A World Where You All Are The Villains - Chapter 159

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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159.

“You can just live here with me.”
Absurdity crashed over me.
‘Is that what you say to someone crying out of fear they’ll die?’
I forgot I’d been terrified and weeping just moments before, my face contorting in indignation.
At that, he let out a hollow laugh as if I were being ridiculous.
“Is living here really something to make such a face about?”
“Living here is one thing, but why with Your Majesty?”
“Isn’t that why you ran away from home?”
“What… I left because of that damned newspaper, I had no choice…!”
I was shouting in fury when a sudden sense of discord made me snap my mouth shut.
‘How does this bastard know I left home?’
I fixed him with a suspicious glare and blurted out the question.
“…Did you have me watched?”
“Well, it’s not something so grand as all that.”
The man answered with shameless composure.
“Let’s just say I planted eyes to keep tabs on you.”
“To keep tabs….”
“If you’re going to leave, you should at least say goodbye.”
I should have been furious about the invasion of privacy.
Instead, I hesitated at those words.
Something felt strange.
It was odd that he’d gone to such lengths for such a reason….
I’d honestly thought he wouldn’t care whether I returned or not.
From what I’d observed so far, Serge didn’t desperately crave purification, nor did he fear rampage.
He seemed to hate Sephiroth and the Imperial Family, wanting to kill them given the chance, yet even that didn’t seem particularly driven.
He was just living carelessly, as if he wouldn’t mind dying this very moment.
Perhaps that’s why this situation felt all the more strange.
A man who seemed indifferent to everything, a man who’d tried to kill me—he cared whether I returned.
And I was naturally asking for help from such a person….
“But….”
….
“Why are you so determined to go back? Did you hide some valuable treasure or something?”
The man’s voice cut through my tangled thoughts at just the right moment.
Turning his question over in my mind, I exhaled a quiet sigh.
‘If only that were the case, I wouldn’t feel so wronged….’
I might have been able to sit on a fortune soon enough, but even that Ruellin madwoman had destroyed with her chaos.
Interpreting my gloomy silence as he saw fit, he smirked with transparent mockery.
“Or perhaps a beloved lover?”
That stung far worse than any mention of money.
“There’s no way something like that could exist.”
“Thank goodness. I nearly had my romantic scandal turn into a sordid affair.”
His insufferable prattle reminded me why I’d fled the house so urgently.
I glared at him and asked desperately.
“Did you request a correction?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I saw no particular reason to.”
He shrugged as he continued.
“It’s not exactly misinformation, is it? Whoever submitted the tip was quite thorough with the details.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever….”
“Forget such trivial matters. Tell me why you need to return. Then I’ll consider whether to help you.”
He was right. This wasn’t the time to squabble over a single article.
I recited flatly, my expression hardened.
“…You know my situation well enough, Your Majesty.”
What was there to explain about why I needed to return?
Everything had simply fallen apart.
Yet saying it aloud felt pathetic.
But then.
“What exactly is your situation?”
Serge wore an expression of genuine bewilderment.
“You don’t know?”
“The sole daughter of the Duke, decorated by the Emperor himself—surely that’s an enviable position? You have no rivals now, the one and only precious Purifier.”
“….”
“Seems like a rather fortunate circumstance to me.”
“…It appears that way on the surface.”
But beneath the façade, everything was in ruins.
A body dying by degrees.
Male leads clinging like leeches at every turn, Ruellin’s reappearance, the strained relationship with the Duke.
And Sephiroth—hidden away somewhere, his intentions utterly inscrutable….
“Humans judge by appearances alone, after all.”
Yet he spoke as though none of it mattered.
“They despise you like vermin one moment, then grovel shamelessly the instant there’s something to exploit.”
“….”
“Was the world the Princess lived in any different?”
Unfortunately, it was identical.
I thought of my biological father and Yu Ji-han, who’d contacted me like clockwork the moment cure-1 became remotely useful.
But my life exists there, doesn’t it?
My education, my career, my job.
Yu Sol’s life—everything I’ve poured myself into building.
I stubbornly shook my head, as if rejecting Serge’s admonishment of a child.
“There’s nothing here worth holding onto.”
“And there is, on your end?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. If it’s neither wealth nor a beloved person, what could possibly be worth clinging to….”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully, then suddenly brightened.
“Is there someone you’d like to kill?”
How very like me.
I answered honestly, my face twisted in displeasure.
