My Body Has Been Possessed By Someone - Chapter 135

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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 135
Celia spoke rapidly, her words tumbling out.
“Seon-hee. That woman poisoned Alexandro’s older brother.”
Why was I not shocked?
It was startling, yes, but deep down a thought surfaced effortlessly: ‘I knew it would be something like this.’
Perhaps—just perhaps—Mother had done it. That premonition had come to me in the carriage.
“And?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“And?”
“A-and what do you mean…?”
Celia let out a hollow laugh, unable to believe Kanna’s composure.
“I’m curious whether you’ll remain so calm after hearing this. But that’s not all. Seon-hee did something absolutely terrible to Alexandro as well. Do you know why he never ages?”
Moisture gathered in Celia’s eyes.
“Seon-hee did it. That woman made Alexandro just like the Divine Spirit.”
“The Divine Spirit?”
“Yes. She made him eternal—never to age, never to die. That vicious woman cursed him with immortality….”
The faces of the Divine Spirit and Father flashed through my mind.
Faces eternally preserved in youth and beauty, as if spring itself had been taxidermied.
I had thought they had simply transcended the mundane and reached a state where aging ceased. Everyone believed that.
“Mother couldn’t possibly have such power.”
“No, she does.”
Celia wiped away her tears roughly.
“When Seon-hee left the Divine Spirit and escaped the Grand Temple, she stole ancient alchemical texts. And she hid them in the Underground Laboratory beneath the Adis Mansion.”
The Underground Laboratory?
The one I use for my research—are you saying ancient alchemical texts are hidden there?
“Find them, Young Lady of House Adis.”
Celia finally composed herself and spoke calmly.
“Learn ancient alchemy and escape the House of Adis. You can do it. With that power, you’ll be able to break free from Alexandro.”
“….”
“This is why I asked to meet you.”
The more I listened, the more it unsettled me.
No—it wasn’t displeasure.
It was dread. The solid ground beneath my feet, the world I thought I knew, was crumbling once again.
“How do you know all this?”
“I know. That woman pretended to be my friend and used me.”
“I see. So?”
“Pardon?”
“Let’s say Mother was the villainess of the age, as you claim. But that’s not something I did.”
I spoke with unwavering conviction.
“I’ve done nothing wrong to Father. So why should I be treated as a criminal?”
“…How shameless can you possibly be?”
Celia glared at her with eyes that refused to believe what she was hearing.
“Aren’t you ashamed? Isn’t it humiliating to have been born from the womb of such a wicked woman?”
Her words came pouring out like arrows.
Yet Kanna Adis didn’t flinch from a single one.
Being pointed at because of her origins was something she’d grown accustomed to long ago.
As a bastard, born with black hair and black eyes, I had been treated as filth for an extraordinarily long time. Now there was simply one more accusation added to the pile—that my mother had been a villainess.
But that composure twisted Celia’s expression.
“Yes, of course that’s not your fault. But do you know what Alexandro Adis has had to endure because of you? Do you know how far he’s been broken? He…!”
That was when it happened.
Tap, tap. The sound of knuckles rapping against the wall echoed from behind.
Celia’s gaze shifted past Kanna, and in that instant, she froze like a tree struck by lightning.
“Y-Your Grace…”
What?
I spun around sharply. At the same moment, I met a pair of cold eyes.
Alexandro Adis’s eyes.
“H-How did you…?”
Celia murmured. When had he come in? She hadn’t even noticed.
Alexandro Adis regarded Kanna and Celia in turn. Then he spoke quietly.
“Stop playing detective.”
I felt a pang for a moment, but I spoke without showing it.
“No. I’ll decide how far I go.”
And I continued sharply.
“Leave. I still have things to discuss with your mistress.”
Alexandro Adis furrowed his brow as if bewildered.
“I have no mistress.”
“Then what is Celia? I hear you meet with her regularly in secret.”
“She’s my alchemist.”
“Why would you need to meet an alchemist so frequently?”
“Because she makes my medicine.”
“Medicine? Why would someone as robust as Your Grace need medicine?”
I continued questioning him deliberately, as if provoking him, but Alexandro Adis simply answered earnestly.
“Unfortunately, that’s how it is.”
And he turned his gaze toward the trembling Celia.
“Celia, you’ve overstepped what I wanted.”
“Y-Your Grace.”
“I warned you not to seek out my daughter.”
“I did it for your sake…”
“You did?”
Alexandro Adis asked as if genuinely curious.
“What right do you have to say such things?”
“I thought that if the Duke’s daughter remained by your side, it would only bring you harm.”
“Where my daughter is has nothing to do with you.”
His low voice was eerily calm. Yet Celia trembled with terror as though struck by a sledgehammer.
“Go.”
Alexandro Adis gestured with his eyes. When Kanna Adis showed no intention of following, he spoke with a sigh.
“Celia won’t say another word, will she, Celia?”
“…Yes, Your Grace.”
At that point, Kanna Adis could no longer resist and followed him out.
* * *
Prince Argon and his carriage were nowhere to be found.
“Are you looking for the Crown Prince?”
“Yes.”
