Mad Rosetta - Chapter 2

—————

This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

—————

Rosetta Gone Mad

Episode 2

Rosetta Coco Benitra (2)

* * *

“I was wrong, Father.”

Like the Knight who had neglected his duties as a guard, Father’s expression twisted into something peculiar—the face of one confronting the inexplicable.

As I walked to the Study, I had deliberated whether I should first kneel and then offer my apologies.

But I concluded that this predicament was not entirely my fault, and resolved instead to offer only an apology.

‘That cursed Faceless Ghost. I’ll grant it this much—it has talent.’

In the Marquis’ Backyard, I thought I had met death without escape.

My body felt weightless, and for a moment, I even experienced a strange peace.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself on the bed in my old room from years ago—a place no better than a heap of refuse.

Through the newspapers scattered across the floor, I learned that I was now sixteen years old.

‘I’ve returned three years into the past….’

I felt a pang of regret that if time were to be rewound, I wished it had been sent back to before Father’s remarriage.

The moment I realized I had returned to the past, I immediately rushed to Odette’s room, intending to kill her while she slept soundly. But in the end, I restrained myself.

If I did so, my heart might feel relieved, but I would fail to drag that accursed Odette and Cessia’s honor through the mud, and the newspapers would inevitably be plastered with headlines like ⟪The Tragic End of the Depraved Princess Who Murdered Her Own Younger Sister! The Ruin of the Benitra Noblewoman…⟫

For this reason, I made my first move to have the confinement order lifted.

To be precise, it was to first restore my own honor, which had descended into the Arcanus Underground Prison.

“…When I asked to be locked away, where were you then? Now you come here so shamelessly.”

Father wiped his eyes, which had begun to ache, and let out a sound like a man drowning in sorrow.

It is awkward for me to say it myself, but Father was renowned throughout high society as a doting father.

When I was born, Duke Benatra cherished me so dearly that he embroidered the family crest with roses—inspired by the color of my hair.

That was not enough. The tale of how he generously purchased the rights to rose cultivation and gifted them to his daughter is known by nearly everyone.

I was merely eighteen months old when those rights were transferred to me.

‘He remarried in the first place because of me, after all.’

Father’s swift remarriage stemmed largely from my suffering in the absence of my mother.

He even kept me informed throughout the process of finding a new mistress for the household. This was far removed from the common tale of a father bewitched by a stepmother who neglects his own child.

– “I would rather you confine me, Father!”

I had been raised with nothing but love, and that was how I had to grow.

When such a daughter, unable to master her own nature, wept and pleaded to be placed under house arrest, what Father must have felt was beyond my comprehension.

“Would you care for some tea?”

“…What sort of tea, Father?”

“Let me see… it appears to be Berkis. Is there anything else you would prefer?”

“No. Any tea you offer me is fine.”

In the quiet stillness, only the occasional clink of teacups broke the silence.

From Father’s perspective, it must have felt awkward to converse with a daughter he had not seen in a year and a half since she left for the Montague Marquessate.

The long stretch of time I had missed—from when I entered the House of Montague until Father’s funeral—weighed heavily upon me, and I clenched my fists in secret.

“Lianna and Bonita have worried about you greatly.”

“That cannot be.”

“Hm?”

“No, I meant to say that of course that would be the case. Aha ha.”

There was no chance those wretched mother and daughter had been concerned about me.

I grasped my throbbing head and forced myself to laugh.

Lianna and Bonita Odette.

They had once borne the name of Epsilon Baron’s Castle, but now they carried the Benitra name behind them.

Moreover, as a commemoration of becoming one household, Odette had even received the beautiful name “Bonita” from Father, so I had believed we had truly become a real family.

My past self, who had welcomed her and called her by such an endearment as “Boni,” now seemed utterly ridiculous and pitiful.

Hearing the names of those dreadful former Epsilon mother and daughter, the vivid scene of Odette and Cessia together flashed before my eyes once more.

– “Ha ha! Even Duke Benatra, whom they say has no weaknesses, was nothing special to you, Bonita.”

– “Oh, come now. What have I done? It was all thanks to my mother’s efforts.”

– “Won’t it be suspected that the Duke died so suddenly?”

– “Don’t worry, Cessia. You said you used an extreme poison that leaves no trace. All that remains for us is to live gloriously, grasping the wealth of the Duke’s House.”

– “Hm…. It’s finally time to stop seeing that woman’s filthy appearance.”

Cessia, speaking ill of me while pressing his lips to Odette, wore an expression of utter rapture.

It was something I had never witnessed before.

They intertwined their bodies as though only two existed in the world, conversed, and intertwined again.

What I learned from spying on that room was that my stepmother Lianna had poisoned my father.

And that she intended to disguise my death as suicide, then fabricate a false will.

One that asked the House of Montague to take in Odette in my stead, as I departed early to follow Father….

Truly, it was an absurd matter.

– “Lovely Bonita. If I displease you, I shall be in grave trouble indeed.”

Cessia’s words rang true.

Both Father and I had displeased her, and we were indeed in grave trouble.

