Chapter 1

Knock, knock, knock—

Listening to the pitter-patter of the falling rain, Ramona had drifted off to sleep in her chair while reading. Just as she was about to surrender to the cozy embrace of her blanket and fall into a deep slumber, the rain seemed to rap against her door.

“…… Ma……”

Ramona tried to ignore the sound of the rain and stay asleep, but she thought she heard something. At the sound—one that made her heart flutter even through the noise of the downpour—Ramona reluctantly stood up and opened the door.

“M-Mommy…”

A young boy, looking to be about four or five years old, stood there trembling, drenched to the bone.

“Raon?”

Only when his name was called did a sorrowful smile finally spread across the child’s face.

“Mommy, I missed you, so I came.”

His lips were pale blue from the cold as he looked up at Ramona. He reached out a tiny hand, wanting to grab the hem of her skirt, but he hesitated and looked down instead, as if afraid he was being a nuisance.

“Who on earth…?”

Ramona quickly took off her shawl to wrap it around the shivering Raon, hurrying him inside to dry him with a towel.

“Raon! Who brought you here?”

“I asked Daddy and came by myself.”

Seeing Raon speak so confidently, Ramona sighed inwardly and quickly boiled some water.She poured it into the tub, stripped him of his wet clothes, and lifted him up to soak him in the warm water.

“Are you saying Andrew told you where I live so you could find me?”

“Yes.”

As Raon nodded his head in response, Ramona looked at him with a deeply complicated gaze, pouring warm water over his chilled body.

“I told you I’m not your mommy anymore.”

“But… you are my mommy…”

Seeing that Raon remained tense even in the warm water, Ramona let out a heavy sigh. To be precise, Raon was the child of her ex-husband’s former wife. In other words, he was a complete stranger with no blood relation even to her ex-husband, Andrew.

Andrew, who was obsessed with beauty, had married Raon’s biological mother because of her exceptional looks. However, she had been sickly even before the marriage and died shortly after, leaving Raon to become a literal nuisance in the household.

Until Ramona married Andrew, Raon didn’t even have a name. After marrying Andrew, Ramona became his new mother and cared for him for two years. Starved for affection, young Raon followed Ramona faithfully.

However, when Andrew’s interest shifted to a new woman, Ramona stepped aside cleanly. She believed that was the way to repay the man who had saved her life at the risk of his own.

Before leaving, she told Raon she was no longer his mother and that a new mommy would be coming, then she left that house. She couldn’t believe the child had walked through the rainy streets with nothing but an address.

“Did Andrew not bring you here himself?”

She had suspected that Raon might be an obstacle if Andrew wanted to remarry. Still, Ramona, who had left alone with her alimony because she couldn’t bring herself to take a “burden” with her, asked the hunched-over Raon.

“N-no, he didn’t.”

“Then did Butler Oliver give you a carriage ride to somewhere nearby?”

“……”

Seeing him fidgeting with his fingers in the water without answering, it seemed that was the case. If he had been Andrew’s biological child, he wouldn’t have been this indifferent; to send him to an ex-wife meant he must have truly hated having the boy around.

“It’s raining hard today, so stay here. We’ll go back there as soon as the rain stops.”

To Ramona, who was just turning twenty and starting a new life, Raon was, in a way, a burden. To be cold about it, he wasn’t her biological son, so there was no reason for her to take him in and raise him.

“If only I knew where his maternal family was.”

Unfortunately, Andrew had said he didn’t know the family of Raon’s biological father or mother, Olivia. He had happened upon a woman collapsing while holding a baby and nursed her, but she had never spoken a word about her relatives.

Knock, knock—

While she was lost in thought, a knock sounded. When she opened the door, a man in a neat suit was standing there. Upon seeing Ramona, the man bowed politely.

“Butler Oliver, what brings you here?”

“Lady Ramona, I have come to visit with a message from the Master.”

Oliver, the butler for the Master of the Grace Merchant Guild and Baron Grace, Andrew, handed Ramona a bundle. As soon as Ramona took it, Oliver bowed and walked back through the rain toward the carriage parked in the distance.

After confirming he had boarded the carriage, Ramona unwrapped the bundle. Inside were gold coins and a single letter.

