Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 135

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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 135

Our eyes locked across the empty space.
“You’re really curious about your mother?”
The Regent Duke questioned me as if testing my resolve.
I paused to consider, then nodded with conviction.
“Of course I’m curious.”
If I was being honest, I was half-desperate to know and half-terrified of knowing.
It wasn’t that I felt no curiosity about my mother, but I had no desire to excavate old, carefully buried stories on her account, and I was afraid—genuinely afraid—that some unbearable truth might come tumbling out if I pulled the wrong thread.
And besides…….
‘I have Mehren.’
If “mother” meant more than simply the person who gave birth to me, then the only person I wanted to call by that name was Mehren, and no one else.
Searching for my biological mother felt like, somehow…… a betrayal of him.
Mehren was the sole object of my attachment and boundless affection, and no one in this world could rival that.
‘I’m sorry, Fession.’
I care for you, but I love Mehren more.
At moments like this, I still felt bound by the concept of “mother” like a shackle, just as I had in my past life—making me wonder if I’d grown at all—and a chill would creep through me…….
Yet at the same time, I felt something else.
Having been born this way, I was fated to pine for “mother” as a child for all my life.
But here was the greatest difference from my past life.
‘Even though we’ve been apart so long, I’m not afraid Mehren will abandon me.’
The anxiety I used to feel—that moment of Mehren slipping from sight would mean I was being cast away—no longer existed in me.
Wasn’t that alone enough to show I’d changed?
‘So I have to go back.’
My resolve hardened further.
I didn’t want to achieve my goals by raking through someone else’s wounds.
With such a soft heart, I would remain forever at odds with this man.
It was time to face an uncomfortable truth.
“Are you even my father to begin with? I’ve never heard my father mention anything about my mother, and suddenly my aunt is my mother?”
Something flickered in the Regent Duke’s green eyes.
“You look so much alike. It’s strange you didn’t recognize it.”
“You’re saying I look like my mother?”
“You do.”
A faint longing passed across those usually cold green eyes.
“……Anyone would think you were a clone.”
For the first time, the Regent Duke—who had always seemed cold and rigid as a fortress—looked like a human being.
“If you weren’t really my daughter, the Grand Duke of Halbern would have had no reason to hide your existence so carefully.”
Schrödinger’s father was actually my uncle—the conclusion no longer surprised me.
But was it strange? Even knowing the truth, nothing had changed.
He’s still my father. Just as Mehren is my mother.
“Is that all? Your argument isn’t very convincing.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll have a paternity test soon enough.”
……
Whatever the conclusion, that arrogant smile—confident the results would reveal truth—left me momentarily speechless.
‘No, calm down. Think. You can’t back down now.’
“Send me back.”
“You already know my answer.”
“Why are you so fixated on me?”
A possessive man has no appeal!
The Regent Duke closed his eyes slowly, as if he hadn’t expected such a question, then opened them again.
And then came his answer.
“Because you’re mine.”
His words, cut bluntly to their essence, left me with my mouth hanging open in disbelief. His hollow gaze swept across empty air.
“Everything that woman left behind is mine.”
Goosebumps crawled across my skin before I could stop them, and I edged backward. The Regent Duke, radiating an air of danger unlike before, issued me a warning.
“Don’t try to shake me through Sione.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m already wading deep enough in the mire.”
Emotion drained from his hollow eyes.
“Do you really want to see my bottom?”

* * *

That’s what the Regent Duke said, but……
‘Why don’t you understand the psychology of someone curious when you talk like that?’
So this was all his fault.
Late at night when everyone slept.
My unusually docile behavior had made the maids and attendants drop their guard, and I opened my eyes in bed at that moment of careless surveillance.
“Being a troublemaker sometimes has its uses.”
After slipping out through a small ventilation gap, I set my sights on the direction of the Duchess’s chambers.
“If no one will tell me, I’ll find out myself.”

* * *

Duke Idikels had been my invaluable ally. Though his brilliant eloquence and masterful diplomacy couldn’t save me directly.

“The notion that words alone can achieve anything is an illusion.”

In diplomacy, what matters most is whether persuasion, compromise, or force works on the other party—and unfortunately, none of those methods work on the Regent Duke.
Instead, he’d helped me in various ways. It was Duke Idikels who told me where the Duchess was likely to be found.

“I couldn’t get near the place due to surveillance and restrictions, but you’re different.”

In the end, Duke Idikels was right. The area with the Duchess’s chambers was closely watched, but my small frame let me slip through unseen.
All of this……
[Navigation ON]
[You have reached your destination.]
was thanks to my newly acquired Ask Anything skill.
“Thirty minutes Cooldown.”
That would be plenty of time to use it again before I left.
Through repeated experiments, I’d managed to gauge roughly how long the Cooldown lasted.
The lower the importance of the information provided, the shorter the Cooldown—though I still didn’t understand the criteria for determining importance.
And when I asked about something I already knew, the Cooldown was also brief.
‘Which means this really is the Duchess’s chamber.’
So why did it feel so eerie?
The building housing the Duchess’s chambers exuded an atmosphere as desolate as if ghosts might emerge at any moment.
‘This is absolutely nerve-wracking.’
Even as I grimaced, the thought that this might be my only chance drove me forward.
And so I opened the door and stepped inside.
“Wow……”
I stood frozen in the doorway, robbed of words by the sight before me.
I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of portraits covering every wall—all of the same woman’s face.
An Image Recording Device captured the living, moving form of Sione endlessly, and items that must have belonged to her, furnishings, clothes—everything was displayed as though in a museum.
Even as I wandered through in a daze, the madness emanating from the room made my skin crawl.
‘No wonder no one dares approach.’
Rumors that the Regent Duke was obsessed with the Duchess to the point of madness were easy to hear anywhere in this gloomy castle.
He’d never seemed entirely stable before, but seeing this room made it clear he was truly unhinged.
“If you’re going to go mad, at least do it gracefully.”
But the fact that the room showed no sign of the Duchess’s presence—no trace of her touch anywhere—suggested the rumors circulating through the castle might be true.
That the Duchess was dead, or locked away somewhere in her madness, or……
‘She used to keep to herself, but they say no one’s seen even a hair of her in six years?’
Swallowing down an ominous premonition, I pressed forward.
When I entered the innermost section of the chamber—vast enough to contain three ordinary rooms—I saw it.
In the deepest part of the room lay a Short Dagger, gleaming with an ominous light, like an offering placed upon an altar, utterly unlike everything else around it.
It seemed to be calling to me, and before I knew it, I’d stepped closer as if entranced.
Click.
“Don’t touch that.”
A large hand seized my outstretched arm, and I flinched in shock.
And even more so when I realized that hand belonged to the Regent Duke.
When people are startled enough, they can’t even scream.
My silent cry escaped as a hiccup as I met his calm green gaze.
Hic.
My helpless body was doing its own thing, and it was maddening.
“Slowly. Breathe.”
What surprised me was that the Regent Duke waited until I’d calmed down.
“Why are you here?”
“Is it strange for me to be in my wife’s chamber?”
“That’s not…… but……”
If I’d known I’d run into him here, I never would have come!
My heart hammered wildly. For the first time, I felt real danger.
Why did I have to encounter the Regent Duke here of all places?
Am I going to die? Is this really the end?

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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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