My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 18

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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 18
Chapter 2. Upheaval (8)
Opera—as if she should consent to this madness for the sake of some theatrical performance.
As the Box Seat door closed, a silence descended as though the world beyond had been severed.
Celia had no choice but to accept Lucius’s proposal. It was not a choice born of her own will, but imposed upon her by circumstance. The eyes of the crowd had fixed upon her, and Evandor was watching with such intensity it burned.
‘I’m going to be sick.’
Lucius and the Opera—she would sooner believe that a harbor had sprouted atop a mountain.
Still, escaping the Banquet Hall, where every gesture had been scrutinized and constrained, allowed her breath to come slightly easier. She felt the texture of the Leather Seat as her body settled into the chair’s curves.
Beneath the soft glow of the lamps, the stage lay visible beyond the parted curtains.
Needing something to occupy her gaze, she fixed her eyes blankly upon the gleaming Brass Chandelier.
“How thrilling. This is my first time in a place like this.”
……
As she leaned back, he leaned forward.
His mouth bore the faint trace of anticipation and pleasure.
He wore the face of a genuinely delighted young man.
Celia stopped her thoughts and reminded herself of one thing alone.
‘Just today. Only today.’
She closed her eyes and comforted herself with visions of a happy future.
Finding evidence of Treason, avoiding even the sight of Lucius’s hair for half a year in seclusion, and then the sweet fantasy of affixing her seal to Divorce Documents six months hence!
She wished to continue spinning this happy fantasy, but he cut her dream short.
“Aren’t you curious why I suddenly suggested we see the Opera?”
Celia bit her tongue.
She genuinely was not curious. Since dinner that evening, she had exhausted herself concentrating entirely on him—body and mind alike drained.
Of course she was not curious what scheme he harbored, what calculations he had performed to arrive at this result.
Yet her lips, sealed by circumstances beyond her control, shaped words unlike her usual self.
“Why… why suggest it, then.”
“Haha.”
Small shadows of laughter fell wherever light touched.
“I was recommended it. They said it’s good for lovers to see together…….”
He listed the information he had gathered in her brief absence.
“I thought I wanted to see it with you.”
Lucius tilted his head toward her, only slightly.
His eyes lay closed beneath their lids, docile and still. Long lashes cast shadows in the lamplight, softening the line of his nose and lips. His profile, that measured breathing…….
‘How infuriating.’
Celia turned her head sharply away.
Instead, she clenched and unclenched her hands in succession.
The warm light that dwelt in his eyes, once she had glimpsed it, seemed to prove its own existence endlessly, as though demanding recognition. It was among the things Lucius must never show Celia. The fact of it was unbearable to her.
Once divorced, she would be free of all of this.
Her calendar still moved in anticipation of the day she would be rid of him.
‘Divorce, divorce, divorce…….’
And yet, why did it feel as though she were forgetting something?
Was it because of the evidence of Treason her father had commanded her to find? No, that wasn’t it. Until six months ago, she had been confident she could uncover it by any means.
Celia soon dragged a neglected problem to the surface of her mind.
What if Lucius’s memory did not return, even after six months?
‘That fool wouldn’t refuse, would he?’
She had already completed all the procedures for the divorce. When the promised deadline arrived, all they need do was affix their seals to white paper. Any human with fingers intact could manage it.
Just then, the curtain on stage rose slowly.
The lights dimmed, and a violin drew its first note from within the stage. As the stately melody filled the space, even Celia, indifferent though she was, found herself gazing quietly at the stage.
She needed something to concentrate upon.
Several minutes passed.
Celia turned her head very slightly. She rolled her eyes to steal a glimpse of Lucius, drew a shallow breath, and straightened her spine.
The garment she wore matched his in design, yet seemed to have been finished by a different artisan’s hand.
It deviated not at all from Lucius’s taste.
As the light fell dim, his face appeared soft, yet simultaneously utterly indifferent. His eyes, which held the entire Opera Theater within them, seemed hollow.
Celia could not tear her gaze away.
