index finger to his lips. The pale shadow of his hand fell over his lips, untouched by sunlight.

“Shh.”

At his warning, Letty tightly shut her mouth and nodded firmly.

As Letty huddled under the sofa, a heavy set of footsteps echoed through the office.

“Brother Grisys, the sun is high, and yet you’re still lying down?”

The voice was laced with mockery.

Letty instinctively recognized him as one of the many villains frequently appearing in [Panda Daughter-in-Law].

‘White shoes….’

Moreover, the man’s shoes, visible through the gap in the sofa, were sharply pointed white dress shoes. With that level of fashion sense, he could easily be seen as a bad person, even if he wasn’t necessarily playing the villain.

“Phew, did you know there’s even talk at the council of removing you from the headship, brother?”

His words sounded like concern for Grisys at first, but the excitement in his voice was poorly concealed.

“I worry about you all the time. What if you really get stripped of your title? I wonder if my poor sister, may she rest in peace, can find peace knowing this.”

With a dramatic sigh, the owner of the white shoes stepped on Grisys’s hand, pressing down firmly on the carpet.

“…....…!”

Letty’s eyes widened as she witnessed Grisys being stepped on right before her eyes. She clasped her hands tightly over her mouth to stifle her gasp.

‘He stepped on Father-in-law!’

To make matters worse, the man wiped the dust from his pointed shoe onto Grisys’s shirt.

Who could possibly have the audacity to wipe their shoes on the Grand Duke of Grizzly House, the head of the Grisys family?

“Oh! I suppose she wouldn’t be able to close her eyes in peace. How could she? She was killed by the very son she gave birth to.”

Each word the man spoke about Grisys’s late wife pierced him like a dagger.

‘The mist—!’

Letty’s eyes widened further as the mist surrounding Grisys grew thicker.

In the end, Grisys, crushed by the weight of the mist, couldn’t resist even as his hand scraped against the floor under the man’s shoe.

The man smiled faintly, seemingly pleased by Grisys’s lack of resistance.

“No matter what others say, I prefer seeing you like this.”

“…....….”

“You suit this pathetic, worm-like state better than anyone.”

Letty’s jaw dropped in shock at the man’s words.

‘Could it be Moriel?’

Though there was no mention of Moriel wearing white shoes in [Panda Daughter-in-Law], his sinister laughter and cruel speech resembled the character closely.

“Don’t forget, brother, that my sister Isilla died because of you. You must live like this until the day you die.”

Isilla.

At the mention of that name, Grisys’s eyes, which had shown no emotion even as his hand was trampled or he was insulted, began to tremble.

The mist surrounding him grew darker and heavier than when Letty had first entered the room, as if he was sinking into an endless abyss.

The deep sorrow that filled Grisys’s ruby-like eyes allowed Letty to understand his curse as if struck by lightning.

He wasn’t lazy or indolent.

‘Father-in-law is….’

“My sister died because of you. Because of you and your wretched family.”

Kneeling beside Grisys, the man tapped his cheek mockingly with his fingers, smirking.

Letty bit her lip as she watched Grisys endure the humiliation in silence.

‘Father-in-law is heartbroken.’

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