My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 22

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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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Episode 22
Chapter 3. Upheaval (2)
Last night, after Lucius laid the intoxicated Celia on the bed, what came to him was a long, suffocating silence.
“Celia.”
“Mmm……”
At his call, her lips parted slightly and breath drifted through them.
The small candlelight fell across her cheek, flushing her skin red, the color of blood pulsing slowly beneath.
“Sleepy?”
“I’m… sleepy.”
Lucius laughed softly at her earnest reply.
“Yet you still have the presence of mind to answer me?”
“Mm…”
Her eyes, which had been sinking into slumber, opened slowly.
Not fully awake, he could see her gaze moving sluggishly beneath lashes that trembled faintly.
Like someone still caught between dream and waking—vulnerable and unguarded, yet unsettled all at once.
“Did I wake you?”
She shook her head, then drew the blanket to her cheek as if the movement made her dizzy.
“Celia, does it bother you that I’m here like this?”
As Lucius sat on the edge of the small bed, it tilted subtly, encroaching on her space. He waited quietly for her answer, his voice gentle and soothing.
“It bothers me.”
“……Why?”
Why indeed.
Even through the haze of wine, Celia found the question oddly new.
That she disliked him, and he disliked her—this needed no explanation to anyone, for it was the most natural law of all.
“When your memory comes back, you’ll resent me and be angry.”
Lucius’s hand, which had been reaching to brush away the warmth from her flushed cheek, froze.
Something wordless stirred in the depths of his gaze as he stared down at her.
“You were never good to have at your side. Not once.”
At her words, Lucius recalled the moment he had awakened from deep sleep and opened his eyes.
The warmth that had bloomed in his chest when he held the being he yearned for in his arms, that clarity that persisted even through this fractured memory—he had never once doubted his own heart toward her.
Yet there are men who speak of love while abusing their wives. There was no guarantee that he was not such a man.
“Did I… do something you hated?”
Celia’s gaze slid away from his subtly.
Her eyes, which had brushed against his shoulder, soon closed beneath their lids and turned into a smile.
“Lucius, why do you keep asking me such strange things?”
“Is that strange?”
“You’ve never asked me anything before.”
When her words tumbled out, slurred by drink, Lucius felt himself growing numb even as he continued to breathe.
‘Noble marriages don’t always end in happiness.’
Love is a phantom, and a life in which spouses respect one another is merely an ideal.
‘In that sense, I thought myself blessed.’
Yet the woman before him whispered that it had all been an illusion.
“How did I end up marrying you anyway? Hmm?”
“I had no choice. I had no power. No one listened to me. I was the same as always, but everyone… said I had to marry you.”
“……So you didn’t want to marry me?”
“Me? Want to?”
She laughed as if such an absurd thing could never have happened.
Lucius’s lips sealed shut, dry as bone.
After he lost his memory, his people had shown him genuine concern.
Oaths of loyalty, eyes filled with worry, voices pledging to give everything for him—through them, he had been able to believe himself a reasonably decent man.
All except one.
All except Celia.
‘I thought she was wary simply because I was unfamiliar.’
After all, even the same person can feel like a stranger when shared memories disappear.
Lucius had overlooked even her eyes, which watched him with subtle caution. He hadn’t given them much weight. He had merely judged them by his own measure—as mere awkwardness—and moved on like so.
Perhaps it had been the shadow of his own unconscious mind all along.
Was it not because he had treated her as he pleased, never minding what she felt?
“……Ah.”
What terrible truth was this. As his breath caught, complex emotions stirred and rose, suppressed beneath the surface.
Anger, disappointment… and self-loathing too.
He had not been eager to recover his memories.
If they were destined to return, there was no need to rush—they would find their place in time.
But now it was different. The thought struck him suddenly: ‘I wish I had never remembered at all.’ If the truth was this repugnant, he prayed it would remain asleep deep in his heart.
“Lucius, I remember every wound you left me.”
