My Body Has Been Possessed By Someone - Chapter 246

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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 246
* * *
“Duke Valentino, what on earth possessed you to commit such an act?”
After the funeral of Crown Prince Kasil and Concubine Teresa concluded, Marquis Mercy arrived as the representative of the Aristocratic Council to confront him.
“I have watched over you since you were a boy. You are not the sort of man to do something without reason. What scheme is this?”
“Well, I’m not entirely sure….”
Silvien Valentino chuckled softly and lifted his wrist to display the iron shackles binding it.
Their bewilderment was entirely justified. A man so rational he seemed almost inhuman had suddenly rampaged like a mad beast.
Just moments before, Orsini Adis had come and posed the same question.
Yet Silvien Valentino had given him a different answer than what he offered now.
“The truth is, I recently became interested in a certain woman.”
“…What? You, a Duke?”
The Marquis narrowed his brow as if he’d heard something utterly absurd. At that reaction, Silvien Valentino raised one eyebrow with a wry tilt.
“I am still a man, after all.”
“Ah, yes, of course.”
“Had I allowed Crown Prince Kasil to live, that woman might have perished.”
“….”
“I jest, of course. Do laugh.”
“Of course you do. You truly are mischievous. Making jokes even at a time like this….”
Except it was the truth.
Silvien Valentino laughed quietly to himself. The absurdity of his own nature was simply unbearable.
“Duke Valentino, speak honestly with me.”
“You have observed me since I was a boy, Marquis.”
“That I have.”
“Then what do you suppose I shall do now?”
Silvien Valentino lowered his gaze to the shackles adorning his wrists. Some distant memory seemed to flicker across his mind, and the Marquis’s face drained of color.
“There were no shortage of wicked men who sought to steal what that boy possessed. I wonder what they are doing now…?”
He smiled thinly.
“Resting peacefully in their graves, I should imagine?”
“…Yes.”
“I regret that one of them was your brother. Or should I offer congratulations? After all, you ascended to your title because of him.”
“Duke! Are you threatening me now?”
Marquis Mercy’s voice erupted in fury.
“Stop your posturing! You are ruined! Shackled and imprisoned without a single weapon to your name….”
In that instant, there came a soft clink.
The shackles clattered to the floor. The Marquis’s lips pressed into a rigid line.
Silvien Valentino’s expression remained utterly unmoved. He tore away the remaining shackle with one hand and set it down on the ground.
“I have never carried weapons to begin with. I find useless things deeply distasteful. They clutter, they break so easily.”
Silvien Valentino rose to his feet, massaging his stiff wrists. He added with deliberate indifference.
“Impractical, one might say?”
A long shadow stretched across Marquis Mercy’s body. The Marquis hastily shouted to the Knight Guards surrounding him.
“What are you doing right now! This man….”
The Marquis’s words trailed off.
The Knight Guards saw everything.
Heard everything.
They simply stood quiet, watching in silence.
“….”
Marquis Mercy swallowed hard. His mind sharpened as though cold water had been poured over his head.
They’ve already been bought.
“I will expose you. Everything from your past misdeeds as a young boy to your blackmail of me now, all of it…!”
“Why would you say such a thing? How disappointing.”
Silvien Valentino grumbled with terrifying gentleness.
“If you do that, I would have no choice but to escape from this Prison, would I?”
“….”
“You won’t be able to sleep peacefully, Marquis.”
Marquis Mercy ground his teeth.
“What exactly do you expect me to do! You murdered a member of the Imperial Family in front of people, in front of the Empire’s citizens! The moment I protect you, I’ll be branded a traitor alongside you!”
“I understand. So please remain calm.”
“…What?”
“Remain calm. Do nothing.”
Silvien Valentino stepped backward, burying himself once more in the shadows of the dark Prison.
“Simply stay still.”
* * *
The hardest moments forge the strongest resolve.
Silvien Valentino felt the weight of that tiresome truth once more.
It was true. Had he been a Young Master raised gently under a guardian’s protection, he was certain he would have simply crumbled in such a moment.
Eleven years old. The age at which I shouldered the vast Valentino Duchy. And Valentino shone with such brilliant splendor that a young boy could never guard it alone.
