I’m Done With Unrequited Love - Chapter 6

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

Episode 6
What’s wrong with my hair color?
Every time Kiara heard such things, she’d huff in frustration and slip out to the Foster Home’s back garden. She didn’t want to see the faces of the Nobility who’d come to adopt, and she wanted to be alone.
Come to think of it, being born with red hair had never brought her a single advantage. Because she stood out so plainly, she’d frequently earned the Foster Home keeper’s anger. During her time on the streets, she’d been an easy target for other vagrants.
And now—because of this hair color—she couldn’t even get adopted?
Did no one see her as anything more than what she was? Was she truly unacceptable to everyone?
In Kiara’s heart, which had never known despair, cracks began to form.
‘Someone, anyone—please choose me.’
Choose me like a miracle.
The longing had grown so fierce that she believed if someone appeared who would select her, she could spend her whole life in gratitude. She would surrender her soul to that person at once, devoting herself entirely to seeking their affection for the rest of her days.
But no such person ever came.
‘God’s a lie.’
Kiara ran away from the Foster Home.
There was no god. All that begging, and her wish never came true.
After that, she drifted from place to place.
Driven out, kicked to the curb, rolling in the dirt…….
It was when she stumbled into the Train Station—a building that offered at least some semblance of safety—that it happened.
“Your rose-colored hair was so beautiful.”
The world stopped. She couldn’t believe it.
Fidellia never knew that Kiara might have been a replacement for someone else, and yet…….
‘I’ve never heard anyone say that before.’
That was the moment Kiara’s soul found its master.
So Kiara had panicked for the first time in her life.
‘Where is this?’
She’d lost Fidellia.
It was a mistake to look away for even an instant. She’d naturally assumed Fidellia and Sanna would follow.
She’d walked on in that assumption for a long while. Then, coming to her senses, she found herself on a relatively quiet street, having strayed from the bustling crowds.
Kiara stood dazed in the middle of a street where elegantly dressed people passed by.
Fidellia.
‘What if I can’t find her again?’
The world felt like it was spinning.
‘Get a grip!’
Kiara slapped both her cheeks hard.
She needed to stay as calm as possible.
‘When you’re lost, you have to stay still.’
Fidellia had taught her that.
First, she needed to get away from the middle of the street.
As Kiara moved toward the street’s edge, she came to a stop in front of a Tea House.
‘I’ll stay right here. Until Fidellia and Sanna come.’
That was the moment.
“Even now, we could still…….”
“If you’re going to talk work even when we’re outside, shut up and go back to the mansion.”
“Yes…….”
Ernan?
Kiara’s head snapped around.
A familiar name.
“That Ernan Cleor fellow—they said he’d go down to the Jonas Territory, but suddenly something about meeting a child came up and he couldn’t come.”
A familiar name!
‘Ernan Cleor.’
That man who definitely knew Fidellia!
“I never understood why she liked that guy from the start!”
Kiara remembered every word Sanna had said in anger that first day they’d met. She remembered the name Ernan Cleor as well.
“Tsk. In the end, it’s my own fault for hiring a workaholic.”
“Will you be letting him go, sir?”
“Eventually.”
The man sitting at an outdoor table of the Tea House—presumably Ernan Cleor, the man Fidellia had seemed to care for, the man who knew Fidellia—was right there before her.
His well-maintained blonde hair and blue eyes, the arrogant way he sat with his legs crossed, all testified to his high station.
And besides…
‘If he looks like that, it’s certain.’
He was certainly attractive enough to be worth looking at.
Fidellia couldn’t possibly have cared for someone ugly.
If Fidellia favored someone, they ought to have looked like that, at minimum.
‘If it’s him…’
He might take me to Fidellia.
Kiara moved forward as though in a trance.
* * *
Sanna and I searched for Kiara like madness had seized us.
