Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 238

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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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Chapter 238

Memory came crashing down.
‘I’ve only just realized why I viewed you as vermin all this time. How delightful.’
Raymond, contempt burning in his eyes.
‘If you pull any more foolishness, I’ll kill you.’
Raymond, unable to trust me.
‘……You’re injured, so why exactly—no, this isn’t about efficiency….’
Raymond, reproaching my mistakes.
‘It’s obvious it’s a trap. So why? Hah……. Is the Raymond in your head some kind of monster with iron flowing instead of blood? And you’d put that wreckage before me?’
Raymond, jaw clenched against his fury.
‘Do you want to die? Did you forget you begged for your life? That you had a goal…… Ah yes, for that goal, you were willing to spend your life, your very heart, anything. All of it.’
Raymond, grinding his teeth.
‘…You know the source of the Magic Beasts lies in the Underground World. I’m not asking about your objective—I’m asking for your reason! Do you want to die? Do you need the heart of a specific Magic Beast? Explain yourself! Only then can I do whatever I’m able to do! Why do you keep fleeing from my gaze every chance you get and running mad?’
Raymond, gripping my arm.
‘None of this is your fault.’
Raymond, apologizing to me for the first time across all my lives and memories.
‘Won’t you come with me?’
Raymond, weeping and pleading before me…….
When did I first sense something amiss?
The Raymond of before had never shown weakness in my presence. He conducted himself as though both body and spirit were steel. Rage might roil within him, scalding and fierce, but he never melted like poured metal, never flowed apart.
I walked through hell with this man.
In a world where everything was lost, we journeyed to the very threshold of the Underground World. That Raymond seemed profoundly unhinged.
It couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t a place one could endure with a sound mind. His anger was natural. His contempt was natural.
That he performed countless inefficient acts because he couldn’t be of use—well, that too was unavoidable.
If one thinks from the perspective of ‘before,’ as ‘Titania’ walked step by step toward the center of the world, she also burned away every trace of Romantic Affection alongside her journey.
It was natural, in a sense.
To survive, she was injured countless times, saw blood, killed Magic Beasts. Raymond bore a similar wreckage—but his limbs were skeletal, withered. His body was covered with scars. His face, once called the most beautiful in the empire, was now so ruined it was hard to believe.
There was no state of mind in which one could recognize such things as Romantic Affection or the bond between a man and woman.
Even as I raged and said I couldn’t understand, still, he and I pressed forward to the very edge of the Underground World.
No matter how much we despised each other, we had to guard each other’s backs through the night fighting Magic Beasts, and when food ran short and we roasted Magic Beast meat, we had to share it between us.
When my condition was at its worst, unable to fully Detoxify the poisoned meat, I lay collapsed with food poisoning—and he said nothing. He simply found what little clean water remained and placed it beside me.
That precious water would have been far better spent on Raymond than on a helpless non-combatant like me. I thought so not because of Lisianthus’s sharp criticism from the sidelines, blaming me for being so weak I couldn’t even stand after that meager amount. I truly believed it.
So I only wet my lips, and somehow with the sword’s aid, I found wild herbs that aided Detoxification and forced them into my mouth. When my trembling body finally rose again, I saw the water barely diminished—and Raymond would contort his brow.
But once I could walk on my own two feet and follow behind, he said nothing.
I thought that was truly extraordinary.
I never could have managed it. Not to begin with—already unable to trust the other person—I could never have journeyed across half a continent, supporting one another through such a lengthy ordeal with someone I found suspicious.
I mean, what was I? A vile villainess who poisoned her betrothed’s sister in a fit of jealousy and unrequited love, scheduled for an Engagement Dissolution, suddenly thrown into madness and begging. How could he possibly believe such a plea?
Yet despite everything, he kept Titania alive and brought her to that place. In a hell where even maintaining one’s own body was barely possible. Dragging such dead weight along.
It was a miracle, truly.
In that sense, I was fortunate that my final companion was him.
And that effort was rewarded.
Now the Titania and Raymond who walked that hell no longer exist. The man—so pitiable—who lost everything and burned with rage, yet couldn’t bring himself to kill Titania, who heard her wish and journeyed with her to the farthest reaches—he no longer exists.
