I Proposed to My Childhood Friend After Regressing - Chapter 32

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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
Chapter 32
His request, delivered with such disarming clarity, left Beatrice at a loss for words.
‘On the brink of losing my mind—what does he mean by that?’
Was he saying his reason might slip away? Was that what he meant?
Her eyes wavered slightly as she studied Clyde intently.
He wore a faint smile, but his lips were drawn tight—as if he were biting the inside of his mouth—and his expression was disheveled, shadows pooling beneath his lower lashes.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
……
Beneath that thin smile lay something he was struggling to suppress—a side of him Beatrice found unsettling.
She had never seen Clyde look so precarious before.
The Clyde Dalton she knew didn’t express anxiety this way.
Watching him, Beatrice felt a sudden thought crystallize.
‘At least you remember regressing with me. I’m grateful for that.’
Had it been otherwise, she would have suspected that the Crown Princess had disposed of Clyde and sent an impostor in his place.
Beatrice rubbed her arm, trying to shake off the strange feeling, and glanced down at the floor.
‘But what happened before the regression to make him fall apart like this?’
She briefly recalled memories she’d buried deep, fragmented and sealed away, then exhaled silently before speaking.
“We said we’d be honest with each other, so I won’t hide anything. I can’t do what you’re asking.”
……
“Valois’s proposal? I can turn that down easily. What’s a proposal compared to what matters? But you don’t actually want me to refuse the proposal itself, do you?”
Clyde’s eyes narrowed fractionally. Beatrice met his gaze without flinching.
“Am I wrong?”
……
No answer came, yet both of them knew her words were true.
“I can’t do this, Clyde.”
“……It’s not that you should do nothing. Strength doesn’t require courting danger every time. Can’t you throw yourself into research with the Empress instead—like the lie you told me before?”
Clyde’s blue eyes darkened with emotion.
“You always say you haven’t learned enough, that you’re inadequate. But you know as well as I do that Jedediah didn’t teach you half-measures. That’s enough to——”
“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that a greenhouse is always a greenhouse, no matter how hard you try, Clyde.”
When you look at reality through glass, your vision warps inevitably, and that distortion necessarily produces error.
‘And error is the variable Alchemy fears most of all.’
Sometimes that error spawns catastrophe beyond containment.
‘Like my ending, in the past.’
After collecting her thoughts, Beatrice stepped closer and spoke again.
“I told you from the start—I can’t grant your request because I know it won’t lead to a good outcome. But refusing doesn’t mean I’ll ignore your anxiety or blindly avoid the problem altogether.”
……
“So tell me. What’s making you this way?”
Clyde’s lips parted slightly, then sealed shut. Shallow breath trembled between them.
“You……”
He began with a strained voice, then faltered again almost immediately.
Beatrice watched silently as Clyde swallowed his words, his face twisting.
He was hesitating to speak the truth aloud.
As though he feared that the moment it left his lips, it would become real.
……
A dry, bitter laugh escaped him at his own helplessness. He pressed his face into one hand. Tendons stood out starkly across the back of his hand.
“Damn it……”
He muttered the words as if spitting them out, then dragged his hand across his face and gripped Beatrice’s shoulders.
Before she could even raise an eyebrow at his rough touch, Clyde buried his face in her shoulder.
“Just a moment.”
He steadied his breathing against her racing pulse, then finally exhaled the truth in a fractured voice.
“……I was the last person to receive you.”
Beatrice’s body went rigid. His voice, trembling with barely suppressed emotion, continued slowly.
He spoke of how, after his family was executed, he’d searched for her across the entire Empire; how he’d allowed himself to be captured in place of the Crown Prince and his allies; how Valois had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse; and then……
‘Clyde Dalton, let me make you a simple offer. Even if it’s a lie, promise me you’ll say you’ll become mine. If you do, I’ll give you the Beatrice Hartwell you’ve been searching for.’
‘……If you keep your word, then yes. I will become yours.’
‘Can you really become mine? If I tell you to laugh, you laugh; to cry, you cry; to die, you die?’
‘……If you command me to laugh, I’ll laugh; to cry, I’ll cry; to die, I’ll die.’
‘Ha ha ha! Yes. That’s how it should be. But actually… I don’t need someone like you anymore. You’ve become so worthless to me that I’m bored. Tired of the sight of you.’
……
‘Still, I’ll keep my promise. Take her. She’s my gift to you. I put some effort into wrapping her as a parting gift—I hope you like it.’
And with that, as if mocking him, he’d handed her over wrapped in a gift box.
“The Crown Princess had many people from the Crown Prince’s side as hostages—family, loved ones. It was bait. So I… I thought you might be the same.”
……
“So when Valois Crawford agreed to let me meet you, I was planning to use my last resort to send you to His Highness……”
His voice came rough and splintered against her ear.
“I still remember you that day so clearly.”
A body gone cold, a heart that no longer beat, a ribbon stained dark with blood.
Burying his face deeper against her throat, Clyde spoke in a low, resolute murmur.
“I swear I’ll never let that happen to you again.”
Whether it’s Valois Crawford, the Crown Princess, or any threat that comes.
……
For a long while, Beatrice said nothing.
Partly because the truth was as brutal as he’d warned; partly because she could feel his emotion so plainly in the warm breath against her nape.
‘……This is hard.’
Any death strikes like a blow, but Beatrice’s death had carried singular weight for Clyde.
‘Because back then, to him, I wasn’t simply his childhood friend Beatrice Hartwell.’
She had been proof that someone in the world knew Clyde as an individual—the last thread connecting him to an uncorrupted past.
Beatrice understood without difficulty the terror, despair, and desolation he must have felt.
‘It must have felt like the only breath left to him was being cut off.’
Held fast against Clyde, Beatrice drew a deep breath and then reached up to ruffle his hair.
It was a strong gesture, almost rough—like mussing a puppy’s fur—but it was her way of offering comfort.
After running her fingers through his hair a few more times, Beatrice deliberately raised her voice and spoke with exaggerated annoyance.
“Now that I think about it, this is ridiculous. A gift? Wrapping? Seriously, you perverts are insane! If those bastards get caught, they should just wear whatever gift wrap everyone decides to gift them!”
……
“Hey. You’re fine. Look, just… think of it like some trashy Halloween prank, okay? The truth is I was alive the whole time. I was just playing dead to get away from them. Got it?”
It was another flood of meaningless chatter, but Beatrice didn’t hesitate.
Only this time, unlike before when she’d been making excuses, she had no particular agenda.
She simply thought that keeping her voice going might help.
How long she rambled on, she couldn’t say.
But finally, Beatrice felt his grip on her shoulders ease.
……
A quiet cough.
They pulled back to meet each other’s eyes again, both clearing their throats awkwardly.
They’d never had a conversation quite like this, so neither knew how to bring it to a proper close.
Beatrice fidgeted with the glasses the Empress had given her and quickly spoke.
“So, um… let’s talk about everything else later, yeah? What do you say?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Today we should just… rest.”
“Yeah……”
That was the end of the conversation.
The two of them tidied the Conference Room in silence for the first time, then parted with a simple farewell.
Awkwardly, as if they’d just had a fight.

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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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