Resetting Lady - Chapter 38

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“How much medicine did you put in there?”

When Karen refused to eat, Dulan eventually came dragging a meal directly to her bedroom. His rolling eyes looked like those of a fish on a cutting board. From that expression, she could guess that Dulan had already heard the whole story from Bowen and the lord.

He finally opened his mouth with a hesitant attitude and answered.

“…A lot.”

“What an excellent personal physician. That’s a compliment, so take it gratefully.”

Dulan remained silent.

Karen sat up in bed and glared at the food laced with medicine. So that was it. The reason Dulan was her fiancé. The reason why someone sitting in the next lord’s position had learned medicine instead of politics.

His job was slaughter and cooking. She wondered how much medicine was hidden among the spices in the cooking. Was this why meals at the Hyer Estate were infinitely more terrible compared to Raymond’s mansion? Her anger flared thinking about how much medicine they had shoved into her food. That’s what made her angriest of all. Taking away the pleasure of eating from her short life?

“Yes, thinking about it that way, everything falls into place.”

Karen knew through her memories and her mother’s suitors how many opportunities she would have had. She was the sole heiress of this estate. And her appearance was truly overwhelming. If she had had more time, she could have chosen from many more men. Thinking about how many second sons of noble families who couldn’t inherit fortunes and titles, and new wealthy people seeking status there were, Karen had many opportunities.

“If Mother had married royalty, I would have traveled abroad a lot too. What a shame. What do you think, doctor?”

“…Yes, I do think that you might have been… normal. If you had been born in a different house.”

“Well now.”

You speak well. Karen pushed away the meal Dulan had brought. She had no appetite at all. She looked at her gaunt relative’s cheek. Even being generous, he was far from handsome.

“Come to think of it, if I had been born abroad, would it have repeated there too, if it’s inherited from Mother?”

She wasn’t a woman in a position where meeting great wealth, or even nobles, was impossible. Her mother Karen had already proven that. Rather, she had been a marriage between noble and commoner. She was a nobleman’s daughter who had received courtship even from royalty. A woman’s beauty was something that had been highly valued from ancient times until now.

Normal marriage involves weighing and matching appropriate contract conditions with each other. Karen herself was the most beautiful among all unmarried women in the capital, and her status wasn’t even lowly. Rather, she wasn’t too high like royalty, so what excellent conditions these were. But the lord had already engaged Karen to Dulan in advance.

“Eight years at the monastery?”

“…Yes.”

“Studying only medicine for eight years and then becoming the next lord, that’s ridiculous. Haha. Really.”

Karen snorted.

Bringing in a poor relative, making him study medicine, and putting him in the next lord’s position. Her father had not only done this to treat Karen’s madness, but had simply installed a substitute that could be appropriately disposed of at any time. Dulan had been a proxy prepared by the lord from the beginning, before meeting the real ‘male protagonist.’

“Father and Mother made quite an interesting deal.”

Karen could guess the lord’s mind. Catherine, who had many suitors, had even gotten engaged to one of them before breaking the engagement and marrying Lord Hyer. The lord had waited for a real male protagonist to appear who would overcome such obstacles, even if there was an obstacle like Dulan, just like in his own case.

It was a repetition of the 「plot」.

“Do you believe those words? My parents’ words and mine, I mean.”

“My, my thoughts probably aren’t… important.”

“What makes your thoughts so precious that you keep your mouth shut?”

“…”

Looking at it coldly, it wasn’t a losing deal for Dulan either. Even if he couldn’t become lord, Dulan would be given a position to manage the parish. Also, by learning medicine rather than being a simple clergyman, he would have security even if he was later abandoned. Moreover, since he could manage the sick Karen right beside him, his power would be further strengthened. Calculating it, it was a deal that wasn’t bad for either of them.

“What do you think? Do you believe like Father? Do you believe Mother’s and my words?”

Dulan blinked and barely managed to answer.

“…I, I believe.”

“How about taking your medical license and throwing it under a circus elephant’s feet? It’ll trample it nicely. Drop your priest position on the way too.”

Despite Karen’s reproach, Dulan continued speaking.

“If I don’t believe, will anything change?”

“What would change if you do believe?”

Silence continued again.

After waiting until irritation began to rise, an answer finally came.

“…Comfort.”

“What?”

“…”

Karen held her forehead.

“No, I won’t say nonsense like I didn’t hear you properly. I’m just amazed. Yes, comfort is good, sure.”

Karen was dumbfounded by Dulan’s completely unexpected answer. He believes… You believe that here? Karen had asked if he believed, but she had expected the opposite answer.

“It would be more plausible if you answered that this whole family is crazy… It’s funny that I’m saying this myself.”

