I Faked a Pregnancy, but My Husband Returned - Chapter 145

Side Story 2: A Bond from the Past

The child was born with the chime of the noon bell.

“Both the mother and baby are healthy!”

Due to the long labor, Ekian had stayed up the entire night. When he held his loudly crying son, who announced his arrival to the world, his eyes filled with joy.

How could anything be so lovable?

A flood of emotions rushed in.

Though he had cursed the baby for nine months while it was in Judith’s womb, seeing the newborn made him think first of his birth mother, who must have wished happiness upon him despite everything.

Before such a helpless, fragile, and yet utterly lovable existence, he resolved not to entertain questions like “Why on earth?” The flood of complex and immense emotions he felt as he looked at the baby made sense now.

At the same time, he could confidently dismiss Judith’s earlier worry—”What if you’re disappointed that it’s a boy?”—as nonsense.

The baby’s eyes, bright green like Judith’s, and the jet-black hair resembling Ekian’s, made him laugh the moment he locked eyes with those round green orbs.

“Son.”

He whispered into the ear of the still-crying baby.

“You’ve gone through so much.”

Until reuniting with Judith, the baby had also traveled a long road. Ekian smiled gently.

“To be honest, there won’t only be good things ahead of you. Hardships are part of life. But I’ll raise you with the fervent wish that such impossibilities never touch you.”

With all his heart, he spoke his first words to his son, then handed the baby back to the doctor. Now it was time to see Judith.

“Judith.”

Judith was lying down, drenched in sweat. As Ekian entered the room, she greeted him with a smile.

“Did you see our baby?”

“He has your eyes. I fell in love with him at first sight.” Ekian gently took her hand and asked, “You went through so much. Are you feeling any pain?”

Judith groaned softly as she muttered, “There’s a lot, of course. Still, now that I’ve given birth, the labor pains are gone, so that’s good.”

In truth, hearing Judith’s cries of pain had been agonizing for Ekian as well. If he hadn’t been there, she would’ve gone through that harrowing delivery alone—and the thought of that was horrifying. At the same time, he felt a newfound respect for her, who had set off on a long journey to protect their child.

Another doctor by Judith’s side said, “You’ll recover gradually. It progressed slowly since it was your first delivery, but this counts as a smooth birth.”

Ekian gently brushed aside Judith’s sweat-drenched hair and let out a long sigh.

“Watching you suffer and being unable to do anything about it was the hardest part. Honestly, with how I feel right now, I don’t think I want to have another child.”

“Hmm, I thought the same thing while I was in labor.”

Judith smiled faintly as she spoke.

“But you know, I once had my fortune told just for fun? They said I’d have two kids. One boy, one girl. If that’s true, doesn’t that mean we’ll have one more?”

“That’s just superstition.”

“I used to think so too, but looking back now, it feels like it was pretty accurate.”

“You’re just remembering the parts that matched.”

When Ekian waved his hand dismissively, Judith opened her eyes wide and retorted.

“Still, the fortune-teller was a famous one, invited by the daughter of the Count of Frona at the masquerade ball they held. It wasn’t just some random street fortune-teller.”

“…Hmm?”

At that, Ekian furrowed his brow slightly.

“The masquerade at the Count of Frona’s? Do you mean… the one held six or seven years ago?”

As far as Ekian knew, Judith hadn’t attended any noble gatherings after she turned seventeen. And it wasn’t common for noble families to host masquerade balls. So attending one at the Count of Frona’s couldn’t have happened more than once.

“Uh, maybe? I think I was fifteen at the time? Honestly, the fortune was so bad, my friends were all shocked… I got the worst reading there. But thinking back now, it was all true.”

Judith blinked several times, then asked, “But were you there too?”

Ekian slowly nodded. “That was the last banquet I attended before I ran away.”

At the time, Ekian was seventeen—the Young Duke of Mayus, whom everyone was desperate to invite to their banquets.

He didn’t particularly enjoy social gatherings like banquets, but he believed that fitting into noble culture was part of a successor’s duty.

So when invited to such events, he usually accepted. Even if he didn’t actively enjoy them, people always gathered around him, and just by smiling lightly and exchanging a few words, his reputation—and the name of House Mayus—would rise.

Before the fall of the Baron Ailan family, he had coincidentally attended several banquets with Judith, then a baron’s daughter.

But neither Ekian nor Judith were the type to approach someone without a reason, so they had no anecdotes or memories of each other from that time.

Judith’s excuse of “I admired you from afar” was plausible because she really had only seen him from a distance.

But…

A girl who received the worst fortune among her friends.

Something suddenly came to Ekian’s mind, and he asked Judith, “By any chance… Judith, were you wearing an owl mask? A white one.”

“Oh my!”

Judith was so surprised she even sat up.

“How did you know?”

That owl mask had been a gift from one of her teachers. Since she was a clever student, the teacher had said an owl, the symbol of wisdom, suited her well.

Other girls wore cute animal masks like butterflies, cats, squirrels, or rabbits. Judith, by contrast, looked a little odd among them. Still, she really liked that mask and wore it the entire time, no matter what her friends said.

“It was a rather strange mask, wasn’t it? Is that why you noticed me? I mean, that owl mask did look unnecessarily realistic.”

“Well, the mask, yes, but…”

Ekian chuckled and laced his fingers through hers again.

“I don’t think nothing happened between us back then. Do you remember speaking with someone in a lion mask?”

“Whaaaat?”

Judith’s eyes widened.

“No way… Ekian, were you… the one sitting in the fountain garden with the lion mask?”

Their memories began to return to that moment.

To a connection from the past that they had never known.

***

Garnet was the only daughter of the Count of Frona, precious and adored. The Count and Countess of Frona would do anything for her.

To celebrate her fifteenth birthday, Garnet had planned a dreamy banquet herself, filled with everything a young girl could wish for.

She recreated the setting of a romance novel she had read with great admiration at the time.

“A man and woman, hiding their identities at a masquerade, meet as if by fate. Then a fortune-teller at the ball gives a prophecy: You two will become husband and wife. And that prophecy becomes the trigger for their future marriage. Isn’t that so romantic?”

At that time, Judith had been acquainted with several noble girls of her age, and Garnet, along with Anais, was among those girls.

Of course, from Judith’s perspective, “acquainted” simply meant they were close enough to speak, not that they were actually close friends. In truth, Judith usually listened more than she actively mingled.

“See? Getting close to someone without knowing their identity is real fate. Because you fall for them without knowing their background or appearance!”

When Garnet clasped her hands and spoke dreamily, Anais scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Then why are you, the host, collecting all the mask info of the guests? You’re planning to approach Young Duke Ekian pretending not to know, aren’t you?”

“W-we’re collecting that for safety reasons! And what do you mean pretend not to know?”

Garnet and Anais began to bicker. Judith, sitting between them, rested her chin on her hand and drifted into thought.

‘Better not get involved with someone like the Young Duke in the first place. Sounds exhausting.’