My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 57

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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 57
Chapter 6. A Lull (4)
Around the age of fourteen, Celia declared that she would have no more friends.
“I’m bored. You all just say strange things.”
The girls her age, at that prime season for falling in love, could only stare at Celia in bewilderment—she who failed to understand love at all.
Some tried to teach her what love was; others cast pitying glances her way; still others patted her head, insisting she was simply too young yet.
Even the monkey-like boys had begun opening their eyes to the opposite sex one by one—some taking on girlfriends, others nervously offering flowers to bashful fiancées.
Evandor, too, met his first lover around that time. She was a beautiful woman from the north, with a cold demeanor. For the record, the two parted ways in two days.
The reason was almost laughable: Evandor loved deer, but the girl despised them.
‘What sublime value could love possibly hold if it cools over something as trivial as a preference for deer?’
She still found cheap magazines far more entertaining than tedious academic texts, and preferred sneaking out to eavesdrop on the conversations of common folk in the streets over the vapid socializing of the nobility.
‘What’s so appealing about things that repeat themselves and reek of artifice?’
Precocious in her way, Celia regarded love with skepticism, her arms folded across her chest.
Then came a day unlike the rest.
At a celebration honoring the birth of the Imperial Grandchild, Celia encountered an unexpected figure and her face twisted in displeasure.
“Ha……!”
“Huh…….”
A boy and girl, just beginning to shed their childish bearing, let out a weighty sigh in unison.
Celia and Lucius stood facing one another.
It was immediately clear from their crossed paths that each found the other decidedly unwelcome.
“Move aside.”
“You should be the one to move.”
Neither took a single step back.
“I was here first.”
“You’re trying to escape the party, whereas I’m fulfilling my duty. Surely it’s obvious who ought to yield?”
His smooth barb about her fleeing made her eyes widen.
“Of course. Since you can only do what your father tells you, you’re probably back there smiling vapidly at that tedious gathering.”
Lucius faltered.
His eyes, which grew gentler as he matured, turned sharp in an instant. Yet he slowly closed them and opened them again, extinguishing the spark that had flared, and soon his voice emerged calm and measured.
“I’m a dutiful son who follows my father’s word faithfully. Unlike you.”
“Wh—”
“But speaking of that.”
Lucius tilted his head slightly, cutting her off.
“Does your father still levy taxes on the people suffering famine in his domain, all while spouting some absurd rule?”
Their quarrels turning into fights was routine.
Celia didn’t hold back. She had no reason to.
“Grasping at rumors because you’ve run out of real complaints?”
She stepped forward and jabbed her index finger at Lucius’s shoulder.
“Ha……. Celia Brickwell.”
Normally, Lucius would have raised his hand without flinching at such an insulting gesture. But this time he remained unmoved. Instead, he addressed her with an attitude she’d never seen from him before.
He gently pried her hand away and leaned down to cast a shadow over her head, whispering.
“Don’t you think it’s time you graduated from this sort of behavior?”
“You really——!”
Celia twisted her captured wrist sharply.
But as she yanked her arm to pull free, her heel slipped on the grass.
“Ugh!”
The world spun. Sky, leaves, and Lucius’s feet all blurred together.
“Ah…….”
She knew she’d hit the ground from the sharp sting of the scrape on her knee and the dull ache in her hip. Celia curled her spine and clutched her knees.
Lucius, who had been looking down at her with a commanding gaze, suddenly stilled.
“Are you——, no, I. I didn’t. I mean.”
But he quickly squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, exhaling slowly.
“Sigh. Celia Brickwell.”
Bending down with unusual courtesy toward her annoyed face looking up at him, he whispered softly to her.
“From now on, I won’t indulge this sort of thing. I don’t intend to roll around on the grass with you like children anymore.”
“Ha!”
Celia sprang to her feet.
“Anyone watching would think I was the only one kicking and pulling your hair!”
“That’s——”
Lucius raised his voice briefly before his eyes hardened.
“Back then, I was just a child who didn’t know better.”
“Are you trying to call me a child by dressing it up nicely?”
“……That’s your problem. You always twist people’s words.”
“You’re the one who twists things when you speak.”
