Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 206

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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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206
Episode

I was in trouble.
Half in jest,
“Since it’s already come to this, why don’t I just not reveal my identity until I’m discovered?”
I’d said it once, and met with Mehren’s cold gaze.
It seemed like it would be amusing.
“Arelin, I don’t see any sign of remorse in your expression.”
“But listen to me. It’s not like I’m intentionally deceiving anyone. I’m just saying I won’t go out of my way to tell people I’m me until they figure it out on their own. It’s more like a decision made through indirect intentionality, you know?”
Mehren pressed his forehead.
“Did I raise you this way?”
“Um, no.”
“Is it the Grand Mage’s doing, then?”
“…I was wrong.”
Before blame could be redirected toward my innocent mentor, I quickly admitted fault, and only then did Mehren’s eyes soften.
“I’m in favor of it!”
Taking this chance, Rena voiced her support for my position, but—
…
She was silenced by Mehren’s cold stare.
Mehren sighed lightly and met my eyes. His pale green eyes, unchanged even beneath the magical light, bored into me.
“Do you know what kind of heart I’ve carried for the past fifteen years since Arelin disappeared?”
“I…”
This was unfair.
Mehren didn’t speak his feelings in words.
He merely appealed through his expression, through the light in his eyes as he looked at me, through the trembling of the hand that reached for me—how difficult those years had been.
…I had only hoped he was living well and eating well.
“This very moment still feels like a dream to me.”
I reached out and grasped Mehren’s hand, which hung hesitantly without daring to touch me, and pressed it against my cheek.
“How could this be a dream?”
Mehren laughed.
“I’m ashamed to admit it, but I could hardly manage to be human. It was then that I first understood how pathetic and wretched a person I could be.”
“You’ve always been the best.”
“Without Arelin and without Valere, Halbern held no value for me either, and yet…even that familiar work became a burden to bear. All I could feel was the absence of those two people.”
“Mehren…”
“In any case, that’s how it was.”
Mehren hastily tidied up his words, embarrassed by his own candor.
“I won’t presume to ask you to understand. It was only my heart, and you have no obligation to carry it. But…”
Mehren’s eyes turned sharp.
“You cannot do this to His Highness. You cared for the Crown Prince, didn’t you?”
It was a piercing reproof.
“At least I knew you were alive, but His Highness did not. As I’ve said, the Imperial Family kept that fact hidden from the Crown Prince. And yet he was the one who held onto you longest.”
Perhaps he still does.
So saying, Mehren quietly persuaded me, recounting how he had once before witnessed just how far a person could be destroyed by the loss of someone precious.
“Arelin, if you truly wish for the Crown Prince to return to the kind, gentle boy he was in childhood, that is your responsibility.”
I blinked quietly.
“Be kind to His Highness.”
Mehren’s voice was soft.
“As he was kind to you.”
It melted away my stubborn irritation.
“Sorry. How could you not recognize me? Even with all the impostors around, that’s no excuse. I think I just got upset because it hurt so much.”
“Yes, that’s understandable. I do understand.”
Mehren held me close as I grumbled, offering his sympathy.
“I often feel the same way about Valere.”
Mehren muttered darkly about how he’d half-kill Valere when he came back this time, even as a warm smile bloomed across his face.
I wondered if that was actually possible, but—well, he’s your mother, so it probably is.
“I’ll do as you say, Mother.”
“Though if you don’t mind, I would like to do part of your suggestion my way.”
“Hmm?”
Mehren gestured with his fingers.
“If you return to your original identity immediately, it will cause confusion. For now, let’s have you live under a temporary identity. I’ll return and sort things out piece by piece, and only after Halbern’s influence is restored will Arelin make a proper return.”
I nodded with a smile, moved by Mehren’s sincere desire to smooth the path before me.
* * *
So I spent some time as the Grand Mage’s personal disciple. My name was Relin.
“Exactly what identity are you hiding?”
I received such comments, but I was confident.
“Miss!”
Though it didn’t work on everyone.
“Uni!”
Uni had endured even after losing her position at Halbern Manor, but when Mehren left, she quit along with him.
She then moved to El Sionel and, drawing on her experience managing me, started a beauty business offering fitness programs and nutritional meal plans for young noblewomen, and it became a massive success.