How many hyenas had been entranced by that dazzling radiance? It was meaningless to count.
In those days, I learned how to survive. It was not particularly difficult. All one needed was to become more vicious, more contemptible, and more merciless than one’s enemies.
From the refined methods of nobility to the vulgar ways practiced by back-alley men, there was nothing I had not done to survive.
‘They say good men go to heaven, but evil men can go anywhere.’
Silvien Valentino hummed a wandering bard’s melody. He had no interest in heaven.
So this crisis was merely an opportunity to display his specialty.
“So?”
Orsini Adis glared at him with displeasure.
“You’re asking me to do something like that?”
“All the preparations are already complete. You need only execute the plan, Duke.”
“The fact that you’ve devised such a scheme is chilling. Were you truly planning to commit treason?”
“Not at all.”
Orsini Adis did not answer. Instead, he fixed a piercing gaze upon his counterpart.
“Listen, Silvien. Do I look like the type to do something like that? No matter how much of a rogue I am, I don’t cross that line.”
At the sharp rebuke, Silvien leaned his back against the wall. Then he let out a quiet laugh.
“Then don’t do it.”
Silence fell between them.
“…You’re truly insufferable.”
Orsini rose to his feet.
“Don’t misunderstand. I’m cooperating because you ended up like this trying to save Kanna Adis.”
He turned to leave, then paused and threw out one final remark.
“And carry a sword with you. How long are you going to keep fighting like a savage with your bare hands?”
At least the world gets to see that this bastard is more barbaric than I am. Orsini grumbled to himself as he left the prison.
It wasn’t just Orsini. Countless people visited his prison in secret. Silvien conducted every move like a maestro leading an orchestra.
Meanwhile, the Valentino Duchy was systematically exterminated, its wealth seized, and a death sentence was pronounced.
It was satisfying. Now was the time to introduce discord.
“Pardon me, but Ju-hwa has come to visit.”
As expected, she came again today. Silvien shook his head at the Knight Guard who reported like a servant.
“Turn her away.”
It wasn’t out of mere distaste. Silvien intended to back Ju-hwa into a corner.
A short while later.
“Young Lady Kanna Adis has arrived.”
Silvien closed the book he had been reading. He glanced around.
His eyes took in the finest blankets softly covering the floor, wine, and other luxuries.
* * *
“Silvien.”
Kanna could not believe what lay before her eyes.
She had been certain he had bribed the Knight Guards and was leisurely enjoying reading by now….
“Silvien, come to your senses.”
He sat with his back against the corner of the prison cell. Heavy chains wound tightly around his upper body, and fresh blood trickled from his lips as though he had been beaten.
“Let me go inside so I can treat him.”
The Knight Guard said nothing and glanced at Silvien’s face. Kanna urged him on.
“He’s bound anyway, so he can’t do anything. Open it.”
After a moment, the heavy iron bars swung open.
“Silvien.”
As she drew closer, he lifted his eyelids. Kanna whispered softly.
“Are you conscious?”
That arrogant Silvien, reduced to such a state. The prison didn’t even have a single blanket. His appearance was so pitiful, so unlike him, that my heart clenched painfully.
“I brought medicine just in case… Wait a moment.”
Silvien watched her with half-open eyes, a flicker of amusement playing at his lips—until she lifted her head, and it vanished in an instant.
“Ah….”
The moment she applied medicine to his split lip, a soft groan escaped him.
“It hurts.”
“It’s not that I’m being rough with you. The wound has simply torn open severely. This is….”
I trailed off mid-sentence.
It looked like a wound that had just formed moments ago.
After a brief silence, I whispered to him.
“Silvien.”
“Yes.”
“Are you perhaps acting?”
Perhaps he was scheming something and couldn’t afford suspicion, so he was subtly leaning against me while feigning the role of a pitiful patient.
“You don’t need to act in front of me. I’ll keep your secret.”
Silvien stared at me intently. He seemed displeased for some reason. But it was only momentary—he smiled wryly and spoke.
“Did Orsini tell you?”
“No.”
Was that man in on it too?
“Then how did you know?”
