Disqualified as a Villainess - Chapter 95

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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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#95. Echoes of the Past (4)

“Admiral.”
“Not Admiral—Keldi.”
He leaned in to kiss Octavia’s lips, but catching sight of her expression, he pulled back. There was no point in kissing her if it wouldn’t satisfy her.
“I spent time with you for the purpose of experiencing romantic feelings.”
“I know.”
“Which means it isn’t love. And what you feel for me is possessiveness.”
From the start, he was a being entirely disconnected from the emotion of love.
“Will you marry someone you love?”
“Yes. I want to understand what it means to give and receive love with another person.”
He lowered his gaze, lost in thought for a moment. The moonlit contours of his face seemed shadowed by contemplation.
“Bia, all those plays we watched together.”
Somehow, he had come to experience every theatrical production centered on love stories alongside her.
The lovers he’d seen on stage spent time together, held hands, and kissed.
“What’s the difference between that and what we’re doing now?”
A man’s possessiveness and a woman’s satisfaction. He believed their relationship—filling each other’s voids—was no different from that of ordinary lovers.
“If anything, it’s ideal. We don’t fight or hate each other.”
His father, who perfectly mimicked human affection while keeping mistresses. His mother, who spoke of love while suffering and burning with rage.
The love he had witnessed with his own eyes was nothing but chaos.
“You’re right. There’s no conflict.”
Her hand, which had been gripping the edge of his sleeve, loosened.
After a brief silence, she posed a question instead of answering.
“Admiral, can love be proven as an emotion?”
Proof.
He turned the word over in his mind—a concept that had clung to him since birth—and studied every corner of her small, composed face.
Her half-lidded eyes seemed languid at first glance, almost world-weary, yet they resembled those of a sage transcendent to worldly affairs.
“If I prove it to you, will you stay by my side for the rest of your life?”
“I will.”
Octavia had posed him an eternal, unsolvable riddle.
Love was an ambiguous emotion that could neither be defined nor proven.
With her sharp intellect, Octavia had already calculated the entire sequence of events and their inevitable conclusion before accepting his proposal and proceeding.
The consensus was clear: a peaceful marriage would be impossible.
‘You and I are different beings.’
After all, the descendants of the Apostles were born for the mission of order, not to live for a companion or children.
To the Royal Family, even family was property, and death itself was seen as the providence of order—something not to be mourned.
For him, marriage would be nothing more than a means to keep his possession close.
‘Can I spend a lifetime with someone who won’t grieve even if I die?’
Unlike now, where mere exhilaration sufficed, marriage to the Royal Family was reality.
‘The expiration date on the illusion of love is three months. Once time passes, it will fade away.’
After all, it wasn’t even real, and possessiveness was the emotion most akin to affection, wasn’t it?
This truth applied to her heart as well.

***

From that day forward, Kelsedny Admiral began to perfectly study and recreate human affection.
“Octavia.”
He would present her with enormous bouquets before the eyes of High Society nobles.
“I’ll give you anything you desire.”
He brought gifts that filled the sprawling gardens of the Ludovisi Mansion to bursting—each one something she cherished.
“Though you can’t pluck the stars from the sky for me, can you?”
After she had carelessly spoken those words to an all-powerful being and a meteor fell upon the Western Outskirts, causing catastrophic devastation, she learned never to jest so recklessly again.

One day, Kelsedny Admiral arrived at her side leading a pack of military dogs from the Security Forces.
“You like puppies, don’t you? I’ll make you the commander of the dog unit.”
Octavia stroked the imposing military hounds with gentle hands, her smile tinged with embarrassment.
“Thank you, but… I have no intention of becoming a dog commander or keeping animals.”
At her refusal, he gazed down at the obediently seated dog, his expression growing forlorn.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t find Dusik for you.”
He was speaking of the dog that had been like family to her in her previous life.
“It was Samsik.”
Watching him remember something she had mentioned in passing so casually before, her heart stirred with a peculiar ache.
Even if it was affection learned through the lens of possessiveness, she found herself drawn to the effort he made for her sake.
‘After all, his satisfaction is my satisfaction.’
She, who rarely took the initiative in such matters, drew closer to the Admiral.
“The mere thought that you want to reunite me with someone precious—that alone brings me joy.”
Unable to reach his head due to their height difference, she caressed his cheek instead.
He lowered his head slightly, his eyes closing.
The contact itself stirred no great emotion within him, yet he found significance in the fact that she had expressed satisfaction.
That was quite a pleasant sensation.
“Since you’ve brought them here anyway, may I play with the dogs?”
She embraced one of the military hounds, her laughter ringing out like music.
“Dogs give such blind, unconditional affection—they see their master as their entire world.”
He found himself surrounded by the dogs, watching Octavia smile radiantly among them.
The military hounds exposed their bellies and licked her cheeks in joy, eager to please her as she held treats in her hands.
Yet even as he observed the platinum hair cascading along her pale throat, her serene eyes, and her glistening lips, he felt only the appreciation one might have for a cherished work of art—no masculine impulse to touch her stirred within him.
‘I’m closer to a dog trying to please its master, aren’t I?’
For some time now, he had been yearning for an instinct he did not possess.
The warmth of holding hands and embracing, the exhilaration of a quickened pulse, and the pleasure that followed.
I understood that what she desired was not one-sided satisfaction, but a connection where both fulfilled each other’s longings.
For Kelsedny Decart, a principle had been etched into his very being: what she wanted was what he wanted.

