I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 90

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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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Chapter 90
In the end, they chose a desolate forest path—a particularly isolated place, cut off even by a fence.
Between the two figures hidden in darkness stretched a hushed silence.
Clip-clop, clip-clop….
The sound of hoofbeats and carriage wheels circled near them for a long while before gradually fading into the distance.
“I think he’s gone.”
“Sigh… How much longer can we keep evading like this?”
Her father proved far more persistent than she’d anticipated. Most of Olivia’s own stubbornness and obsessive tendencies likely traced back to Kishear himself.
He seemed to have given up for now, but both of them knew it wasn’t a true surrender. The dread of facing this onslaught stretched before them indefinitely.
“Still, we managed to avoid it today.”
“Yes, that’s a relief at least.”
It was a moonless night. While they waited in hiding, evening had fully withdrawn, and now the peculiar stillness of autumn nights pressed down around them from all directions.
Chirp, chirp.
The forest’s fresh air brushed against her nose, and crickets sang their endless song. There was something almost romantic in the atmosphere.
It was strange—they’d cleared just a single fence, yet it felt as though they’d stepped outside the world entirely. Olivia smiled faintly at this, then reached over and pulled the arm of the person beside her into an embrace.
“Olivia?”
“There’s no one here. No risk of being discovered.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she realized how they sounded—like a line from some illicit romance. Aiden seemed to have the same thought; his face flushed deeply.
He coughed awkwardly several times, then flicked her forehead with his finger and pushed her back slightly.
“That’s a terribly inappropriate thing to say to a work colleague at this hour.”
“But perfectly appropriate to say to one’s fiancé, wouldn’t you say?”
“Troublesome.”
Aiden ran his hand clumsily across Olivia’s face as she blinked at him prettily, her eyes dancing with mischief.
Utterly devoid of romantic sensibility, that one. Olivia sighed quietly.
“I’ll be of age in just a few months now.”
“Has it really been that long?”
Time always flows at its own measured pace, or so they say—yet between the two of them, it seemed to have raced. They’d changed in countless ways while appearing to change not at all. Olivia kept her grip on Aiden’s arm, which had grown considerably larger since she’d last taken stock of it, as they walked together. Then she spoke quietly.
“Father is looking for new fiancée candidates.”
“…I’d already heard.”
“From whom?”
“Your father. He kept saying I should dissolve the engagement immediately and find you a new fiancé.”
I knew it.
Olivia’s brow furrowed deeply as she recalled the letter her father had sent her not long ago.
[Olivia. I heard that Aiden has returned.
I’ll dispense with pleasantries and get to the point. It seems we’ve waited long enough. I’ve selected several suitable candidates from respectable families to serve as new fiancée options. We should arrange to meet with them soon and discuss the matter.]
In essence, it meant she was to meet the new candidates at once and begin marriage preparations. More bluntly, it was pressure to dissolve the engagement with Aiden immediately.
The Engagement Dissolution documents he’d given her lay locked away in a safe, which she’d brought with her to the Academy.
She kept them hidden in a place only she knew of, so her father had no means of reaching them. In this way, she’d eluded both the dissolution and a new engagement.
But now it seemed their patience had finally reached its limit. With Aiden’s return, they appeared poised to demand fresh dissolution documents from him directly.
Olivia poked Aiden irritably and spoke.
“This is all because of my brother.”
“You’re right. It’s all my fault.”
“…Do you still want to dissolve the engagement with me?”
“Well, it’s not that I want to—I felt I had to.”
There he went again, spouting nonsense.
“Because I’m your friend’s sister?”
“That seems to be part of it, yes.”
“You know that’s complete nonsense, don’t you?”
“Probably, yes.”
“This is so frustrating.”
Aiden chuckled and ruffled her hair. Olivia batted his hand away, her irritation plain.
“Brother, I’m asking this somewhat on a whim, but…”
“What is it?”
“If we really do end up dissolving the engagement….”
She watched him swallow hard, and then Olivia declared firmly.
“Then it’s truly over.”
At those words, Aiden’s movements stopped completely.
Over. Olivia turned the word over in her mind once more.
She’d thought it slipped from her lips lightly enough, yet the weight it carried caught her off guard. She turned her own words over again and again in her head.
“…Over?”
“Yes. It would truly be the end.”
Aiden had been present in Olivia’s earliest memories. They’d walked beside each other before their baby fat had melted away, had been childhood companions, and were now each other’s fiancé.
So she’d sometimes entertained a thought.
If she were to break the engagement, could they return to what they’d been before?
But she’d never once answered that question. Somehow it felt as though they couldn’t.
And only now did Olivia understand why.
“We can’t go back to the way we were.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is my true heart speaking.”
Aiden always seemed to want to deny it, but Olivia had always been sincere in this relationship. She truly loved him.
A sun-bright man who once bought her white cotton candy when she wept wanting clouds, who smiled and said simply: here.
“Olivia. Look, here’s a cloud.”
“Where?”
“Surprise. How’s that? White and fluffy, isn’t it?”
Olivia’s first cloud tasted sweet. Hold it too long and it grew sticky; press it together and it formed solid. That day’s “cloud.”
Because Aiden was the first to hand her something everyone else said was impossible to have, she’d loved him for a very long time afterward.
Every moment she’d said she loved him, that she wanted to protect him—none of it had ever been insincere.
“I’ve given my all in every moment. When I first asked for the engagement, when I went searching for you, when I confessed everything, and in this moment too. Every single time.”
“…Olivia.”
“Pouring everything out means each moment was grueling, but when it ends, I’ll have no regrets. Nothing will remain.”
“How can there be such a thing? What happens to us then?”
Olivia gazed blankly into the distant darkness. In the trees shrouded by night, leaves already dried of their moisture drifted down in little flutters.
“That’s why I’m asking you to seriously consider this relationship.”
“Olivia.”
“Just as you said—maybe we could become nothing more than a friend’s sister and a brother’s friend. Whether that’s something you can accept.”
Speaking it aloud seemed to settle her thoughts.
Olivia truly hoped that day would never come. Even when Aiden had vanished for three years and left no trace, even when he’d brazenly returned and moved about showing his face to the world—
Through it all, she’d still loved him.
There had been days when resentment and anger stirred in her heart, but an affection far greater had swallowed all of it whole.
Olivia poured herself out in every moment. Love had accompanied every second they’d shared together.
Could she now strip away only that feeling and behave as she once had?
Olivia didn’t think so. That was why it was “over.”
“There isn’t much time left now. The Day of Promise you mentioned.”
“…About two months, I suppose.”
“I’m doing my best. I hope you’ll understand that.”
A smile played at the corners of Olivia’s mouth. It was an ordinary smile, no different from always—yet seeing it, Aiden clenched his teeth.
The walk back to the Academy wasn’t far, and Kishear’s carriage was nowhere to be seen.
The two moved forward in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
It was a night when countless thoughts collided.

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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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