My Body Has Been Possessed By Someone - Chapter 217

—————

This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

—————

Chapter 217
* * *
“A failure?”
The dark-haired girl spoke.
“You call me that, and you’ll regret it later?”
With those words, she shoved him and ran.
And the scene shifted.
Rain fell. Within the Forest drenched by torrential downpour, he knelt and gazed up at the woman.
Her sharp heel pressed down upon his thigh.
In that moment, he wanted to speak. To reveal what she had warned him of when she was still a girl. Those words that had lingered in his mouth all this time.
“Back then, I was….”
“Shut up.”
She cut off his words.
“I don’t want to hear anything. Whatever it is, nothing at all.”
The rain poured down like violence itself.
“You must remain garbage forever. Don’t you dare become anything else now.”
Then suddenly, she laughed.
“But who knows?”
Her smiling crimson lips were so beautiful… and so cruel.
“If you die for me, I might forgive you.”
He closed his eyes. Then opened them again.
“Close your eyes.”
He told her.
“Don’t look.”
In that instant, a black force pierced through his abdomen.
It tore through skin, shattered bone with a sickening crack, and burst through his back. His body was skewered while still alive. The pain was utterly unbearable.
Yet he did not evade. He simply endured as the force pierced through him again and again.
His thighs, his calves, his abdomen, his chest, his shoulders, and finally even his neck. He felt his entire body torn and tattered everywhere. He collapsed like a worm.
She looked down at him with eyes devoid of feeling, devoid of mercy.
In that instant, what he felt was profound relief.
It was done.
It was finally done.
* * *
“Hurry!”
The Physicians rushed forward.
“Hurry to the Duke’s Chamber!”
In Duke Adis’s Chamber, the red-haired man convulsed upon the bed.
“Gasp, gasp, gasp.”
He drew ragged, suffocating breaths. Every muscle locked rigid, his limbs twisted at unnatural angles.
“Bring the medicine, now!”
The physicians pressed down on his body and hastily poured sedative into his mouth.
How much time had passed?
The man’s body finally subsided. Slowly, like a turbulent sea calming after a storm. He grew docile. The physicians finally exhaled in relief and rose to their feet.
“Is everyone all right?”
“Are any of you injured?”
It was fortunate the incident ended with this. Before they grew accustomed to it, several bones had been broken.
Now that they had experienced it multiple times, everyone had learned how to administer the medicine effectively and swiftly.
Orsini Adis. The new Duke Adis’s seizures.
* * *
The seizures began in the Yalden Kingdom.
The day before she married. He lay in bed, contemplating the marriage ceremony that would arrive tomorrow morning. She who would become the wife of that foolish prince.
It felt like slowly sinking into murky waters.
Yet it did not remain merely a feeling.
“Gasp—”
His throat suddenly constricted as if someone were strangling him. His muscles convulsed. His heart pounded as though it would burst. He thrashed and writhed.
That terrible spasm continued for some time before fading only when his entire body was exhausted.
He pressed his trembling hands against his face.
No. It couldn’t be.
Not because of something so trivial.
It couldn’t be because of that woman’s marriage.
Yet after that day—more precisely, after she rejected me—the seizures grew worse.
I couldn’t sleep. I simply couldn’t sleep.
Eventually, I summoned a physician and disclosed my symptoms. I did not mention that she was the eldest daughter of Adis.
I merely said the seizures began the day before a certain woman’s wedding.
“It is likely a symptom caused by heat of the heart.”
“Heat of the heart?”
“Yes. A disease where fire qi accumulates in the heart, and in your case, the cause appears to be, if I may be so bold….”
The physician hesitated as if frightened.
“It seems close to lovesickness….”
Lovesickness?
I’m suffering from lovesickness because of that woman?
Orsini wanted to seize the physician by the collar and cast him out.
Yet that was merely his habitual impulse. In truth, strangely, no anger arose.
“Leave.”
Alone, Orsini fell into thought for a long while. After much deliberation, I opened a drawer. I retrieved the small medicine bottle within it.
I stared at the bottle, then uncorked it and drank it all at once. Then I buried my face in both hands.
How much time had passed? I opened my eyes again and lifted my head.
“….”
She stood leaning against the door.
With a mocking smile, as if amused. Orsini regarded her quietly.
I interlaced my fingers and placed them on the desk. Then I remained motionless. Frozen in that moment.
A stray thought crossed my mind—perhaps this was for the best.
That woman would relish this farce immensely.
Orsini Adis, reduced to a fool dependent on hallucinogens because he couldn’t forget a single woman—she would savor this ending.
She was a woman incapable of forgiveness. She wouldn’t even permit the act of asking for it.
What she desired from him was neither atonement nor reflection. Only suffering.
Exquisite suffering—the kind where skin peels away with each passing second.
That alone was all she wanted… so I had no choice but to give it.
It was all I could offer.
Orsini twisted his lips into a smile.
“Mock me all you wish. You’ve gotten what you wanted.”
She mocked him. It was beautiful to behold.
So beautiful that I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
For a very long time.
* * *
Alexandro Adis’s absence continued.
Then one day, a letter arrived in Alexandro’s handwriting.
