I Opened an Illegal Animal Hospital in Another World - Chapter 129
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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129
Chapter 26. The One Without Me (1)
What mattered was the fact that Seth had wanted things to turn out this way.
Safe Wentworth Castle, grandparents as overprotective as my parents, and Evelyn and the twins as guards.
I knew I had to stay far away, and I also knew I was the only weakness.
Raven had also sent me away at the cost of breaking off the engagement. If that weren’t the case, he would have played tricks to prevent the broken engagement, but the reason he was so compliant was to completely separate me from Nathan and keep me far away.
Seth had deliberately ruined everything.
‘What a scary bastard. It was all planned.’
While laughing carelessly as if he had no thoughts at all, he was manipulating everything in the direction he desired.
Amazing yet such a despicable bastard.
Since he couldn’t kidnap my body, he extracted only the spiritual entity that had been eroding me for a long time, possessed it in a new body, obtained my lifespan through a contract, and dominated my flesh.
He probably guessed I would make a contract if it meant saving Maria. That’s why he could appear with such perfect timing.
I quietly reflected on it.
Seth always appeared with perfect timing, and I found it sickeningly annoying. The feeling of being played in the palm of his hand was absolutely disgusting.
Seth was the root of all evil and the axis of evil. That was clear in this matter.
‘Should I have told them everything about Seth from the beginning?’
Could I have told them?
If I had told my parents about Seth, perhaps they could have removed him. I believed my parents would have protected me no matter what they had to do.
The same went for Raven. If he knew that my safety was just an excuse, he would have been furious. And he would have tried to protect me just as earnestly as my parents. If he had known from the start that Seth couldn’t harm humans, he wouldn’t have been deceived.
At first, I thought it couldn’t be helped, that I couldn’t refuse what Seth demanded of me anyway, but as time passed, he gradually seemed like an easy pushover.
I thought that while I might be able to remove him if I told my parents, it wasn’t a big deal so there was no need to cause them unnecessary worry.
‘That’s where I went wrong.’
No matter how easy and insignificant he seemed, Seth was the type who lied as easily as breathing and felt joy from deceiving others.
Even so, I came to think I didn’t need to bother removing Seth.
Seth was good at pretending to be friendly toward me, and also…
He looked into my mind, spoke to me in the form of Mina from my memories, and shared stories about things only I knew in this world.
At first I was disgusted, but gradually I became accustomed to it as time passed.
Yes. I had grown attached to Seth.
Because I missed the illusion of Mina he showed me and everything from my past life, I couldn’t bring myself to cut him off cleanly. On days when I met Seth in dreams, even though I was too tired to function properly, I thought he wasn’t harmful.
Evelyn often asked if I had nightmares, and my parents worriedly stroked the dark circles under my eyes. I also knew that Ella and Bailey occasionally came to check if I was sleeping well.
Even so, I thought he wasn’t harmful.
He’s so insignificant, what could he do.
You don’t have to worry.
Just a little more.
Just a little more. That’s how my procrastination created today.
That was the poison.
How terrible was it? Even seeing crying Evelyn and my parents, and Raven’s face twisted in agony like I’d never seen before, I couldn’t bring myself to hate Seth.
Certainly, I had received help.
When I missed Mina unbearably, when I felt homesick and sorry about my past life and wanted to cry. Meeting Seth and talking with him helped me forget. There were countless such moments.
That made me angriest. At myself.
“It’s all my fault…”
I clutched my head.
Though I said it was to stop Nathan, considering it was being broadcast live, I had done something too cruel to Evelyn as well as Renate, Ron, and the children.
They would all think it was their fault.
But if Nathan hadn’t been stopped there, he would have gradually become more of a monster. I had to let him return to his fate there.
From chimera back to human.
“Did everyone suffer? I’d like to keep watching, but I’m worried you’ll pull out all your hair and go bald.”
“…What exactly are you scheming?”
I asked the question I’d been wanting to ask all along.
Seth smiled calmly as he always did. He tilted his head while tapping between his chin and cheek with his long fingers.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“…I don’t. More importantly, answer the question.”
“Aren’t you curious about where this is?”
That meant he had no intention of answering. I let out a low sigh.
