Chapter 111: A Way to Stay Alive
Even though Armand had already decided to let Rachel live in the estate, he still couldn’t stop thinking about her biological parents.
If Rachel could remember even a little bit, with his abilities, he might be able to track them down.
“You really don’t remember anything? Like their hair color, eye color, name, nickname, or whether they had any scars or tattoos?”
Armand sat at his desk, his fingers tapping on the table.
To make things easier, he had simply grabbed a cushion and placed the little girl directly on the desk. She didn’t seem like the kind of kid who’d move around and fall off.
Evelia had already been sent off to do her usual work. After all, she was still a maid working under Armand, and there were always tasks waiting for her.
So right now, the only people in the office were Armand and Rachel.
“I don’t remember,” Rachel replied.
Unable to give a real answer, all she could say were those meaningless three words.
She only needed to pretend to be clueless, since her current “identity” was just a normal little girl.
“You don’t remember anything at all?”
But Armand didn’t seem ready to give up.
In this country, it wasn’t rare for children to get separated from their families for many different reasons. The higher-ups usually turned a blind eye and just treated them as orphans, placing them in shelters or orphanages. But Armand felt that since he had met her, he should at least try to help.
He understood what it felt like to lose one’s parents. Even though his experience had been at a different age, the emotional pain was something he knew well.
“…Yes. I really don’t remember.”
To keep up the act of being a child, Rachel knew she couldn’t talk too much. People always said they liked “mature” kids, but if she acted too grown-up, it might expose her.
Better to keep things simple and stay quiet, that way, she could give her brain a little rest too.
“Then, before we found you… who was taking care of you all these years?”
“……”
That question caught Rachel off guard. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say.
Her current body had been made to look like a three- or four-year-old from the very beginning. So she had no past. There was no backstory from age 0 to 4, it was a blank slate. And at the time she made this body, she hadn’t known it would be used as an “escape pod,” so she had never created a detailed background for the girl named Rachel.
‘This knight captain is seriously annoying.’
Rachel was starting to get frustrated. No one likes being grilled with questions like this, even if Armand was just trying to be kind.
“…I really don’t remember anything from before.”
So Rachel stuck to playing dumb.
She knew she couldn’t make up a full story on the spot. Rushed lies always have holes. She’d rather say “I don’t know” than risk Armand noticing something didn’t add up. But to be safe, she also started quickly thinking of a more believable answer in case he kept asking.
“I see…”
Armand listened to her vague reply, then looked down, deep in thought, his fingers still tapping lightly on the table.
Rachel had once heard that Armand was supposed to be a brainless idiot, easy to fool. But now, sitting here with him, she felt a strange kind of pressure. It didn’t feel like he was just “asking questions” anymore. It felt more like an interrogation. Like he wouldn’t stop until he figured it all out.
If she made even one small mistake in her logic, it might raise a red flag in his mind.
Sure, a three- or four-year-old’s words shouldn’t be taken too seriously. She could even just make stuff up. But still, she didn’t want any lingering suspicion in his heart.
So her strategy was simple: say less, mess up less. If she didn’t talk, she couldn’t slip up.
“Have you ever been to a monastery, orphanage, or shelter? Somewhere people might take you in for a while?”
“I don’t really remember…” Rachel replied with a pitiful look. “I just remember always wandering around. If I met kind uncles or aunties, they’d give me something to eat. And if I met nice older brothers or sisters, they’d play with me… But I didn’t have a place to stay…”
Except for that torn mat next to the alley and the trash cans…
Rachel couldn’t claim she had ever been to an orphanage or similar place. She knew that with Armand’s position as Captain of the Royal Knights, he could easily check the records at those places. If she said she had lived in one, he could verify whether a platinum-haired girl named Rachel had ever really been there.
Sure, adding a detail like that might make her story sound more believable, but it would also make it easier to get caught.
So in the end, it was easier to just say that she had been wandering around on her own. It sounded a bit dramatic, but Armand didn’t have any solid clues to check anyway.
Rachel still didn’t know if this man in front of her truly wanted to help her find out where she came from, or if he was actually getting suspicious and wanted to investigate her.
Did she mess up somewhere in her disguise? Did she accidentally say or do something that made him suspicious?
Of course, Armand actually hadn’t thought that deeply about it. It was just that this alchemist, who had already experienced death once, was overthinking things.
Because she was scared of dying again, she was extra careful around others. In fact, her suspicion of people might have been even stronger than Armand’s, who already had trouble sleeping at night because of his own anxieties.
On Armand’s side, things were pretty simple. He honestly just thought Rachel was a normal, homeless orphan who needed help.
Sure, he had briefly considered whether she could be a spy or assassin sent by another group. But then he thought, if a three- or four-year-old could already be a killer, wouldn’t that make her a total genius? And if someone like that took him down, well, it wouldn’t exactly be unfair.
“I see.”
Hearing Rachel’s answer, Armand nodded. Although there were still many details he could ask more about, he didn’t plan to dig deeper.
“So your name is Rachel?”
“…Yes,” Rachel nodded. “Rachel. That’s my name.”
“Easier to remember than Eve,” Armand laughed. “Do you still remember who gave you that name?”
“……” Rachel paused for a moment, then replied, “I gave it to myself.”
She couldn’t come up with a believable story about someone else naming her, so she decided to just tell the truth.
“You named yourself?”
“Yes… I was on the street one day, and I heard a big brother playing music with a guitar. He was singing a song about a girl named Rachel. I really liked the name, so I decided to use it.”
That part wasn’t even a lie. Rachel had indeed heard the name somewhere before, she just couldn’t remember where exactly.
“I see… Well then, Rachel, tell me this, do you want to find your real parents? If you want to, I’ll help you find them.”
He wasn’t just saying that to comfort her. If Rachel truly wanted to look for her family, Armand would put in real effort to help.
His words were so serious that, for a moment, Rachel started to feel like maybe he really wasn’t interrogating her, maybe he genuinely just wanted to help her.
But…
“Parents? Aren’t you and Mom already my parents?”
Rachel decided to keep playing dumb. She wanted to make full use of the emotional angle.
Now that she knew who Evelia and Armand were, Rachel realized, if she wanted to stay alive, she had to win the favor of both of them.
“Dad and Mom? Us…?”
Armand was clearly surprised by what she said. He had assumed she was just a simple little girl and didn’t expect her to say something like that.
“Yup! Mom is Mom, and you’re Dad.”
“Well… I’m not really your dad…” Armand said awkwardly.
He had already accepted Evelia being seen as the “mom,” but he hadn’t thought of himself as the “dad.”
“For someone to be your mom or dad, they have to be a real couple. Evelia, the one who found you, and I, we’re not a couple. So I can’t really be your dad.”
“Yes you are! You are Dad!”
“But—”
“I don’t care! You are my dad!”
Seeing that Armand wouldn’t give in, Rachel started acting spoiled and stubborn.
She wanted to survive, and to do that, she needed a safe place to stay. This estate was clearly perfect for that.
But because of Evelia, her plan needed an extra step.
To avoid getting hurt or killed by Evelia, she needed to win her favor. At the same time, to protect herself in the future, she also had to win over Armand, the Captain of the Knights.
And the best way to win both of them over was simple—
“Mom is Mom, you are Dad! You are my mom and dad!”
That’s right. She just had to make them and herself a real family.