Values

"Hey, kid," Michel called out, arriving at the end of the wood and meeting Edward.

At first, Edward thought Michel was talking to him, but the Midian leader soon showed his true intentions.

Nudging Theo, who was sitting on the ground and scribbling in the dirt with a stick, Edward caught his nephew's eye.

"He's talking to you, Te."

Theo looked at Michel with a dull expression that annoyed the leader.

"The boy has a very…"

"I know,' replied Ethan, totally dissatisfied."

Michel took a small scythe from his waistband while he fixed his straw hat. With a shake of his head, the leader called out to Theo without saying a word.

A few minutes later, a crowd of villagers formed around a section of the plantation, which blocked the road and half the routes between the crops.

They whispered while laughter erupted at times. Nothing to do with the event that had brought them together, but for personal reasons: the farmers had just found the opportunity to rest for a few minutes and talk things over.

"What's going on here? Why aren't you working?" complained Anton, one of the men closest to Michel.

The peasant entered the crowd pushing the other farmers.

When he reached the end of the road... he was surprised.

Anton was shocked by the back of Duke Ethan, who was standing still with his arms crossed just watching from afar.

"Lord…" he said, but was interrupted by a heavy sigh.

"Cut it at that height," said Michel, running his hand over the body of the wheat plant, almost to the ground.

With scythe in hand, Theo cut exactly where Michel ordered.

"Good, keep it there. Now do it again with the next ones."

"What are you doing?" Anton asked as he approached.

"Giving the Young Master reason to show off to Magnum."

A vein popped out on Anton's forehead; Magnum was his only child, but unlike Theo, he wasn't a deviant.

"Let's go! I'll show you how to remove the seeds."

Accompanying Theo and Michel for the rest of that day, Ethan found the solution to his concern.

For the next few months, Ethan took Theo to the village at least twice a week. Even with more than thirty children to play with, Theo preferred to stay at Michel's feet.

He just found himself in the personality and values of the old man, someone who was the complete opposite of Liam Mason. Theo became attached to the fact that Michel was always reaching out to others, even though they didn't really need it, just to accumulate what he calls a 'positive balance'.

A karma capable of guaranteeing a decent rest... Something that Liam didn't make a point of having.

Before, Michel said that there were no heroes in humanity... But he himself turned out to be the light of a child with the most intense glow.

A second father for the Young Master of the Lawrence.

Four months after starting to live with Michel, the boy was already relatively more open with some of the villagers, but he hadn't identified with the children of Midian.

When Michel wasn't around, Theo would sit at the foot of a tree scribbling in the dirt with a stick.

On that particular afternoon, Theo was doodling a kind of eye on the ground, with rays forming a kind of magical Velcro around a sharp pupil.

'I think it was like this...' he thought, analyzing the scribbles. 'The will of the destroyer... All this information is inside my head, all these memories are so...'

With his eyes closed, he sighed heavily.

'Cruel.'

"What are you doing?" Agnes, a child with red hair and brown eyes, slowly approached Theo. Michel's granddaughter then continued: " What would that be?

She leaned over to analyze Theo's drawing.

'He's strange...'

"One eye…"

"It's messy... The composition isn't good."

Theo's pride was shot. How?! How could she have the nerve to insult his art? Although it really wasn't amazing... Maybe she wasn't having the same interpretation as him.

"It's not for you to understand."

Agnes laughed, because she knew it was the excuse of someone with a damaged ego.

"Yes, yes. Yes, of course. Do you have a problem if I stay here and read?"

Theo's eyes shone like the finest gold.

"Do you read? Like... Aren't you a peasant? How can you read?"

Agnes puffed out her chest with pride and shook back her waves of red hair.

"The Duchess teaches me." Agnes held up a book "She gives me a book a week and, while you're here, she teaches me to read and write…"

The arrogance in Agnes' voice annoyed Theo.