“If it’s either dead or unconscious, then it must be a dream. Like it always was.”
“Wrong. It’s reality!”
Ah, seriously, can’t something be done about that way of speaking.
“Where is this place?”
“Now you’re curious?”
“….”
“Ah, I’ll tell you. Don’t glare at me. It’s scary.”
“You’re lying….”
“Right. It’s a lie.”
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking if you don’t like me?”
In my previous life, I was busy enough to collapse from overwork, so why did I spend so much time on the internet. Of course, they were things you’d hear if your ears were open, but because of that, Seth became several times more annoying and I got really irritated.
“This is one of my hideouts. Now, where.”
“You need to relearn how to have a conversation.”
Answering questions with a time delay made everything very chaotic. I also had some expertise in being chaotic, but my mind wasn’t as scattered as Seth’s. Compared to Seth, I was at the level of having organizational obsession.
“Do I.”
Seth pressed my forehead with his large palm. I only lifted my eyes to look at Seth.
“seem to hate you?”
“…Don’t set the mood. It makes me want to vomit.”
“You easily give in to your blonde childhood friend, but you put up walls against me?”
“You’ve been in Mina’s form more than half the time in front of me, and you want me to be conscious of you as the opposite sex?”
Wouldn’t that make me more problematic….
I would need to think deeply about sexual identity and morality. Mina is the same sex, and more than that, family.
“I do seem to hate you.”
“…You’re not much better yourself when it comes to criticizing my conversation style, Shana.”
I know. Have you heard of internalized hatred?
Seth removed his hand from my forehead and sat up. Only then could I relax a little and look around.
It was a small cabin I’d never seen before in my life. Here, “in my life” refers to this lifetime.
A wooden cabin even smaller than the villa where I spent summer and winter vacations. The bed I was lying on was also a single bed I hadn’t seen in a long time. People are truly fickle – compared to the studio apartment I lived in with Mina, this small cabin was like a luxury resort, yet my first thought was that it was small.
The breeze and sunlight gently flowing in through the small window created a terrible sense of incongruity.
I shifted my gaze from the window to Seth.
Seth was even humming while brewing tea leaves, and he seemed to fit the setting yet not fit at the same time. He was handsome so he looked good, but it felt like the wrong genre…? It would be exactly right to say it felt like a shounen manga character placed in a shoujo manga background.
Seth and nature, the epitome of disharmony….
“Too much.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were looking at me strangely. I know everything. Here.”
Seth held out a steaming teacup.
“Finally trying to poison me….”
The tea looked clear and smelled refreshing. However, to my eyes it looked like poison.
“What are you talking about? Why would I kill you?”
“You hate me.”
“…I do?”
A face that truly looked like this was the first time hearing such a thing. I got choked up and spoke sarcastically.
“Don’t play dumb. Because you hate me, because you’re tired of me now, you made me make a contract with my lifespan as the price and pushed me into a situation where I had no choice but to use excessive power, didn’t you.”
“….”
I lowered my eyes. I knew this man in front of me was different from Mina, so why couldn’t I harden my heart.
Is this what it’s like to be drawn to school ties, regional ties, and blood ties in a foreign land. It’s not even a real hometown connection, just something known from looking into my head.
“After scraping away all my remaining lifespan as payment for letting me see my parents’ faces and my friends’ faces one last time, I don’t understand why you brought me here.”
I thought I would inevitably die just like that. But if I said I was going to die, I was afraid it would hurt them, so I tried to leave as lightly as possible.
But why am I alive. I gripped the teacup. The surface of the teacup was warm. My senses said everything was normal. In fact, I felt lighter than at any time in those 18 years.
What on earth had Seth done.
“Even so, I can’t hate you.”
It becomes easier when you admit it. Seth just listened to my words in silence.
“You can laugh at me for being stupid, Seth. But I don’t dislike you. Actually, talking with you was enjoyable and fun.”
“You are stupid.”
“….”
I correct myself. Even if it becomes easier, I still get annoyed. I wrinkled my nose bridge and looked up at Seth, gasp….
“Right. I hate you.”
Seth smiled with a face I had never seen before, happily, brightly.
He was a liar through and through.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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