I’m a Mother-in-Law, but I Dislike Conflict with My Daughter-in-Law - Chapter 189

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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I’m a Mother-in-Law, But I Don’t Want Family Conflicts Episode 189

‘How ironic that father and daughter’s choices diverged so completely.’

Raymond’s circumstances were tragic.

The grief of losing family sometimes transcends justice and reason.

But unlike Raymond, who went mad with revenge and chose collective punishment, Adeline believed in family love.

“I understand why you wanted revenge. But unlike you, your daughter tried to protect her family until the end. Even though they weren’t blood-related.”

Believing that her own children could escape the curse, she prepared for the future.

Father Raymond, obsessed with the past, and Adeline, who planned for the future and passed away. Even facing the same tragedy, what they dreamed of was completely opposite.

‘If I had known Raymond’s true identity earlier… I would have shown him this diary first.’

The diary contained no information about Raymond. She probably deliberately avoided mentioning him so that if the Late Duke discovered it, her father wouldn’t face consequences.

If I had realized earlier that Raymond was the root of all this, I could have used the diary to persuade him to abandon his revenge.

Then I wouldn’t have had to face such a despairing expression.

“Then I… the family that child tried to protect…”

“You tried to kill them. That’s why I said it. If Adeline were alive, she wouldn’t have agreed with you.”

“But I definitely heard it. Every night, I heard that child’s crying!”

I let out a short sigh and stroked Adeline’s coffin.

“Don’t rationalize the evil deeds you’ve committed for your revenge by using your child as an excuse.”

Raymond’s actions were full of contradictions.

He sold me to the Duke’s Estate to use me, yet when the Late Duke died, he reached out his hand saying he would rescue me from the Duke’s Estate.

It was a plan that poured out all the influence he had built up in the capital.

There might have been the reason that he couldn’t leave me alone because I resembled his daughter, but perhaps it was actually the expression of guilt accumulated from committing countless evil deeds.

Though he had walked an irreversible path for revenge, a small kindness that he could pay any price if he could clear even one sin. A father’s pitiful struggle who couldn’t remain a villain until the end.

The problem was that he had gone too far for such excuses to work.

“Your revenge is over. No more…”

“…If I end it like this, what will change?”

“What?”

Raymond staggered toward me. Rohan, who was protecting me nearby, tried to block him.

“Wait.”

I grabbed Rohan’s sleeve and stepped back together with him. I realized that Raymond’s target wasn’t me but the stone coffin.

“If I end it like this without telling anyone, leaving it incomplete, what will remain for this child?”

He reached out his arms to open the lid of the stone coffin. But the stone coffin was too heavy. It was a weight that an old man’s strength could never handle.

Even so, he used all his desperate strength to keep pushing the coffin lid. Blood vessels stood out on his forehead, and his thin fingertips turned pale white.

Though I should have stopped him and told him to quit, somehow my hands wouldn’t move. It seemed Rohan felt the same way.

“Everything has disappeared. Records, names, even people who remember this child. Now even I can barely hear this child’s voice. How pitiful that I can’t even remember what was different about you, Wilhelmina. As if memories are being overwritten.”

Crack, the lid moved slightly under his full strength.

“I keep aging. I forget things starting with trivial ones. Someday, I’ll forget this child too.”

His face turned bright red as he breathed roughly. Even his speech became confusedly mixed.

It seemed like advice to his daughter, and also like rambling written in a will.

“If I had at least succeeded in my revenge, I could have left records of this child’s existence.”

Ugh!

His fingertips must have gotten caught on the stone coffin, as he bit his lips. Even so, he didn’t stop and pushed the lid away.

Before long, the lid had been pushed about half a span, and the interior began to slowly come into view.

“If I give up here, who will remember our daughter? Who will mourn for this child sleeping alone in this cold land that isn’t even her hometown!”

It’s not about stopping his revenge.

He had come running because he couldn’t stop.

If he slowed his steps, it felt like Adeline would drift further away.

At the anguished voice of a father who still couldn’t accept his child’s death, neither of us could say anything.

Both of us were those who had lost parents.

Because we had never experienced parents who would commit evil for their children.

“So I cannot stop. To get back my daughter, whom no one remembers, huff-! I must-!”

Bang-!

He finally pushed the lid away. Unable to control his strength, his upper body collapsed into the opened stone coffin.

Since it was a hard stone coffin, there should have been a loud sound when he buried his head in it.

“…?”

What greeted him wasn’t cold, hard stone, but flowers that filled the stone coffin.

“What is this….”

They weren’t artificial flowers. They were all fresh flowers. Whether they had received magical treatment or not, a bed of vivid and abundant flowers was spread inside the stone coffin as if they had just been picked.

