My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 5

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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 5
Chapter 1. The Fracture (5)
The Count’s Son of House Windmere had lost his memory!
At this terrible, shocking truth, the Duchess let out a piercing scream.
“My, my son… my son has become an idiot!”
The physicians who had come to deliver the news hurriedly steadied the swaying Duchess.
“Well, ahem. It doesn’t appear to be idiocy, per se. He retains basic knowledge of his name and daily routines. This seems to be simple temporary amnesia resulting from trauma…”
“His memories are incomplete…! Oh, merciful heavens!”
The Duchess soaked through her third handkerchief with tears. Watching from a distance, Celia turned her gaze toward the physician.
“When will his memories return?”
Lucius, who had briefly awakened at dawn yesterday, had fallen back into a death-like sleep the moment he began spouting nonsense.
Hoping that the next time he woke he would be in his right mind, she posed the question—and the physician’s gaze slipped away. In that gesture, something ineffably ominous began to creep up her ankles and drag her under.
“To your question, only the Lord above can provide an answer, young lady.”
“Why?”
“It’s possible his memories may return when he wakes again. Or they may return one day during his normal life. Or perhaps…”
The hesitant physician finally forced out the unlucky words.
“Never.”
At that word, the Duchess—who had been on the verge of collapsing to the floor—sprang up like a frog.
“Now see here!!”
The Duchess’s indignant outburst caused the physician to cower considerably.
Celia, too, was thoroughly shocked. She bit her lip at the impact—as if struck three times over the head with a hammer.
What was he saying? That his memories might never return?
Through the stunned crowd, a maid approached.
“Madam, the Count’s Son has awakened.”
Lucius, who had inflicted this sudden calamity upon her and then slept peacefully, had awoken once more. The Duchess, who had been languishing, accepted a walking stick.
“Lucius has awakened. Of course he has. Of course I’ll go.”
It was then that the maid hesitated.
“Young mistress… well, that is to say…”
“What is it? Has something else happened to Lucius?”
Until then, Celia had been focused on Lucius’s damaged head.
Now that he’d awakened again—what if his memory hadn’t returned? As she turned such thoughts over…
But her train of thought didn’t continue long.
“He’s asking for the young mistress, ma’am.”
Celia’s jaw snapped upward.
Her eyes, grown perfectly round, betrayed her confusion entirely.
“What?”
***
The first thing Lucius sought upon fully awakening was Celia.
It was a fact that neither Celia herself nor anyone else could believe.
‘That’s something he’d never do if he were in his right mind!’
Wanting to see her face—a face that would offer no aid to his recovery from this illness.
She stepped into the room, still heavy with the scent of medicinal herbs. Celia’s expression was twisted as if she’d bitten into something wrong, but she steadied herself by recalling the physician’s words.
“The Count’s Son is a patient! You must not, under any circumstances, do anything that might provoke him!”
It would be equally bad for her if Lucius’s condition worsened, so she resolved to follow the physician’s instructions as closely as possible.
“Ah.”
Lucius, sitting alone on the bed staring at still-steaming food, noticed her in the doorway.
“Come here.”
Lucius pointed to the chair beside his bed.
At his excessively polite manner, she stiffened—but only for a moment.
Perhaps because of how he’d behaved when he first awakened, her pace quickened gradually.
‘I can’t believe I’m nervous around Lucius.’
The instant she recognized this fact, she widened her stride and approached. She dragged the chair back a little further, settled onto it, and let out a shallow breath.
“I heard you asked for me first.”
She immediately crossed her legs and folded her arms, taking a defensive posture. Her tone came out endless skewed and cutting.
But the amnesiac showed no particular reaction to her attitude, merely nodding. Only his eyes, following her movements faintly, felt somehow obsessive.
As he fixed his gaze upon her, Celia likewise tightened her own.
Like a man who had been confined to bed for over half a month, his skin was as pale as porcelain untouched by sunlight. No trace of bandages remained visible between his loosely draped clothes, but in their stead, a taut body could be glimpsed.
‘Damned madman… how can his body be like that after half a month of lying there?’
Had his muscles atrophied, had he become all bone and skin, perhaps she might have treated him with slightly more gentleness.
“Why did you ask for me?”
She waited for his answer, watching the faintly withered line of his lips.
As the silence stretched, Celia found herself growing more anxious for reasons she couldn’t place.
‘Why does he call me here and then say nothing?’
Just before Celia, who had never experienced silence with him before, could stamp her foot, Lucius parted his lips.
“I hear you’re my wife.”
Celia’s chin, which had been descending toward her knees, snapped upward immediately.
The excessive honorific made her fine hairs bristle.
‘You? You addressed me as “you”? You just called me “you” like that?’
She’d barely called him by name a few times, and only in front of people whose opinions mattered. Such formal address had no place between them.
“You… call me by my name.”
The words tumbled out reflexively.
When she reacted as though he hadn’t heard what he most certainly had, Lucius tilted his head.
His eyes moved entirely with her, granting no distance. His gaze, containing emotions she could not parse, traced the line of her jaw before continuing in a slightly measured breath.
His lips hesitated ever so slightly before parting.
“That must be how we address each other, then.”
It was an unbearably naive response.
Her hand, gripping the chair, tightened with force.
Lucius, wearing such an ingenuous expression.
Her throat felt ticklish. Even as she tried to convince herself that the damnable man was playing innocent, she found she couldn’t—his gaze and manner forbade it.
‘Madness… he really does think of me as his wife?’
Legally speaking, that was true, but still—this wasn’t right!
Lucius pushed away the pale gruel and instead reached for a Medicine Bottle. He uncapped the glass vial with a soft pop, then spoke in a low, measured voice.
“I heard the gist of what happened from the physician before you arrived.”
