Rewriting the Trash Ending - Chapter 9

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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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9.

“Tsk……!”
Logan turned his head.
Eyes as deep and black as they were unsettling.
The Grand Duke of Winterheim.
Logan’s hand trembled violently.
It felt as though he’d been seized not by a man, but by a bear.
The pain was nearly unbearable, his knuckles whitening as his grip tore free.
Snap!
Unable to hold on, Logan wrenched his hand away irritably, and Lumiere, who had been clinging to him, stumbled backward with a soft cry.
“Ah!”
Axid reflexively caught her shoulders from behind.
“Are you all right?”
“…A bit dizzy, that’s all.”
Still reeling from the impact, she nestled her head naturally against his chest.
“…….”
For a moment he was taken aback by how readily she leaned into him.
Then Axid wrapped one arm around her protectively.
“You have a habit of using your hands carelessly.”
Logan’s brow furrowed deeply.
He’d caught the contempt flickering in those ominous black eyes.
To be overpowered by sheer strength by a barbarian was insulting enough—but this mockery on top of it all.
His pride wounded, he spoke through gritted teeth in a low, restrained voice.
“The princess threatened my betrothed first.”
Axid’s cold gaze shifted toward Clara.
This was a man who had felled hundreds, thousands of demons on the battlefield.
His frame was lean and muscular, a fact his tailored formal wear could not conceal.
His gaze was sharp, as though he could see through to the core of a person’s intent.
And yet his look was suffocating in its weight—not quite a threat, but close.
“I, well, that is, you see, it was all a misunderstanding…….”
Clara stammered in panic, and Roselyn swiftly stepped forward.
“That’s right! Not only did the princess threaten the Duke’s betrothed, she struck her across the face in front of everyone!”
Roselyn had to seize the narrative before Clara told the truth.
If the Duke wasn’t here now, she might never get the chance to extract an apology from the princess.
A glance.
Roselyn looked at the man whose face she didn’t recognize.
From his plain dress, he seemed to be a bodyguard assigned to the princess by the Grand Duke—but if the Duke of Trobitan intervened, this man would be powerless.
There was no way a mere envoy from a grand duchy would genuinely risk friction with a duke just to defend a princess brought in as a brood mare.
But then.
“What’s the problem with that?”
“I beg your pardon……?”
“If the princess wishes it, there would be nothing wrong with her striking your neck instead of your face.”
“What, what do you…….”
Roselyn’s confident bearing crumbled.
He spoke with the steady certainty of someone reciting a self-evident truth.
Standing before him, she felt like an insect that would burst if stepped on.
Then, several broad-shouldered men entered with stern expressions.
The Grand Duke’s knights.
“Your Highness, what is the matter?”
Sensing the tension, their eyes burned with vigilance.
“…One moment, Grand Duke.”
The princess, who had been held in the man’s arms, straightened herself and stepped forward.
Grand Duke?
Grand Duke?
Roselyn’s eyes widened in shock.
“Countess Beleno.”
“Huh…….”
“Once you’ve grasped the situation, make a proper apology. Then I’ll bury the discourtesy you’ve shown me here and now.”
Roselyn looked at Logan desperately, but he made no move to intervene.
It meant the man’s identity was real.
Yet no matter what, shouldn’t Axid, a duke, step in if some barbarian threatened an imperial citizen like this?
Especially when she was Clara’s closest friend?
Roselyn’s voice trembled thinly as she called out, pleading for him to do something.
“C-Clara, Miss….”
But Clara too simply looked away, at a loss.
A small, strangled sound escaped her throat.
Apologize to that lowborn princess she’d played with whenever boredom struck?
Heat flooded her face as contempt, humiliation, and betrayal toward Clara seized her. Her entire body shook with it.
But the glacial stares of the knights were something no mere noblewoman could withstand.
Roselyn’s trembling frame slowly crumpled.
“I-I’m s-sorry. Your Highness, p-please forgive me…….”
Lumiere watched the scene with cold detachment.
Roselyn would never move in society again.
News of this would spread far and wide.
It was all her own karma.
She withdrew her gaze from Roselyn, who lay prostrate on the ground, wailing.
“I apologize for the unnecessary commotion. Please accept this as compensation for the trouble I’ve caused.”
“N-no, Your Highness!”
She pressed a Gold Coin into the clerk’s reluctant hands.
“Let’s go, Axid.”
She felt the meaningless stares of Logan and Clara on her back, but she had no desire to exchange parting words with them.
“Sigh…….”
The moment she climbed into the carriage, exhaustion finally crashed over her.
As she let out a long breath and closed her eyes, Axid’s voice reached her.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No, I’m fine…….”
She lifted her heavy eyelids.