‘Like some other creature wearing Lucius’s skin.’
Because she had learned how his eyes transformed when they kindled with warmth, what light dwelt in his tender voice—things she had no desire to know—he grated on her now, like a stain upon cloth that catches and worries at the eye. Like a splinter beneath the fingernail—precisely that degree of irritation.
He stays with her. A splinter she cannot quite dislodge.
And when he notices her gaze and lifts the eyelids that had hung lowered before……
“Bored?”
The moment his hollow eyes filled with warmth, holding her within them, Celia witnessed it clearly.
She startled and looked away.
“Just… not my taste.”
Celia hated everything about him.
His speech, his gaze, his breath, his bearing, the tips of his fingers. Simply everything.
So this version of him was no exception.
‘I despise Lucius.’
She did not know to whom she spoke.
In any form, whether he were a child or an old man, endlessly gentle or monstrously cruel, she would have hated him anywhere, at any time.
That truth would never change.
***
“How was the Opera?”
Something settled across her shoulders, and Celia opened her half-closed eyes. The brilliant lights were going out one by one, and the audience was rising from their seats amid applause.
‘I nearly fell asleep.’
One might ask how one could sleep with such a loud-voiced actor performing, but the chair was comfortable, there was no one watching her, and the soaring music had the power to summon sleep.
“Was it enjoyable?”
Celia hastily composed herself.
Fortunately, Lucius seemed unaware that she had dozed. Relieved, she spoke freely.
“That heroine—the way she smiled after losing an heirloom… it was as though she were smiling because she wanted to weep. It seemed open to interpretation.”
When she recited the sole scene she remembered, Lucius exhaled a short laugh.
“That’s an uncommon reading.”
Celia rose without reply.
“Let’s go back now.”
“Shall we?”
To avoid becoming tangled among the departing crowds, they waited a moment before leaving. In the interval, Lucius offered his own useless observations.
“The leads’ story impressed me. They yearned so desperately, yet chance upon chance conspired to keep them apart. Unhappy though it was, it struck me as all the more noble for the poignancy of it—a tale of wanting what you cannot have.”
……
“It was an instructive time, in many ways. It made one recognize what truly deserves to be treasured.”
He had called her reading uncommon, but Lucius’s own reflections were hardly commonplace either.
‘He watched so intently, yet speaks like this.’
Love stories, and such things. Celia found them tiresome. Why all this weeping tenderness, this pathos? She could not empathize with it in the slightest.
As they emerged into the Corridor and moved toward the Staircase, Lucius held her back.
“There are crowds. What should we do……. Celia, would you wait here a moment? I’ll have the Carriage brought to the Front of Theater.”
Why such fuss about the crowded Front of Theater? But Lucius was quite resolute, and Celia, lacking the strength to resist his tone, halted.
“Wait just a little while.”
As he descended the Staircase, Celia, half-sunken in drowsiness, suddenly thought:
‘Why should I obey him?’
Defiance surged up and scattered her remaining sleep.
It was refusal without reason or justification, but that was simply how it was. There was nothing surprising in it. She had always been this way.
She stepped forward at once. The folds of her Dress slid slowly across the staircase. One step, then another. She followed the same path he had taken down.
And Celia quickly ran into trouble.
Murmur—murmur—
People surged and pressed, trapping her instantaneously within the crowd.
Then a thick arm wrapped around her back. A familiar scent, guiding her through the throng, flooded her nostrils and sank into her lungs.
“Why did you come down?”
Celia raised her eyes from the floor, where her gaze had been fixed.
“I wanted to hurry.”
She spoke calmly and twisted her shoulders to slip free from his hold. The problem was, without his embrace, there was nowhere left for her feet to find purchase.
Lucius swept her disheveled hair aside and pulled his mouth into the faintest, forced smile.
“You see, the thing is…….”
A sudden ill premonition seized her.
Celia turned her head to follow his gaze toward the outside.
Whoosh—
Beyond the doors, rain was pouring down.
A sudden deluge—the Carriage could not move an inch in this.

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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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