Uni, who had become a proper entrepreneur, came dashing over with a bright smile, but then her expression hardened when she saw mine.
“Who are you?”
“What?”
“Our young miss would never greet us like that. She frowns at every falling leaf, gets annoyed at the slightest word, begrudges even breathing, thinks life itself is suffering—there’s no way someone like her could smile so brightly and radiantly. Who are you?!”
“Want to get scolded?”
“You really are our young miss.”
“Ugh, really.”
“I’ve missed you so much.”
Was I never destined to have a touching reunion? Why is everything like this these days?
“Get away from me.”
“Wow, it really is our young miss! Hehe!”
“Don’t get emotional over something so stupid.”
“It really is her!”
“Ugh, really.”
“More! Please be even more irritable!”
“Argh, I’m irritated!”
“That’s it!”
Ern had enlisted in the Saren Knights, and Ember was too busy to possibly take time off, so only Uni came running, and I felt a strange sense of time passing rather than disappointment.
“Miss, do you need a maid? I can still do maidwork.”
“I don’t need one.”
“Ahem. Uni. I am already the young miss’s head maid.”
“What?! That’s not fair!”
The two of them bickered back and forth.
Usually Ember would distract them by offering sweets.
I heard Ember had opened a bakery and it became hugely profitable.
A flicker of sentiment passed through me, then I was back to reality.
So.
“Is Father dead?”
“I doubt that very much.”
Mehren shook his head.
“If he were dead, the power of the Halbern household head would have passed to you.”
“Would I be able to tell that right away?”
“Well, they say it feels like all the sealed gates of perception expand simultaneously at once, so it would be hard not to notice.”
Mehren had made efforts to search for Father’s whereabouts in his own way.
He’d gathered intelligence from adventurer’s guilds and information guilds around the world, and even sent people to dig up information from every corner.
“The whole world? Or rather, strictly speaking, not the whole world.”
There was the Magic Tower’s Sky Tower and its Infinite Archive.
The Great Forest of the Shugra Empire.
The Sacred Ground of Lemuren City-State.
The Great Ruins of the Uyeo Alliance.
And the Abyss in the North and the Forbidden Lands in the South.
Plus the Other Side World.
The countless places scattered across the world where human hands could not reach—Mehren’s power would be unable to penetrate those either.
“My daughter barely managed to come back alive, and Father doesn’t even show his face.”
I don’t know what he’s doing or where, but really.
Father is always late.
Well, I still love him though.
“By the way, what’s the Regent Duke up to these days?”
“He’s in Lemuren City-State.”
“Why?”
“He’s in closed meditation.”
…
The Regent Duke who used to raid the Southern Kingdom’s treasury to send me rare artifacts and elixirs when I was struggling had become a husk after my disappearance, but upon learning I was alive, he’d gone all the way to the Sacred Ground to pray for my safe return.
What could I even say.
That’s kind of…
“Wasn’t he not that kind of person?”
Mehren shrugged.
“He sent word, so once his meditation ends, he’ll read it and come, won’t he?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“Anyway, are you going to visit the Magic Tower?”
“Oh, yes.”
I wanted to have happy reunions with the others too.
“But I can’t just leave Father as he is.”
When I smiled brightly, Mehren made a strange expression again.
I could almost hear his thoughts—whether I resembled Sione, or Valere, or neither, but my appearance was similar while my aura was completely different, making it seem like I resembled neither.
“The Grand Mage might be able to find him.”
Planetary-scale search magic would be necessary, but perhaps the Grand Mage could manage it.
“So…”
Mehren looked at my hands, which were overflowing with shopping bags, with a complicated expression.
For a trip to the Magic Tower, it was quite an extensive array of luggage.
Rena had even gasped and asked me if I was going on a trip. I wasn’t planning a trip, but…
“What, why. Why.”
I did some shopping for the first time in fifteen years—was that such a waste?
“No, it’s not.”
“Mother, surely we’re not going to be impoverished from this?”
“That’s not it, but…”
“This is all bribery. Bribery for smooth social interaction. You understand, right?”
I flashed a bright smile, cheerfully ignoring Mehren’s lukewarm expression.
“Anyway, I’ll be back soon!”

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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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