Mad Rosetta - Chapter 2
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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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Mad Rosetta
Episode 2
Rosetta Coco Benitra (2)
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“I was wrong, Father.”
Just like the knight who had been negligent in his guard duty, Father’s expression was strangely contorted as if he had encountered something bizarre.
Even while walking to the study, I had pondered whether I should kneel first and then apologize.
However, I reached the conclusion that this mess wasn’t entirely my fault, so I decided to just apologize.
‘That damn ghost. I’ll acknowledge his skill.’
I thought I was going to die helplessly in the Duke’s backyard.
My body felt like it was floating, and for a moment I even felt peaceful.
When I opened my eyes again, I was on the bed in my room from a few years ago, which was no different from a garbage dump.
Through the newspapers scattered on the floor, I learned that I was currently sixteen years old.
‘To think I came back three years…’
If time was going to be turned back anyway, I wished it had been sent back to before Father remarried.
When I realized I had returned to the past, I immediately planned to storm into Odette’s room where she would be sleeping soundly and kill her, but I ultimately held back.
If I did that, while it might feel satisfying, I wouldn’t be able to drag that damn Odette and Cessia’s honor through the mud, and it was obvious that newspapers would feature headlines like “Deranged Young Lady Finally Murders Her Sister! The Tragic End of Duke Benatra’s Daughter…”
For this reason, I made my first step to revoke the house arrest order.
To be precise, it was to salvage my honor that had fallen all the way down to the Arcanus underground prison.
“When did you ask to be confined, and now you come looking for me so rudely.”
Father rubbed his temples as if they ached and spoke in a weary voice.
Though it’s awkward for me to say this myself, Father was famous in high society as a daughter fool.
Duke Benatra, who cherished his newborn daughter, had the household embroidered with roses because they resembled the color of her hair.
Not only that, but the story of how he generously bought the ownership rights to rose cultivation and gifted them to his daughter was known by everyone.
I was a mere 18 months old when I received those ownership rights.
‘He remarried because of me in the first place…’
The reason Father remarried so quickly was largely because I had been struggling due to Mother’s absence.
He also carefully informed me about the process of finding a new mistress of the house… It was different from the typical drama where a father bewitched by a stepmother neglects his own child.
– “Please just confine me instead, Father!”
He raised me with nothing but love, and that’s how I had to grow up.
When such a daughter, unable to control her temper, tearfully begged for house arrest herself, Father’s feelings were… beyond what I could fathom.
“Would you like some tea?”
“…What kind of tea is it?”
“Let’s see, it’s Berkis. Do you have anything particular you’d prefer?”
“No. I like any tea that Father gives me.”
In the quiet silence, only the occasional sound of touching teacups could be heard.
From Father’s perspective, it must have been awkward to know what to talk about with a daughter who had come out of her room for the first time in a year and a half.
I secretly clenched my fists, feeling the weight of the long time we hadn’t been able to face each other, from when I entered the Montague Marquis Estate until Father’s funeral.
“Lianna and Bonita were also very worried about you.”
“As if they would be.”
“Hm?”
“No. I was going to say, of course they would be. Ahaha.”
As if those damn mother and daughter would worry about me.
I forced a smile while clutching my throbbing head.
Lianna and Bonita Odette.
They had carried the name of Baron Epsilon, but now they had taken on the Benatra name.
Moreover, Odette even received the pretty name ‘Bonita’ from Father to commemorate becoming family, so I thought we had truly become a real family.
My past self, who had called her by the nickname ‘Bonnie’ to welcome her, felt truly ridiculous and pathetic.
Hearing the names of those terrible former Epsilon mother and daughter, I vividly recalled the scene of Odette and Cessia’s intercourse once again.
– “Haha! Even the impenetrable Duke Benatra was nothing special to you, Bonita.”
– “Oh my. What have I done? It’s thanks to my mother’s good work.”
– “We won’t be suspected even though the Duke died suddenly, will we?”
– “Don’t worry, Lord Cessia. She said she used a deadly poison that leaves no trace. All we have left to do is live gloriously while grasping the ducal wealth.”
– “Phew… It’s finally time to stop seeing that woman’s filthy appearance.”
Cessia, who was kissing Odette while badmouthing me, had an utterly ecstatic expression.
It was something I had never seen before.
They intertwined their bodies, conversed, and intertwined again as if only the two of them existed in the world.
What I learned while secretly watching that room was that my stepmother Lianna had poisoned my father.
And the information that they would disguise my death as suicide and then create a fake suicide note.
Saying that I would follow Father, and asking them to take care of Odette at the Montague Marquis Estate in my place since I was leaving early…
Truly absurd content.
– “Lovely Bonita. It would be real trouble if you came to dislike me.”
Cessia’s words were right.
Both Father and I had gotten into real trouble by displeasing her.
