Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 83

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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 83

I’d been rejected.
“His Highness the Crown Prince’s schedule is already full, and he regrets that he cannot spare time for an audience.”
It was almost bearable that the Crown Prince’s attendant had come in person rather than sending a letter, but…
“So I’m being snubbed, then?”
“He must be terribly busy.”
Rena was quick to interject.
“Of course—the Founding Festival is coming up soon, after all.”
“His Highness the Crown Prince is such an important person. He must be rushed off his feet.”
Yugyadan tried her best to smooth things over, but my mind remained unchanged.
“No matter how I look at it, I’ve been turned away.”
I sank into gloom.
“Additionally, Lord Sirua has extended an invitation to Lady Arelin for a tea time at his palace. He expressed a desire to spend an afternoon with you there.”
Lord Sirua?
I recalled the excessively beautiful young man I’d met at the tea party—he’d looked like a female version of Fession.
Under different circumstances, I would have declined such attention as burdensome, but caught in this confusion, my feelings were muddled.
“…If I have the time, I’ll go.”
“Then I shall convey to him that you are considering it favorably.”
I felt even worse.
“Sigh.”
He wouldn’t even give me the chance to clarify.
This sort of thing needed to be cleared up immediately, without room for misunderstanding.
“Don’t worry, my lady—the Founding Festival Ball is in just two days.”
As I was heaving sigh after sigh, Uni rushed to console me.
“Then what’s the use? Children aren’t allowed at the ball.”
“Children thirteen and under have a separate space arranged for them.”
“Will you be able to see His Highness the Crown Prince there?”
“Really?!”
I lifted my head sharply, and my maids smiled at me in unison.
“Now, why don’t you ask the Grand Duke to take you along?”
“Ah…”
I’d crossed one mountain only to find another looming ahead.

