Asher shut his mouth quietly. How would Venicia react? She wouldn't believe it no matter what, he thought. Who would believe such a weird thing coming from a 12 year-old troublemaker of the estate?
Maybe she'll be on guard. Asher's anxiety started to bubble up. IHe slowly looked up and looked at her face. As Asher saw her expression gradually, he was surprised.
"What?"
Venicia was crying. Asher was incredibly embarrassed. In the numerous situations that were played out just now in his head, crying was not one of them.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
She hugged Asher. Asher flinched again at the warmth of Venicia's body. She hugged him tightly and patted him on the back.
"You must have been having such a hard time. Are you okay? Since when did you start to lose your memories?"
"…it hasn't been more than two months."
Asher turned to Reika with a perplexed face. He said that he had lost his memory, and she was feeling sorry for him? He couldn't understand the thought process of the two women next to him.
However, Reika looked sullen as if she had guessed this would happen. Her mother cared about him too much.
"Mother, get away from him. He's flustered.", Reika interjected.
"Flustered? Why?"
"He just told you he lost his memory, didn't he? How could he possibly remember you mom?"
"Ah."
At the words, Venecia wiped away her tears and stepped back. Asher carefully helped Venicia stand properly as she was bending down to hug Asher's rather small figure.
"Don't you doubt me?"
"About what?"
."
"That I lost my memory."
"Why would I doubt it? There's no reason for you to lie to me."
Venicia smiled warmly with her eyes displaying absolute trust, Asher avoided her gaze since it still felt uncomfortable for him.
"…I'm not the kid you know anymore."
His memories had become jumbled together with the previous body's owner and he was still uncomfortable with adjusting to his reincarnation. He had also never had somebody show him affection, so Asher naturally tried to push her away from him with rough words.
"You said you raised me. But I don't have those memories. Not only that, but your face, your name… I forgot all of those things. To me, you're someone I've never met before."
She was nothing to the current Asher, he was trying to get that point across to her and set a boundary with her. However, both of them in their bodies felt a platonic sense of love and affection for one another, so an uncomfortable silence ensued in the training hall.
"…I don't know if you remember, but long ago before any of the younger ones were born, I was unable to bear any children."
"I know."
Venicia could not give birth to any children for a long time, and when she finally had her first child, she was already in her mid-twenties. Although wealth and influence were nice, having a blood descendant was a necessary must for nobility. The deities and gods that she prayed to, left her calls unanswered until one day… she found a little boy abandoned by the side of a river.
"I was the first one to find you."
She laughed as she recalled the time she had found the young baby boy, named 'Asher'.
On a day when she was ridden with stress and shame, Rebecca, her maid, recommended her to take a walk. She didn't quite have the strength to do that, but while walking through the hallways of the estate and out in the grassy areas of the plains with a sorry heart, she heard a very high pitched wailing sound.
"I brought you back into the mansion with me. I was embarrassed because it was my first time holding a baby in my entire life. I tried to get you a maid that night to help get you to sleep, but you grabbed my finger and held onto it."
The young baby at that time stopped crying and started to giggle. Fiddling with Venicias fingers, he burst into a fit of giggles. The abandoned child laughed in her arms as soon as he was brought to the estate.
At that moment, Venicia's world changed. She raised the child in spite of the opposition. She saw the child growing slowly, suffering on his own as an employee of the estate, not leaving his well-being in the hands of a maid. Although she could not adopt him, she poured more love into him than anything else in her life as Asher grew up.