I Proposed to My Childhood Friend After Regressing - Chapter 100

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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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After Regression, I Proposed to My Childhood Friend
Episode 100
“And after that……”
“……After that?”
At Clyde’s voice, which had dropped to a sudden hush, Beatrice’s eyes rolled for a moment. She was torn over whether she should really tell him this.
But there was no way Clyde wouldn’t notice her hesitation.
Rather than urge her on, Clyde wrapped his hand around the back of her head and drew her against his chest.
The way he had once done in the Downer Marquis Territory, when he was purging his past.
“……Hearing someone’s heartbeat helped.”
“……”
Beatrice closed her eyes in silence for a moment and listened to the rhythm of Clyde’s heart.
The body heat where they touched and the breath felt at close range truly did ease a person’s mind.
Especially when that person was someone you loved.
Beatrice felt an almost absolute sense of safety wash over her as she carefully mumbled out a few bleak facts.
“After that, I was just confined to different places depending on the situation. I wasn’t beaten or anything. From the Crown Princess’s position, she might have a use for me someday, right? Like… the hostage from the Crown Prince’s faction you mentioned.”
“……”
“Except for one thing. There was an… incident.”
Beatrice lowered her head slightly, her gaze dropping downward. The shoes and hem of fabric belonging to the two of them, so close together, filled her vision entirely.
Her gaze fixed on a moment as mundane as any other, she opened up her long-standing affliction.
Her voice, which had tumbled out so flatly before Turner, trembled strangely now.
“They didn’t bind me or beat me, but there was one thing the Crown Princess’s side was thorough about maintaining. Cutting off any possibility of my escape. The best way to do that was to keep me from knowing where I was or what time it was. So for most of the time, my eyes were covered.”
The problem was that this method wasn’t merely inconvenient for those who had to watch her.
Especially as the Crown Princess used Beatrice’s disappearance and the external situation to frame the Duke’s house and seize the advantage, it became all the more so.
A card already played could only decrease in value.
So they decided to make Beatrice into a more manageable form under the guise of an accident.
‘If her eyes are ruined, there’s no need to bother covering her vision and checking if it’s properly hidden, right?’
Beatrice felt the hand wrapped around the back of her head tense with force.
Strangely, that touch gave her courage. For the first time, Beatrice spoke aloud a feeling she could never have revealed to anyone else.
“……It really, really hurt. It felt like my eyes were burning away.”
And when that pain subsided, a helplessness so agonizing that it was unbearable washed over her.
Throughout all her misfortunes, Beatrice had continuously striven to hold herself together.
She fought not to crumble under an anxiety that never seemed to improve no matter how hard she struggled, the self-blame that followed, regrets about the past, and fears about the future.
But the moment her vision was stolen, all those emotions crushed her at once.
As if to say: this is the result of your effort.
“That’s all there is. I don’t have anything else to confess. I lived and died in a greenhouse from beginning to end.”
It had simply transformed from a greenhouse built with love into a prison meant to confine her.
After steadying her trembling breath several times, Beatrice deliberately forced the corners of her mouth upward.
“……What is this? We’re supposed to be playing a Truth Game, and in the end only I talked.”
“……”
But despite Beatrice’s efforts, no answer came back from Clyde.
The only way she could sense his emotions was through the continued tension in his hand.
“……Clyde?”
She raised her head, wondering if he was quietly angry as she’d thought, only for a moment.
At the sight of him before her eyes, Beatrice froze entirely.
Clyde was weeping without so much as a blink.
His cheeks were wet with the endless stream of tears, yet he made no move to wipe them away.
Like an emotionless doll, shedding tears without a single sob, he slowly lowered his gaze toward Beatrice.
“……Clyde.”
In the instant a tear from the edge of his jaw fell onto the hand she had reflexively raised, Clyde pulled her close with a force that seemed about to break.
The strength was so overwhelming she could barely breathe, yet Beatrice couldn’t bring herself to push him away as she normally would.
More accurately, she didn’t want to.
“……Why, why are you so composed? It’s driving me mad listening to you.”
“I wasn’t composed. It’s just… I suppose I spent so long in one place dwelling on the same emotions.”
Some emotions grow stronger the more you dwell on them, but others dull and dissolve.
The same was true of her feelings toward the Crown Princess.
Beatrice still hated Elodie. When she faced her, her mood plummeted, her smile was uncomfortable, and being close to her made her feel sick.
But it wasn’t the kind of destructive emotion that burned fiercely like it had when she was first trapped there.
In fact, though only the tiniest fraction, hadn’t she even questioned whether it was right to demand Elodie’s penance for what she’d done before the Regression?
‘What would you even call this? Like it’s been deliberately sealed away behind a barrier?’
Yes. Something like that.
Just…… a feeling of wanting to leave all of it in the past and forget it, as if it had never happened.
“After coming back, the moment I saw everything anew, I thought: let that Beatrice stay behind. It’s not right to keep carrying the pain.”
“……You’re all right? Sleeping?”
“Yeah, when my eyes are closed? Well, as long as there’s light, even if it’s dim, I’m fine. So long as I’m not having fabric covering my vision or suddenly finding myself in a space with no light at all, where I can’t see anything.”
“……”
No answer came from Clyde, but Beatrice could easily discern his feelings. His chest was heaving violently.
Beatrice stood vacant for a moment, watching the intense emotions he displayed, and without thinking she let slip a single word.
“……Thank you.”
She meant it. She didn’t know what Clyde thought, but all these feelings he revealed were to her a sort of comfort and salvation sent to her past self.
Just as the absurd consolations Beatrice had laid out and his simple, clear actions had reassured him.
Clyde furrowed his brow, as if utterly bewildered why she was thanking him.
Just before he could move his lips, still bearing the mark of tears, Beatrice took his hand and covered her eyes with it.
She didn’t know the clear reason herself, but she wanted to.
“……Beatrice.”
“Wait.”
Beatrice pressed her hand firmly and faced the familiar darkness again. The experience of everything going dark even with her eyes open.
The sensation of her eyelashes brushing against the obstacle obscuring her vision.
Everything was so familiar. Except for one thing: her heart no longer cried out in unstable anguish when facing this familiar darkness.
Beatrice felt the warmth of his palm and slowly closed her eyes. Then she gently drew his hand away.
“I have a request.”
“……Tell me.”
“When I open my eyes, can you look at me? Honestly, I can hardly believe it myself—I’m wondering if I hit my head or something—but now I think as long as you’re there when I open my eyes again, I’ll be fine.”
“……”
“Lucky, right? When I first proposed, I had absolutely no one to rely on. Finally I can have someone I trust!”
Beatrice threw out the deliberately playful joke and began counting lightly.
“Three, two, one, then I’ll open them, so get ready?”
“……”
“Three, two……”
One.
But before she could count that final number, Beatrice opened her eyes first.
She had no choice.
His breath was felt at such a precarious distance, with his hand cradling her cheek and their lips nearly touching.

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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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