***

「Admiral Kelsedny Decart, why do you take interest in a powerless commoner woman?」

Thus, the Decart Imperial Family’s active courtship of a commoner woman naturally sent shockwaves through society.
A ruler who could possess anything with a single command now striving to win the heart of a single person—it was unprecedented in history and the very fantasy everyone dreamed of.
When Emperor Arseno learned of this, he showed interest only in the fact that Octavia was the fiancée the Former Emperor had chosen in her childhood, expressing no particular disapproval.
But as expected, the incident Octavia had anticipated came to pass.
That day, she had come to meet someone at the behest of the Queen Regent.
The moment she arrived at the meeting place, she immediately grasped what situation she had been placed in.
“You are as beautiful as I heard.”
Sure enough, a nobleman who appeared to be at least ten years her senior was waiting for her.
“I am Anton Deckerman. The King of Ira Kingdom is my grand-uncle. Surely my history of remarriage is no blemish at this point?”
Lady Roxan, the King’s mistress, had orchestrated this meeting as part of her scheme.
‘It seems I’ve received a proposal from forces opposed to my relationship with the Admiral.’
It was no different from the old tactic of selling off princesses to foreign royalty or collateral branches of imperial families.
From the start, Lady Roxan had wanted to remove Octavia far away—she who had repeatedly thwarted her plans.
“At such a tender age and with such beauty, why concern yourself with status? I would very much like to cherish you.”
Ugh.
Mistaking her look of disgust for embarrassment, he flashed a sinister smile.
The sound of a military band drifted in from outside.
The street beyond the window was bustling with a military parade—soldiers with ceremonial swords at their waists marching in formation.
She gazed at it quietly for a moment, then rose from her seat.
“I don’t know what you were told, but I didn’t come here for a formal meeting. I came because I requested this meeting regarding the usage rights to my patent.”
“Will you commit such rudeness as to leave immediately?”
“Yes.”
Then what would he do about it?
Anton Deckerman seized her wrist as she rose to leave.
“Regardless, the fact that you came to meet me with marriage in mind won’t change. Whatever the truth, everyone will believe it that way.”
The method was transparent enough.
Lady Roxan would propose the meeting with Anton Deckerman, and alongside distorted rumors that Octavia had accepted, articles would be published.
Claims of being deceived or thinking it was a different occasion would be dismissed as excuses.
People would prefer to believe ‘there are marriage talks between a collateral branch of royalty seeking a second wife and this commoner’ rather than the unrealistic romance of ‘the Decart Imperial Family wanting to marry a commoner.’
He added as a warning.
“Though Lady Roxan arranged it, this meeting is as good as one created by the King of Acedia himself. Think carefully.”
As a foreigner, he was unaware that Octavia possessed the mindset of someone from a future civilization and cared nothing for such hierarchies—she was entirely her own person.
“Surely you weren’t actually considering marrying a descendant of the Apostle?”
The man’s tone carried a mocking edge as he treated her like some naive woman.
“Of course, he would never propose to me. But why would I settle for living with an asexual whose only purpose is breeding, when I could be the second wife of a man who knows how to show a woman pleasure?”
She smiled dismissively at this.
“There was also the purpose of planting misunderstandings in the Admiral’s mind.”
If the two of them had been in an ordinary relationship, he would have misunderstood that she was seeking another match while he was around, and conflict would have erupted.
Soon after, she settled back into her seat, crossed her legs with elegant poise, and continued speaking.
“That man is far from ordinary.”
“What exactly are you trying to say? How presumptuous of you….”
Before he could even point out her disrespectful informal speech, an ominous wind swept through.
Crash—!
A tremendous roar echoed as a brilliant blue sky unfurled overhead.
The restaurant’s ceiling had vanished in an instant.
The people stood frozen, unable even to scream.
“Hello there.”
At the calm voice of someone, Deckerman Count turned around, his face drained of color.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a black uniform with an overwhelming presence that seemed to alter the very air around him.
Kelsedny Admiral was smiling gently, his eyes crinkling warmly. He held a ceremonial sword in one hand.
“The asexual breeding tool has arrived.”

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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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