I’m The Male Lead’s Biological Daughter, But I Want To Live With The Second Male Lead! - Chapter 21

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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 21
“Oh? Young Master Aselth?”
Mabel, who had been sitting primly in her chair, turned around.
In midair, Aselth’s white eyes and Mabel’s crimson eyes met directly.
But……
Nothing happened.
Which was only natural.
Aselth had long since learned to control his ability.
It wasn’t perfect, but he was confident he wouldn’t slip up.
Though people had never trusted him for it.
– Isn’t it true that Basilisks turn their own mothers to stone the moment they hatch?
– That’s why mothers are lost so often. The offspring killed its own mother.
Some of the Duke’s House staff were busy spouting uncertain information they’d picked up from who knows where.
It was utter nonsense.
‘A Basilisk’s ability grows stronger as it matures.’
Aselth, still only a boy, could manage to petrify something for merely a few hours at most.
And when he’d first hatched, his eyes had been veiled—he couldn’t use the ability at all.
This fact, easily learned by anyone who frequented black markets or the increasingly rampant Demi-human Market, was unknown to the Duke’s House staff.
They were “good people who didn’t buy and sell demi-humans,” after all.
In an age where studying demi-human traits was seen as something only black-market dealers did, the servants had no reason to study for Aselth’s sake.
But just as a person universally good isn’t good to everyone, sometimes goodness runs so deep it wounds.
Because of this contradiction, Aselth was always lonely and isolated.
Even when he’d asked Kelric’s permission, turned him to stone, and returned him safely—it made no difference.
Everyone only cared that Aselth was “not wearing his blindfold.”
Sigmund, knowing this, had offered to step in and warn the others, but Aselth shook his head.
And so all he could do was endure his fear while following Sigmund’s orders.
That wasn’t what Aselth wanted.
He wanted them not to avert their eyes when they met his gaze, not to check if he was wearing his blindfold before approaching him……
He wanted to be treated like anyone else.
Better to be discriminated against for being a demi-human than to be treated like a monster too terrifying to come near.
‘But even that’s probably asking too much.’
So the reason Mabel was now frozen in place, eyes wide, was probably just shock.
That girl seemed to stop breathing altogether when she got too frightened.
‘Like the first time she saw me.’
With an ugly face and a Basilisk’s eyes meeting hers, freezing was only natural.
Since the outcome of this test was already decided, Aselth moved to turn his head away.
“You don’t need to wear the blindfold?”
“……What?”
Startled, he looked over to find Mabel bouncing in her seat.
“It’s true. I didn’t turn to stone.”
Mabel looked at her own hands, flexing them, then asked again.
“Can you control your ability?”
All the while staring directly into Aselth’s white eyes.
It was Aselth who turned rigid as stone.
Mabel’s reaction was nothing like he’d expected.
He’d assumed she’d scream.
He’d assumed she’d be swept into someone’s arms and cry her eyes out.
But Mabel didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t call for help.
She simply stepped forward with clear, steady eyes, meeting his gaze directly.
“Aren’t you…… aren’t you afraid of me?”
As Aselth stepped back, Mabel felt an odd sense of déjà vu.
‘Where have I heard that before?’
Mabel thought for a moment, then it came to her.
– Can you… can you see me……?
It was similar to something she’d once asked Sigmund.
That moment when she’d met his gaze directly and gotten an answer for the first time.
The moment she’d asked over and over, unable to believe they were actually having a conversation.
As that memory surfaced, Mabel broke into a smile without thinking and nodded.
“Your eyes met mine and I didn’t turn to stone. You had no intention of turning me to stone. So I’m not afraid.”
She was saying he was actually handsome without the blindfold, stepping forward to close the distance he’d created—when it happened.
“Gasp!”
Crash!
A sharp shattering sound came from the direction of the door.
A maidservant carrying a tray of dishes had been startled upon seeing Aselth without his blindfold and dropped it.
The sound made Aselth flinch violently, and in that instant, his ability activated.
“Ugh……!”
It was a mistake.
But Aselth hurriedly looked down at the floor instead of the maidservant, and his ability, reflected off the silver tray that had fallen, turned back toward him.
“Oh no, young master’s legs!”
As a result, Aselth’s lower body had turned to stone.
“Of all the…”
The petrification would wear off after some time passed, but that wasn’t the real problem.
“Ahhhhh!”
The maidservant, who had nearly turned to stone, shrieked and called people over.
She was one of those who feared Aselth’s ability.
“What’s happened?”
“What on earth has—!”