From one end of Festival Street to the other—there wasn’t a corner we hadn’t torn through, nowhere we hadn’t asked our way to and scoured.
“Sanna, did you find her?”
“No luck!”
Two women drenched in sweat and gasping in the middle of winter drew every eye. We were on the verge of hysteria.
‘Where on earth could she have gone….’
All at once, a thought flashed through my mind—Denzergha, the street that ran directly alongside Renton House. It was lined entirely with cafés and tea houses catering to the Nobility, and we’d deliberately excluded it from our search.
But what if Kiara had wandered that way?
My blood ran cold.
‘And the security there is terrible, too.’
A cascade of possibilities flickered through my head. My runaway imagination painted the worst scenarios in vivid detail.
‘No. Not that.’
I grabbed Sanna’s arm and pulled.
“What? Where are we going?”
“Denzergha. It’s right next to here—she could’ve gone that way.”
“You’re serious? That’s quite a distance from here… and besides, it’s where all those noble bastards hang around?!”
Sanna’s eyes widened.
Not that it was surprising—she had a habit of lumping the Upper Class together as nothing but villains. With that mindset now feeding her anxiety—Upper Class equals Nobility equals wretches—Sanna gnawed at her fingernails.
“I called the police from here already, so let’s just check there first. We can’t afford to miss anything.”
Sanna nodded in agreement, and we hurried out of Festival Street.
And it was just after we arrived at Denzergha that I saw it.
“You’re absolutely ridiculous!”
Kiara, shrieking at Ernan Cleor.
‘Oh.’
This crazy, impossible girl.
* * *
Ernan Cleor regarded the red-haired girl who had materialized before him.
“Are you Ernan Cleor?”
A girl with the tilted, upturned eyes of a cat blocked his path and asked. The way she thrust her chin forward was decidedly bold.
Louis, his aide who’d been sitting beside him wiping his face just moments ago, now stood slack-jawed with astonishment.
And well he might—how many would dare to appear before Ernan Cleor and display such disrespect? And in casual speech, no less.
It was known throughout the upper echelons of the Corvalrue Empire that Ernan could not stomach rudeness or vulgarity.
How many families had seen their businesses destroyed after catching his eye unfavorably?
The red-haired girl had appeared just moments before, right when Louis, having been silenced by Ernan’s cutting glance, had finally managed to close his mouth. She’d walked up with such ease and naturalness that she seemed to know Ernan from long acquaintance, and took her place before them.
And then, without preamble, she’d asked about him directly.
Disrespectfully.
Ernan’s head tilted—an expression of approval.
“Do you know Fidellia?”
His hand, which had been lifting the tea cup, went still.
But then, as though nothing had happened, it rose smoothly and he brought the cup to his lips.
“She’s my guardian, and I’ve lost her.”
Only once the girl finished speaking did Ernan’s mouth open.
“So.”
His head tilted to one side.
“What exactly are you asking me to do?”
The girl’s cat-like eyes grew sharper still.
Not that it posed any real threat to Ernan.
“What do you mean ‘what’? Find her, obviously. I’m just a child who’s lost her way.”
“And why should I.”
Ernan’s face remained strikingly expressionless.
“Wow….”
The red-haired girl let out a breath of disbelief, her eyes wide with amazement. Then she frowned.
“You seem like a really nasty person.”
“Cough!”
Saredellin’s aide Louis coughed loudly and repeatedly.
When Ernan Cleor regarded him with a cold stare, Louis clapped both hands over his mouth, turned away, and struggled to stifle the coughing fit.
Kiara, watching the pathetic display, fixed Ernan with another glare. She’d apparently decided to brazenly press the matter, lifting her chin defiantly.
“Fidellia was fond of you, wasn’t she?”
“So?”
“Couldn’t you at least find a lost child for someone who cared about you?”
It was sophistry, pure and simple.
Ernan Cleor answered.
“No—doesn’t seem like it.”
…….
At that, Kiara’s lips pressed firmly shut.

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