【Inherit the title.】
I subtly proposed it to Kalen, but he refused.
“Isn’t my elder brother the acting head of house? Don’t thrust this obligation onto me.”
I wanted to seize Kalen by the collar and scream that this was originally his responsibility.
But that too was merely the reaction of the ‘self’ that lingered in my mind. In reality, there was no disturbance. Nothing mattered.
And so I inherited the ducal title.
“Your Grace, a marriage proposal has arrived. The prospective bride is….”
“Very well.”
The Butler looked up in surprise. Orsini answered.
“Accept it.”
From some point onward, my world had split into two: that woman, and everything else. Because of this, it mattered not who the other party was.
Whether a beggar in the streets or the princess in the Imperial Palace, they were all the same to me.
* * *
“I can offer Your Highness nothing but the position of Duchess.”
“Then why did you accept this proposal? Out of duty as head of house?”
Orsini nodded. Princess Lilienne let out a soft laugh at his rudeness. Yet she was not displeased. Rather, her eyes gleamed.
“Fine, I’ll be honest too. The reason I chose you is simple. You are the Duke of Adis.”
Princess Lilienne gestured toward him.
“Your appearance is striking enough to make me shine wherever we go, and with the bloodline of the Descendants of Holy Knights, your power will be eternal.”
Princess Lilienne laughed, regarding him as one would a finest accessory.
“I find power games far more intriguing than games of love.”
The man before me could provide exactly that.
“Fortunately, our desires align. What do you say? Don’t you think we’ll get along splendidly?”
* * *
Orsini Adis had married.
Yet on their wedding night, he did not touch even the tip of her finger. He had no desire to.
“I am your wife now. Are you truly refusing the duties of the bridal chamber?”
“Yes.”
Princess Lilienne appeared wounded in pride, but she withdrew without protest.
“Fine, I shall wait for now. But do not forget—you must produce an heir. That is why I married you, is it not?”
“I understand.”
“But let me be clear on this. You do not expect me to remain chaste while waiting for you to look my way, do you?”
“Not at all.”
“I shall take lovers. Young men, more beautiful and younger than you.”
“Do as you wish.”
Princess Lilienne’s lips curved into a smile.
“Now I understand. You have a woman you love, do you not? And she does not even spare you a glance?”
She laughed mockingly before him, her voice ringing with cruel amusement.
“How pitiful. The great Orsini, pining in unrequited love. Tell me—who is this woman?”
Orsini did not answer.
Thus the Duke and Duchess began their married life in separate chambers from the very first night. Returning to his own room, Orsini sprawled alone upon the bed, staring up at the ceiling in thought.
Was this a dream, or was it reality?
Perhaps he had died back then.
When he had been deceived by the Black Apostles, when he had thrown away his life to protect something that was not Kanna.
Perhaps he had truly perished in that moment, and what remained was merely the afterimage of a life already ended.
If that were not the case, then why did everything feel
so false?
Life did not feel like life. It felt like a shoddy play observed from above. Everything that had been real in those days seemed to have been taken away by that woman, leaving nothing behind.
No, that was not quite right. She had left one thing.
Orsini stared at his right arm—the limb he had lost when he willingly consumed the poison she gave him.
It had miraculously returned, but perhaps it was an aftereffect. He sometimes suffered excruciating pain, as though the arm were being severed anew.
Just as he did now.
Yet he told no one. He had never intended to seek treatment in the first place.
Instead of searching for painkillers, Orsini reached out and grasped the hallucinogen on the nightstand. He deftly uncorked it and let the liquid flow into his mouth.
He closed his eyes, then opened them.
She was perched at the edge of his bed, looking down at him.
Orsini gazed up at her from where he lay. Though cold sweat beaded his brow from the pain of his severing arm, he did not utter a single cry.
Instead, he brought that arm to his lips.
He pierced her with his gaze and kissed the arm she had destroyed.
He loved this pain.
* * *
After he created the hallucination of her, his seizures had diminished.
But they had not vanished entirely. Yet the darkness concealed what remained imperfect.
In daylight, Orsini Adis was flawless. No matter where one looked, there was nothing to criticize.
Once a ruffian, he had finally matured—or so the whispers began, calling him a perfect Duke.
He knew he was dying well. He intended to continue dying in precisely this manner.
Outwardly a respectable Duke, but in truth a crippled drug addict, writhing in immortal agony.
As she desired, he would suffer this way for a lifetime, dying in torment—or so he had planned.
“Your Grace, Duke Adis… she has come to see you.”
“Who?”
“Lady Kanna Adis, sir…”
The fountain pen stilled mid-signature.
In the silence, Orsini stared down at the documents.
“I will never seek you out again.”
“So do not appear before me again. At that time, I will…”
It was only a moment. Orsini signed the document and answered quietly.
“Let her in.”
He flipped the papers aside.
The old memory overlaps once more. Even the sincerity I could not bring myself to speak aloud.
“At that time, I will not let you go.”
You should not have come.
Kanna.

—————

This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

—————