I’m The Male Lead’s Biological Daughter, But I Want To Live With The Second Male Lead! - Chapter 37

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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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Episode 37
It was the same maidservant who’d been bringing Mabel the medicine.
“Miss, this is the medicine the Master has sent for your health.”
The maidservant’s tone hadn’t changed from when Mabel had been delirious with fever, hovering at death’s door.
Thanks to the commotion, Mabel had just realized that Caesar had been feeding her a Sleeping Drug all this time.
‘No wonder I’ve been so drowsy!’
The moment she heard the knock, Mabel, already in bed, trembled with indignation.
‘So he kept me asleep until his schedule freed up, and the second I recovered, we could finally spend time together? Is that what you’re telling me?’
Was he in his right mind?
Had he genuinely lost it?
For the first time, Mabel felt afraid of Caesar’s callousness.
‘I suppose that’s the only way someone could watch a child dying in this mansion without blinking once.’
While Mabel was recoiling in disgust at the man called Caesar, the maidservant approached.
“Miss? Are you sleeping?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Mabel lowered the blanket and shook her head.
“No… but I am feeling rather drowsy.”
“It must be from your outing. You climbed the hill, I heard.”
The maidservant, standing at the bedside, offered Mabel a cup containing medicine.
“The Master is worried about you. Please take this medicine and get some proper rest.”
“Yes…”
Mabel sat up slowly and carefully in bed.
The mug in her hands was warm.
Mabel brought the cup to her lips, then suddenly lowered her arm and looked at the maidservant.
“But this smells absolutely terrible.”
“It is medicine infused with the Master’s affection for you, Miss. If you bear with it and drink it, the Master will be very pleased.”
The maidservant spoke anxiously.
She seemed afraid Mabel might refuse to take it.
“But… don’t you have any sugar? Or candy?”
“Candy? I’m afraid we don’t have any set aside…”
Mabel barely stifled a laugh that threatened to burst forth.
Not a single sweet in a noble household with a child? That made no sense.
The more she dug, the clearer it became: Caesar saw her not as a daughter, but as a tool to be used.
Yet Mabel merely pouted, as if she’d heard nothing of the maidservant’s murmur.
“Then I won’t take it. It’s too bitter. I don’t like it.”
“What? But… but…”
“It’s all right! I’ll explain it to Father myself! And I won’t mention that you didn’t give me candy!”
Mabel giggled as if they’d formed a secret together, and held up her forefinger to her lips in a shush gesture.
The maidservant’s face drained of color in an instant.
“Oh, wait! Let me go to the kitchen and get some sugar! That’s sweet too, isn’t it?”
“Yes, well… I suppose.”
But sugar and candy aren’t the same thing at all.
Still, having achieved her goal of sending the maidservant away, Mabel answered halfheartedly.
The moment the maidservant was gone from the room, Mabel hurried toward a trunk in the corner.
Despite having been at Aselon’s Duchy Mansion for several days, the servants had never unpacked her belongings.
But that had turned out to be a blessing.
‘Found it!’
What she found in the trunk was a Hairpin that the soldiers had bought when they went out on patrol.
Like the cheap goods sold on the street, it had rough finishing and jagged, pointed edges.
For this reason, she rarely used it, but she hadn’t discarded it either—she’d kept it all this time.
Because she was grateful for the thought that they’d bought it for her.
After closing the trunk, Mabel gripped the crude Hairpin in her hand and slipped back under the blanket.
“Miss, I’ve brought the sugar.”
The returning maidservant didn’t notice that Mabel had rummaged through the trunk.
Mabel hid the Hairpin beneath her thigh.
The pointed end pricked her skin, sharp and stinging, but that was exactly what she wanted.
“Once you take the medicine, I’ll bring you water sweetened with sugar.”
“All right.”
Mabel drank the medicine, acutely aware of the Hairpin pricking her thigh.
“Ugh!”
It was so bitter she felt her hair standing on end.
The maidservant quickly pressed a cup of sugar water into Mabel’s trembling hands.
Sleeping drug or not, the taste was so bitter that Mabel shed tears as she gulped down the sugar water.
“Well done. Now rest.”