“If the princess wished it, there would be no issue striking her neck instead of her cheek.”

So this was what it felt like to have someone take her side.
“…Thank you, Axid. For standing up for me.”
“It was merely what was right.”
She smiled softly as she watched him respond with his characteristic bluntness.
His casual refusal to take credit warmed something deep in her chest.
She wanted to thank him more properly, but her body felt so heavy now, as though weighted down by anchors.
“…Axid, I’m sorry, but I’m exhausted. Would you mind if I rested my eyes for a moment?”
She whispered softly and leaned her head against the carriage wall, letting her eyes gently close.
Clatter, clatter.
Soon after, the carriage began rolling slowly down the road in quiet silence.

***

Clara called out to Logan.
“Duke, how can you just leave like this?”
Logan stopped in his tracks.
He paused to steady his breathing and contain his anger.
“…I can’t just stand around in this chaos.”
“But you can’t leave Miss Roselyn like this either.”
“Why should I look after that woman?”
“You…?”
It was only after the princess had left that Logan learned the full account of what had happened from the other patrons in the shop.
That Roselyn had accosted the princess first and provoked the confrontation.
He’d heard someone say it was a mercy she’d only been struck on the cheek.
At testimony to just how disrespectful she’d been, his blood had nearly boiled over.
If that woman hadn’t needlessly picked a fight, none of this humiliation at the hands of that barbarian would have happened.
As he felt a dull ache in his wrist, an urge seized him—the desire to throttle the young countess’s neck.
“Your friend didn’t merely provoke the Princess first—she shamed her right in front of the Grand Duke.”
“But the Princess said she would overlook it, didn’t she?”
At those placid words, the anger he’d barely suppressed flared anew.
“We nearly had a diplomatic incident on our hands. The fact that the Princess forgave her doesn’t erase what that woman did.”
“She was angry because of what the Princess did to me before. She was doing it for my sake, wasn’t she…”
After years of contending with someone as troublesome as the Princess, he’d come to find Clara’s generous nature and gentle temperament deeply appealing.
A beautiful face, an excellent family, an unblemished reputation.
She was in every way the ideal woman to place beside him.
Yet if the Princess hadn’t buried the matter, he himself would have had to make that humiliating apology—so why did he feel no concern for Clara’s worry, no remorse on her behalf?
He held back a surging sigh and spoke curtly.
“If you truly meant it for my sake, you wouldn’t have stirred up trouble in the first place.”
“…”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can spend time with you feeling like this.”
Clara’s expression fell, but she acquiesced to his words without protest.
“…Yes, I understand.”
“…I’ll take you back to the manor.”
Logan held Clara’s hand as they walked, his mind drifting to the past.

“Duke, please… accept me. You know as well as I do—you’re all I have.”

The Princess of old had clung to him desperately, her face sunken and hollowed, her body little more than bone.
He’d shown her pity without thought, moved by a desperation that was painful to witness.
He’d since regretted that even that much compassion—never realizing she would mistake it for love and pursue him for three years.
The Princess, who’d spoken her mind freely before the Emperor himself to preserve the Grand Duke’s dignity.
Clara, who couldn’t manage a single word in his defense when he’d found himself in crisis.
The two women were simply inescapable to compare.
“…”
Logan recalled the Princess leaning naturally into the Grand Duke’s embrace, and his jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
‘Did she really think I’d be jealous of such a sight?’
He turned his gaze toward Clara.
Beneath her long, delicate lashes, eyes as beautiful as a lake were clouded with concern.
To compare Clara with a woman who could behave so lightly, for such a trivial reason—it was absurd.
Yet even in that fleeting moment, the displeasure was undeniable.
He squeezed Clara’s soft hand firmly, as if to dispel the intrusive thoughts.
But somehow, the image of the Princess lingering in his mind refused to fade.

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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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