My Husband Lives in a Painting - Chapter 37

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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 Inside the Painting: Episode 37
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Thirty minutes had passed since Claude climbed upstairs.
Two servants had followed him, and two others remained to watch me.
In a moment when their eyes were elsewhere, I carefully withdrew the paper I’d hidden in my sleeve.
A postcard small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. Inside it, an empty beach stretched across the canvas. Gentle waves bore a crimson sunset, scattering its glimmering light.
‘……Was this the right choice?’
The truth is, I still don’t know.
Whether this was truly the right thing to do.
“To bring the child into the painting?”
“Yes. It might not be just one person, either.”
“Certainly, it would be an effective way to move people without being discovered.”
“…….”
“But if you do that, your ability will be exposed.”
When I’d said I wanted to paint a seascape and move people into it, Camille had shaken his head firmly.
“If you must do this, paint a pitch-black space instead. If you want to claim they lost consciousness and then woke up, that’s the safest approach.”
He was right.
But in the end, I painted the sea.
There was only one reason I chose to take the risk.
‘I couldn’t bear to push people who were trapped in darkness into yet another darkness.’
……Yes.
A foolish and sentimental reason.
But as time wore on, anxiety slowly began to creep in.
Beneath the table, I glanced down at the postcard clasped in my hand, biting my lip quietly.
‘It’s about time…….’
Fortunately, Claude soon returned with a brightened expression.
“Madam, I found it.”
Holding a glimmering ring he’d prepared beforehand.
“This is the one, yes?”
The moment Claude drew near, I asked him in a voice only he could hear.
“Have you completed everything I asked of you?”
“Yes. Though I did knock out a few more people on the way down. How much longer do I need to hold out?”
“…….”
I looked back down at the postcard in silence.
That moment.
The change I had been desperately awaiting occurred inside the painting.
‘It’s done!’
I rose from my seat without hesitation.
As Claude and I turned to cross the reception room toward the exit, the servants guarding the door started in alarm and blocked our path.
“W-what is the matter? Were you intending to go to the Appreciation Room—”
“Don’t worry yourselves. I was planning to leave anyway.”
“Pardon?”
“Ideally, I would wait for your master to return, but it wouldn’t be right to impose on you any longer. I shall visit again next time.”
“Ah, if that is the case…….”
Just as we were slipping past the servants who had exhaled in relief and moving toward the exit, a loud commotion erupted from the upper staircase.
An elderly servant came rushing down, beads of cold sweat on his brow, and hastily stretched out his hand to stop us.
“Please, wait a moment!”
But the hand that reached for my arm was blocked by Claude.
“Don’t grab. Just speak.”
“Ugh…….”
The elderly servant, who had appeared with several guards, faltered momentarily under Claude’s intensity, then spoke in a strained voice.
“I have just checked the master’s chambers.”
“And?”
“But he was not inside.”
“…….”
“What have you done with our master?”
I narrowed my eyes slightly. Sharp instincts, as expected from this man.
But mere good intuition would not be enough to stop us, bound as we are to a demon.
“What do you mean by that?”
I smiled radiantly and lowered my voice to something gentle, and the servant’s shoulders flinched noticeably.
“We never went near the Marquis’s bedchamber today, though.”
The game was already over.
As if to make a point of it, I slipped out of the Manor and made for the carriage, the postcard I’d been clutching all day still in my hand.
‘A painting doesn’t need canvas. You can draw it anywhere.’
Two postcards, each bearing an identical seascape as though reflected in a mirror.
Within them, the hem of Anne-Marie’s dress fluttered.
* * *
Pagoda sifted slowly through his memories.
‘I could’ve sworn I felt Ortega in my arms just now……’
……How in the world had he ended up dangling upside down from a tree?
Once he focused on the throbbing at the back of his skull, the memory came flooding back.
On the bed, Ortega had suddenly shifted, pinned him down with extraordinary force, and then struck his head in a vicious arc.