Unaware that he would be poisoned by his remarried wife in three years, Father told me stories about how much they had taken care of me.
I wanted to overturn the table right then and there, but I endured it by clenching my fists until my nails dug into my thighs.
“I want to come out of my room now.”
“Didn’t you already come out on your own?”
“I don’t want to come out on my own, so please lift the house arrest order.”
“Ha! Really!”
How could I be so bold, did I think everything could be solved by just being stubborn…
Father scolded me the entire time he was writing the house arrest revocation documents, saying I was still acting like a child and was far from ready for marriage.
I grumbled about why he was thinking of marrying me off when I had no intention of marrying yet, while helping Father with his paperwork.
‘Father. We were backstabbed and killed by con artist mother and daughter who rolled in, and they stole all our property and everything.’
So this Rosetta Coco is going to send Father’s current wife and second daughter to prison first.
Silently asking for enthusiastic support, I confidently returned to my room, fluttering with the house arrest revocation documents in hand.
Father’s order to attend breakfast starting this morning wasn’t particularly pleasing, but originally when you receive one thing, you must give another.
I obediently agreed and withdrew.
It was a day that started earlier than most people’s mornings.
* * *
Click.
As soon as I confirmed the door was closed, I slid down to the floor and caught my breath.
The knight I had encountered earlier had looked at me so suspiciously as I walked from far away without a single attendant.
When I showed him the house arrest revocation documents I was holding, his surprised eyes were quite amusing.
After telling him some kind words about how he always worked hard, partly to recover my fallen dignity, I had hurriedly returned to my room.
That was exactly my limit.
“Huff. Damn… I need to find an antidote, an antidote first.”
I hadn’t even been running, but I was breathless.
How long had it been since I had a proper conversation with someone else…
My head was still throbbing and my skin got goosebumps just from moving.
Suppressing the urge to peel off my skin, I swept up all the flowers decorating the bedside and windowsill and threw them into the fireplace to burn them.
How much effort had I put into not throwing the teacup in front of Father.
I had to keep drinking tea just to shove down the curses rising toward the Epsilon mother and daughter.
It would have been perfect if I had realized earlier that this terrible hypersensitivity that developed at some point was created by someone’s intention.
But at the time, I was too busy trying to control my unruly temper to even think about looking around.
– “Stupidly enough. Sister kept wearing the flowers I gave her all the time.”
The name of the flower whose leaf tips were tinted as if covered with white frost was Panilinia.
It was the only different flower in this household full of roses, and the poisonous plant that Odette had filled my room with.
The scent of Panilinia stimulated human senses, making nerves extremely sensitive the longer one smelled it.
The problem was that research on Panilinia flowers had rarely been conducted, and the variety itself wasn’t a commonly blooming plant, so no one knew the truth.
“Unless they’ve gone mad, how dare they….”
Recalling the moment of agony when my throat felt like it was burning up, curses naturally spilled out.
Odette did it for one day, two days, one month, one year….
When I was fourteen, when I wouldn’t come out of my room, even when I moved to Montague Street!
She handed me those flowers with a smile until the day I died.
– “How could you do this, how could you!”
So on the day I discovered Cessia and Odette’s atrocities, I was outraged and turned that room upside down.
I screamed, threw vases, and stomped my feet in a frenzy.
How could they do this to me, to Father.
And then, unbelievably.
– “Sister is hastening her own death.”
Cessia locked the doorway, and Odette shoved the pure extract of Panilinia flowers down my throat.
Those vicious things. It was chilling that they had been carrying around a lethal dose of poison with the intent to kill me at any time.
– “Give Father my regards, Sister.”
They must have thought I would die alone, writhing in that room as I withered away, because they locked the doorway and left.
My teeth ground together as I recalled how they had left the room so intimately together.
The one fortunate thing I felt was that perhaps because they were called paragons among nobles, they couldn’t imagine that a young lady would exist who would climb through windows.
That day I frantically escaped from the guest room on the second floor of the manor, clutching my burning chest, and encountered a faceless ghost in the Marquis’ backyard.
And I returned to the past.
“Since I’m sixteen now, hmm. It’s been at least 2 years since I was poisoned….”
Crackle crackle. I looked at the Panilinia flowers burning so well.
As I pondered how to solve this hypersensitivity, I decided to ventilate first due to the rising smoke.
Perhaps because I had put too much firewood in at once, I was coughing and my eyes were stinging.
Naturally I tried to call a maid, but realizing that I had driven away so many assigned maids that only servants remained, I opened the window with my own hands.
“I’m busy, so busy. I need to hire new maids, find a way to detoxify, break off the engagement with that bastard Cessia, and also….”
【You need to get my revenge too.】
“Ah!”
Startled by the voice that suddenly appeared, I stepped backward and hit the back of my head on the window frame.
Clutching my throbbing head, I glared at the owner of the voice.
The faceless ghost was still there before my eyes.
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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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