Chapter 152. I Will Have the Child
“What on earth…?”
After barely managing to utter those words, Deborah’s eyes began to tremble chaotically once again.
A child… a child, whose child could it possibly be…?
Even while thinking it could not be true, that she must have heard wrong, her heart suddenly sank.
It felt as though the crying she had heard just before waking from the dream was ringing loudly in her ears once again.
Around then, Jade also realized that something was wrong.
Watching her face grow paler and paler without a trace of color from right in front of him, there was no way he could fail to notice.
Deborah had absolutely no idea that she was pregnant.
No, she had never even suspected it.
Looking at those golden eyes shaking anxiously from side to side, Jade bit down hard on his lip.
He had been careless.
He should not have told someone with such a lifeless face, someone who looked so sick that it was painful to watch, in such a manner.
It was something she absolutely needed to know.
But at the very least, she should not have learned it this way…
However, what was done was done.
And in a situation where spilled water could not be gathered back up, Jade knew exactly what he had to do.
As if organizing his complicated thoughts once more, Jade roughly rubbed his face again.
“The fever…”
At those difficult words, Deborah’s body immediately flinched.
The sight caused Jade’s jaw to tighten for a moment, but only briefly before he continued.
“That day… your fever wouldn’t go down all night, so as soon as morning came, I called a doctor.”
“……”
“Lea came after hearing the news in the meantime.”
“……”
“The doctor had just arrived, checked your condition, and gave you medicine that was supposed to reduce the fever.”
“At that time, Lea… said something strange.”
“……”
“She said… Deborah might be carrying a child.”
Thump-! Thump-!
As she listened to the story of the day she had collapsed unconscious, her heart suddenly began pounding like mad.
-How are you? Have you been feeling a little better lately?
-Your condition, I mean. The nausea and how you keep getting sleepy all the time.
-Hmm… About that, Deborah, I thought about it carefully and—
The things Lea had said over the past several days flashed rapidly through her mind.
Along with that strange expression Lea had worn while saying those things.
“I asked what grounds she had for saying something like that, and for a moment things got heated.”
“It was such an absurd thing to say that I couldn’t exactly respond politely…”
“……”
“Even so, I thought it was strange.”
“Because of how unusually certain Lea seemed.”
“She’s not the type of person to act like that without any basis… and I know that better than anyone.”
As she watched Jade continue speaking calmly, Deborah suddenly remembered something.
She did not remember exactly when, but something Lea had said once.
-I have six younger sisters below me, you know? And there’s quite a big age gap.
-The youngest two are so much younger that it wouldn’t be strange if people thought I gave birth to them myself.
-Your parents must have gotten along well.
-Well, they did get along. Too well, if anything.
-Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that maybe because I grew up with parents like that, I have one exceptional talent compared to other people.
-An exceptional talent? …What is it?
-Hmm, it’s the ability to tell when someone’s pregnant.
-I can just tell at a glance.
-The complexion, the way they walk, even the look of their back.
-…You can tell just from things like that?
-Haha, half of that was a joke.
-Well, if I talk a little with someone I suspect, most of the time I end up being right.
-Even I find it amazing.
She had never suspected it at all.
Those questions Lea had casually asked her not long after that conversation.
The nausea.
The constant sleepiness and exhaustion.
And most importantly, that thing that happened every month.
Only now did Deborah finally realize what all of it had meant.
“After that, Lea spoke with the doctor for quite a while.”
“After hearing everything she had to say, the doctor came back to the bedside and examined Deborah again…”
“And after some time, he said that pregnancy was almost certain…”
Having said that much, Jade’s lips pressed tightly together.
Shock and confusion coexisted on his face.
Watching the fist clutching the bedsheet tremble, he concluded that she was no longer in a state where she could continue the conversation.
It had been a fact that even he himself had found difficult to believe.
So he could not even begin to imagine how she must be feeling now.
Jade, who had remained silent for a long while, finally rose from his seat shortly afterward.
