This Time Hi Be the Villain’s Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 5

Chapter 5 The King of Hell Calling the Roll

The nap room at Kingsley Preschool was unusually quiet. Alfred lay flat on his small bed, his posture so rigid that he looked like a corpse.

The overlapping sounds of breathing around him, along with the teacher’s hushed conversation in the distance, kept pricking at his overly sensitive nerves.

After managing to sleep for half an hour, he was fully awake again.

Alfred silently began working through a complex multivariable differential equation in his head, trying to use it to fight off the irritation of the preschool environment.

At that moment, a faint sound of sniffling reached his ears.

Alfred’s brows drew together ever so slightly.

He slowly turned his head and opened his eyes.

Beside him, Maya had curled into a small ball. She was crying.

Keeping his head tilted, he stared at her in the dim light with his dark eyes without blinking.

He wasn’t someone with any sense of empathy.

His father said he was born bad, lacking the emotions of a normal person.

Alfred thought his father was right.

To him, most human emotional displays were all the same.

But Maya’s tears felt different.

The way she cried in her sleep stirred an inexplicable irritation in him.

The boy quietly climbed down from his bed.

Like a silent cat, he stood there, staring unblinkingly at her tear-streaked face.

He watched for a long time, until Maya slowly opened her eyes and met her brother standing by the bed.

She froze, then instinctively raised a hand to touch her cheek. Seeing the moisture on her fingertips, she looked confused.

“Did you dream about something?” Alfred suddenly asked.

Because of the dream, Maya looked a little drained. “I-I don’t remember.”

Alfred asked, “It was a nightmare, wasn’t it?”

Maya nodded.

Otherwise, she couldn’t explain why she’d cried so hard. Even when she chose to end her life in her past life, she hadn’t cried like this.

Alfred didn’t ask anything else. He simply reached out and awkwardly patted her head with his fingertips. like he was touching some kind of small animal.

He said, “Don’t cry.”

Maya was momentarily stunned by his strange way of comforting her.

Then she grabbed her brother’s hand and rubbed her face against it, wiping the remaining tears onto his palm, before looking up and smiling brightly.

“Thank you for comforting me. I’m not sad anymore. I don’t remember what I dreamed about at all.” Alfred had made a rare attempt to act human, and this was what he got in return.

He looked at the damp shine on his palm, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.

Catching sight of Maya’s smile, Alfred ultimately said nothing and quietly wiped his hand on his pants.

The afternoon passed in a blur of boring school games. After getting home, Maya eagerly opened her backpack, spreading all kinds of colorful snacks across the table.

She copied what other kids with parents did, chattering away to Raymond and Wendy about her entire day at school.

“You’re amazing, Maya,” Wendy praised sincerely. “On your first day of school, you already made so many friends. I was so worried you wouldn’t have any.”

Wendy had even considered warning those kids’ parents beforehand, telling them to make sure their children behaved and became friends with her daughter.

Now it seemed that it had been completely unnecessary.

Her precious girl didn’t need any help making friends.

Maya scratched her head shyly under the flood of praise and mumbled, “I don’t think anyone would end up without friends, right?”

Back at the orphanage, she’d been the leader among the kids. As long as she wasn’t dealing with those elite, untouchable people, she could get along anywhere.

“Haha, but Edric still doesn’t have any friends,” Wendy said, unable to hold back a laugh, her tone tinged with helplessness. “He’s already a teenager, but when it comes to making friends, he’s always been a headache.”

Hearing Wendy say that, Maya grew even more curious about the older brother she had never met.

“Mom, how old is Edric?”

“He’s already seventeen.”

“Seventeen…” Maya remembered Alfred mentioning that Edric had some kind of medical certification. Tilting her head, she couldn’t help but feel confused. “But can someone get a medical license at seventeen’

“Why not?”

Raymond, who had been working at his computer, suddenly cut in and interrupted.

Maya was still stuck on the logic. “But that doesn’t seem normal.”

All of them were high-end brands.

Raymond leaned out to take a look and raised an eyebrow slightly. “Maya alone can’t possibly wear this many clothes.”

“You don’t understand.” Wendy had the unmistakable glow of an over-the-top doting mother. “Our Maya could be a child model! For a girl, the more clothes, the better.”

Raymond had no reply.

I shouldn’t have asked.

Pulling his thoughts back, Raymond stared at the screen, propping his chin on his hand as he considered his next assassination target.

Suddenly, on a whim, he lazily called out toward the living room, “Maya…”

“Yes, Dad?”

Maya had been sitting on the floor, working on preschool homework with her brother. Hearing him, she quickly ran over to the living room.

She thought he had some task for her.

For someone as terminally lazy as Raymond, sometimes he couldn’t even be bothered to throw away his own trash and would often order Maya to do it for him.

“Come here. Raymond adjusted the angle of the screen, making the neatly arranged photos clearer. “Help me take a look. Which one do you like best?”

When the Clarks made a move, there was no deal they couldn’t close.

As for who the target would be? That just depended on which rich person was unlucky.

“What is this?”

Maya stared at the screen for two seconds and voiced a soul-deep question.

Why does Dad have a bunch of strangers’ photos on his computer?

And instead of saving pictures of handsome guys with abs or pretty women, they are all crooked-looking, unattractive people.

“These are my future clients,” Raymond said with complete seriousness while making things up. “Who do you want me to work with?”

Hearing that, Maya immediately became more serious too.

She stared at the screen, directing Raymond to scroll through the photos.

Alfred, who had been doing preschool homework in the living room, silently glanced over.

Watching her point at the screen back and forth, completely unaware of what was really going on, for some reason, a vivid phrase popped into Alfred’s mind to describe the scene.

The King of Hell calling the roll.