I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 88

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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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Episode 88
“What’s the point of coming here? My daughter has already wasted three years, and she even entered that cursed Knight Order—Lux or Locks or whatever it’s called—searching for you!”
“You should be proud of her instead. Olivia graduated top of her class. Don’t you realize how tragic it is to let such talent go to waste?”
“Oh yes. I’ve heard all about how you dragged my daughter around the Academy, tossing her about like a toy and harassing her every single day.”
“……Who on earth told you that?”
“That’s not all. I’ve also heard you threw her off a cliff multiple times. Should I really be keeping you alive?”
No, you’d probably be right to kill me.
Listening to it all laid out like this, Aiden had to admit he truly deserved death. The broken engagement was one thing, but coming back and tormenting Olivia so relentlessly afterward—that was beyond excuse.
Hearing each crime enumerated, even he had to conclude he’d been utterly mad.
Had anyone else done such things to Olivia, Kishir would have had to intervene before Aiden could rush in and snap the man’s spine backward himself.
Therefore, Aiden had resolved to accept his fate with humility.
“I deserve to die…….”
He closed his eyes in resignation. Above his head, the Marquis of Kishir released an exasperated sigh.
One, two, three…….
Aiden counted silently, trying to gauge how much life remained to him.
But as the seconds ticked by and he reached ten, his neck remained stubbornly attached to his shoulders.
Aiden cracked his eyes open slightly, looking up at Kishir. The Marquis stared down at him with such disdain that his eyebrows twitched.
Huff.
“Let go.”
The Marquis of Kishir irritably shook his leg. Aiden tumbled helplessly to the ground.
As he fell, he must have rolled badly across some stone, because a sharp sting shot through his lower back.
The Marquis of Kishir simply continued to stare at him in silence.
As Aiden pushed himself up, rubbing his side, Kishir let out a hollow laugh and spoke.
“Perhaps this isn’t entirely your fault.”
“Father?”
“It’s my fault for trusting you.”
Only then did Aiden truly look into Kishir’s eyes. They burned with anger, yes—but beneath it flickered the shadow of bitter disappointment.
A cold autumn wind swept past them. Aiden swallowed dryly and took a cautious step forward.
“Was my daughter so lacking in some way?”
But at those words, Aiden found his feet rooted to the ground. A frigid silence split the space between them.
He couldn’t answer the Marquis’s question easily. It was something he’d never once contemplated.
Olivia lacking? In what possible way?
In all his years, he’d never harbored such a thought.
Olivia was the most beautiful, the most endearing, the most brilliant younger sister in the world to him.
There wasn’t a soul alive—not even himself—to whom she wouldn’t be a precious treasure. She was worth more than her weight in gold.
He shook his head.
“No. Absolutely not. It was nothing of the sort.”
“Then?”
“It was…….”
This whole situation was entirely his fault. No one else’s.
Kishir waited patiently for his answer, but as the silence stretched on, he finally spoke again.
“I thought you both held affection for each other. I believed that if Olivia were to be joined with anyone, it had to be you. Your mother and I were of the same mind.”
“Father.”
“Above all, Olivia loved you. But it seems none of that mattered to you at all—isn’t that so?”
“No! Father, that’s not it. Not at all.”
Aiden bit his lip, remembering the time when he and Olivia were engaged.
“Then what other reason could there be?”
The Marquis’s voice carried a sharp edge of fury.
“It’s just that…….”
Now was the time to be honest. Aiden exhaled the truth he’d held buried all these years.
“……because what she wanted was the only thing I could never give her.”
Love.
Olivia had wanted love from him.
The one thing Aiden did not possess, and never would.
“Surely you, Marquis, understand better than anyone how unhappy a person becomes when they endlessly long for something they can never have.”
Aiden stared at Kishir, his lips pressed firm.
“……That’s the reason. It wasn’t that Olivia was lacking. It’s that she wanted something I could never provide.”
“Something you can’t give? What kind of naïve nonsense are you—”
“I didn’t want to watch Olivia waste away her whole life in misery, the way my mother did!”
At that, the Marquis’s lips snapped shut.
There it is. Everyone knows my mother was unhappy. Aiden gritted his teeth and swallowed back a deep breath.
“Olivia loved me. I know that.”
“Aiden.”
“And surely you understand, Marquis, the story of my beloved father.”
Aiden said this with his eyes shut tight.
* * *
The previous Duke of Oblion had kept two “wives.”
His official spouse and Aiden’s mother, Nesarita of House Oblion—and
“Mileer. How was your day?”
“Wonderful. Everything was perfect. The weather was lovely, and I spent such a pleasant time with the children.”
“I’m glad. I heard from Nesarita that you took a walk along the riverbank today.”
The Duke had given a separate wing of the manor to his concubine, Mileer, treating her publicly as though she were his wife.
Aiden’s father had taken a lover into the household the same moment he married—Mileer, a woman he’d been seeing long before his marriage.
“My lady, Mileer will need use of the garden this afternoon, I’m told.”
“Will he be with her?”
“…….”
“……Yes. I see.”
His mother had loved his father. But his father’s “love” had been directed elsewhere.
It was then that Aiden learned: a person who yearns for what they cannot have withers with terrifying, relentless speed.
Aiden closed and opened his eyes slowly. When he looked up again, his face bore an expression distinctly different from before. He continued.
“You remember, don’t you? That my parents’ relationship was far from normal.”
“So. You claim you did this because you didn’t want my daughter to suffer the same misery your mother did?”
“……I care deeply for Olivia, but I’m a person who cannot return the feelings she desires. And such a thing eats away at a person far more than one might think.”
Love. As if such a thing matters. Aiden’s lips curved downward in bitter irony.
“My mother withered away and met an end that was little different from suicide, my accursed father never gave the House name to the ‘second wife’ he loved so dearly…….”
“Aiden.”
“And Mileer, who lived her entire life hearing herself called a concubine and remains trapped in that house even now—weren’t they all people whose lives were ruined by that wretched emotion?”
Aiden had thus come to distrust love. No—he hated it.
His mother had given up nothing because of her love.
Not a drop of Oblion blood ran through her veins, yet she died fulfilling her duty as a member of the Guardian Family. It must have been for the sake of the one she loved.
In the end, the only thing she had been able to surrender was her own life.
And because of that, Aiden had inherited her misery. So that wretched emotion had destroyed four people’s lives.
The Marquis of Kishir now let out a humorless laugh, utterly incredulous. But Aiden’s resolve remained unshaken.
Kishir fixed him with a long stare.
“Aiden. Do you truly believe what you’re saying?”
“I apologize for breaking the engagement the way I did and running away. I couldn’t think of any other way at the time. I was young.”
“Ha……. Nesarita bore a fool.”
At that, Aiden’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t argue. He simply lowered his head in silence.
Tap, tap. The Marquis drummed his fingers on the table in calculation, the rhythm erratic—a habit that emerged when his thoughts deepened.
His fingers, which had been moving like beads on an abacus, finally slowed and stilled.
Aiden held his breath, watching Kishir intently. The Marquis opened his mouth slowly.
“Will you break the engagement?”
“Pardon?”
“Are you going to break the engagement with Olivia?”

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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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