Following the sound of breaking dishes and the maidservant’s screams, people came rushing in from all sides.
And they all saw Aselth, his legs transformed to stone.
The warm and gentle expressions they usually wore hardened in an instant, flooding with terror.
“W-wait, just a moment! It’s all right! Because—”
Mabel tried to make excuses, but it was useless.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
“S-save us!”
The people shrieked at the sight of Aselth turned to stone and bolted from the room.
Seized by panic, they didn’t bother to understand what was actually happening and grew even more excited.
As they shoved and collided with one another, racing to be the first out, the furnishings in the Activity Room overturned.
Crash, bang!
Glass tabletops shattered and scattered across the floor, chairs toppled over.
“Ugh……!”
The noise was like a battlefield—so terrible that Mabel covered her ears and sank to the ground.
Meanwhile, Aselth’s heart had been pounding irregularly ever since he’d been confronted head-on with such deafening commotion and these people’s terror.
‘Calm down, calm yourself……’
No matter how much he tried to steel himself from within, it was no use.
Behind his tightly squeezed eyelids, the face of the maidservant stiffening at the sight of him and the faces of people distorting with fear were vivid and clear.
The screams of those running away, begging for their lives, and their retreating figures……
Scenes he’d never wanted to witness cut deep into his heart, surfacing again and again.
“Gasp, ugh……”
Aselth quickly clenched his hands over his eyes.
It was no mistake.
His eyes burned as if they were being consumed.
The Basilisk’s ability was running rampant!
“Ugh……”
Through the gaps between his fingers, he felt something warm and thick trickling down.
Tears?
No—there was a metallic, bitter smell to it.
“This is…… blood?”
“Young master……?!”
Mabel, who had been crouched on the floor, gasped sharply when she saw blood trailing down the back of Aselth’s hand.
‘He still has it in him?’
Aselth flinched, pressing his eyes shut even harder, and cried out.
“Don’t come near!”
“B-but you’re bleeding!”
“I said don’t come near!”
Aselth gritted his teeth and shouted.
With his legs turned to stone, he couldn’t leave this place.
Everything was falling apart.
‘All I wanted was to remove the mask that child was wearing.’
How had it come to this?
And most of all, experiencing his ability’s rampage for the first time terrified him.
What if I lose my eyes like this? What if I can never see again?
But in that moment, something unfamiliar washed over him—a strange sense of déjà vu.
As if he had once spiraled like this before, long ago.
‘Have I…… lost control before?’
The moment that question formed, the dam with its hairline fractures collapsed entirely, and forgotten memories of his rampage came flooding back.
‘My head…… my head is splitting apart……!’
Blood pooled so thick in his palms that his tears mixed with it.
Tap-tap-tap.
He heard something light treading carefully through shattered glass, drawing closer.
Those hurried footsteps were heading directly toward Aselth.
When the footsteps stopped just before him, Aselth caught an unfamiliar scent.
A faint, sweet baby-powder smell—something he hadn’t been able to smell before, lost as it was beneath the reek of his own blood pooling in his covered hands.
Then something warm and small brushed against the back of his hand.
“Calm yourself!”
It was Mabel’s hand.
“You—what are you doing here! Have you lost your mind? Why did you come to me!”
“But you’re bleeding—”
Aselth, seized by panic, shoved her away and cried out.
Thud!
Mabel tumbled backward.
“Ow!”
Then the smell of someone else’s blood—not his own—grew stronger.
At the same time, a different scene flickered behind Aselth’s eyelids, beyond the panicked faces he’d been seeing.
The Activity Room, chaos left in the wake of people scrambling for the exit.
The floor, a wreckage of broken glass.
‘Surely not……!’
Aselth wanted to check on Mabel, but he couldn’t bring himself to lower his hands.
Mabel would turn to stone.
If the one person who had understood him were to petrify and then come to fear him afterward…….
There would be no escaping despair then.
Yet because he had pushed her away, he couldn’t help but worry—she seemed to have fallen onto the broken glass.
‘What should I do?’
Without thinking, Aselth’s hands trembled, his lips pressed tightly together.
“You want to lower your hands? Then I—I’ll close my eyes!”
Hearing those words, Aselth felt his heart lurch, as if the ground beneath him had given way.
There was still no trace of tears in Mabel’s voice.
No trace of hostility.
‘Even after all this…… you’re not afraid of me?’
He had deliberately shown his eyes to frighten her, and in doing so, his ability had reflected back and turned his own leg to stone.
He had shoved you away and hurt you.
So why are you still treating me as if nothing happened?

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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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