Having swallowed the medicine, he ran his thick tongue along the inside of his cheek, recoiling from the bitter taste.
He shook his head slightly and continued.
“I’ve lost my memory, which must be troublesome for you.”
Troublesome? That wasn’t the word for this feeling at all. This was a catastrophe of cosmic proportions.
Heat boiled up from deep within her belly.
The Duchess had compared her son to an idiot. Yes, she was furious with that man who’d become an idiot. How could nothing—nothing from beginning to end—be of any help to her in this short life?
“It’s not troublesome. You’re still Lucius Windmere—that hasn’t changed.”
She wrapped all her discomfort into those words, laying them on thick with sarcasm.
If the usual Lucius had heard her mockery, he would have curled his own lips in answer, raised his eyebrow, and given her that ‘see what I mean?’ expression.
But the useless ruin who now lay before her merely opened his eyes slightly in surprise before falling silent, his head bowed.
He savored this uncomfortable quiet, breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly.
“We were childhood friends, I’m told.”
“…”
‘What kind of bizarre prank is this?’
Someone must have planted a warped definition of “childhood friends” in his head. Their relationship and that name had only one thing in common: they’d known each other since childhood.
He continued impassively with what he’d been saying.
“I lost my memory and don’t know much about my wife, so I asked the physician to bring me newspapers. Thanks to that, I’ve skimmed through a few.”
Newspapers?
Only then did she notice the unfinished newspapers on the table near the bed.
She’d only skimmed them quickly, and her mind had grown murky at all of it—an absolute feast of exaggerated content about him and her in the most favorable light possible!
Of course, those newspapers had been fabricated to demonstrate that House Windmere and House Brickwell had reconciled.
It wouldn’t do to say that the pair, who’d once been at odds, now spent their marriage tearing each other’s hair out.
Lucius showed great interest in the false newspapers created by his own father and her father joining hands, leaning forward.
“I’m sorry for losing my memory. It must have been awkward for you that I suddenly lost it and came back.”
He’d drawn close without her noticing.
At the suddenly intimate distance, she drew in a breath. The narrowed space made her feel pressure from his large frame.
“Is that why you called me here? Because you were worried I’d be in a difficult position?”
She spoke quickly, unaware that her breathing had quickened.
“Of course. And I thought it right to see you first. You’re my wife, after all.”
Lucius Windmere—once his memory returns, she can already see his future self agonizing over those words.
Celia pressed her hand to her mouth to calm her roiling insides.
Whatever he made of that reaction, he drew back slightly. Then he tilted his head. The gaze that fell at an angle was familiar, but the emotion behind it was foreign.
“For such a reason? Just for that reason?!”
She bolted upright, only to stumble. A large hand caught her waist, steadying her frame.
At the warmth of his body, felt even through her clothes, she fluttered like a caged bird and opened her mouth wide.
“I don’t accept it!”
He regarded her with genuine sincerity.
His clear eyes robbed her of her words.
The man before her was undoubtedly Lucius. That Lucius Windmere.
The architect of every scar left upon her life. Yet now he gazed at her with eyes purer than any ignorant boy’s, with colors of pristine white.
The discrepancy of him acting as the same person yet as something wholly different clouded her mind with confusion.
“Would it help if I explained the reasons for you to ‘accept’ it?”
He settled her back into the chair. The plush seat embraced her gently, but soon his hand—callused and hardened—covered her own.
His hand, large enough to cover both of hers with ease, radiated warmth; her back muscles tensed instantly.
‘Ma… madness.’
She barely swallowed back the word that nearly escaped aloud.
“Speak honestly?”
“…Then are you asking me to lie instead?”
His index finger traced her dry hand slowly. His eyelids descended deeply as his eyes studied their intertwined hands for a moment before meeting hers.
“Though my memory isn’t complete, as I told the physicians, there is one thing I do remember.”
The corners of his eyes curved up and the corners of his lips stretched wide. As though wetting his withered lips, his red tongue emerged and traced them, then he spoke in a voice roughened by sleep.
“You, crying.”
“Gasp… cough!”
“All I can think of is the image of you crying in my arms, your eyes red and swollen.”
Her hand, which had been struggling to slip from his grasp, he laced more deeply with his own.
His fingers penetrated deeply between each knuckle of hers.
“With my head empty of all else, there’s only you.”
Her wretched hand, dragged down to just beneath his jaw, was soon pressed against his damp lips.
“That’s why I sought you out, Celia.”
***
Unable to bear it any longer, Celia kicked through the door and staggered out into the corridor.
‘Madness… madness!’
Her fist, clenched with all her strength, came down hard against the wall with a sharp bang.
Lucius Windmere had lost his memory.
Lucius Windmere had gone mad!
“What? What did I just—what did I just do beneath him?”
Good heavens.
It was a parade of terrible memories.
What memories remained in that damned Lucius’s skull?
Why—why did only those memories persist in that empty head?!
She simply couldn’t comprehend it.
Her stomach turned instantly.
Wanting to drink cold water, she straightened her swaying body.
It was then that footsteps echoed from far off.
Celia lifted her head with a pallid expression, then immediately bit her lip and steeled her gaze.
“What are you doing there alone?”
As the figure drew closer, she could make out their features more clearly.
A waist drawn tight in a deep-red velvet coat, and in stark contrast, a few loosened buttons through which a white neckline and collarbone were sharply defined.
“I’ve been searching for you for quite some time.”
Soft hair fell like a cascade over her rigid form.
A delicate fragrance stung her nostrils, pressing forward.
“Sister.”
Evandor, the future heir of House Brickwell with white hair like hers, smiled with deep dimples.
“Didn’t you want to see me?”
The childish traces that lingered in her memory were nowhere to be found in Evandor as he aligned his feet with hers and smiled.

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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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