That Piece Of Trash Was Me - Chapter 70
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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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Chapter 70
What is this?
I need to listen to what he’s saying right now…?
My bewildered feelings were only momentary.
This benefit wasn’t like the previous one, where it felt like watching a movie.
It was more like…
“Mother? Can’t you take me with you too?”
The voices, scenes, and emotions from that night that Leon Frazier couldn’t bring himself to describe in detail due to his pride faintly surfaced.
Like film held up to light. Blurry but therefore even more poignant, like a black and white silent movie.
“I’ll be good. Okay? Mother, I want to come with you too.”
Leon Frazier, much younger than now, had chubby cheeks.
Young children have an instinctive fear and intuition about being abandoned.
Just like young Leon Frazier who was shedding tears drop by drop in this black and white footage.
“Leon.”
The face of the woman with her robe pulled deep over her head wasn’t clearly visible.
Since she was the Marquis’s wife, there might be a portrait of her at the Marquis castle in the Imperial Capital, but I had never seen her face either in the game or through Tulia’s eyes.
Just sorrowful lips that held a pitiful smile.
“Leon has Lisian, so you know you’re not alone, right?”
And the young girl sleeping, held tightly in her arms.
Tulia.
Young Leon Frazier’s eyes were definitely looking at Tulia too.
Those young eyes were filled with questions and more questions.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why are you leaving me behind and taking Tulia?
Why do you say you love me too, but only take Tulia?
Why?
Such questions overflowed and streamed down his cheeks.
“Tulia is alone, so Mother has to take her. Poor our Tulia. If I don’t take her, who will?”
“Mother…”
“Our Leon is good, so you’ll listen to Mother well, right? Give way to Tulia. Okay?”
From inside the carriage came an urgent man’s voice saying there was no time.
That wasn’t Father’s voice, not Marquis Aster Frazier’s voice.
Perhaps because it was a benefit.
I could feel all the shock and pain, sense of loss and questions that this young Leon Frazier had experienced as if they were my own.
Mother abandoned us and chose another man.
Mother abandoned me and chose my younger sibling.
Mother left me behind.
Even when I clung to her, she left coldly.
Even when I cried asking to be taken along, she didn’t embrace me.
“Lisian is sick, so you, Leon, as the younger sibling, need to take good care of him. Understood? I love you. Leon.”
I knew all too well how cruel those words were.
And the fact that even though the Marquis’s wife held Leon tightly with love and affection, he would no longer be able to feel warmth from that embrace.
I watched the departing carriage.
Small, young Leon Frazier continued for a long time after, staring blankly at the dark night road like a frozen statue.
Without being able to take even a single step.
Until dawn broke and the surroundings became bright.
Not for a single moment.
“I just, that’s how it was. That’s why I didn’t really like you.”
Leon Frazier naturally doesn’t know that I saw everything from that day through the benefit.
Since he doesn’t know, he talks about it lightly like that, as if it was nothing special.
As if it was someone else’s business.
As if it’s nothing special now.
How ridiculous.
I know best that his insides aren’t like that.
And also that he can’t bear to reveal those deep wounds to others.
“L-Leon?! What, what are you doing…?!”
“Brother.”
Young Leon with pink paint poured over his head cries while laughing.
“Why can’t I have pink hair?”
Tears drop and mix with the pink. They leave long marks on his white cheeks like young bloodstains.
Young Leon Frazier cried like that for a long time.
The whole time Lisian held him and comforted him, he cried his heart out like a fool.
“…”
I stared at Leon Frazier for a moment.
His hair was such a deep black color that even if he tried to dye it pink, it would never take on this delicate color.
“So you said you didn’t really like me?”
“Yeah. I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a big brother all this time. I’ll even apologize if you want.”
“That’s probably not it.”
“What’s not it?”
“It wasn’t just that you didn’t really like me, you must have hated me.”
“Why are you exaggerating again. What else don’t you like now.”
“Because Mother left you behind and only took me, you must have hated me terribly.”
“Ah. Really. Here we go again. What should I do? Should I kneel in front of you? Or bark like a dog? Woof woof?”
“So you must have found everything about me disgusting…”
“Ha.”
Leon Frazier finally set down the herbal medicine on the side table with a thud.
“Hey. Tulia Frazier. What answer do you want to hear from me right now?”
“I understand.”
“…What?”
“I said I understand.”
I too very often hated my younger sibling who received Mother’s love.
I thought I would spend my whole life hovering around Mother’s side because of that child, always on the outside.
The fact that my older sister and older brothers had grown up enough that they didn’t need as much parental love as I did.
Made me feel a strange sense of inferiority.
Why was I younger than them, trapped in this cycle of hurt?
What must it have been like for Leon Frazier, who was abandoned so directly before his eyes at an age much younger than mine?
“I understand, but I’m still angry.”
“…Why.”
Leon Frazier asked a beat late.
“Are you angry now because I tormented you for such a trivial reason?”
“You tormented me? No.”
“Then what?”
“Because I feel sorry for you.”
“…What?”
That’s right.
I was angry because I felt sorry for him.
This Leon Frazier, who I had hated to the point of irritation until this very morning, no, until the moment I just opened my eyes.
Because I felt sorry for him.
Because he reminded me of the old Han Ina.
“Leon.”
Sometimes thoughts don’t pass through the head, but come out through the heart.
“Why don’t we have normal parents like everyone else does?”
Like now.
“I didn’t want to be abandoned either.”
“….”
“You didn’t want to be abandoned either.”
“….”
“Why were we abandoned?”
“….”
“What did we do so wrong….”
Words leave traces where they pass. No, they leave pathways. Moisture formed along the thin pathway and soon flowed down my cheeks.
“I understand that you hated me. I would have hated me too.”
“….”
“I understand everything. We were too young. Leon.”
“….”
“So….”
Right. So.
I had so much to say, but nothing came out past my throat.
Only then did I realize that the balloon I had been endlessly inflating, no, my heart had already burst.
The wounds I had deliberately ignored, the invisible traces like patterns on expanded rubber, had become wrinkled and turned into even more hideous scars without my knowing.
“I’m just, sorry.”
Maybe I wanted to hear these words from Mother.
Childish and immature as it was, maybe I wanted to hear such words from my younger sibling too.
From my older sister and older brothers who said they had never once thought of me as family.
The fact that only I had thought of family as family was so frustrating and heartbreaking, and on the other hand, terribly painful.
So perhaps the apology Tulia was giving to Leon Frazier was ultimately the apology I, Han Ina, had wanted to hear from everyone.
“Tulia Frazier.”
It was a voice like trash sunken to the bottom of the sea. It was that pathetic of a voice.
“Why are you sorry?”
“….”
“…I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“….”
“Really… I’m the one who should be sorry.”
We were still young, and so we didn’t know how to escape from the wounds given by the adults we had loved. We couldn’t know.
That was true for Tulia, who had been the ultimate villainess in the game.
And the same was true for Leon, who as one of the male leads possessed almost everything sparkling that existed in the world.
Both of them just sniffled like fools.
The herbal medicine bowl was ridiculously still warm.
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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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