My Husband Lives in a Painting - 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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My Husband Lives in a Painting — Episode 22
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Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sharp, bright sound rang out across the Flower Field.
Gail, his face unrecognizable beneath tears, snot, and blood, begged desperately.
“Please, please stop!”
His plea was raw, anguished—but the shovel came down again without mercy, crashing against his skull.
Clang—!
Kamiyuu drew closer, unhurried, the great shovel still gripped in his hands.
“H-hiik……!!”
Terror. Pure, absolute terror.
Gail crawled backward, his trembling legs barely obeying him. As he dragged himself away, a voice followed—light, almost playful.
“You killed me, though. Twice, even. So why can’t I kill you?”
“I didn’t! I never killed you! It failed! How many times do I have to say it!”
“Is that so?”
The disbelief in Kamiyuu’s tone was absolute. His lips parted again.
“What about selling Anmarie?”
“Pagoda asked me to help just once! I had no choice! How many more times must I—!!”
“Ah, so Marquess Butaer was your last customer.”
“Ugh.”
The admission spilled from Gail’s lips before he could stop himself. He clamped his hand over his mouth too late—the water had already been spilled.
Kamiyuu burst out laughing like a child.
“Gail the fool.”
He chased Gail the way a cat plays with a mouse.
Until Gail collapsed to the ground, drained of the strength even to cry out, and lost consciousness.
How much time had passed? Kamiyuu now sat upon a wooden chair—from where, he couldn’t say—staring down at the brown-haired head streaked with blood and dirt.
“Sob, sob…….”
Gail lay sprawled, whimpering, all resistance drained from him.
“Hmm.”
‘I’ve worked out what happened. So what now?’
Should he kill this man, or let him live?
‘Aub asked me not to kill, if I could help it.’
His cheek, resting against the shovel handle, puffed slightly with displeasure, then deflated.
Her kindness was sometimes frustrating, yet he found himself wanting to honor it.
‘All right. First offense—this is mercy enough.’
It might have ended there, in relative grace.
But Gail had always been hasty. Too hasty.
“Are you…… going to kill me?”
Instead of answering, Kamiyuu smiled. Gail’s shoulders trembled.
Then something cold flickered in his eyes. A dangerous sign.
“……You can’t kill me.”
“Why not?”
“Because if your wife knew how corrupted you’ve become, she’d never love you again!”
“…….”
“What woman would become the wife of a murderer? Rather than let the wife you love hate you, it’s in your best interest to let me live, yes? Isn’t it?”
Kamiyuu’s eyes went cold as ice.
……Just what kind of past did Aub and ‘Kamiyuu’ share?
The mention of her name from Gail’s lips sparked an unpleasant twist in his chest, and yet he found himself curious—curious why Gail believed this threat held any weight at all.
“Did my past self love Aub so much that I deserved to be called a fool for it?”
“W-what?”
“I’m just wondering how you behaved that you’d think this could work as blackmail.”
Gail’s expression twisted grotesquely.
The man who once became putty at any mention of his wife now leaned against the shovel with bored indifference, tilting his head as if listening to some stranger’s unrelated tale.
‘Aub would leave me?’
He was nearly certain now: this man was not the husband Aub remembered. Without a Contract, perhaps she would indeed abandon him.
But with Aub, he was already bound. Time would see to the rest—every last fragment of her soul would become his own.
Still…….
‘It’s irritating.’
“I should put a leash on you. Yes. That would be better.”
“What did you say?”
“Ah, so you hate that too? But Aub ought to like it…….”
“…….”
She had already vanished into her own world, deaf to everything around her.
But in the next instant.
“Anyway, well. The conversation was fun.”
Kamiyuu rose from the wooden chair and brushed the soil dust from his clothes before stepping toward Gail.
“It seems time for us to part.”
“……What? Wait, just a moment!”
“Is there more you wish to say?”
Toward Kamiyuu, who slung the shovel across his shoulder and advanced with menacing ease, Gail spread his palms open in surrender.
“Weren’t you going to spare my life……?”
Kamiyuu, who had been staring intently at him, broke into a grin.
“I considered it, but it won’t do. Even if you left this place, I don’t see how it would help Aub much.”
“Please, I beg your mercy……! I’ll do anything, truly anything!”
The arrogance that had filled his voice moments before evaporated, replaced by something servile and desperate, but Kamiyuu paid it no mind.
Gail’s face had gone ashen as he wrung out his final hope like a cry.
“You……you’re the angel of Ortega!”
“An angel?”
A bright laugh rang out, and Gail dared to hope that perhaps his words had struck something in the man.
But that hope was shattered utterly.
“How wrong. You’re begging mercy from the wrong person.”
Gleam—
The blood-stained edge of the shovel caught the hot sunlight.
“I’m sorry, but I’m no dull-witted angel…….”
“Ah, ah……no—!”
Thud—
“I’m a vulgar demon.”
With that dull sound, Gail’s voice fell silent forever.
Upon the canvas depicting an empty Safe, only sunflowers with broken necks remained.
Chapter 4. The Ribbon Belongs Around the Neck
If one fears falling in love, how can one take that first step toward such a feeling?
There was a time when I believed that summoning such courage would require destiny itself to intervene.
Yet looking back, the way Kamiyuu approached me demanded no such courage.
He merely set down roots like a blue tree, offering nothing but shade to rest beneath.
“……Sometimes, when I look at you, you seem like someone untouched by everything.”
I once asked him this abruptly, crouching without a chair in the Greenhouse Garden.
Kamiyuu, sitting beside me and toying with a single Magnolia petal fallen to the ground, turned the question back on me.
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone in this house watches only you. Yet somehow you bear all that burden without seeming to feel it at all. It’s remarkable.”
“…….”
“I once received my father’s expectations too, but I could never do it like you do.”
After my reincarnation into this world, when Lui was still an infant.
Before my mother passed from illness, I was mistaken for a prodigy because of my past-life memories.
“My father was delighted to teach arithmetic to his three-year-old daughter, but the moment he realized I was hopeless, he made no effort to hide his disappointment.”
“It seems the lord had intended to entrust the business to his lady.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, Lui had no talent in that direction.”
It was uncommon for a daughter to inherit the family trade, yet not entirely impossible.
But once my father learned of my inadequacy, he abandoned his hopes without hesitation.
From that point on, I became known as the family’s burden, a defective product.
“So sometimes I find you strange. From what I can see, you have no particular hobbies, and I often wonder if you even have desires at all.”
“Mm…….”
“What did you play with as a child? I heard you had a younger brother.”
“Ah, a brother.”
Even to a question that might have been impertinent, he gave it serious thought before answering.
The Ortega manor had no portrait of Claude hung upon its walls, nor one of Kamiyuu either.
Had one of the servants who had worked there long not mentioned it, I would never have known Kamiyuu had a brother at all.
“The truth is, I have no memories from childhood.”
“What?”
No memories?
As my eyes widened, Kamiyuu let out a low laugh and continued, saying it was a secret.

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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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