As if heralding the coming of autumn, summer flowers and autumn flowers filled it half and half.

They had been packed so tightly that when Raymond’s body crashed into them, the flowers scattered in the air like snowflakes.

It was a strange sight.

The grayish-white stone coffin of the pure white temple, and the well of colorfully gorgeous flowers that filled it.

It felt like seeing a fairy showing color alone in a black and white movie.

And lying within it, a corpse wrapped in pure white cloth without a speck of dust.

Though the entire body was tightly wrapped so that not even a fingertip was visible, it looked peaceful as if sleeping in comfortable bedding.

Just as we were staring wide-eyed, wondering if what we were seeing was real.

“…Helene did this.”

Opening the temple door, Mikhail came looking for us again.

Helene was not in his arms.

“The person who comes and goes here most frequently is Helene.”

“Are you saying the Duchess placed these flowers here now?”

At Raymond’s trembling voice, Mikhail nodded heavily.

“Yes. Probably the first thing she did after arriving at the Duke’s Castle was to come to this temple and change the flowers.”

Come to think of it, after finishing our trip, Helene immediately left as if she had urgent business. I thought she was going to rest because she was tired, but it was actually to come to the temple.

‘Ah, so the reason Raymond and Helene were at this temple was also….’

I had thought Raymond asked to be taken to where Adeline was, but it seemed Helene had been the one who came here first.

“She comes here every Sunday for Father’s wives. She picks flowers blooming in the garden and always decorates the coffins. She even gets help from a mage so they won’t spoil. If she can’t come due to unavoidable circumstances, she offers prayers from her room.”

Only then did I recall the rumor that Helene disappeared somewhere every Sunday.

During Jane’s incident too, and when we had just arrived at the capital, she had left for unknown business.

So it was for memorial purposes.

“She said we must not forget. My mothers, Father’s evil deeds—we shouldn’t pretend not to know or erase them.”

“B-but surely she said she couldn’t change the registry…”

“That wasn’t Helene’s intention. Rather… it was my fault.”

Mikhail slowly approached Raymond. He knelt on one knee to meet the eyes of Raymond, who sat slumped while gripping the coffin.

“Father’s traces still remain. His retainers, his forces—I haven’t dealt with them all. Meanwhile, the Empire’s structure has changed. The Emperor, Layton, Venice—all have welcomed a new generation. So I couldn’t show any weakness.”

“Are you calling that an excuse?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s the excuse of a pathetic husband who burdened his wife. The ugly excuse of a man who was absorbed only in his own affairs, his own pain, and failed to look around him.”

Perhaps, if Helene had mentioned this issue to Mikhail, he would have naturally stepped forward to restore the registry.

He was a man who would execute what he believed was right without hesitation.

But Helene didn’t want that. She postponed everything so that the Late Duke’s sins wouldn’t become his responsibility.

Instead, she took upon herself the memorial of the dead.

“Raymond, we will not forget.”

“…”

“You, Mother Adeline, the third and fourth mothers… we will not forget any of you.”

Mikhail grasped Raymond’s bleeding fingertips. He slowly wrapped them with his own hands.

“Before long, I will surely return Mother Adeline’s name to her. I promise you on my name.”

He bowed his head deeply, as if paying respects to the Emperor.

“I’m sorry. For forgetting you, for forgetting Mother, for being a pathetic father who couldn’t respond to Father’s revenge… I’m sorry.”

Raymond stared blankly at Mikhail.

Then he slowly turned his head and looked at me.

“Grand Duchess.”

“…Yes.”

“If my daughter, Adeline… saw her father’s appearance, what would she say? To such a father who accomplished nothing, who wasted his years… would that child be angry?”

At his words, as if seeking the opinion of his absent daughter, I also knelt and faced him.

What would a daughter say to a father who gave up revenge for her?

Would she ask why he stopped? Or would she scold him for doing such things?

‘No, it’s not for a daughter to demand retribution for evil deeds.’

Raymond’s future would be more painful than I could imagine. There were dozens, hundreds of blades of law remaining that sought to punish him.

So what I needed to say now wasn’t clumsy scolding or comfort…

“You’ve worked hard, Father. Now let’s go home.”

It was a light, simple greeting that a child might give.

I grasped the opposite hand that Mikhail wasn’t holding.

With Mikhail on one side and my hand on the other, Raymond leaned his back against the stone coffin.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Raymond, murmuring in a tearful voice, didn’t look like the stubborn and violent man I first met.

He looked like a gentle, sorrowful old man waiting for his children.

“Let’s go back, let’s go back to our home. Enough now, let’s go back…”

Was it responding to his answer?

Though not a breath of wind was blowing, a single flower from the coffin fell onto his knee.

It was a beautiful white flower.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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