After a moment of silent staring, Lucius finally turned away.
He strode across the grass with long steps before coming to a halt. Turning his head back, he pointed with one finger at the hem of Celia’s dress below her ankles.
“Tend to that yourself.”
“…….”
Only then did Celia lift her skirt hem slightly to glance down at her ankle.
Blood beaded at the wound where the stone had scraped her.
Lucius walked away without another word. Left alone, Celia kicked at the small pebble beneath her foot.
“I hope I never see that face again!”
Yet contrary to her outburst, minutes later Celia stopped in the middle of her search through the vast gardens and furrowed her brow.
Of all people—it had to be Lucius Windmere again.
“I got engaged,” a boy with him was saying.
His cheeks flushed pink, he announced this to Lucius, who had been absorbed in his book. Lucius seemed slightly surprised; he closed the book and then, a moment later, smiled softly.
“Congratulations.”
It was the smile Celia found most infuriating. Gentle, warm, affectionate—nauseating in its tenderness.
“You’re a young lord yourself. An engagement won’t be far behind, will it?”
“Likely not.”
“Is there a lady on your mind? With House of Windmere’s name, surely you could become engaged to any noble daughter.”
“I haven’t given it much thought just yet.”
Whether from the strain of being trapped at the party or from his earlier encounter with her, Lucius appeared slightly weary, but his color had returned; he smiled thinly.
“How bland. Then what about a lady who catches your eye? Any woman who’s made an impression? Don’t you want to marry for love?”
“I——”
What nonsense they were spouting. Celia clucked her tongue inwardly and turned away without hearing more.
The gentle voices faded in the breeze, growing smaller.
As Celia walked without pause, she wrinkled the bridge of her nose. The more she thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
“Lucius Windmere and love?”
Gag.
It was an utterly incongruous pairing of words.
And yet, despite her disgust, she couldn’t help but entertain a trivial question.
Had he, too, ever experienced first love?
“Love, to such a boring, rigid creature. Whoever she is, I can only pity her.”
A tender moment in the spring of her fourteenth year, fleeting and quick to fade.
***
It was dawn, before the sun had yet taken shape.
A time when night and morning blurred at their borders. The room was suffused with ashen white.
When Celia opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Lucius, perched on the edge of the bed.
With one hand, he carefully brushed back her hair that had slipped free, and pressed a brief kiss near her forehead. When he realized he’d been caught, he smiled softly.
His face was difficult to make out in the backlighting, but his eyes, creased by the light, were perfectly clear.
“Celia.”
Her eyes, just emerging from sleep, came into focus on him.
“You once asked me why I loved you.”
His voice resembled the dawn itself.
“I think my clumsy answer may have hurt you.”
Light seeping through the gap between curtain and window grew wider. As the room’s contours sharpened, his form, which had been lost in shadow, found its shape.
“From the moment I opened my eyes, you were the beginning of all things for me. Wherever I’ve traced the passage of time, you were there.”
His words fell like a soliloquy.
“Pity me, who yearns for you.”
He carefully lifted her left hand. With cool metal, he pressed something onto the tip of her ring finger. As it passed over the knuckle, his thumb slowly traced the inside of her finger.
“I cannot exist without you.”
It was the ring they’d promised to wear together. Ceyaborite set in it—the stone she had chosen herself. The deep, vivid green of the gem, which she had unconsciously selected because it resembled his eyes.
“When I’m at your side, I forget what I’m meant to be. What I need to prove.”
The dawn remained still.
Pale light brushed across his shoulders and the backs of his hands in turn.
“I’m curious about you. I want to know you. Even the moments we share seem precious as they slip away.”
Words fall in an instant, yet stretch like ages.
“I want to call this love, and nothing else.”
Light spreading across the curtain’s edge slowly pushed back the color of night.
Celia raised her torso. When she reached out and touched his cheek softly, he leaned his face into her palm like one begging for affection.
Finally, cradling his face in both hands, she slowly moved closer. At a distance where their lips nearly met, she whispered softly.
“Come to my room from tomorrow on.”
The boundary between night and morning finally dissolved, and Celia pressed her lips to his.

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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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