Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 74

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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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Chapter 74

Mehren’s usually composed, orderly face crumpled.
He’d learned truths he never wanted to know, and his mind tangled into a chaotic knot.
“What exactly was in that medicine… No, never mind. It’s another secret, I’m sure.”
“You know me well.”
He smiled slowly, and there was something languid and seductive about it.
Irritation flared up without reason. What was so amusing that he had to smile like that?
“I wish you’d told me sooner.”
“There wasn’t time, energy, or space for it.”
“Later, then.”
“This isn’t the kind of conversation to have over a communication channel where anyone might be listening.”
He was right, every word of it. Which made it all the more infuriating.
Arelin’s illness—the Temple, the Magic Tower, the Medical Association, all of them together couldn’t even name it. Some suggested it might not be illness at all but a Curse, so he’d looked into that too, only to hit dead ends.
And this medicine was the only thing that had any effect on the unnameable affliction. It couldn’t be anything but extraordinarily rare.
He’d suspected it vaguely. Suspected it, but…
The fact that he’d struck a deal to save his only daughter and been stuck in the Northern Fortress, a place barely better than desolate wasteland—it clashed so violently with this man that Mehren had dismissed the suspicion.
And yet he’d never once come to the Imperial Capital in all this time.
“Ha.”
A walking contradiction, through and through.
“So after you returned, all this time…”
Halbern smiled knowingly, as if confirming what Mehren had figured out.
“Damn it.”
He’d cursed the man for vanishing without a trace the moment he returned, never showing his face. So it was because of the deal.
It was bitter and infuriating, yet it made sense, and he understood it—which meant he had nothing to say and wanted to tear his own hair out.
“Why are you cursing?”
“Does it look like I’m not going to curse right now?”
All he wanted was to sigh, but the man himself just kept grinning.
“You haven’t pawned your body, soul, or life as collateral, have you?”
“Treating me like a child. Did you think I came back with a fraudulent contract?”
“How am I supposed to believe that? When you act like this?”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have the good fortune of losing your position out of nowhere.”
Fat chance.
His faith in his lord had long since converged to negative territory, or what little there had been to begin with.
“The medicine will arrive on time. It matters. Make sure she takes it regularly.”
Who was lecturing whom here? Mehren was beyond exasperated.
“Even so.”
Mehren clenched his fist and made his declaration.
“My lord is the world’s greatest dog of a father. Do you understand?”
Halbern didn’t answer. He simply burst out laughing.
“Want to be fired?”
“Yes. Please dismiss me.”
“I won’t, so get back to work.”
“Fire me. I want to retire.”
“A child’s mother doesn’t abandon the child.”
“Damn it.”
“Your language is atrocious. The child will hear and be frightened.”
“I come from common stock, raised in the streets with no education. Will that suffice?”
“Yet you’re more accomplished than those educated men. So that’ll do.”
“Ha, really.”
One moment he wanted to beat the man senseless out of pure exasperation, the next his heart softened when Halbern spoke like that. Too much time had passed between them, too much shared history, to simply turn away and leave.
This damned wretch.
“My lord—no, Halbern.”
A question that had persisted since he first took Arelin in and continued until now.
There were others. So why him?
Why had the man entrusted her to him and left?
“Why me?”
“There was no one else.”
…
“No one else I trust.”
His violet eyes darkened with an unreadable light. Mehren’s expression crumbled.
“I only trust you. You know that?”
When had that cheerful, smiling boy become someone with eyes and a smile that held no depths at all?
There was too much to grasp, and it stung to think about.
“Mehren.”
Those purple eyes fixed on him, warm now.
“If there’s one thing I’ve done right in my life, it was picking you up.”
“The worst mistake of my life was following you that day.”
The sharp reply didn’t shake Halbern at all. He simply smiled with that inscrutable charm and spoke with certainty.
“Too bad, then. There won’t be another chance.”