“I have a job I’m responsible for. There’s research that will bear fruit soon….”
“A commoner woman used that body of yours. And you just let it slide?”
That was the problem.
Something that could have been left alone—Ruellin refused to leave it alone at all.
With Yu Ji-han dead and the researcher who oversaw the project missing, the Research Institute might have already been shut down by now.
Yet that was all I had to hold onto.
I muttered weakly.
“…I’ll resolve it as soon as I return.”
“If it were something you could resolve, you wouldn’t be crying and carrying on like this.”
This time, I had nothing to say, so I clamped my mouth shut.
Then I realized that his large hand still rested against my cheek.
‘What an embarrassment this is….’
I hastily pushed his hand away and wiped my eyes with my own hand, carelessly placed.
My hand was damp with tears—evidence of how much I’d cried.
The fact that he’d witnessed this spectacle in its entirety made me feel both embarrassed and oddly ticklish.
Unable to resist, I began rubbing my eyes vigorously, but he suddenly grabbed my wrist and stopped me.
“Stop rubbing.”
“Don’t worry about it….”
“Then do this instead.”
I tried to pull my hand free, but it didn’t budge.
Looking at him with displeasure, he suddenly rose and said something completely out of the blue.
“Why don’t you create something worth holding onto here, starting now?”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes. You do.”
“Why….”
“Because we don’t know yet if you’ll even be able to return, do we? And that charlatan doesn’t seem like she’d reveal her location easily.”
“….”
“It wouldn’t hurt to prepare a contingency plan, just in case.”
It was a point that made sense, which only irritated me further.
Deep down, I already knew it myself.
That Sephiroth wouldn’t reveal things so easily, perhaps.
That I might never be able to return.
There was nothing in this place worth coveting.
So I asked.
“…How?”
“Well.”
He tilted his head thoughtfully, then suddenly curved his lips into a smile as if drawing it on his face.
I caught a glimpse of his abyssal black pupils glimmering with sudden interest.
Like a child who had just discovered a new toy.
“…Like this?”
The man who whispered softly suddenly bent forward.
And.
A soft touch—
Before I could even react, a tender sensation brushed against my flushed eyes and then withdrew just as quickly.
It was his lips.
Serge Belnak’s lips….
I froze with my mouth hanging open.
“What is this….”
As I hesitantly raised my gaze, he grinned with a composed expression as if nothing had happened.
And what he said was.
“Someone told me. There is no product in life more precious than love.”
My mouth fell open.
Love?
When my very body is on the verge of death, what love is this.
Moreover.
“…Is that so, Your Majesty?”
Of all times? When there’s nothing else to hold onto?
“Besides, a scandal has erupted quite spectacularly—isn’t this a rather decent choice?”
Unlike me, frozen in place, he wore an expression as if nothing was wrong.
I was so dumbfounded that I couldn’t even muster a hollow laugh.
Even in this moment, my eyes burned with heat for some reason, and my turbulent chest filled me with anger.
I wrenched my wrist free from his grasp coldly.
“…Don’t joke with me.”
“How unexpected. I didn’t know I’d be rejected before even confessing.”
“You, like me?”
To do this to someone you don’t even like—that’s crude mockery, or rather.
There’s no way he could like me.
What have we even done.
At most, he’d rescued me a handful of times from situations I hadn’t chosen, performed The Purifier’s cleansing a few times—that was all.
“I don’t know.”
The answer came back as hollow as I’d expected.
For some reason, the suffocating tightness in my chest seemed to ease.
I exhaled in ragged gasps, heaving, when both my cheeks were suddenly seized.
“But I’ve thought about it. If I were in the same situation as the Princess, I’d cling to the hem of your skirt and hang on for dear life.”
He forcibly lifted my face to meet his gaze, and spouted more nonsense.
“And I’d beg.”
“….”
“Help me go back, I’d plead.”
I’d been far too naive.
To ask for help from someone who seized every opportunity to exploit me, to toy with me.
‘Is this some kind of transaction?’
If he was demanding payment in return for his aid, as he’d first proposed to me, I could understand it to some degree.
But why was the price like this?
And why couldn’t I simply strike these hands away as I had before?
I didn’t know.
I understood nothing at all.
Only the thundering of my heartbeat echoing in my ears was so fierce it made me dizzy.
I couldn’t tell whose heart was beating so violently.
“If you understand, close your eyes.”
In that moment of utter confusion, he arrogantly claimed his price from me.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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