My Husband Lives in a Painting - Chapter 75

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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 Within the Painting 075
“Y-you’re saying it’s really possible to break the contract?”
“Of course.”
Basaria added his explanation with meticulous, patient precision.
“Demons cloak themselves in contracts under the guise of fairness. They trick the human who becomes the contractor into believing they ‘chose freely,’ shifting responsibility onto their shoulders.”
“……Shifting responsibility onto them, you say.”
“Have no fear. Ironically, that very deception becomes the shackle that binds them.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you create grounds for liability on the demon’s side, you can unilaterally break the contract.”
‘How does this priest know so much about contracts with demons?’
Yet Basaria continued speaking, brushing off my obvious skepticism with unshakeable calm.
“When you made the contract with the demon, there must have been certain conditions attached. Things like killing someone for you, or seducing them.”
“…….”
“Prevent the demon from fulfilling those promises. That becomes your grounds for liability.”
“Is there no other way? Besides breaking the contract?”
“Ah! You could also kill the demon. But for fragile humans like us, that would be considerably more difficult, wouldn’t it?”
Crack!
I dropped the pen I’d been gripping like I was tossing it aside.
“Damn it.”
Somewhere along the way, my notebook had filled with meaningless circles scrawled in every direction.
‘Stop. Just stop. I’m losing my mind.’
I flung myself onto the bed like I was fleeing.
Thud.
The soft quilt wrapped around me, but somehow it felt sharp and prickling, as if I were lying on thorns.
“…….”
With the sound of a cuckoo drifting through the window as backdrop, I sat in silence with my back to the moonlight, lost in thought.
The tangled, unruly thoughts swirling in my head eventually spilled across my lips.
“……I have to kill Camille? Me? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Huh. That’s insane.”
……Yeah!
It was absolutely insane.
I pulled the soft quilt up to my chest and continued muttering to myself.
“How could I possibly kill him?”
“Right, how could you?”
“He has my husband’s face.”
“And since he became a demon, he’s gotten even more handsome.”
“……That’s true.”
For some reason, a creeping unease crept over me, and I absently traced my goosebumped arm as I mumbled as if entranced.
“But, but what if—really, what if——”
My parted lips failed to form the words, instead opening and closing wordlessly.
After a moment, a whispered confession barely escaped into the still air and dissipated.
“What would I do if he refused to renew the contract……?”
“Contract renewal? What’s that?”
“…….”
……Wait a moment.
‘Who the hell have I been talking to this whole time?’
“No way.”
By the time I realized, it was already too late.
A blinding surge of light was already dragging my body away!
Screeeeee—!
“N-no, no!”
The moment I located the source of that radiant glow, horror seized me.
‘The doodles on my notebook!’
Was that being counted as a painting?
“W-wait!”
I thrashed my hands about frantically, trying to block whatever was happening, but my gestures were useless.
My vision spun, my body lifted into empty air, and in an instant I was sucked into the notebook.
“Ugh……!”
I shut my eyes instinctively against the blinding intensity. Then, as I cautiously opened them again moments later,
“What. You’re trying to kill me?”
“……!”
Among the profusely blooming flowers, I was trapped against Camille’s solid chest, bound by his black tail.
“……C, Camille.”
I stammered like I was hiccupping.
Unlike me, whose lips merely trembled in panic, Camille blinked his innocent eyes and asked softly.
“Why? Why do you suddenly want to kill me?”
His water-colored eyes, luminous with sunlight, rippled with transparency.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“I, it’s just, well……”
My face burned as though I’d been caught red-handed.
I twisted instinctively to flee, but the tail wrapped around me like a binding left me utterly helpless.
‘This is, this is dangerous. We’re too close!’
At such close range—near enough to feel his breath—his beauty was overwhelming. Enough to evaporate every coherent thought.
‘Ob. Get a grip. You need to say something in your defense!’
“It’s not that I want to, to kill you. It’s……”
Watching me gape like a roasted sweet potato, my face flushed crimson, Camille tilted his head with keen interest.
“Hmm, how strange……?”
Camille’s brow furrowed briefly as though in thought, then suddenly his face broke into a childlike, radiant smile.
“Ah, I see! This is a marital quarrel, isn’t it?”
“W, what?”
A marital quarrel.
The words struck so jarringly at odds with the situation that I lost my train of thought entirely.
When had marital quarrels become this extreme—a matter of kill or be killed?
“I’ve heard that couples resolve their fights through skinship.”
“……What?”
“You think so too, don’t you?”
……Ah. Damn it.
His expression made it clear he’d been waiting for the chance to say those very words.
The corners of Camille’s eyes narrowed into crescents, mischief dancing across them.
“Hmm? Darling.”
“W, wait, just a moment!”
I twisted my torso urgently, trying to wriggle free.
But as if he’d anticipated my every move, he gave me no chance to slip my arms loose, only tightened his tail’s grip around me.
And so, inevitably, I found myself with no room to resist……
Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack!
I received an unrelenting barrage of kisses with no defense.
“Ugh, eeek……!”
As though he’d been waiting for this very moment, he descended on me like a storm.
Facing Camille as he kissed indiscriminately—forehead, nose, lips—I was struck once more by a brutal truth: this man was anything but normal.
“P, please, stop……!”
All my deliberation about whether to kill Camille had been completely erased from my mind.
And I had never, not once in my entire life, engaged in skinship quite like this.
There was only one path left for me to choose in that moment.
“Stop this instant, you deranged pervert!!”
Thud—!
“Ow!”
……Which was to drive a Headbutt into his forehead with all my strength.
* * *
“Sob, whimper.”
……How had things become so twisted again?
Now sitting before me with his back turned is a man shedding tears.
A man whose black horns jutted out stubbornly, busily grooming his disheveled hair back into place.
“H, how could you hit so hard?”
“……You were the one who came at me first.”
“I give you a few kisses and that’s a crime? But where exactly does a wife who tears her husband’s hair out by the roots and mangles his head like that exist?!”
“I, I’m sorry about that.”
Honest as it was to admit, his appearance was simply wretched.
My Headbutt had left his forehead a deep, angry red, and once my grip had come loose, the hair I’d torn out had left his head a tangled mess.
Without thinking, I lowered my gaze and discovered pink strands matted between my fingers, which made me flinch.
“Er, ahem.”
……You didn’t see that, did you?
I cleared my throat and turned my palm over, stealing a glance at Camille.
Fortunately, he was too preoccupied with tidying his hair to notice.
Still…… if things went on like this, all those hours I’d spent avoiding him would be for nothing.
Not that fear was making my heart race now. This wasn’t the time to discuss contract breaches or anything like that.
Yet an odd discomfort lingered.
‘When I think about it, hasn’t this man been cutting me considerable slack?’
He could take my soul whenever he wanted. Even now.
“……..”
It was nearly impossible to believe this was the demon who had brutally murdered men—Camille was a completely different person in front of me.
A question suddenly occurred to me.
‘Is this really the face of a man deceiving me?’
“Ugh, sniff, it hurts.”
What……?

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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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