Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 180

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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 180

Morning in Halbern.
Uni stopped short in surprise upon entering to wake Arelin, and Rena, who’d followed behind her, looked over as if to ask what was wrong.
Uni tilted her chin quietly, motioning for her to see for herself. And when Rena looked at the bed……
“……?”
‘Why is the Grand Duke sleeping there?’
The maids stood uncertain, watching the father and daughter—one giving Arelin an arm pillow, both asleep together.
The two of them ultimately chose strategic retreat.
“Let’s fetch Mehren.”
“In a situation like this, it has to be Mehren.”
And so Mehren, summoned on such short notice, found himself at a loss for words at the sight before him.
“…….”
Last night, Valere had said he’d watch over Arelin a bit longer before leaving—but apparently he’d fallen asleep with her instead.
‘I knew this would happen.’
He’d even nagged at him not to disturb the sleeping child and just go to bed, and Valere had said he’d take care of it himself.
‘And this is how he takes care of it?’
Mehren’s eyes sharpened in an instant. Yet watching the two of them sleeping so peacefully, his irritation began to soften.
Valere, who usually slept like the dead, and Arelin, who drifted off with labored breaths—both wore calm, contented expressions today as they slept face to face.
The curtains had been drawn wide open to wake Arelin, and bright morning sunlight streamed through the tall window, yet the two of them showed no sign of waking.
Looking at them now……
“They look alike.”
When awake, their expressions were so different he’d never noticed it, but in sleep they resembled each other so closely one might have taken them for father and daughter.
‘Perhaps because Arelin takes so much after Sione……’
Valere’s face looked unusually boyish in sleep, which only made the resemblance between them more striking.
Though they seemed nothing alike at first glance, the two of them were subtly similar in every way.
Both had the infuriating habit of never revealing their true feelings first, and both possessed that ingenuous yet precarious quality that made it impossible to look away—they’d inherited that identically from each other.
As a result, Mehren let out a thin sigh, resigned to his role as caretaker.
‘It is time to wake them, but……’
“Well, a day or two shouldn’t hurt.”
He considered drawing the curtains again, but the sight of the two of them bathed in that warm morning light was too peaceful to disturb, so he left them be.
Beyond the gentle rays, he thought he glimpsed Sione’s phantom smiling.
“……It would have been wonderful if you could have been here too.”
Would Halbern’s history have seen its most harmonious family born then?
Imagining the three of them together, so alike, Mehren smiled wryly.
It was all meaningless speculation.
Watching Mehren leave alone, Rena and Uni exchanged glances.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Mehren smiled.
“Let them sleep a while longer.”

* * *

Valere was dreaming.
A dream that always began the same way.
The moment he received the newborn Arelin from his sister.
He never imagined his sister would refuse his offer to go with him, never thought he’d take the infant into his arms,
and he had no idea what to do, what he could do, or how to proceed—just stood there in confusion, staring only at his sister in that pivotal moment.
‘That child’s name is Arelin.’
The turning point came at his sister’s final words—the chains that would bind him for life.
Fragmented memories, hazy dreams from before, washed over him.
‘Please raise her well.’
In that confusion, Valere had only one answer to give.
‘……Yes.’
Just believe in me.
And though he tried in countless ways to keep Arelin alive, the result Valere always faced was the same.
A body with no warmth, or a cold coffin.
Himself standing before it in despair.
‘…….’
Failed again.
Mehren leaving and himself unable to stop him. Or Mehren vanishing and himself unable to find him.
Or else Mehren already dead, leaving nothing to grasp or seek.
Valere’s choice when left alone was always the same.
The Destruction of Clan Halbern.
Without his sister, Arelin, or Mehren, Halbern held no value for him.
Indeed, Valere had always wished for nothing but Halbern’s destruction.
From childhood, watching his sister suffer—for such a long time.
Preserving Halbern’s line meant nothing to Valere. He kept it only because his sister had wanted him to—for no other reason.
‘Sister.’
To him, Sione was his whole world.
A child who learned only what his sister taught him, only what she gave him.
The boy who stopped growing the moment Sione vanished from his life could find no direction for what came next.
And so he descended smoothly into madness……
“Usually the dream ends here.”
So why wouldn’t it end?
Valere stared blankly up at the overcast sky of the dream, then turned around without thought.
And then, remarkably, the dream began anew.
From a different point in time.
“This has never happened before.”
Valere, who always woke the moment Arelin died in the dream, narrowed his brow at this anomaly.
In the distance, another version of himself appeared—another sister beside him.
The other Valere received Arelin from his sister.
His sister was smiling.
She smiled at the confused, bewildered version of himself with eyes full of infinite tenderness.
It was an expression he’d missed in the moment, too focused on Arelin.
‘This must be the last time.’
So he finally saw his sister’s lonely smile as he turned to leave.
So his sister was already dead?
The truth he’d suspected but never wished to know pierced his very core.
So his sister was gone.
There was no sorrow in it. Hatred burned cold and fierce, but it did not hunger to consume further, to grow bolder and stronger.
It was simply strange.
As if he himself were dead.
As if he had become nothing but an empty shell, a puppet moving only by duty and purpose.
Or perhaps that was the truth.
His sole conviction and purpose were to ‘keep alive’ the daughter his sister had given him and raise her well.
As his sister wished.
“……Sister.”
Could I have stopped you?
If I had begged you to reconsider, clung to you and wept, pleaded so shamefully, would you have relented and chosen to live?
No. That couldn’t be.
Valere knew Sione better than anyone.
Even trapped in a suffocating life where she could never live as she wished, she steadfastly achieved her will.
She’d made a fool of Ludvich, of her own father—she would break before bending, never wavering. She would never yield her will simply because he cried.
Because that was who his sister was.
A woman who decided with such certainty what she would protect and what she would leave behind, and who would see it through.
Because he knew her too well, he could not plead. Could not beg. Could not cling to her shamefully.
That was why he’d returned that day with only Arelin.
Because it was his sister’s will.
Valere could never defy his sister’s will.
Sister.
Why me?
Why was it me?
There were plenty of people more secure, more capable of raising her well. Why did you entrust Arelin to me?
If you’d wanted it, you could have had her raised so no one would ever know whose blood she carried—that would have been safer. But why me?
Why me?
Because you feared I would die?
That once you were gone, I would die too?
“How well you understand me.”
Did you see the future?
How much did you love me, sister?
How could you love me like this and still leave me? You have no mercy.
“Did you know, sister?”
That I was trying to save you and then die.
That you couldn’t help but marry because of me, and before I became another shackle, I meant to die.
Did you know?
Is that why you died first?

“By saving you, I save myself.”

His sister’s voice, from a time he couldn’t place, invaded his mind.
He could only laugh.
“Ha……”
But you didn’t know this either, did you, sister?
That the daughter you gave birth to had a fatal flaw in her health.
You didn’t know, so you could pass her to me without a word, without worry, without shadow.
The dreamscape flickers.
Resonating with that chaotic feeling, the landscape blurs and swirls—yet Sione’s form alone remained clear.
Sister.
Who was that man?
The one who made you smile.
What is Arelin?
What did you give me?
Helpless self-loathing, utter powerlessness, madness rising from an already-shattered core.
And overwhelming longing dragged him down.
Endlessly.
‘Be happy.’
‘Be happy, Valere.’
How can I be happy without you?
‘It’s alright. I will—’
You will?
‘Watch over you until you are happy.’
“What?”
His eyes flew open.
What Valere saw upon waking was his own body and Arelin’s glowing faintly with light.

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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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