「In exchange for saving your life, I want you to raise that child until his biological father appears.」

Ramona, receiving more gold than typical child support, sighed deeply after reading the letter. She couldn’t simply refuse, given he mentioned the debt of her life. Without him, she wouldn’t even be here to have these worries.

Tapping her fingertips on the table, she realized she might have left the child in the tub for too long and stood up.

“Raon, I’ll wash you, just wait a moment.”

There was no way a four-year-old could wash himself properly. She hurried into the bathroom, but there she found Raon, scrubbing his body with his tiny hands, looking at Ramona with a piteous smile.

“Mommy, I can wash myself. So please don’t throw me away. Please…”

It was clear he never wanted to go back. After Raon finished washing and came out, Ramona dried his body with a towel. The three red dots on his right shoulder, which he supposedly had since birth, stood out vividly. Since there were no clothes for him, she wrapped him in a blanket, sat him in front of the fireplace, and brought him some homemade soup.

“Hehe, I love the things Mommy makes. It’s really, really yummy. I almost died because I wanted to eat Mommy’s cooking so much.”

Watching Raon scrape the bowl until not a drop was left, Ramona cracked a faint smile. This was a child who, whenever Ramona cooked for him in the past, would eat every last bit even if it gave him an upset stomach, all while watching her every move.

Knowing Ramona didn’t want to take him in, Raon hung his head and bit his lip.

“I’ll be good. I’ll be better than a real son. So please don’t send me back to Daddy. Okay?”

“……”

Seeing eyes that were more than just pitiful—they looked as if they might shatter—Ramona sat down to match the child’s eye level.

Deciding that raising the child would be her way of repaying the debt of her life, Ramona held up her pinky finger.

“There is a condition if you want to live with me. If your real daddy comes for you, you must go without a word.”

“R-really? Thank you! I love Mommy best. I love you, Mommy.”

With eyes full of golden tears of joy, Raon hooked his pinky with hers and buried his face in her shoulder.

“I felt like I was going to die without Mommy. I missed Mommy’s cooking so much, too.”

They had been apart for only about a month, but to Raon, it felt like decades. Had Ramona never existed in the first place, it might have been different, but for Raon, who had grown up receiving an abundance of love from her for two years, life without her was pure agony.

“I won’t leave you now.”

It felt as though Ramona’s protection would keep him safe no matter what hardships came. Leaning into that safety, Raon’s tension melted away, and he fell fast asleep.

Lifting the limp Raon, Ramona laid him on her bed. The child, who had been mature enough to rarely need help since he was small, looked especially heartbreaking today.

Stroking the soft face of the sleeping child, Ramona brushed his hair back and whispered.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t ask to be born, and you couldn’t choose your parents.”

***

Two years later—

Carrying a basket, Ramona’s face was filled with nothing but worry as she stepped outside.

“You must never open the door for a stranger. Understood?”

“Yes! Don’t worry!”

Ramona kept looking back as she left to go earn money. Seeing Raon waving with a bright smile, she gave her usual beaming grin and headed toward the fields.

Raon continued waving until Ramona was out of sight, then went inside to start cleaning. Knowing Ramona wouldn’t have the strength to clean after a day of work, Raon often did chores without being asked.

After sweeping and mopping the small house with a proud expression, Raon quickly locked the door. Then, he opened a book that Ramona had bought for him.

Thanks to Ramona, who made sure to buy him books even if she had to go hungry, he was growing up smarter than other children his age. Raon, who could read even difficult words quite well, froze the moment he heard a knock.

Knock, knock, knock—

— My name is Adrian, and I am looking for a child. Does a child named Raon happen to live here?

At the sound of the man’s heavy voice, Raon swallowed hard and approached the door. He then peered through the small peephole.

“Eek!”

Because the person on the other side had also put his eye to the hole, their eyes met. Startled, Raon jumped back.

— Are you perhaps Raon?

“W-who are you?”

As he asked, blinking his eyes, the man took a deep breath and spoke in a low, gentle voice.

— I have business with you, so please open the door. Be a good boy!

“No. Mommy told me not to open the door for strangers. And there’s no ‘good Raon’ here, only ‘bad Raon’!”

Remembering Ramona said children who didn’t listen to adults were “bad,” Raon decided that today, he would be a bad child.