She was still considering the possibility that she and her mother had both gone mad simultaneously. At least that seemed to be something that probably all people in the world couldn’t prove. Like wondering if this world might be a shadow of ideas, it was somewhat unrelated to reality, so it didn’t cause any major ripples for her beyond that.

But if Dulan was a doctor, if he was a priest, she had hoped he would deny her regression. Unlike Father, that she was a delusional patient and this was her life and it wouldn’t repeat anymore. She had hoped for such sweet words.

“You must have your own life too. Yes.”

Otherwise, your life would just be nothing more than a sideshow. The feeling of having confirmed that such a life exists just to provide appropriate entertainment would be terrible. Karen could imagine it. Even if positions were different, such jealousy was universal. How selfish an expression “a supporting character’s life” was. Everyone was the protagonist in their own life, yet the lord and his wife had actually created what they called a supporting character’s life.

“Dulan, do you need comfort?”

Then if she chose Dulan instead of Raymond here, would that be recognized as true love?

Wasn’t that a plausible story, like Father’s? Refusing handsome and charming suitors to find true love, or that modest love was real, or the bluebird of happiness.

“Hmm?”

Karen reached out and stroked Dulan’s cheek.

Rationally speaking, it probably wouldn’t have been a bad deal for Dulan either. But emotionally speaking, it was no different from having what he had received taken away. Karen understood ordinary people’s hearts well. Such greed. Even though it was originally just something borrowed that wasn’t theirs, people’s greed made them struggle with loss when it disappeared.

Especially if they were a man and woman who had developed a relationship.

Karen hoped Dulan would at least fight with Raymond. Prove your love. To end it.

“The one who needs comfort would be you.”

“…Yes. That’s right.”

But Karen knew the end with Dulan.

“But I don’t need it right now.”

She remembered.

He too hadn’t given her an answer. Marriage with Dulan was just like that. No solution came out. Karen had already tried all sorts of choices. At least Karen could guess why Dulan had trembled with anxiety and sought God after marriage. It would be breach of contract. He was a man who didn’t have the boldness to claim and take what was his.

She lowered her hand.

“Dulan, I’m going to break our engagement.”

Dulan’s face contorted, but that was the end of it.

“…Alright.”

That too was uninteresting. It was the attitude of someone who coveted what was given and sulked when what they had received was taken away, but lacked the courage to step forward and shout. The attitude of a supporting character who couldn’t become a protagonist. The appearance of an ordinary person who had complaints but no will to revolt and conformed to their given role.

Karen grasped Dulan’s white, long fingers. Holding tight to his hand that flinched away, she looked up at Dulan and murmured.

“Say, Dulan. Should you have just died back then after all?”

She looked into Dulan’s eyes. Her face reflected in his pitch-black eyes. And Karen couldn’t read anything in those eyes except her own face.

“Then you would have lived a real life.”

You too. Me too.

Dulan’s mouth didn’t open anymore.

* * *

The cold dawn air scratched her cheeks. Pushing through the cool summer grass, Karen moved her steps. The cold air cleared her head. This time she occasionally enjoyed. Dawn walks taken while avoiding people’s attention made her heart flutter. Karen liked this time.

“It’s a bit cold.”

“…”

Since Tom’s clothes were thinner, Karen didn’t complain anymore. The Hyer family tomb area, further from the garden, was colder despite being in a sunny spot.

“Does it feel colder because it’s a tomb, or is the temperature actually lower?”

Tom tilted his head. Since she didn’t want an answer, Karen continued walking.

The tomb she was looking for was noticeable because it had a statue. She read the name written on the tombstone once more.

“This statue is of Catherine, 「Karen’s」… probably my mother.”

Karen looked at her mother’s grave, which she had never visited once in all those years, and was briefly moved. The statue was quite elaborate with hair and clothing folds, but it was pure white and cold. No matter how skilled an artist reproduced it, skin color disappeared, movement was fixed, and form differed from memory.

What did Catherine look like in the lord’s mind?

She touched the statue’s cheek. As expected, it was cold. The touch of death that stone material represented.

“I want to open the coffin.”

Tom approached, but a stone block that several strong men had barely moved couldn’t be moved by a boy and girl’s hands.

“…Never mind.”

She lay down on the tomb.

The summer sky was clear and stars seemed to pour down. If she gazed quietly, hundreds of millions of dim stars filled the sky once more between the brightly shining stars.

A sea of stars. The cold wind on this earth was nothing more than a device to make starlight shine brighter. It was a dawn when stars shone. She was intoxicated by the permanence that stars showed. How beautiful those stars were. The sky and scenery hadn’t changed. Like the past 100 years. Perhaps in the future too. Those worlds that were too vast to be trapped in a world called books and chillingly old.

“Is Mother really dead?”

Karen felt like crying for some reason.

“I’m dying of envy.”

Lady Nora Catherine Hyer.

Congratulating her on finally getting peaceful sleep.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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