Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 275

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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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275
Cycle

A melody flows forth.
Though it had been ages since I last held the violin, the instrument still rendered the sounds I wished to draw from it with pristine clarity, as if no time had passed at all.
My earliest memory, strangely enough, was of my mother sitting before me, playing the violin with a smile.
The piece she played that day was this very one.
Even its name was filled with love—”Salut d’Amour.”
Perhaps because of that memory, I played it often; it was a short work, barely three minutes, and not difficult.
Yet still.
‘I never thought I’d play this score again.’
This old violin that helped me now had been my mother’s faithful companion through her prime, a cherished instrument steeped in history.
That day, then, had been a kind of tribute—a dedication played on the violin my mother left me, a song that linked us together, offered to her and to my former self.
After letting her go that way, I had resolved never to play this piece again.
I didn’t want to dredge up what was already settled.
‘If Father hadn’t found me after hearing this music that day… well.’
Then perhaps I’d be playing something different now.
‘Father, can you hear me?’
Sometimes it’s easier to speak through music than through words.
Even now, I’m uncertain how to say things without causing misunderstanding, how to truly convey what I feel and think.
Words are difficult, writing is harder still, and drawing it is simply impossible.
All I can do is play.
Perhaps because it’s as familiar as eating, the more I played, the more peaceful my heart became.
As a child, whenever I played, the mages’ Corruption would purify itself, so I once thought I truly possessed a Purification Ability.
‘But I don’t have a Purification Ability separate from myself.’
As I play now, I understand it.
The purification of my surroundings was only a side effect; the power sleeping deep within me fragments and flows outward according to the music I produce.
‘It resonates with my emotions.’
Strangely, I felt no danger in this.
Right now, I was simply playing.
The final note hung in the air.
My emotions and heart, woven into music, radiated outward.
‘I hope Father can hear this sound.’
If he’s lost somewhere, I wanted him to hear this music and come find me.
Just as he did that day.
As “Salut d’Amour” ended, I caught my breath, slightly quickened.
“Yes, this much isn’t enough either.”
It’s fine—there’s still more.
The memories I’d built with Father were far from exhausted.
The next one should be…
Manuel Ponce’s “Estrellita,” the Little Star.
‘The piece I played when Father gave me the violin.’
I closed my eyes and conjured the image of Father, chin resting in his hand, listening quietly as I drew the bow across the strings.
A single clear note rang out.
A sound that would have been dissonance elsewhere became harmony beneath my touch, completing itself as music.
Just as the peaceful time we’d spent together had been.

* * *

Valere had stopped his aimless wandering and, from somewhere within the Other Side World, tried to summon a memory.

“Would you like me to make you a god?”

Thanks to that fragmented memory, he at least understood how he’d come to this state.
An Immortal who’d appeared suddenly, offering to make him divine.
Of course he’d never accept such a worthless proposal.
‘Was it that one from before?’
The dangerous entity he’d encountered in the Shadow World of Imperial Palace.
He’d been slow to recognize it because too many memories from previous cycles had surfaced at once.
And even if that weren’t the case, having spent so long wandering through the ownerless Other Side World, he’d been corrupted without realizing it.
Valere understood he was caught in a vicious trap.
‘How do I get back to the original world from here?’
He’d failed too many times.
Which cycle was this, anyway?
He couldn’t possibly remember.
Should he just die? Death only meant losing his memory and starting over anyway.
Beneath the crushing weight of exhaustion, Valere smiled bitterly, understanding now why he’d sealed his memories immediately after Regression.
‘There was no choice.’
The despair and lethargy that came from pursuing a goal he could never achieve, no matter how many cycles he repeated, were inescapable.
For hundreds of cycles, he’d actually convinced himself that blunting his emotions and lowering his sensitivity due to these memories meant becoming more rational.

“Valere, what on earth are you doing…?”

It was Mehren who’d made him snap back to himself, looking at him with the disgust of someone watching a worm—Mehren, whom he’d sacrifice anything for to save Arelin.
‘Ah, I remember now.’
There had been times when he’d killed everything that might pose a threat to Arelin, accepting such condemnation; but the more unstable society became, the faster Arelin died. He’d been so utterly lost then that he’d almost wanted to give up.

“How intriguing you are. If what you say is true, perhaps you’ve become a different kind of Immortal than I.”

The seals that let him view memories of previous cycles in dreams, and retrieve them only when he needed them most—all of that had been her work. Even in the next cycle, he couldn’t remember that forgetting itself was her kindness.
‘Right, I was trying to save Arelin.’
Suddenly, Valere looked at the pendant he held in his hand. The pendant he’d never released, no matter the circumstance.
This was the artifact he’d found by making it this far—a relic that could seal even the most powerful abilities.
There was a reason he’d held onto it even in a state of delirium, never letting it go.
His mind cleared.
He had to pass this to Arelin, even if he died doing it.
He forced strength into his unresponsive body. Fortunately, he hadn’t died after all.
“…I’m still alive.”
Though his body was a wreck, as long as he could move, nothing else mattered. The burning pain in his throat, the numbness of a body shattered from within—he scarcely felt it anymore.
Valere managed to sit up, spitting blood that had pooled in his mouth.
‘Which way should I go?’
Even as he wandered without direction, the phantom of his sister remained at his side, smiling gently.
Now that he thought about it, he could have sworn he’d seen her just now.
“…Sister.”
I wish I’d died first instead, he thought. So I wouldn’t block her path. Then she would have lived well on her own.
“And I can’t even regress before that point. Is that deliberate? To keep me from dying instead of her?”
She was petty, even at the end.
Despite all this time, his soul remained a child who’d never grown—and the discord made Valere laugh.
From somewhere distant, he seemed to hear the melody of a violin.
A delicate sound, as if offering him solace.
For some reason, the image came to him of a small child, barely reaching his waist, struggling to hold a violin that seemed far too large for her small hands.
The beautiful music that flowed from her was utterly at odds with that picture.
‘Could it be Arelin?’
It couldn’t be.
Though he tried to tell himself that no miracle would appear before him so conveniently, he found himself drawn toward the source of that music.
He couldn’t recall the composers’ names every time Arelin played, but he remembered the titles of the pieces.
Salut d’Amour, Estrellita, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Moonlight Serenade, Meditation, Joy of Love, Romance, Elegy.
She’d insisted they were masterpieces, that memorizing the titles and composers’ names was a bare minimum of respect; he remembered too the Arelin who would demand he learn them.
She rarely played the same piece twice, but whenever Valere answered wrongly, she would gaze at him with genuine contempt, yet insist he memorize the title and play it again for him—so he sometimes deliberately gave wrong answers, even though he knew the songs.
‘What did she say? That Schumann’s Romance and Chopin’s Romance and Beethoven’s Romance and Vieuxtemps’ Romance were each different, so any true listener should distinguish them instantly?’
The memory surfaced unbidden, and Valere laughed weakly before falling silent in thought.
He missed Arelin.
‘I want to go back.’
He wanted desperately to return to that time when, doing nothing at all, he was happy simply because Mehren and Arelin were beside him.
For the first and only time, Valere no longer wanted to regress.
The place he wanted to return to was in this world—his home, where Mehren and Arelin would welcome him.
Did that earnest wish reach them?
—!
At the end of that sound, Valere’s eyes widened at the sight of two figures.
The music had ended.
And then.
“Father—!”
The child he’d longed to see, he had found.
Like a miracle.

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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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