“I sent him away after persuading him well.”
Persuaded? How could he…?
“How admirable—using Prince Argon like that.”
My words caught in my throat.
He had investigated my background, kidnapped my lover—no, the alchemist—and yet he called it “admirable.”
‘And he called me his daughter.’
My daughter.
Those words struck me like a hammer blow to the ears. He had never called me that before, not once.
I remained silent for a long time after boarding his carriage. Only after considerable time had passed did I speak.
“Is it true? Did my mother really…?”
Did she truly make you live eternally, never aging, surviving alone while everyone around you crumbled into dust?
The thought was so cruel I couldn’t bring myself to speak it aloud.
“It’s not your concern. You didn’t need to know.”
“But I’ve already learned of it. Please tell me.”
Alexandro Adis exhaled deeply.
He reproached himself for underestimating me. He never imagined I would manipulate Prince Argon like this.
He hadn’t realized I could corner him so thoroughly.
“Yes. That woman stopped my time.”
“Why would she do such a thing?”
“Because she hated me. And I hated her.”
I couldn’t help but ask.
“Why did you hate her? When she met my uncle while pregnant with another man’s child?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“That woman used my brother like a tool.”
“….”
“Perhaps because I was young then, I grew angry over something that wasn’t my affair. And I didn’t hide that anger.”
“So… you did such things simply because you disliked each other?”
“That woman always retaliated against those who harmed her. I was merely one of them.”
Yes. Mother was that kind of person.
Because I am too.
Kanna Adis thought what a terrifyingly ruthless mother and daughter they were.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s not your concern.”
“I think it is.”
“What?”
“I apologize that my mother destroyed your life. Since my mother committed the crime, please punish me instead.”
Alexandro Adis’s eyes grew sharp. Kanna continued.
“Isn’t that the atonement you desired?”
“….”
“That’s why you made me live miserably all this time. You made me pay the price of my mother’s sins in her stead, didn’t you?”
I was raised not as Kanna Adis, but as the daughter of a criminal and an object of punishment.
The Divine Spirit’s words were correct.
I was bred as an object of hatred.
“That’s why you raised me.”
“….”
“To vent your anger on me, the daughter of the woman who cursed you—Seon-hee.”
Kanna Adis stared at him with eyes like glass marbles.
“So you wanted me to be miserable? To you, I’m someone who doesn’t deserve happiness.”
There was no answer. It was a familiar silence.
Kanna Adis took it as confirmation. There could be nothing else.
After all, there was only one possible answer.
Either he loved me, or he hated me.
There was no other way he would have raised me. The daughter of the woman who killed his brother and cursed his life….
It couldn’t be love.
It had to be hatred.
Suddenly, the past flashed before me.
A childhood stained with every form of abuse.
Days when I had no allies, surrounded only by enemies, when each breath was agony—those hellish hours.
Only now did Kanna Adis understand why she had fallen into hell.
To Alexandro Adis, she had been a criminal from the start. So it was only right that she burned and screamed in the fires of damnation.
“Then you succeeded.”
Kanna Adis smiled.
“Back then, I truly wanted to die.”
For a moment, Alexandro Adis’s eyes wavered. Kanna Adis looked into them and asked.
“How does it feel? Are you pleased?”
She would never have dared speak so boldly before, but now she no longer feared him.
In that moment, I finally understood why I had always feared him.
Perhaps the truth I had buried deep within my heart, the one I had turned away from for so long,
was that I had been yearning for his acknowledgment.
I had wanted his attention.
Rejected hundreds, thousands of times, yet I still harbored a deep longing for him—stealing glances at his back during my childhood, hoping he would turn to look at me—
Perhaps.
Someday. Just once.
Like a fool.
“It’s a pity. If only I had been a more skilled alchemist, I truly would have succeeded in disappearing forever.”
If that had happened, would he have seen me not as the daughter of a criminal, but simply as another human being?
‘I wish I had truly died back then.’
A hollow laugh escaped me.
“If I had succeeded, would it have brought you comfort in your misery?”
Alexandro Adis opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again without uttering a word. When he clenched his fist, the veins on the back of his hand became prominent.
Strangely, he seemed flustered in a way that was unlike him.
After a long silence, Alexandro Adis slowly parted his lips.
“You weren’t trying to die, were you?”
Perhaps it was my imagination. His voice seemed to tremble ever so slightly.
It must certainly be my imagination. He was someone who wouldn’t blink an eye even if I died.
I simply smiled.
“What a pitiful man.”
My mother had destroyed his life.
I genuinely pitied him.
“I acknowledge that your life is tragic. And I acknowledge that what my mother did to you was cruel.”
“Answer me. Were you trying to die?”
“But I will not sympathize with your misfortune. Just as you never sympathized with mine.”
“Kanna Adis, answer me.”
“And I will not answer questions I do not wish to answer. Just as you do not.”
Alexandro Adis fell silent.
“Duke Adis, we were never truly family, were we?”
I smiled gently at the man who had raised me all these years.
“I apologize for calling you father all this time. I had no right to do so.”
“….”
“Please, never call me your daughter again. You have no right to do so either.”

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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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