“For now… your health comes first.”
“So don’t think about anything else.”
“Just focus on recovering.”
“……”
“…Then get some rest.”
Click.
The sound of the door closing echoed through the room.
But Deborah did not move at all.
As though she had frozen exactly as she lay—
For a long time afterward, a heavy silence drifted through the bedroom, so dense that even breathing could not be heard.
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“My goodness…”
Seeing Leah’s mouth fall open the moment she saw her face, Deborah awkwardly curled her lips into a smile.
Leah stood there for a long while without closing her mouth.
Then she approached the bed where Deborah was lying.
“What happened to your face?”
“You look worse than when you were unconscious.”
At that brutally honest evaluation from someone who never knew how to soften her words, Deborah let out a small laugh without realizing it.
Even she found it strange that she could still laugh in a situation like this.
“Have you eaten anything?”
“…A little.”
Thinking she had to force something down, she diligently tried eating the porridge that arrived on schedule.
But because of the nausea surging up inside her, she had only managed to swallow a few spoonfuls.
Apparently guessing the situation from that unsatisfactory answer, Leah let out a long sigh.
“This is usually when morning sickness is at its worst.”
“Of course, it varies from person to person, but once you get through this stage, most people start feeling better.”
It was meant as a comforting remark.
Yet Deborah laughed again.
It was amusing hearing those words from an unmarried woman who had never even given birth, speaking as though she had already raised several children.
“You know all that too?”
“Of course.”
“I told you before.”
“My mother would get pregnant just when you thought she’d stop, and then she’d get pregnant again with the next sibling.”
“So I’ve become incredibly perceptive about these things.”
She added that Deborah could ask her if she was curious about anything.
Deborah quietly nodded.
“But—.”
The tone was noticeably different from before.
Seeing how serious Leah’s expression had become, Deborah’s face also grew calm.
“Can I ask what you’re planning to do from now on?”
True to her straightforward personality, Leah asked directly without beating around the bush.
Several days had already passed since Deborah regained consciousness.
Yet no one had asked her that question until now.
There was no one close enough to ask.
And even Jade, who had been the one to tell her about the pregnancy, had never brought it up.
Of course, that was probably because he did not know how to.
After remaining silent for a long while, Deborah finally opened her mouth.
“I want to have the baby…”
“No, I will have the baby.”
Only after saying it aloud did it finally feel real.
The decision she had reached after agonizing over it for days.
When she first learned she was carrying a child, the emotions she felt could not be summed up with a single word.
Despair.
Confusion.
And fear.
The moment she realized she could never stand before that man again, she learned that a part of him had come to reside within her.
Longing for a man she would never forget, and raising a child alone for the rest of her life—
Deborah knew better than anyone how lonely and miserable such a life could be.
That was why she had sworn over and over again that she would never live such a life.
And yet she…
The daughter of that pitiful Rosalyn, of all people…
Was repeating that same difficult life.
So how could she not be afraid?
How could she not be confused?
But after spending an entire day drowning in despair, a completely different feeling suddenly emerged.
A child.
The only blood relative to enter the life of someone who had lived as though she were completely alone in this vast world.
It was the first time she had felt such emotions since her mother died.
Family.
Blood.
And… the child of the man she loved.
From that moment on, her thoughts began flowing in a completely different direction.
She would have the child.
And unlike herself, she would not raise the child to be lonely.
She would shower the child with endless love and raise them to be happy.
After saying that determination aloud to someone for the first time, everything finally felt real.
Even the last remnants of anxiety lingering inside her were washed away completely.
Looking at Leah, whose expression had become complicated, Deborah repeated herself in a voice far firmer than before.
“I will have the baby.”
A smile as bright and clear as a cloudless sky spread across her face.
They had not known each other for very long.
But it was the first time Leah had ever seen her smile like that.
That was why.
Why Leah stared at that face for such a long time.
As though she had been enchanted by something.
For a very long time.
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