And you too…. Drunk on sleep, Celia trailed off, her words dissolving into silence as her lips moved without sound.
Yet at her resentful words, he despaired utterly. He could deny reality no longer. To her, he was the base and vile remnant of some old cruelty.
‘You said you’ve known for a long time.’
Over all those long years, he could not rule out the possibility that he had tormented her.
Lucius’s eyes reddened as he bowed his head. A disgusting self-hatred muddied his gaze.
“Celia. What am I to do?”
“Why do you keep asking such meaningless questions……”
But……
“Once you remember, you’ll be the same anyway.”
Perhaps losing his memory had been a blessing.
Lucius wrapped himself in selfish, ugly thoughts.
If the man he truly was beyond redemption, if he had left indelible scars on her heart, then wouldn’t the current self, who knew nothing of those crimes, be able to stand at her side without guilt?
That thought was impure.
And that impurity was strangely sweet.
“If I remain as I am now, could I stay at your side?”
He did not know where the twisted self from before his memory loss had gone, yet his longing for her remained unchanged.
And atop the ruins of that longing, Lucius uttered a desire so cruelly honest it nearly became a confession.
“I want to be at your side.”
Her wavering eyelids descended slowly, and she murmured in a voice barely above a whisper.
“If it’s you as you are now… it might be better than before……”
Soon, quiet breathing filled the room.
Lucius gazed at her sleeping form for some time, then quietly nestled into the narrow space of the small bed, drawing her sleeping body unhesitatingly into his embrace.
He wished only to hold this woman in his arms with tenderness, to touch her with gentleness.
If the disappearance of his past self meant he could no longer wound her… and if she would look upon him as he was now……
“Celia.”
His fingertips threaded through her hair, parting the delicate strands as he buried his face against her neck.
Into his clear, pale green eyes, shadow gathered deep. Over that clarity, the color of desire seeped in.
This was an opportunity.
***
Had she not yet awakened from her dream?
Celia wondered this as she looked at the man who lay above her.
It was said that sometimes the fairy of dreams scatters mischievous powder above people’s heads. Dreams touched by that dust reflect impossible realities, creating confusion and bewilderment in that precarious boundary between dream and waking……
“Still very sleepy?”
He whispered down to her with a face far too composed for someone who had just woken.
His dark hair fell disheveled across his forehead, and his shirt hung open at several buttons, loosely gaping along his neck.
The breath that escaped from within brushed past her cheek.
“Get off me……!”
Celia, now urgent, planted her foot squarely against his thigh.
The firm muscle yielded briefly, tensing faintly, before he furrowed his brow and smiled in a way that was subtly dangerous.
Celia realized her sole was touching something entirely different from muscle.
‘……What?’
Her bewildered gaze slipped downward to his leg. Beneath the fabric pressed under her pale sole, something made its presence undeniably known.
When she flexed her foot, it responded as if alive, stirring with movement.
As Celia startled and tried to withdraw her foot, Lucius’s hand slid down from the head of the bed. It moved with deceptive gentleness before his grip closed around her ankle.
A flinch.
Her foot instinctively curled inward.
When he tightened his hold, her slender leg was drawn effortlessly toward him.
Her ankle bone, exposed and pale against the cool air, became visible. Lucius gazed at it for a moment, then lowered his lips with an unhurried motion.
“It’s a physiological response. You wake up like this every morning without thinking anything unseemly.”
As if she cared about that!
Celia thrashed her foot desperately, as if willing to strike his face without regret.
But Lucius didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, as if to prove her wrong, he moved his lips lower still from her ankle.
His breath traced across her skin and slipped away.
Peck—
His lips lingered near her knee, drawing out a slow smile.
“Though today does feel a little different.”
She would never grow accustomed to this, could never become accustomed to it—this unreality she repeated over and over in her mind.
“You slept in my arms, after all.”
This must be a dream conjured by that spiteful fairy.
“You made me this way. Are you perhaps curious?”
A dream from which she could wake any moment!

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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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