The maidservant rose from her seat with an air of quiet satisfaction, as if she’d accomplished something.
Even after draining the sugar water in one go, the bitter aftertaste lingered, and Mabel continued to tremble.
‘That went down properly.’
The maidservant left Mabel’s room with relief.
She never imagined that with each tremor, the sharp hairpin was pricking Mabel’s thigh.
“Cough—!”
The drug was so bitter that saliva flooded her mouth.
When she was in pain, her mind had been too clouded to notice, but drinking it with a clear head was torture.
What’s more, the drug tasted bitter enough that it must have been potent—drowsiness crept over her almost at once.
Mabel, nodding off while sitting, jolted awake at the sharp pain of the hairpin puncturing her thigh.
‘No, no, this won’t do!’
Mabel quickly found the hairpin and drove its sharpest point into her palm with all her strength.
Prick! Sharp pain!
The needle-fine tip pierced the tender flesh of her palm, and drowsiness shattered in an instant.
‘That’s it!’
Blood beaded up from the sizeable wound, but she paid it no mind.
Mabel had never known fear at the sight of wounds or blood.
During her time in this mansion, such things had been routine.
She jumped from the bed, reassured by the throbbing pain sharp enough to banish all sleep.
Without hesitation, she found a scrap of cloth and wrapped it tightly around the wound to stop the bleeding.
No one had taught her this method—she’d learned it on her own.
‘Good. I’ve beaten the sleeping drug. Now all that’s left is…….’
Mabel crept forward on her toes and pressed her ear to the door.
She heard not a single footstep, not even the rustling of an ant.
Everyone assumed Mabel had taken the sleeping drug and was sleeping soundly, so they left her alone.
‘All the better for me.’
Mabel eased the door open and peered around cautiously.
True enough, no one was there.
Seizing the moment, Mabel made to head for the Underground Prison.
‘But Aselt said he’d blocked all the secret passages…….’
Yet had he truly blocked them all?
Over the past few years, Mabel had prodded through every passage she could find just to survive—whereas Caesar had only learned of their existence through documents.
Between the two of them, who really knew the secret passages better?
Moreover, Mabel’s room was on the highest floor: the 4th Floor.
They must have assigned it to her deliberately.
‘To get outside, I’d have to go down the stairs, and I’d run into someone for certain.’
If Caesar had indeed been thinking along those lines when assigning Mabel a room on the 4th Floor, he’d already lost.
The cramped corner where Mabel had lived before was also on the 4th Floor.
More precisely, it was an attic-like space half a flight higher up.
‘He doesn’t even care where I lived, so he just gave me a 4th Floor room.’
The bitter taste of the drug still lingered on her tongue, it seemed.
Mabel ignored the acrid feeling in her mouth and peered behind the stairs leading up to the attic.
Dusty junk greeted her just as it had before.
‘Of course—I knew he wouldn’t know about this!’
Mabel squeezed quickly through the clutter.
As she slid the wooden floorboard—which appeared perfectly fitted—out of the way, a pitch-black hole yawned open.
This passage connected to the mansion’s outer wall and allowed descent in one straight drop to the lower levels.
Mabel descended the passage as if it were a slide.
The sensation of her body plummeting, combined with complete darkness, was terrifying, but she gritted her teeth and stifled her scream.
That endless fall lasted only a moment.
Thud!
Mabel landed atop a mountainous heap of straw.
“Cough, cough! Ugh.”
The smell of rotten straw made her gag.
Holding her breath, Mabel frantically clawed through the straw and emerged.
“……Mabel?”
Kellik, bound tightly with nets and rope, opened his eyes wide in astonishment.
Shreds of fabric fluttered near her face—whether from his canines tearing at the gag or some other violence, she couldn’t say.
“How… how on earth…?”
Kellik lay sprawled on the floor in an ungainly heap, his eyes darting between Mabel and the pile of straw with an expression of pure disbelief.
He’d already found it suspicious that rotten straw had accumulated in that corner of the wall—a detail that nagged at him.
But for Mabel to simply vanish from the pile and reappear like that?
Kellik’s gaze continued to shuttle between the straw and Mabel, until understanding bloomed across his face and he called out brightly.
“You really were an angel all along!”

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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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