CH 185

Ah. It’s true that they must look like a family.

Helios was twenty years older than the twins, so it’s enough to make anyone think that he’s their father.

On the first day that Sera saw Rosé, Ferre and Helios together, she also initially thought that Helios looked like their young father.

Sera shook her head, correcting the man’s wrong impression.

“No, we are—”

However, even before she could finish speaking, Helios had a strange smile on his lips as he faced Sera and gave a brazen answer.

“Does it look like that?”

“Of course. You must have gotten married very early. You still look like a newly married couple, too, even though the kids look like they’re already six years old. You must have great marital chemistry.”

“We’re not newlyweds eith…”

But this time, Rosé and Ferre interrupted with puffy pouts.

“We’re seven. Not six.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re not six, we’re seven.”

The age-sensitive kids quickly shouted, swiping the backs of their hands at the corners of their lips, which were smeared with ice cream.

For adults, it didn’t make much of a difference whether a child was six or seven years old, but it was enough for the children to be angry about because each year was important for a child of their age group.

Though Rosé and Ferre wouldn’t want to hear it, Sera nearly said, ‘But you both look six years old, not seven.’

As if given a signal, the twins stood up straight as if they were model students to make themselves seem more mature.

“Goodness, I see, I see. Considering their age, it seems like you got married as soon as you came of age. But gosh, twins. Maybe it’s because you’re young, but you must be very energetic.”

“What?”

“Energetic! It’s all about the stamina, too.”

The merchant smiled happily and raised one clenched fist.

Sera just stared at him for a moment, but she became shocked as she soon realized what he was insinuating.

Energetic?! It was an absurd thing to say in broad daylight.

But the merchant didn’t seem to know how to stop.

Perhaps jokes like this boosted the mood of his customers before, the harmonious families helping his sales.

“The children look like they’re the exact copies of your spouse, Madam. Actually, the Sir reminds me of someone…”

Sera glanced at Helios with an awkward yet incredulous smile.

She wracked her brain for any excuse she could make, but she couldn’t think of any. His Majesty wasn’t saying either.

Helios smiled politely and quietly just held the ice cream in his hand to his mouth. The ice cream was melting gently beneath the sunlight.

Looking at him, it seemed like he felt this wasn’t a matter of concern.

“Spouse? What’s spouse?”

“What does it mean?”

Rosé and Ferre couldn’t resist asking after hearing the difficult word.

“What the vendor meant there was ‘husband’.”

Sera smiled despondently at Rosé and Ferre.

The melted pink and light green ice cream made a mess around their mouths.

“Your sticky beards have begun to trickle down.”

“Hehe. But it’s yummy.”

“It’s so sweet.”

Sera took out a handkerchief from her bag so that she could wipe the sticky beards off the children, who smiled and didn’t seem to mind that they were getting dirty. They’re more focused on eating.

Noticing what she was about to do, Helios quickly took Sera’s ice cream cone to help her.

“It’ll be a mess again once you eat again, but we can’t leave your sticky beards like this. We should wipe the spilled ice cream off your faces and clothes before they harden.”

Rosé and Ferre frowned as they watched the handkerchief being unfolded. And Sera moved forward to wipe their faces in earnest, they tried to run away.

However, even as Helios was holding two ice cream cones, he blocked the twins’ escape route with his long legs so that they couldn’t run away.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uuuung. Don’t wanna. I’ll wipe it off after eating.”

“No can do. It’s running down your chin.”

Taking advantage of Helios’s successful block, Sera quickly wiped the twins’ chins and cheeks with a handkerchief.

Rosé and Ferre frowned as their puffy cheeks were wiped down.

The nosy, merchant with a broad body watched with a particularly playful smile, and added one last comment.

“Seeing that you two are so sweet, you should have a third child, too! You can definitely do it since you’re both still young!”

While folding her now light-green handkerchief, Sera cautiously looked at Helios.

Under the scorching sun, Helios was indisputably giving her a mischievous smirk.

* * *

‘A third, he said. How could he even think of such a thing! Gosh, that was so embarrassing. What he gave for one whole gold wasn’t just the four ice cream servings.”

Sitting on a bench at the town square, Sera shuddered as she recalled what she heard from the ice cream stall.

She took a big bite out of her vanilla ice cream, which was nearly finished by now. Despite the sweetness that was melting in her mouth, she felt particularly bitter.

This delicious ice cream was astronomically expensive.

The cute little kids were still busy eating their ice cream.

It’s not that they’re eating slowly because they’re saving the precious treat, it’s just that they’re small mouths could only eat little by little.

Their ice cream began to trickle down the long cones, now on the verge of wetting their wrists.

Rosé and Ferre tried to stop the dribbling cream by tilting their heads to the side and licking the cones, but the ice cream melted faster than they could eat it.

“After they’re done eating, we’ll have to wipe them up again.”

Sighing briefly, Sera smiled as she watched the twins’ faces, which were getting sticky once more.

Sitting on the opposite bench facing her with his long legs stretched out, Helios laughed quietly as he watched his younger siblings licking their ice creams.

“That’s right. And people might think it’s their first time eating ice cream.”

“Exactly.”

And as their eyes met, Sera and Helios chuckled together.