Instead of My Beloved Sister, I Married a Monster - Chapter 24

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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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Chapter 24

“Where did you learn the bad habit of peeping into other people’s bedrooms? Go back to your room immediately!”

“Oh, I was just…”

Evnia hesitantly stepped back, trying to excuse her actions.

She had only come to show them something, and wanted to say she was sorry for interrupting their conversation.

Just then, her mother, who had followed her husband into the corridor, suddenly grabbed Evnia’s shoulders.

With rough hands, she touched and examined the clothes Evnia was wearing here and there, then asked in a voice filled with horror.

“Evnia, you… Don’t tell me you altered Emilia’s clothes?”

“Oh, yes. They were a bit big for me, so I thought they would fit better this way…”

Evnia answered with a voice mixed with joy and fear.

She instinctively sensed that something was going wrong, but a trace of expectation remaining in her heart refused to accept reality.

The reason Evnia had come to find her parents who returned home late at night was precisely to show them these clothes.

In Emilia’s wardrobe, clothes that had lost their owner were piled up like mountains, and the Countess and Count of Hessen had passed all of them down to their second daughter even before their first daughter’s funeral was over.

Naturally, Emilia’s dresses didn’t fit Evnia well.

Her arms and legs were slightly longer, and the body was baggy.

When she kept soiling the long sleeves, eventually one of the maids from the laundry room came to Evnia’s room.

She selected several clothes that Evnia wore often and altered them to fit her body.

It was like magic. With just a few stitches, clothes that had been far too loose shrank to fit her body.

Evnia pestered and begged that kind maid to teach her sewing.

Fortunately, Evnia had dexterous hands and before long succeeded in altering one of her sister’s nightgowns by herself.

Evnia was filled with anticipation when the maid praised her skills.

If she told her parents that she was taking good care of her sister’s belongings, if she told them she had become so good at sewing, wouldn’t they be happy for the first time in a long while?

Evnia looked up at her mother with eyes hoping for praise.

At that moment, her mother struck Evnia’s cheek harshly.

“Ah…!”

Evnia collapsed to the floor.

The spot where her mother’s hand had touched hurt as if burned.

Perhaps because her ear had also been struck by that large hand, a dull ringing continued to echo in her head.

Evnia fumbled on the floor, trying somehow to get up, but repeatedly lost her balance and slipped again.

The Countess of Hessen approached Evnia and forcibly stripped off her clothes while shouting.

“Are you happy that your sister is gone? How else could you do such a thing? If we gave you your sister’s things, you should have thought to treasure and use them carefully, not cut and sew them as you pleased!”

“No, uh… No, no…”

“What are we going to do with all this? This… we can’t even return it to how it was…!”

Every time the Countess of Hessen pulled at the collar with rough hands, her skin was painfully scraped.

Finally succeeding in separating Evnia from Emilia’s clothes, she held them preciously in her arms.

Evnia trembled in the cold air, watching this scene in a daze.

Evnia couldn’t even cry. Her mother was sobbing more sorrowfully than anyone while clutching a fragment of the traces left by her first daughter.

“Who are you to carelessly alter my daughter’s clothes, who are you!”

“I was wrong, Mother. I was wrong…”

“Don’t even call me Mother! How can I be your mother when you do such things to your sister! Go ahead and tear my clothes instead. Cut me with scissors or slash me with a knife, do whatever you want!”

“Honey, calm down. Someone might hear at this rate!”

“Aren’t you angry! Honey, look at this. This is the nightgown Emilia loved. Even when we bought her other things, she kept asking to wear only this because it was comfortable, you remember too! But now she can never wear it again, never, aah…”

The Countess of Hessen buried her face in her husband’s chest as he tried to stop her, screaming as if in agony.

“I really can’t stand this. It would be better if I just died…! Mother… What do I do… What do I do, honey…!”

The Count of Hessen, who had been stroking his wife’s back, finally turned his stern face toward Evnia.

He announced to Evnia in a frightening voice.

“Evnia, come inside. You really need to be severely punished today.”

Evnia was dragged into the bedroom by her father’s grip on her arm.

He stood Evnia in the middle of the room and brought a long poker that had been placed near the fireplace.

In a way, it was a natural choice.

The Count of Hessen had never been someone who resorted to violence no matter how great a mistake his daughter made.

There had never even been a disciplinary rod in their house.

“As a sign of reflection, every time you’re struck, shout out what you did wrong.”

“Father, I was wrong. I won’t do it again. Mother, please stop Father, sob, please…”

At her father’s command, Evnia looked desperately for her mother.

The Countess of Hessen was only watching the scene with eyes even colder than her husband’s.

“Repeat after me. ‘I will never carelessly touch my sister’s things again.'”

The Countess of Hessen commanded in a stern voice.

The eyes that had been soaked with longing for her first daughter somehow took on a cold light like a snake’s when they turned toward Evnia.

As Evnia stared blankly up at her mother in disbelief at this reality.

A stinging pain struck her shin.

“Agh!”

“Repeat it now! I won’t send you back to your room until you properly reflect!”

Pushed by her father’s urging, Evnia blurted out the words he demanded.

“I will never carelessly touch my sister’s things, ugh, again.”

It was strange.

The tears that hadn’t come even when her shin was struck oddly burst forth while saying those words.

Evnia barely suppressed her rising sobs and repeated the words they made her say.

I will never carelessly touch my sister’s things again.

But Dad, then why did you give those clothes to me?

I will never carelessly touch my sister’s things again.

Why does Mom only call my sister her daughter? I’m my sister’s younger sister, so I should be Mom’s daughter too.

I will never carelessly touch my sister’s things again.

Sister, why did you die so early? Everyone became strange after you disappeared. The house without you is like a different world. It’s very scary here. I’m so scared of home now…

So I will never touch my sister’s things again, never…

Finally, the Count of Hessen threw down the poker he had been wielding at Evnia.

Since it wasn’t originally made for hitting people, the handle for other purposes seemed to have hurt the punisher as well.

He wheezed with rough breathing and stretched out his arm to point at the door.

“If you’ve reflected enough, go back to your room now.”

Evnia crawled out of their room, dragging her painful legs.

The moment she carefully closed the door and turned her head, she met eyes with a maid who had come after hearing the commotion.

“…”

The maid was startled as if she had seen a ghost and left the spot.

Evnia knew that maid’s name. She was a woman who had been very kind to her until yesterday.

Evnia dragged her heavy legs and barely made it back to her room.

But when she actually arrived at the door, she felt like she had come to the wrong place.

This wasn’t her bedroom. This was Emilia’s room.

Emilia’s room that had been given to her after Emilia died, but which someone like her shouldn’t carelessly ruin.

She wanted to return to where she used to live even now, but her abused shins wouldn’t obey.

Evnia sat down in the corridor and pulled her aching legs up to her chest.

The places where she had been beaten still burned, but Evnia’s body was trembling as if ice water had been poured over her.

Evnia looked up at the towering door and prayed that all of this had happened in a dream.

If she got up and went inside like this, it seemed like her sister would poke her head out from between the bed curtains and welcome her.

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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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