Mad Rosetta - Chapter 62

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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 62

Golden Coffin (3)

With two glasses neatly placed on the private room table, I took out the Panilnia concentrate from my bosom.

Even by rough estimation, the amount was more than what I had given to Cessia and Odette.

‘Considering that even I, who had been consuming Panilnia poison for so long, died without building immunity…’

Someone who ingested this much from the start might reach death even faster.

‘…If you really die, will I feel a bit relieved?’

No, I might even sleep soundly beyond relief.

Cessia, you despised me.

While finding me detestable, you forced marriage to target my household and played around with Odette for years.

Sometimes you laid hands on me, and on days you didn’t, you turned away when the Marchioness beat me.

Yet thinking how pathetic I must have looked, trembling in fear of earning your hatred, and lashing out when I couldn’t bear it anymore, makes me laugh bitterly even in this situation.

You seemed to make me less than human…

This filthy feeling won’t go away.

With wretched feelings, I poured the concentrate into Cessia’s glass, and the red wine quickly turned an ambiguously murky color.

“…I should add more alcohol, right?”

Turning my head to ask Sing who was sitting on the sofa, our eyes met briefly.

His expression seemed both bored like someone with no thoughts, or perhaps a face relaxed from thinking too deeply.

【Not the wine you brought. Pour from your glass into his.】

“Huh… Why?”

【Your glass will be empty before Fordicus comes. If you suggest pouring fresh drinks, he’ll down the alcohol in one go.】

“…”

【Why?】

“Nothing, just. I wondered if this was also you teaching me how you were tricked.”

Speaking calmly, I transferred my wine into Cessia’s glass.

Then he made a deflated laughing sound.

【I absolutely hate alcohol…】

I was glancing at him, wondering if there was a particular reason he disliked it so much.

The private room door opened, and Cessia entered.

Now that the moment had arrived, I felt tense enough that my fingertips felt numb.

“…I was thirsty so I drank a glass first.”

“Ah, really…?”

Cessia, who had closed the door, slowly approached me.

Perhaps finding this situation simply awkward, he stiffened his expression with considerable embarrassment.

I personally handed Cessia the glass and said.

“When you finish that, let’s pour fresh drinks. I brought a separate bottle.”

“Haha, I never thought you’d be one to enjoy drinking.”

“I didn’t know either. This is my first time drinking with you.”

Though I had lived quite close to alcohol since marriage, it wasn’t worth mentioning, so I just stayed quiet.

“Strange.”

“…What is?”

“It seems like you’re only saying nice things today.”

“…”

“The answer I’ve been waiting for… can I think I’ll be able to hear it?”

Grinning, Cessia smiled with his eyes as if truly delighted.

His lips touching the glass seemed to loom large in my vision.

Thump thump thump thump thump.

Even though I wasn’t the one drinking. The hand that had gripped my chin, the arms that had roughly bound my body overlapped with the current Cessia.

It was the moment I felt like I might suffocate from tension.

“…Ugh! Cough…!”

Cessia, who had downed all the wine at once, set the glass on the table and simultaneously retched.

His helplessly trembling pupils were exposed without filter.

“What, cough…”

“…Your throat feels like it’s burning, right?”

“Cough, gag…”

“Your stomach feels like it’s being hammered…”

I felt the same way.

Without bending down to help, just speaking with my voice alone, Cessia, who had collapsed in pain, raised his head to meet my eyes.

Already blood vessels had burst, making his eyes bloodshot.

Saliva and blood clots dripped from the corners of his mouth.

“…Shit!”

As if realizing this was something I had orchestrated, I saw Cessia quickly get up and head for the door.

I instinctively grabbed the back of his uniform desperately and pulled him back.

‘Damn it, shit…!’

Was it superhuman strength brought on by the will to survive?

I held tightly to his trouser leg and wouldn’t let go.

Though I was about to be helplessly dragged along, instead Cessia couldn’t overcome his own strength and rolled on the floor.

The sound of hitting something. The sound of objects falling. The sound of agony being expelled…

Amidst all that, Cessia struggled desperately.

“Cough, cough… Gag.”

When Cessia’s movements finally stopped completely.

I collapsed on top of him as all strength left my body.

“Gasp, huff…”

My breathing wouldn’t come as I willed it.

To the extent it could be called a sense of loss, I felt as if something had been completely torn from my chest.