It would have been better never to have met. That was the true will of the ‘Titania’ who threw herself forward.
Even if I burn love with my own hands and turn every path backward to use myself as the wick of a candle that lights the future, still—the Raymond whom ‘Titania’ loved was a man so radiant that even in the moment of his own contempt, she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
That such a man, every day, every time, every single breath as if drinking poison, gritted his teeth and poured out his fury, shaking Titania…….
Yes. That’s how it came to be.
He was a man who knew how to despise with such elegance and cold precision a creature that fell short of his eyes. Placed in extreme circumstances, unable even to control himself, he was broken.
And so I was grateful that I alone could remember all of it.
It was enough that I alone carry everything. It would be lonely, somewhat melancholy, but at least this once the world wouldn’t shatter in such a state. I thought it inevitable that Raymond, knowing only my present actions, would feel sorry toward me…….
A world forcibly unwound in time spawned numerous side effects. Perhaps that’s why Lisianthus occasionally showed strange eyes. Raymond might be the way he is because of that aftermath too. Perhaps he’s simply having strange dreams and reacting oversensitively.
So I hoped for a denial.
A confused face, blinking eyes, some answer like: “What? I of course remember everything related to Titania…… Why do you ask?” was all I wanted.
Time seemed to stop.
I looked at Raymond with a tangle of emotions across my face. His expression, at first, showed no change whatsoever.
“……What memory do you speak of, Your Highness?”
But then, a beat late, Raymond’s smooth lips twisted.
The moment I heard that voice—part guileless, part dangerous—my vision went black.
The man’s eyes flashed.
A twisted light played across his face, like that of a lamb willingly mounting the altar, offering its throat to the knife, as if I commanded him to die and he would obey on that very spot. The believer who had pleaded for divine mercy transformed in an instant into a fallen angel burning with the desire to drag his God down to earth and imprison him within ourselves.
He was neither angel nor demon, and I was neither god nor his punisher.
Unthinking, I retreated before him.
A hooked hand stilled me, fingering my ankle as if with restraint. The motion was careful, like touching a bud just broken open in spring…….
But the fingertips brushing my thin ankle were rough. As his hand caressed my heel, I involuntarily drew in a breath.
Raymond laughed as if to soothe me.
A laugh I had never once imagined before.
This man was not someone who could laugh like this.
Not a man who had scorched despair and regret and hatred and resignation and pity and remorse—all of it—deep down inside, then mixed that ash into muddy water and drank it, only to laugh.
“Titania.”
That timbre sounded profoundly strange. I knew he’d called me that way several times before, yet I reflexively widened my eyes.
“My Titania.”
I had never once been ‘his Titania.’
I had done nothing to earn it. If anything, having recovered all memories, I deserved it even less.
That you know what kind of creature you were originally. That even if you wear the guise of someone good-natured, as if you’d stolen another’s memories and affection, even if you saved with your own hands the child you once tried to kill with those same hands—does that wash away all your sins?
He should have blamed me with eyes like fire, saying he wouldn’t be deceived.
The hand that had gripped my ankle moved slowly, very slowly, to my cheek.
Now there were no scars. Not sunken like before, when I was near death and only bone pressed through.
As if savoring it, as if counting the fine hairs remaining on my cheek, his touch was uncharacteristically soft. My breath grew ragged.
He placed the tip of his thumb above my philtrum, confirming my quickened breathing. As if to verify that I existed here, before his eyes, alive and breathing. As if that were his greatest weakness…….
“I only wish for you to be safe and content, in a place of peace.”
“…….”
“To that end, I can do anything, I say.”
“…….”
“Hah…….”
Seeing me motionless, Raymond laughed.
It was a laughter clear as a bird breaking through its shell into the world.
The face of one who knows his own deception.
“……As I thought.”
Rain hung from the ends of the man’s eyelashes, shimmering. A ghost from a dead world seemed to overlay the face of a man who had crushed all pretense.
His voice was all the more terrifying for how tenderly it feigned affection.
“You have no intention of believing me, do you?”
My breath caught.

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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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