Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 191

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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 191

Mehren found the path to Arelin’s room strangely unfamiliar in the quiet manor.
There had been a time when this house rang with children’s laughter and life.
Somehow he’d grown accustomed to it, and now the silence felt suffocating in a way he hadn’t expected.
Mehren glanced out at the empty garden beyond the windows and let out a bitter laugh.
“Ridiculous.”
The Halbern Manor had always been quiet like this, and the noise had been the abnormality.
It was only the past year out of the seven years Mehren had kept Halbern alone that had felt out of place.
But……
“The young lady is sleeping.”
“The healers cast Vitality Magic before they left.”
“The priests will come tomorrow.”
Three maids took shifts reporting to Mehren, watching day and night to ensure Arelin wouldn’t wake unattended.
He’d learned through the mages that this abnormal sleep was a side effect of the Authority of Sloth he’d been administering to her, and that while it was a side effect, the extreme reduction in vital functions might actually extend her lifespan—but none of that eased his mind.
“If only there was something I could do.”
Mehren wanted to mock his past self, the one who’d claimed that without blood ties, she could never truly be family.
What did that even mean? Family or not?
He’d become a fool willing to give everything—his liver, his heart, anything—so how could merely saying it didn’t count make it so?
When had it happened?
When she first called him mother?
When he became a mother—a ridiculous one at that?
No, it was before that.
When Arelin called him by his name instead of “mother.”
Perhaps it was when he first saw her smile at him.
Mehren thought that maybe he’d drawn that line in the past precisely because he’d already given his heart away.
“Mehren……”
“The young lady is so pitiful.”
“What do we do?”
The Childcare Unit’s response, having come on business only to give away their hearts completely, was no different from Mehren’s.
They were all fools and idiots.
Knowing Arelin didn’t have long to live, yet loving her so deeply.
“But how could anyone help but love her, when she’s so lovable?”
The maids and butlers, including Uni, Rena, and Emma, wept while steeling themselves to show only beauty and goodness if Arelin should wake.
Seeing that, Mehren knew he should find strength too, but……
“Mehren, perhaps you should rest today?”
Even Dillen, who had stood by Mehren’s side longer than anyone, was offering such advice—a sign of how much Mehren’s condition had deteriorated.
“Recovery Items?”
“We have some obtained through Sperom in addition to what the Regent Duke sent, but they say the efficacy won’t be great.”
“Use them anyway. We have to try everything we can.”
If only he could take her pain upon himself instead.
What wrong had that child done to deserve such suffering?
Mehren finally set down the documents he’d been looking at. The words wouldn’t focus. This had never happened before.
The Halbern business enterprises, the matters of the Halbern Fiefdom large and small, taxes, asset management, mediating conflicts among Halbern retainers, miscellaneous affairs—and beyond that, the affairs of the growing city of El Sionel.
None of it was unimportant, yet absurdly, none of it felt important anymore.
“Has there been any news of the Duke?”
Albrecht, Phytale, Sugra, the Uyeo Alliance, Lemuren and Prium, Manes—
Across the Central Continent, Northern Continent, Western Continent, and Southern Continent, Mehren had spread people everywhere within reach and influence, searching for one man, but Valere had vanished without a trace as if evaporated.
“Ha.”
The resolve he’d clung to shattered when he saw Arelin growing thinner and more withered each day.
So much so that he wanted to abandon everything and disappear into some place with good mountains and water.
Though that much was impossible now.

“Even if I die, I cannot leave Halbern.”
“I must never leave. Do you understand?”

Suddenly, Arelin’s inexplicable words from the past came back to him, and Mehren smiled sadly.
“Arelin……”
That child couldn’t possibly have seen this future coming; she must have simply worried about a future without him.
How could our Arelin be so kind and gentle?
“I won’t leave, so please find your strength too.”
Without Arelin, Halbern means nothing to him anymore.

* * *

Crown Prince Palace.
Empress Azeni watched Fession with an unreadable expression.
While Sirua was surrounded by divine creatures and animals, enjoying a happy time, and Terion was eating heartily from a table laden with delicious food, Fession alone gave off a curiously distant air.
‘Something has definitely changed……’
His status as Crown Prince, his beloved personality and bearing, his talent—
Fession had been born with an innate innocence and clarity, but lately those qualities had become difficult to see.
Everyone praised the change in Fession.
“The Crown Prince has matured so much, they say.”
“Some of his tutors say he’s suddenly come of age.”
“There’s praise that his composure befits a Crown Prince.”
But Empress Azeni was different.
“Don’t those words just mean he’s stopped acting like a child?”
The Empress possessed an educational philosophy unlike any imperial consort before her.
Her children must meet more people and come to understand a wider world.
Compared to the world she knew, the Imperial Palace was far too narrow and rigid.
‘Yet the influence of the imperial family remains absolute.’
She believed her children needed to understand, as members of the imperial family, what power they wielded and how they could exercise it.

“Yes. Do whatever you want, sister.”

With Emperor Edward’s full backing, she had abolished the old evils maintained under the name of tradition.
‘This is all thanks to Sione, too.’
The saying went that people never forget someone who shows them a new world.
Empress Azeni, influenced by Sione, wanted her children to grow up as children should.
‘The palace’s education focuses too much on making imperial children into special beings.’
Fession was already too special.
If he became any more so, he might spend his entire life in solitude.
Unlike Sirua, who acted on his own will regardless of what was asked, and Terion, who was still too young to have real convictions, Fession was genuinely just like other children his age.
“Sigh……”
As the endlessly bright Crown Prince grew dim and lost even his smile, Empress Azeni’s worry deepened day by day.
She wanted to forbid his visits to the Halbern Manor, almost certainly the source of it all, but Fession refused so stubbornly—even going on hunger strikes—that there was nothing she could do.
And she couldn’t find another pretext to use, because since Arelin fell ill, Fession’s conduct and grades had actually improved.
Seeing how thoroughly Fession completed every lesson, clearly to prevent anyone from using it as an excuse to keep him from visiting, everyone could only shake their heads in awe.
“In that way, he’s exactly like his father.”
She understood that if something couldn’t be stopped, the better course was to watch from a distance and prepare for the worst.
But Empress Azeni genuinely grieved for what she saw coming.

* * *

The sole person permitted to visit the Halbern Manor, now fortified with ironclad security.
Crown Prince Fession today too, after finishing his packed schedule, carved out a moment of free time to visit the manor.
Fession, cradling an armful of blooming spring flowers, set them down beside Arelin’s bed.
“Arelin, I’m here.”
The fact that Fession could visit didn’t mean he did anything special.
He simply sat beside the sleeping Arelin, and when it was time to leave, he left.
That was enough for Fession.
“You’re sleeping well today too.”
Fession understood well enough that no one knew when she’d wake, and that she might never wake at all.
Everyone tried to discourage his visits with worried looks, but Fession found he couldn’t bear not seeing Arelin.
He was troubled, he wanted to know, and only by seeing her directly with his own eyes could he find peace.
Learning about Arelin secondhand through others felt far worse.
“Spring flowers are blooming already. I brought them to show you.”
When will you open your eyes?
Can you even open them?
As the waiting lengthened, the shadow of his emotions deepened.
Fession didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
Sometimes he wished she would just stay like this and live a long life, and sometimes he wished it had all been a dream.
That you’d never been sick at all.
“Arelin……”
Why is it so hard to reach you?

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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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