"Hello? She teaches me every day. She reads to me, teaches me to read and write, teaches me to paint…"

As Agnes clucked her tongue in frustration at her failed attempts to annoy the Young Master, the latter looked at the cover of the book in the girl's possession and smiled.

"Aaaah, the Snegriya Incursion book, eh?" Theo commented amusedly. "Sergei Van Klanov decided to go there five hundred years ago, to form the Patriarchal community of the South Pole. It's a pity that the mana beasts of the South alone, dominated by the ancient shamans, wiped out the entire crew... Only Van Klanov's diaries were found bottled up in the shipwrecks…"

Theo had just summarized the entire article that Agnes was going to use as study material. This completely annoyed the girl.

"You bastard!" She screamed.

"Whoa, whoa. How vulgar."

Waving his arms and letting his body go limp, Theo made fun of his mentor's granddaughter.

Grabbing a handful of earth, Agnes threw it at the Young Master. Stowing the book at the foot of a tree, she held her dress between her legs and began to run after Theo...

A big mistake.

As a deviant, Theo was absurdly faster than Agnes (although she was also a deviant). And although he was approximately two years and ten months old, precisely because he was a deviant, Theo's physical maturity bordered on that of a child of almost five.

Dodging Agnes and causing her to slip on the sand, Theo turned around and snatched the book on Van Klanov before running back to the main road.

"Give it back!" Agnes screamed, trying to get up. She chased him to the road. " It's a present from the Duchess!

Theo ran along the road towards the wheat plantation, which at that time was small thanks to the harvest. He turned off the main road onto a road that cut through the plantation.

The Young Master started laughing as he ran.

"Magnum!" Agnes called out to a boy sitting on a cart "Help me!"

The Magnum boy, drowsy and wearing a straw hat to cover his face from the sun, lay quietly yawning and trying to open his eyes.

"Huh?" He mumbled as he yawned. "Waz it?"

"Take my book!"

Removing his hat from his face, Magnum straightened up and looked at Theo, who was still running towards him. Without fully understanding what Agnes was trying to say, he only noticed a book under Theo's arms and decided to act.

Falling on the hay beside the cart, Magnum ran towards Theo and threw himself at the Young Master's feet. However, Theo jumped on top of the young peasant and knocked him to the ground.

Michel and Anton saw the exact moment that Magnum fell. Anton, after seeing his son fall carelessly to the ground, immediately dropped the bales of wheat he was carrying in his arms and ran after him.

"And, boy…" Michel muttered.

"Mag!" Anton shouted in desperation.

"Hey, Theo! To the plantation!" Michel suggested, pointing away.

Without hesitation and showing total confidence in Michel, the Young Master launched himself into the field and ran between the leftover crops.

Annoyed, Magnum did the same.

'Agnes woke me up just for that?! Now I can't go back to sleep until I get the book!'

Although the plantation was cultivated and low, it was enough to cover the short legs of the two children. And even though Theo was faster and more prepared, his breath was gradually running out.

He started walking slowly and looked around for a route.

But, unexpectedly, Magnum hit him slightly.

When Theo noticed, he pulled the book away and used his body to push Magnum away. The peasant, however, ran up to Theo's back and tried to steal the book again.

However, Young Master Lawrence threw the book forward only to catch it again and get rid of Magnum. It worked because, confused, the young peasant let go of Theo's back.

They ran a few more meters until Theo lost control when he tripped over the plants.

Theo was the first to go down: Magnum subsequently blundered into the side.

The book fell out of the open pages next to Theo.

Both boys fell on their stomachs and were able to watch the afternoon sky.

Gasping, they began to forget their tiredness and were overcome by adrenaline. In a matter of seconds, they burst into laughter.

"Tha girl is queiz!" exclaimed Magnum.

"That's right"' Theo agreed.

"Who are you calling what?" Agnes, who was running across the field pulling up her dress to avoid tripping, shouted as she went to get the free one.

Anton sighed with relief.

Michel smiled and turned to do his chores.

They were Theo's first sparks of happiness, which wouldn't be fed for so long...