I’m Done With Unrequited Love - Chapter 62

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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 62

That day, I confirmed that Ernan and I could touch without any adverse effect.
To be safe, I tested it with Noel as well, and nearly retched the moment our skin made contact—so Ernan truly was the exception.
‘How did things come to this?’
Perhaps I’d grown numb from seeing him for so long.
Perhaps my unrequited feelings played a role.
I gave serious thought to the marriage proposal Ernan had suggested.
‘For one thing, Kiara and Rene want this marriage.’
I understood their hearts too.
They would naturally wish for the adults they cared for to grow closer.
‘And that thought led them to conceive of marriage.’
Besides, if Ernan and I married, we could all become one family together.
Those children had virtually no experience of family to begin with.
Family.
How sweet would that word taste to them?
Especially a family composed of what one might call the standard arrangement—one mother, one father, and children.
As far as I was concerned, I wanted to give Kiara and Rene whatever they desired.
‘Because I don’t know when I’ll die—all the more so.’
Though I was working on a cure, this Divine Mark or whatever it was continued to torment me with pain that burned a little worse each month.
If I couldn’t treat it, I wouldn’t make it past this year.
So I wanted to live without regrets, prepared for any such possibility.
I didn’t want to end my life thinking, ‘I wish I’d done what Kiara and Rene asked back then.’
The reasons to marry could be summarized like this.
‘But if there are merits, there are equally opposing drawbacks.’
I brooded over what I would have to bear should I marry Ernan.
‘The obvious one being my cure research.’
I had never revealed to anyone that I was terminally ill.
I didn’t want to cause needless worry, and I despised being treated as a patient.
But if living in Ernan’s house after marriage meant I’d be making medicine there…….
‘Wouldn’t he grow suspicious?’
After all, someone unfamiliar with the field wouldn’t be able to distinguish whether I was conducting Pharmaceutical Research or biological research.
But Ernan too had a terminal illness, and like me, he had an interest in pharmaceuticals.
Moreover, these days I was also researching a cure for Ernan’s condition.
If that fact were discovered, Ernan would surely harbor doubts about me.
Just as I hadn’t told a soul about my illness, Ernan had kept his condition secret from everyone.
He would be intensely suspicious of how I came by that information.
Without revealing that I had been reincarnated, there was no conceivable explanation for how I knew of Ernan’s incurable disease.
Rather than create such an unsavory situation, I had no choice but to keep my lips sealed until the day I died and desperately hide the truth.
In any case, if Ernan and I were to marry, the probability of him discovering such a secret would increase.
Living together, he would grow suspicious at the slightest deviation from the ordinary.
‘If I were thorough enough in hiding it……perhaps it would be possible.’
In most films and novels, such complacency becomes the protagonist’s undoing.
‘This is exhausting.’
I had no idea what to do.
Grant the children their wish, or preemptively eliminate any possibility of suspicion?
‘That is the question.’
Considering all this, I couldn’t fathom this being called God.
‘Why reincarnate a person and let them remember their past life?’
Didn’t this contradict that thing called the Law of Causality?
‘Hmm.’
Though it wasn’t the sort of problem that would yield an easy answer, no matter how much I brooded over it.
So I neatly set aside my doubts and rose from my seat.
In my hands lay a letter sent by Prince Xavier.
It was his reply to news I’d sent him that I had recovered the sword from the Pope.
I was about to pull the bell cord to summon the elderly butler Pippin.
Knock, knock.
Had it not been for the sound of someone rapping on my study door, I would have done so.
“Come in.”
At those words, the attendant who entered bowed deeply and delivered the news he’d brought.
“Siren from House Marco wishes to see Miss Fidellia.”
* * *
Siren, whom I met in the reception room, delivered startling news to me.
“I’ve submitted my Master’s Thesis!”
……What?
‘What did he just say?’
What on earth is this person talking about?
“……You show up without any advance notice and tell me you’ve already submitted your Master’s Thesis?”
“I apologize for barging in without warning.”
At least he knows he should apologize.
“……So what’s your point?”
There has to be more to this than that.
I regarded Siren with a look of dark foreboding.
Meanwhile, Siren’s face was flushed with what appeared to be anticipation or something of the sort.
“Will you take me on as your aide?”
“…….”
No, he said he’d come back in a year.

Didn’t he say that himself?
“You said to wait one year.”
“Ah, that was.”
“That was?”
“The maximum estimate I could give. As you know, a Master’s student can graduate early if they pass their thesis even after just six months of coursework, can’t they?”
That’s true enough.
In the progressive and somewhat haphazard system of Romen University, Corvaliu’s only institution of higher learning, it was technically possible to earn a Master’s degree in as little as half a year of coursework if one’s thesis passed peer review.
‘The problem is that it’s damnably difficult.’
And this is for a Master’s degree, not a Bachelor’s.
Of course, to me—someone carrying memories from a previous life—it was simple enough.
Yet I spent roughly two years in my Master’s program, and only because I wasn’t keen to leave the graduate school.
‘There was Sanna too.’
It felt awkward to graduate ahead of Sanna, my classmate from public school.
So I simply followed the regular program and obtained my Master’s degree in due course.
But Siren was apparently different.
While early graduation after six months was theoretically possible, it was practically unrealistic—most students don’t submit their thesis just months into the program.
‘Yet he went ahead and did it.’
What is this person trying to pull?
“Will you accept me as your aide?!”
“I specifically said ‘after you’ve earned your Master’s degree.'”
“My thesis will pass without question, so you don’t need to worry about that. I’m simply arriving ahead of schedule.”
‘It’s even more astounding that he’s coming here confident it will pass.’
It was extraordinary confidence.
Siren gazed at me with a slightly nervous expression and spoke.
“Or failing that, wouldn’t you at least allow me to observe and learn from your side, even if not as a formal aide?”
At his plea—tinged with what seemed like genuine earnestness—I stared at Siren intently.
“Why are you going to such lengths to be by my side?”
Yet, as always, Siren’s answer remained consistent.
“Because I’m a fan! I respect you greatly.”
“Hmm.”
‘Certainly.’
There was something off about calling the gleam of near-madness in his eyes a matter of romantic affection.
Then, quite suddenly, Siren made an astonishing declaration.
“I won’t go home until you accept me.”
“…….”
How can one be so discourteous and stubborn?
Siren was now committing an outrageous breach of propriety, smoothing it over with his cheerful disposition and my own tolerance.
‘They say a person lies where there’s room to stretch out.’
Siren was exactly that sort.
And so I decided to compromise.
“Ah, yes. I’d like that. So once my master’s thesis is approved, we can talk again then…….”
“I’d rather not.”
“…….”
That so?

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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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