His vision blurred; he couldn’t resist as she dragged him by the hair, and the moment they reached the backyard clearing, she’d strung him up on the tree like a sack of grain.
‘……That wasn’t a dream?’
Pagoda couldn’t make sense of what was happening to him.
In fact, he hadn’t even noticed the strange fact that he’d encountered not a single servant while being dragged away.
As blood pooled in his head, he couldn’t hold back anymore and finally wet his lips.
“M-Madam. What did I do wrong……?”
Then Ortega, who had paused her digging, lifted her head as if she’d been waiting for exactly this.
“Oh, you’re awake?”
“……Yes?”
“What did you do wrong? If we’re counting sins, there’s more than one.”
Something in her tone had shifted subtly, and Pagoda’s instinct screamed that things had gone badly wrong.
So, before it was too late, he steeled himself and asked again.
“What sin could I possibly have committed?”
“Let’s start with participating in an illegal adoption.”
“……How did you—”
“Don’t ask how I found out. You were the one who showed me the Appreciation Room yourself, weren’t you?”
Pagoda’s face drained of color in an instant.
‘She’s figured out what the nursery was for!’
Those with a narrow mind tend to go blind in one way or another.
At first they struggle to hide something they know is wrong, but eventually they forget it was ever wrong at all.
‘Damn it, I overdid it. What am I going to do?’
But the rush of indignation was overwhelming, and he couldn’t help but argue back.
“……So you’re betraying me over just one child?”
“One child?”
“I only did it once because that bastard Gail talked me into it, saying it was my last chance! What’s the big deal about that?!”
“Yes, well. You’d like to squirm out of it till the end, wouldn’t you.”
But the atmosphere only grew more dire.
Before Ortega, a pit had already been dug—large enough to accommodate a grown man with ease.
“There. That should do it.”
She straightened her spine and wiped the sweat from her brow.
‘This… this can’t be real……’
Where could such monstrous strength have been hiding? The sight was so surreal that even with his own eyes, he couldn’t believe it.
“You don’t actually think that’s all, do you?”
She suddenly turned her head, her eyes narrowing as she spoke.
“……Yes?”
“Listen, is your brain already rotting? You know as well as I do—the crimes you’ve committed.”
“What are you talking about—”
“Second: the murder of my husband.”
A cold wind brushed through her hair.
“You killed my husband, Pagoda.”
In Pagoda’s eyes, she no longer looked human—standing inverted with a spade in one hand.
‘What… what did she just say?’
His Adam’s apple bobbed violently as he stared into her blood-red eyes.
Not because she’d struck a nerve. He simply couldn’t comprehend what she was saying.
Then, just as she raised the spade high above her head, he suddenly snapped back to awareness and cried out in desperation.
“W-Wait, wait! I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding!”
The spade that had shot upward froze precariously in mid-air.
“I… I didn’t kill Camille!”
A voice on the verge of tearing scattered in all directions.
As the droning sound subsided, the woman’s lips curved into an arc.
“How am I supposed to believe that? Unless you tell me everything you know, I’ll consider you the culprit and kill you.”
“Ugh…….”
Though it felt like he’d fallen into a leading question, Pagoda had no choice but to squeeze his eyes shut.
“I saw it myself! The face of the one who killed Camille!”
“……Ah, is that so?”
She, who had been standing like a reaper of the underworld, finally lowered her weapon.
Then, as if bestowing a final mercy, she crouched before him and rested her chin on her hand, asking softly.
“Tell me more. The memory of that day as you witnessed it.”
When the woman’s index finger pressed firmly into the center of Pagoda’s forehead, heat flooded his face.
Satisfied by his reaction, a faint smile spread across her lips.
“If your answer pleases me, I might even let you live.”
“L-let me live? ……Hah.”
Pagoda trembled involuntarily at the cool touch of her fingers tracing his jaw.
Despite the blood rushing to his head, pressing him to the edge of consciousness, the moment he met eyes that held a seductive gleam he’d never seen before, the pain seemed to wash away.
‘But is this really the Ortega I know?’

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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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