“That’s….”
I swallowed back the words I was about to say—that I’d kidnapped your knight and sprayed hypnotic incense in his face to find out.
“A secret.”
Snap, crack. The iron chains that had bound Silvien’s body snapped like taffy. At his serene expression, I felt my spirit deflate.
‘So Orsini was right when he said we were alike….’
It was true.
I hesitated before asking quietly.
“What do you intend to do now?”
“That’s….”
Silvien drew out his words before narrowing his eyes to slits.
“A secret.”
“….”
“Why did you come to this place?”
“Ju-hwa told me. I wanted to thank you first. I never expected you would think of me so much.”
I spoke with deliberate clarity.
“But may I ask why you went so far?”
“It was to protect you.”
“It’s fine, so tell me honestly. Or is there something you need to ask of me?”
It was a natural question from my perspective.
Had Silvien ever helped me without compensation?
Not once. There was always a corresponding reason.
A sense of responsibility, or something he wanted in return.
Yet he had saved me while taking on such danger without any obligation or price…how was I supposed to believe that?
I couldn’t help but feel grateful and yet unsettled at the same time.
“There is no other intention. I simply did it to protect you, Kanna.”
“Then why exactly? You dislike me, don’t you?”
“Who says such a thing? It’s quite the opposite.”
“…The opposite?”
“Yes.”
At his rebuttal, Kanna Adis muttered in bewilderment.
“What…? So you’re saying you like me?”
At her murmured question, Silvien Valentino gazed down at her intently.
“Of course. There is no man alive who would refuse a woman as beautiful as you.”
Did she think it was a jest? Kanna Adis let out a dry laugh and countered.
“You refused, though. You did.”
When Ju-hwa had stripped and thrown herself at him before, he had driven her away—so what was this? At that pointed look, Silvien Valentino answered with utmost seriousness.
“That was Ju-hwa, not you. Had it been you, I would not have refused.”
“What did you just say?”
Kanna Adis wore the expression of someone who had heard something utterly absurd.
“Do you not understand what it means that you would not refuse me in the chamber?”
“I wonder. Do you think I would not comprehend such a thing?”
“…”
Kanna Adis studied him with suspicious eyes. She seemed utterly convinced that such desire did not exist within him at all.
It was such an unexpectedly innocent misconception that it was genuinely amusing. And so Silvien Valentino laughed.
“Why not put it to the test?”
Kanna Adis’s eyes widened. She appeared startled.
Yet Silvien Valentino feigned ignorance and slowly lowered his head. He whispered mischievously against her ear.
“Did I not tell you? He would pale in comparison to that little prince.”
Kanna Adis narrowed her brows.
A little prince? What did that…?
‘Ah, could it be Lorenzo?’
In that instant, a memory surfaced. The Party Venue in the Yalden Kingdom, where ruin had descended. That man who had whispered unspeakable obscenities into her ear as they danced together.
‘With such a face, to speak such words.’
As the memory rekindled, heat flooded Kanna Adis’s cheeks.
“Silvien Valentino, wherever did you learn such vulgar language?”
At that, he brushed back his disheveled silver hair and murmured.
“I am far more vulgar than I appear. Especially when I am in the chamber.”
“Enough with the wordplay—let us speak seriously!”
Silvien Valentino let out a laugh. It was banter laced with half-truths, and this exchange of jests proved strangely delightful.
Did he like her?
Of course, he did.
She was the most captivating woman he had ever beheld. The most fierce, the most relentless, the most intense.
And the most dangerous. Even the venom that threatened ruin should he falter held an irresistible allure for him.
So, did he love her?
That remained uncertain.
It was a question without answer.
What was certain, however, was that one day, at some moment, Kanna Adis had simply tossed a single seed into my chest and walked away.
My heart had always been barren soil where nothing had ever grown, so I was merely curious about the nature of this seed I held for the first time.
What could it be? What would it bloom into?
If I nurtured it tenderly beneath rain and wind and sunlight, it seemed it would become something truly beautiful….
It was only natural that I did not wish to lose it.
“I wonder… what will happen?”
Silvien Valentino murmured languidly, a faint smile gracing his lips.

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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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