Saturday.
Eleven o'clock at night.
West London.
Kensington.
Mr. Richter suddenly opened his eyes and sat halfway up in bed. His entire body was soaked in cold sweat.
He stared around in panic, breathing heavily for a long while before finally calming down.
He had just had a strange nightmare.
He could no longer remember the details, only a vague impression that it had something to do with Dawn—
Something about Dawn getting into serious trouble and, in the end, dragging him down with it, causing the entire family to die.
"Damn it."
Mr. Richter muttered under his breath, grumbling that Dawn never explained what kind of trouble he had caused, leaving him stuck in this uneasy state for the past year.
Ever since the phone call from Dawn last Halloween, Mr. Richter had gone nearly a full year without hearing a single word from him.
He wondered how that kid was doing now.
After that call, he had even gone to Kent, but neither the local police nor the nearby residents mentioned any incidents or trouble in the area.
That was not good news.
If nothing had happened, Mr. Richter did not believe Dawn would have fled to France in such a hurry.
The fact that he had found nothing only meant one thing:
Whatever Dawn was involved in was far more serious than he could imagine—something that, once it exploded, could send him flying straight into disaster.
"You really were born just to collect debts from me," Mr. Richter grumbled resentfully.
Shaking his head, he shook off the lingering unease from the nightmare and realized his throat was painfully dry. He was about to get up and pour himself a glass of water.
But at that moment—
He suddenly heard an unusual sound in the room, as if someone were walking back and forth nearby.
A burglar?!
Mr. Richter froze, his heart tightening.
Damn it!
Didn't this villa complex boast top-tier security, claiming they had spent a fortune hiring G4S personnel for protection?
A bunch of lying bastards, advertising nonsense!
His thoughts ran wild as he deliberately distracted himself to stay calm, reaching under his pillow for the gun.
Thanks to the constant sense of insecurity Dawn had brought him, he now kept a firearm within reach at all times.
The cold metal steadied his nerves.
Carefully, Mr. Richter extended his hand toward the bedside lamp switch, then suddenly thought of his wife and children sleeping next door.
He was alone in the study tonight.
After all, a man nearing forty was not always up to certain things anymore. Sometimes, solitude brought its own kind of comfort.
Click.
The light snapped on.
Mr. Richter saw a black-robed figure standing beside his bed, completely motionless, staring at him.
There was no telling how long it had been watching.
"Don't move!"
His scalp went numb as goosebumps exploded across his skin.
Mr. Richter shouted sharply and raised the gun in an instant. But before pulling the trigger, he saw those unmistakable eyes—
And suddenly recognized who it was.
"…Dawn?"
"Long time no see."
Dawn nodded, glancing at the gun gleaming with a cold sheen. "Mr. Richter, I remember seeing a news report when I was young.
Someone slept with a gun under their pillow, and it went off accidentally. Died on the spot."
"Fuck!"
Mr. Richter clutched his chest, his heart pounding like it might burst into flames. He could not hide his anger.
"Showing up like this in the middle of the night—are you trying to scare me to death?!"
Dawn shrugged.
When he first arrived, he had actually planned to wake the man by splashing him with water.
But before doing so, he remembered something else and cast the Rapid Manifestation spell on the place, hoping to see scenes of himself having lived here.
If such images appeared, it would mean that he truly was the Richters' child, and that his memories had not been completely rewritten.
Unfortunately—
After casting the spell more than a dozen times, all he saw were ancient events from centuries ago.
The only real takeaway was confirmation that the private lives of British aristocrats in the past were just as decadent as people imagined.
Mr. Richter took several deep breaths, then asked irritably, "Didn't you go to France? When did you come back? And tell me right now—what exactly did you get yourself into before?!"
"You don't know?" Dawn asked. "Didn't anyone strange come asking you questions?"
"No."
Mr. Richter shook his head at first, but then caught the key word and his expression changed. "Wait—what do you mean by strange people?"
At that moment, Mr. Richter felt very uneasy.
Damn it, who had Dawn offended this time? Was he really going to end up ruined because of the mess this kid caused?
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
It seemed the Ministry of Magic really had followed the Statute of Secrecy. Even when hunting him down, they had not come to question his Muggle father.
Or—
They might have questioned him and erased his memory afterward.
"That's enough. None of that matters."
Dawn shook his head.
Mr. Richter snapped back unhappily, "It does matter!"
But Dawn continued as if he had not heard him. "Mr. Richter, I came this time to ask you a question—"
"You little bastard! I'm your father!"
Mr. Richter cut him off angrily. Hearing Dawn call him Mr. Richter again and again made him increasingly irritated.
That was what bothered him the most.
In those faintly red eyes, he could not see even a trace of emotion—only cold indifference and unfamiliar detachment.
Fine.
Maybe it had something to do with sending the kid away and not spending much time together.
But even if he was one percent at fault, wasn't Dawn ninety-nine percent responsible as well?
After all, even back when they lived together, the kid had already been like this.
Dawn frowned.
He felt there was something odd about that statement, but since, according to his current memories, it was technically true, he compromised.
"Alright."
He avoided any form of address and asked directly, "Back when I was six and asked to live on my own, why did you agree so quickly?"
"Why are you asking that?" Mr. Richter frowned, thinking Dawn was accusing him of favoritism.
"I see," Dawn murmured thoughtfully. "You suspected I wasn't your biological child."
Before Mr. Richter could respond, Dawn had already read his thoughts through Legilimency as they surfaced.
Mr. Richter choked, coughing repeatedly, his expression as if he had seen a ghost.
"H-How did you know that?"
Dawn said nothing, simply staring into Mr. Richter's eyes and continuing to read.
"You took hair from my pillow and had a paternity test done.
The result said we weren't biologically related. Just then, I asked to live on my own, so you agreed without hesitation."
"Wait—wait a second!"
Mr. Richter waved his hands frantically. For some reason, he suddenly felt as if he were standing naked in public.
And—
"No—how do you know all this?"
His face twitched. For the first time, Mr. Richter realized just how little he truly understood his own son.
Dawn did not answer. He merely continued asking, "Then—if we weren't biologically related, why did you keep sending me child support on time afterward?"
Scenes replayed one after another through the magical connection.
But perhaps because his secret had been laid bare, or because he was genuinely furious, Mr. Richter suddenly cursed loudly:
"Fuck! It was that damn doctor! A week later, he called me and said they had mixed up the samples during the test—compared my hair with someone else's DNA! You are my biological son!"
Dawn frowned.
The hospital had mixed up DNA samples during a paternity test?
What a far-fetched explanation.
Dawn felt more and more that his past was riddled with falsehoods.
Everything that had happened seemed designed solely to give him a reasonably acceptable reason to move to Kent.
He took a deep breath, suppressed the surge of negative emotion, thought for a moment, and then asked,
"Then why did you suddenly decide to get a paternity test in the first place?"
___________
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