Chapter 170.1

Chapter 170.1

A soft sound, part sigh, caught between a sigh and a moan, escaped with the child’s breath.

The dark eyes continued to stare intently at him. The persistent gaze traveled from the boy’s black hair to his shiny nose, then to his red lips, and finally to the Adam’s apple that was beginning to protrude like a fruit.

Then, suddenly, a finger shot up, as if to poke at his eye. Yuri squeezed his eyes shut and shouted.

“What… what are you!”

He reflexively pushed it away, but instead of rolling off, the heavy head settled with a thud against his collarbone.

The sound it made suggested that the creature was also getting annoyed.

It was still a bizarre headpiece. Why was something like this in Winter Castle?

No matter how he tried to think logically, he couldn’t understand.

The child was quick and aggressive, and now he noticed that the nails were incredibly long.

This creature had choked him with those maple leaf-like hands… Yuri squinted his eyes in irritation.

“Who the hell are you to be in a private property like this…”

As the child’s head tilted, Yuri quickly reached out. He supported the head between his elbows and wrapped his waist around it to prevent it from escaping.

Though he ended up holding the child like a completely helpless baby, Yuri remained remarkably calm.

Setting aside the fact that he had been attacked, he needed to take this child to Winter Castle and find his parents.

“Where did you come from? What’s your name? You’re a person, right?”

The black hair sticking out from beneath the mask looked just like his own. Despite its strange appearance, the child had limbs, and with five fingers and toes on each, it was definitely human.

So someone had dressed this child so thinly and put a mask on him as a prank… It made him feel strangely hot with anger.

How dare they do this in the Prime Minister’s grand mansion?

“Hey, kid, tell me. Who did this to you?”

When he asked gently so as not to frighten the child, their eyes widened in surprise.

The child had been flinching with caution but remained still in his embrace. The rigid posture, holding its breath, was quite amusing.

“Why can’t you speak? Can you not speak Russian?”

As he patted its bottom and asked again, suddenly, a rough breathing sound emerged.

A strange premonition washed over him as he touched the child’s nape, feeling the skin beneath boil like a furnace.

“You…”

The child was dressed in a thin outfit that looked like either a patient gown or pajamas, with no coat and bare feet. In Russia, wandering around like this could easily lead to freezing to death. Yet here he was, climbing trees and eating snow.

Yuri paused for a moment, setting aside his questions as he unzipped his fur coat and took the child’s cold foot in his hand.

As he began to rub the foot like his parents used to do, the child suddenly thrashed about as if in a fit.

“Wait, hold still…!”

The child, now furious, scratched Yuri’s face with his nails.

“Ugh, wait, I’m not trying to hurt you!”

But the child lunged at him again, slapping his cheeks hard. The calm demeanor he had shown was clearly just a ruse for this moment, and the shift in attitude was astonishingly quick.

As the frozen cheeks were slapped repeatedly, a terrible pain followed, as if shards of metal were embedding themselves in his skin.

In an instant, one side of his face swelled up, turning red and puffy.

‘Darn it. This beast really doesn’t listen at all.’

“Are you done hitting me?”

With that, another slap sent his head spinning.

“Ah, not yet?”

Yuri forced a laugh, suppressing his frustration. Was he really pretending to be a dead animal just to see how he would react?

Is this really a human child?

Despite everything, there was something oddly endearing about the child’s spirited behavior. As Yuri laughed in disbelief, the child hesitated again.

The wide, round eyes met the boy’s smiling lips for a long moment.

“How did you end up so uneducated?”

As he chuckled in disbelief, the child’s bright red fingertips poked at Yuri’s lips.

Yuri twitched his eyebrows and lay back on the slope, resigned to whatever would happen.

But then, seeing how small and cold the child looked, he quickly stuffed him into his fur coat and hugged him tightly, only to receive a punch to the solar plexus.

If this was the damage done barehanded, giving him a stick would probably result in a serious injury. It was a sudden thought, but it sent a chill down his spine.

“Where did you come from? If you tell me properly and I’ll let you go.”

“―”

“Shh, just stay still…! I’m not trying to suffocate you!”

Yet, the child seemed to misunderstand and continued to scream loudly.

“Damn it, I get it, I get it! I’m not trying to hurt you!”

“Ah, aaah!”

“Wait, hey, kid, don’t bang your head against me!”

This little one really had a way of driving a person mad. It was quite humiliating, but when someone half his size started thrashing about, he had to admit he was at a disadvantage.

What should he do in this situation? He had never touched or calmed a wild animal before. During horseback riding lessons, he had only ridden perfectly trained horses; wild ones had never even been brought into the stable.