* * *

Halbern Manor was in an uproar.
The manor that had always been quiet and still—so hushed it didn’t seem inhabited—had taken on an unusual, buzzing energy.
The reason was simple.
The master of the house had returned.
“Do you think the Grand Duke will stay for good?”
“Since he hasn’t left again, I’d say so? I heard the Saren Knights are returning too!”
“But it’s wasteful to have someone of such high caliber as the Grand Duke guarding the Northern Fortress!”
“Someone else can go to the Northern Fortress. It’s always been known as a place of demotion and exile anyway.”
“But did you see how handsome he was?”
“You saw him too? I thought my heart would stop.”
If you listened, you could hear talk of Halbern drifting from all corners of the manor.
Admiration and fear, curiosity and excessive interest.
‘That’s probably how people usually behave around Halbern.’
Even if he was an almost-absent father to her, the Grand Duke’s position and influence were incomparable to anyone else’s.
“I probably would’ve reacted the same way if I hadn’t read the novel.”
Since he’d been the icon of secrets and unresolved mysteries throughout the story, meeting him in person was simply… curious.
The fact that he was handsome was just a bonus.
‘Dad…’
Having him around was nice, she supposed.
Whereas feelings toward ‘Mother’ were always wistful, longing, sticky, and gazing upward like a sunflower, her emotions and attitude toward this figure called ‘Father’ had always been dry.
Well, her father in the previous life hadn’t been warm to her either.
To her, a father was always just the person trailing behind her mother.
“Though I think there might have been good memories.”
It wasn’t that her father didn’t love her. He was just insanely in love with her mother.
He was a man who loved her mother like a zealot worshipping a god.
Perhaps that was why Halbern’s unpaternal attitude had no impact on her whatsoever.
Mehren, though, seemed rather irritated.
What was strange was the Childcare Unit’s attitude.
“The Grand Duke? Ha. Well, I suppose he’s come.”
“But what difference will it make now that he’s come playing father?”
“Being a father isn’t something that ends with giving birth, you know.”
“That’s right, and we don’t think he’ll be loved by the young mistress so easily.”
“We’re on the young mistress’s side!”
It was strange how they seemed to harbor something like antagonism, or rather, were subtly competing.
“We may have lost to Mehren, but we won’t lose to the Grand Duke.”
“Hear, hear!”
What on earth were they competing for?
“Right, right. Do your best.”
Not knowing what it was, she didn’t want to get entangled. A vague acknowledgment sent the Childcare Unit’s spirits soaring to the heavens.
They rallied together, determined not to lose her, and she still couldn’t understand it.
‘Who am I being taken away from in the first place?’
Everything was already complicated enough.
“Sigh…”
A sigh escaped unbidden.
These past few days she’d been sighing relentlessly, so much so that the Childcare Unit had even insisted on a detailed medical examination, wondering if she’d caught some new illness.
‘I fell for Fession…’
“Come on, no, no…”
This is ridiculous.
The novel changed, she couldn’t predict the future, this wasn’t the story she knew! She’d wanted to discuss these common anxieties of a Reincarnator, but instead everything was consumed by this.
“No, sigh. This is…”
The ticklish, muddled feeling was so unfamiliar and awkward it felt like she was going insane.
She forcibly kept her mind from drifting away into space.
‘No, this is all just the scheming of hormones, a trick of the brain.’
She tried hard to deny reality. She even attempted to escape into the lie that it was all an illusion.
“Why won’t self-hypnosis work on this? It’s so unfair.”
Was this that famous period of denial before falling in love?
No. She was being serious and sincere when she said it wasn’t, so why did the term “denial before falling in love” even exist? It doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t make sense.
“Ugh!”
Finally, after throwing a fit by herself, she started to tear up, and the Childcare Unit swarmed her.
“Young mistress, are you all right?”
“It’s because of the Grand Duke, isn’t it?!”
They were jumping to conclusions in a way that was actually helpful, even as her thoughts drifted elsewhere.
“Sigh…”
For the first time, she felt curious.
What was Fession doing right now?

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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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