Unaware that in three years he would be poisoned by his remarried wife, Father spoke of how attentively they had cared for me.

I longed to overturn the table then and there, but I restrained myself by gripping my thighs so fiercely my nails drew blood.

“I wish to leave my room now.”

“Have you not already left of your own accord?”

“I do not wish to leave of my own accord. Please lift my confinement.”

“Ha! Remarkable!”

He remarked on my audacity, suggesting I believed stubbornness alone could solve everything.

Still acting like a child, Father scolded me throughout the entire process of drafting the confinement release, declaring I was far too immature for marriage.

I had no intention of marrying, yet he spoke of arranging it. I grumbled as I assisted him with the documents.

‘Father. We have been betrayed and murdered by a mother and daughter pair of con artists who infiltrated our household. Our wealth and everything else has been stolen.’

So I, Rosetta Coco, intend to send Father’s current wife and younger daughter to prison first.

Silently offering my fervent prayers, I confidently returned to my room, the confinement release document in hand, walking with a light step.

Father’s command to attend breakfast this very morning did not please me, but such is the law—when one receives something, one must give something in return.

I acquiesced gracefully and withdrew.

It was a morning that began earlier than most.

* * *

Click.

The moment the door shut behind me, I slid down to the floor and caught my breath.

That Knight I’d encountered earlier had regarded me with such suspicion as I walked toward him without a single attendant in sight.

When I brandished the disciplinary revocation document I was holding, the shock that flashed across his eyes was almost amusing.

After offering him some pleasant words of gratitude to salvage what dignity I could, I hurried back to my room.

That was the extent of what I could manage.

“Hah… damn it… I need to find an antidote first.”

My breath came in ragged gasps, though I hadn’t even been running.

How long had it been since I’d held a normal conversation with anyone?

My head still throbbed, and my skin crawled with every movement.

Suppressing the maddening urge to claw at my own flesh, I swept all the flowers adorning the bedside and windowsill into the Fireplace and set them ablaze.

How much restraint had it taken not to hurl a teacup at Father?

I’d had to drink tea constantly just to force down the vicious words clawing up my throat toward the Epsilon Mother and Daughter who kept pushing their way in.

If only I had realized sooner that this vicious hypersensitivity was deliberately inflicted upon me.

But at the time, I was too consumed with trying to rein in my own wild temperament to even glance around me.

– “How foolish. Sister wore the flowers I gave her constantly.”

The name of the flower, its leaf tips stained white as if touched by frost, was Panilnia.

The only bloom different from the roses that filled this household, and the poisonous plant Odette had filled my room with.

The scent of Panilnia stimulated the senses, and the longer one breathed it in, the more it drove the nerves to an unbearable pitch.

The problem was that Panilnia had scarcely been studied, and the species itself was not a common bloom, so no one knew the truth.

“Unless I’ve gone mad, how dare they….”

The memory of that searing pain, as though my throat were burning away, drew a curse from my lips unbidden.

Odette—for one day, two days, a month, a year….

Even when I was fourteen, even when I refused to leave my room, even after I entered the House of Montague!

She smiled and handed me that flower until the very day I died.

– “How could you do this? How could you!”

The day I discovered Cessia and Odette’s atrocities, I, consumed by righteous fury, tore that room apart.

I screamed, hurled vases, stamped my feet, and raged like a madwoman.

How could they do this to me, to Father?

And then, of all things.

– “Sister, you’re hastening your own demise.”

Cessia locked the door behind him, and Odette forced the concentrated essence of Panilnia Flower down my throat.

Those vile creatures. The realization that they had always carried a lethal dose of poison, ready to kill me at any moment, sent chills down my spine.

– “Give Father my regards, Sister.”

They left the room locked, believing I would waste away alone within those walls and perish, writhing in agony.

The memory of them departing so contentedly made my teeth clench.

Perhaps my only stroke of fortune was that those hailed as paragons of nobility never imagined a Princess would climb through a window.

That day, I fled desperately from the Guest Room on the second floor of the Manor, my heart pounding wildly, and encountered a Faceless Ghost in the Marquis’ Backyard.

And then I returned to the past.

“I’m sixteen now, so… I’ve been poisoned for at least two years….”

Crackle, crackle. I watched the Panilnia Flowers burn so beautifully.

As I pondered how to resolve this mounting anxiety, I decided that ventilation should come first, given the smoke billowing ever thicker into the air.

I must have added too much firewood at once—I coughed violently, my eyes stinging from the acrid haze.

I had meant to summon a Maid, but then I remembered that I had driven away so many of my attendants that only Servants remained. So I opened the window myself.

“So much to do, so little time. I need to hire new Maids, find a way to break the poison’s hold, dissolve my engagement with that wretch Cessia, and….”

【And exact my revenge.】

“Ah!”

Startled by the voice that suddenly erupted, I stumbled backward and struck the back of my head against the window frame.

Cradling my throbbing skull, I glared at the source of that voice.

The Faceless Ghost still hovered before my eyes.

—————

This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

—————