So I too had died this wretchedly.

Me, who had struggled so desperately to live, you left alone in that room like handling a beast.

With my head resting on Cessia’s motionless back, I struggled to emerge from emotions I couldn’t tell were fear or ecstasy.

– “You’re all I have, Rosetta.”

I would never again hear Cessia’s voice declaring love built on lies.

Hoping he would repent his past in the afterlife, I drew the silver dagger tied to my calf to complete the finale.

“…Whew.”

Then I laid Cessia’s prone body flat on the floor and straddled his thighs.

The blade of the metal I held high with both hands was white and clean, as if it had never been used once.

“I loved you, Cessia…”

Enough to kill you in the end, this much.

Closing my eyes tightly, I struck the sharp dagger down hard toward Cessia’s heart.

Clack, and…

It was then that a man’s bloodshot hand caught both my hands.

“Ah, aha. Ahahaha…!”

“…”

“…Ah. Finally.”

Ghostly bright golden eyes fixed on me.

Laughter filled with joy to a frivolous degree sounded somehow familiar, making my body stiffen.

“…Hello, darling.”

Overwhelming terror.

Whether it was because the man I loved, the man I resented terribly, had this appearance.

Or simply fear of a ghost that had stolen the form of someone I had killed.

I couldn’t distinguish anything.

“It’s dangerous, so put the knife away.”

“….”

The hand he held trembled as if I had been thrown out into the middle of winter.

It was the moment when the dagger I had gripped tightly, as if no one could take it away, slipped out of my hand with ridiculous ease.

I kicked back my chair and bolted out of the room.

I had to escape.

To somewhere ‘he’ wasn’t.

“Hah, haah…!”

Though the poison from Panilnia should have long been neutralized, my head was spinning and I felt like vomiting.

A noble, and in the Imperial Palace corridor no less, shouldn’t be running around like this….

But I had no luxury to care about appearances, so I ran in terror-stricken fear.

The moment I heard his voice again, this situation became real.

No, to be precise, I understood it with my head.

That Sing had taken over Cessia’s body.

“Ah…!”

By the time I realized the corridor was swaying, I had already collapsed on the corridor floor with throbbing pain.

Whether I had slipped by stepping on my dress hem, my right shoe had come off and lay forlornly rolling in the corridor behind me.

My pelvis that had hit the floor when I fell, my twisted ankle—everything hurt terribly.

“…Sing?”

But none of that hurt as much as the fact that the face of the man I prided myself on knowing better than anyone was hanging on the Imperial Palace wall.

– Calastian Theo Arcanis –

218.2~218.8

The majestically stretched corridor was decorated with portraits of successive Arcanis rulers.

Contained within frames the size of a grown man, each emperor gazed down at those walking the corridor, flaunting the dignity of their respective eras.

“…Calastian, Theo…you say.”

The one I thought I knew better than anyone….

But whom I could no longer regard as such—his pale teal eyes were also brazenly staring down at me.

“Ah. Haha. Hahaha….”

Perhaps I had gone mad from this situation, because laughter came spilling out.

Calastian Theo. How could I not know.

The tragic emperor who ascended to the throne at the early age of sixteen, only to be murdered by unknown forces after just six months of rule.

When he died, I was nine years old and preparing for my engagement ceremony with Cessia, so I remembered it nearly being canceled due to the mourning period.

The name Sing, his face, even his obsession with killing Cessia—I thought I knew it all clearly….

“You really… didn’t allow me even a handful of truth.”

I had to painfully realize that in reality, I knew nothing about him at all.

The sound of footsteps that came simultaneously with my bewildered murmuring carried an extremely desolate aura.

Even as I slowly turned my head toward him as he gradually approached, my heart seemed to sink with another thud.

The series of actions as he picked up my fallen shoe was arrogant beyond measure.

It looked so similar to the Cessia of old that I felt my blood run cold.

“Even when you run away, how do you end up coming this way.”

“….”

“You really have no luck.”

As if not needing even the slightest excuse, he put the shoe he had picked up on me as I sat collapsed in front of his own portrait.

With Cessia’s blazing red hair. With Cessia’s golden eyes.

With the appearance of the man who betrayed me, how dare he.

“Didn’t I tell you so. That you’d obviously regret it.”

“….”

“Hmm? Darling.”

How dare he call me his lover.

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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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