* * *

At that same moment, in Mehren’s study.
Mehren had dragged out Valer—who, unusually, had been wandering the inner pavilion instead of holing up in it—and passed him a stack of documents to review.
Valer lay half-sprawled on the couch with an expression of displeasure, his chin propped on his hand as he signed off on the pile of papers.
“I hear you made a death threat to Arelin.”
His indifferent gaze, which had been skimming the documents with clinical precision, suddenly fixed on Mehren.
“Your daughter tells me such things? I thought it was supposed to be a secret from me. Are you treating your mother like the lesser parent?”
Mehren clicked his tongue.
“What exactly did you say to the child?”
There were things that could be said, and things that couldn’t.
During their bedtime routine—which had now become an established ritual—when Mehren read aloud from a book at her pillow, Arelin had rambled on to him about what had happened during the day.
That her biological father had issued a murder threat and then said he’d do anything for her.
Unlike Mehren, who’d doubted his own ears in shock, Arelin’s expression had been so serene that he’d wondered for a moment if he’d mishearing.
“Do you not realize you should watch your tongue around the child? Must I advise you on this too?”
“I didn’t say anything in particular.”
“If it’s not worth mentioning, why did it sound like a death threat to Arelin?”
Valer’s handsome eyes curved with a slight smile.
“If you’re curious, then tell me why you became her mother.”
“That’s a secret.”
“Then so is mine.”
He stared at Mehren.
“Why. What.”
“It irritates me.”
Mehren’s brow furrowed irritably. Only Valer, his master, could stir emotion in the normally composed and mannered Mehren.
After setting down the completed documents on the table, Valer held Mehren’s gaze.
In the Northern Castle, every day had been struggle and battle, time flowing without sensation. But returning to Halbern Manor in the Imperial Capital, Valer noticed how distinctly everything had shifted in each passing moment.
“You’ve really become a mother, Mehren.”
“What nonsense are you spouting now…”
At the dangerous edge in her voice—one that promised serious consequences if he used that “dear” tone one more time—Valer’s lips twitched with suppressed amusement.
“It’s a bit strange. You’ve always drawn your own line and never known how to step outside it.”
Mehren fell still.
“I never could figure out if it was proper restraint, or a lack of desire, or the absence of ambition, or simply the fulfillment of duty, or your nature, or disinterest in others, or mere indolence. You were always a mystery to me—someone who never changed, always holding your place.”
“What are you trying to say?”
For some reason, a wave of resistance washed over Mehren. She wanted to silence him right then and there.
“So now, the fact that you’re showing such deep concern for someone, investing such affection…”
“…”
“I find it rather surprising.”
His voice was mild but utterly hollow. His gaze carried the same quality.
“It’s your first time showing attachment to someone, after all.”
“Valer, stop this nonsense.”
“Am I wrong?”
Tell me I’m mistaken, will you?
His tone wasn’t accusatory, nor was there any edge of reproach or mockery. He simply laid out the facts, plainly and without judgment.
It felt suffocating.
Mehren fought the urge to bolt from her seat, biting her lip as she struggled to appear unmoved.
Not that it mattered—he’d already grasped everything long ago.
“Everything you own, everyone beneath you—I handed all of it to you on a platter, didn’t I?”
Your name, your station, a townhouse in the Capital you’d never visited, estates, the reputation of a genius, your current position, your standing and wealth.
And.
Even the seat of my regent.
“You simply fulfill what’s given to you, never desiring more. You never have.”
“…”
“As if you’re constantly reminding yourself that things must be this way.”
As if even this position is more than you deserve.
“That’s why I’m surprised. I thought you’d raise the child the same way.”
His words struck like a blade. Mehren had to clench her teeth to keep from crying out.
The assessment was startlingly accurate.
It had been exactly that way.
She had kept her distance, telling herself not to draw closer, that she was merely a temporary guardian, that she would have to step aside whenever her master returned, drawing her own line and withdrawing behind it.
How much loneliness she had inflicted, how much she had made the child suffer.
That small one.
“It looks good on you.”
Watching her master smile without knowledge of the past, seeing only what was before him now, Mehren could not bring herself to raise her head.
Before this master—her longtime savior, her friend, the one who believed in her—she had no face to show.
He had urged her to come back, and yet the child he’d left in her care…
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
An indifferent answer came to her abrupt apology. Mehren’s expression crumpled.
“Everything.”
She could pretend not to know, could brush it aside as if nothing were wrong, but she couldn’t be brazen about it. He couldn’t be fooled. Mehren lowered her head.
“I didn’t do as well as you believed I would. Arelin… I may have broken something I could have raised better. That child could have…”
“Mehren.”
Watching Mehren stretch out her words, overwhelmed by belated guilt, Valer sighed.
“I didn’t entrust Arelin to you because I believed you’d do well.”
Mehren couldn’t grasp this.
Then why had he given her the child?
“Isn’t it strange that you, with no experience raising children, encountered no difficulties? Wouldn’t that be odd?”
“Then why did you…”
“Because it’s you.”
Even if he could return to that moment a thousand times over, Valer’s choice would be the same.
Because Mehren was the only human he believed in.
“Do you remember what I said when I first entrusted you with the regent’s post?”
Mehren raised her head.
“I said you could fail.”
Valer’s decision to install Mehren as regent, bypassing all the long-serving retainers who had served Halbern, had drawn considerable resentment. Yet no one dared oppose him.
“That you could ruin it completely, squander everything, collapse entirely if you wished.”
The reason he had entrusted such an important position—one that carried the authority of the Grand Duke—to an orphan with no connections.
“Because it mattered that you held that place.”
If he gave it to anyone else, they’d probably botch it spectacularly.
“This time was no different.”
His profound distrust of humanity remained unchanged, and there was only one person Valer could genuinely say he believed in.
Under the weight of that trust, Mehren felt ashamed.
“Which is why I must do it well.”
“Did I ask you to?”
No, but it seemed as though she should.
Because she could not become a stain on him.
“I don’t keep you beside me because you’re useful or a genius. Isn’t it time you understood, my intimate confidant?”
Valer spoke with a note of tired patience. Mehren’s eyes sank into dark hollows.
It was Mehren who broke the silence that fell like death itself.
“Then, as your intimate confidant, allow me to overstep just this once.”
Their gazes collided in the empty air.
“Is Arelin really your daughter?”

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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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