If I Were Reborn, I Wouldn’t Marry You - Chapter 106

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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 106
“You don’t know me?”
Miela countered as if it were absurd.
The time the two of them had shared now exceeded twenty years.
And four of those years had been spent as husband and wife.
It was hardly strange that Miela would react this way.
But…
Leonhardt gnawed at his lower lip before, as if possessed, laying bare his innermost thoughts.
“You don’t know what I’m thinking when I look at you…”
Perhaps, at least where Miela was concerned, he was a more dangerous existence than Prince.
‘Madman.’
He had kept it hidden all this time, yet he had spoken it aloud.
Leonhardt felt like a fool who had walked into a quagmire of his own accord.
He was berating himself for a moment of lost sanity when Miela’s voice reached him.
“If that’s the standard, then you don’t know me either?”
He had imagined the day his obsession would be exposed hundreds of times.
But this reaction from Miela was something he had never once considered, and Leonhardt was greatly flustered.

* * *
“No, that’s not it. A sane person doesn’t lay bare every thought in their head.”
We call that kind of restraint sociability.
‘And if you had spoken every thought aloud, you would have proposed to me by now.’
It was as obvious to me as the sun rising in the east.
Yet Leonhardt’s expression became enigmatic upon hearing my words.
He looked like someone who wanted to object but couldn’t find the right words—wronged and flustered.
“It’s a bit different from that.”
After worrying in silence, his lips barely moving, Leonhardt finally uttered his answer.
There was something melancholic about his appearance that seemed ominous.
“Different how?”
I released his cheek, which I had been holding, and asked.
Though I didn’t yet know exactly what it was, it felt like discovering a burrow that a baby rabbit had dug in secret.
‘Or rather, the kind of discovery you only make after the entire Garden has collapsed into it?’
Leonhardt averted his gaze, as if unwilling to answer.
His poor evasive instinct seemed to be activating again.
‘There are two ways to frustrate someone—one is to start speaking and then cut off in the middle…’
As I narrowed my eyes in warning, Leonhardt’s gaze slid back toward me.
Yet those heavy lips remained stubbornly closed.
I waited silently for Leonhardt, who seemed to be deliberating whether he should speak, his lips barely moving.
My patience had grown somewhat, but my frustration remained unchanged.
Just before I could no longer hold back and pressed him, Leonhardt’s lips finally parted.
“Your hidden emotions and mine are entirely different things.”
Leonhardt spoke with a sorrowful expression.
“They would have to be. You and I aren’t the same person, after all….”
Yet it seemed that wasn’t what Leonhardt truly wanted to say.
As his expression grew more melancholic, I fell silent for a moment and sank into thought.
Leonhardt was speaking as though everyone else were flawless while only he bore flaws.
But setting aside natural villains like Prince, most people’s inner worlds were fundamentally the same.
Jealousy, envy, hatred, fear.
Everyone carried some backward part within themselves.
That was simply natural.
‘I knew Leon had always been somewhat lacking in self-esteem, but….’
It seemed far more serious than I had anticipated.
This was all because of the Crown Prince and the Emperor.
For some reason, I felt a pang of pity, a sharp ache in my chest.
Yet I hid such feelings and deliberately asked in a light tone.
“Do you actually know what I’m hiding and not revealing?”
“…I don’t. But what you hide isn’t something you couldn’t show others.”
Since my family had fawned so much over calling me an angel, it seemed even he had become a bit strange.
“Surely you don’t think I’m some kind of saint or something?”
Leonhardt looked puzzled as I laughed in disbelief.
As if he truly believed it with all his heart.
I laughed hollowly and laid bare my dark history.
“Right after we just got married. I was incredibly anxious and struggling. I was afraid too.”
I had never experienced failure, so I was arrogant enough to think the life of an Empress would be manageable.
But the success I had achieved came because there was always someone to lift me up whenever I fell.
Standing entirely alone for the first time was truly overwhelming.
Yet before others, I always pretended to be fine.
I always smiled as if happy so my family wouldn’t worry, and I acted more confidently before those who tried to suppress me.
I didn’t want to admit that my choice had been wrong.
‘I should have admitted it and accepted it instead.’
If I had taken the wrong path, I should have turned around right there and returned to the correct one, but by ignoring it and continuing down that path, I only grew further from my destination.
“You probably thought I had good reason to be angry with you, but the truth was it was just venting and sulking. That’s why I’m sorry.”
I offered a belated apology in a calm tone.
Sure enough, Leonhardt’s face bore the characteristic confusion of someone learning the truth too late.
‘See?’
What I was hiding isn’t something I could show others with pride, just as you thought.
‘If you knew how jealous and possessive I truly am, you’d be shocked.’
It simply hadn’t been given to me before I could want it, so it never showed.
It was something I only realized belatedly after acknowledging that I loved Leonhardt.
Unlike the dark history from the first time, this was still something I myself was coming to accept, so I couldn’t speak it aloud.
So I simply smiled brightly at Leonhardt.
I acknowledged that I had taken the wrong path, returned to the starting line, and now I would run forward with all my might.

* * *
Miela’s smile felt somehow ethereal to Leonhardt.
Afraid she might vanish before his eyes, Leonhardt reached out and grasped her hand.
The anxious pounding of his heart finally calmed at the warmth of her touch.
“Your hands are cold.”
Miela squeezed his hand firmly and continued speaking with a slight smile.
“So you were disappointed in me?”
“No, that’s impossible.”
Leonhardt shook his head instinctively.
Miela laughed as if she had known he would say that, her eyes crinkling with joy.
Then she swung their clasped hands cheerfully and spoke.
“Now it’s your turn.”
With those words, the tightly locked gate within him seemed to open.
Leonhardt began to voice the words he had harbored in his heart for so long.
“…I hate seeing you with other people.”
In truth, he was jealous even of the air that touched her—just a little.
Leonhardt, having released a fraction of the emotions threatening to overflow, studied Miela’s reaction.
Fortunately, Miela seemed to interpret his feelings as nothing more than a friend’s possessiveness.
“I feel the same way. Jealousy and possessiveness like that are natural.”
She smiled at him gently, as if offering comfort.
“Right?”
Leonhardt nodded in response to Miela’s confirming question, and a thought crossed his mind.
‘But if I asked for just the two of us to remain in this world, she would be sad.’
He wanted to possess Miela completely, and just as she had owned him, he wanted to become her everything.
Unaware of Leonhardt’s true feelings, Miela assured him it was fine, that it was normal.
Yet he knew well enough that his emotions far exceeded what could be called normal.
So Leonhardt, concealing his sincerity, asked with the cunning of a villain.
“But wouldn’t the other person dislike it if jealousy and possessiveness were expressed excessively?”
It was a question born from the very source of his deepest fear.
Miela, who had been pondering his words briefly, answered.
“If it’s too much, then yes, but….”
It was one of the countless things he had imagined hearing, yet his heart suddenly plummeted and his vision swam.
However, at Miela’s next words, Leonhardt felt a surge of elation.
“Wouldn’t it be fine as long as it’s within what the other person can accept?”
Despite the condition attached to the premise, only the word “fine” lodged itself in his heart.
“How would one know where that line is?”
Leonhardt asked with the earnestness of a priest seeking divine truth.
“Who knows? Perhaps the knack will come naturally with repeated attempts, much like archery?”
“And what of the arrows that fly astray while I’m still learning?”
“Trial and error are inevitable parts of any learning process.”
At Miela’s gentle permission, Leonhardt’s eyes gleamed with sudden intensity.

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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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