That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 35

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

Episode 35

Bridget had noticed from the start that Milia’s complexion didn’t look quite right.
But since the conversation had centered on Eric, she hadn’t found an appropriate moment to ask what was wrong.
‘Has something happened to Julian?’
The thought sent a chill through her.
She kept the worry buried, thinking it only to herself, when Eric glanced at her and asked gently.
“Are you quite all right, ma’am?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You seemed lost in rather serious thoughts just then. Did I say something amiss?”
He was a perceptive man.
Bridget offered an awkward smile.
“No, Eric. I simply drifted into thought for a moment. But tell me—how have you been managing lately? Are the nightmares returning?”
Once Eric’s examination began, Milia excused herself to take some air, leaving them to speak privately.
Eric watched her depart in silence, then turned back with a wry smile. “Shall we begin properly now?”
“You were concerned about your mother?”
“I didn’t want to trouble her unnecessarily. She’s been through so much on my account already—I can’t let that continue.”
He was a thoughtful son.
Bridget found herself beginning to understand why Milia had never fled her terrible husband sooner.
‘Among all the reasons, there was this one—a son she couldn’t bear to leave behind.’
Eric was an only child and the heir to the Spencer Family.
Had Milia divorced, both custody and guardianship would have passed to Spencer—she would never have been allowed to see him.
A family heir cannot abandon his house. It was the law of nobility, iron and absolute.
‘He knows this too.’
That his mother had been unable to leave because of him.
Which was why he’d begun by speaking of himself.
“I’d rather Mother not worry. Would you keep what I tell you confidential? If she asks after me, just tell her I’m improving.”
As he spoke, the Magical Miasma clinging to his body swayed in concert with his words, swelling and contracting. It seemed heavy with sorrow.
“Does your mother appear in the nightmares?”
“…You can discern such things?”
“Only conjecture.”
She could infer it from the way the Magical Miasma reacted whenever he spoke of Milia.
“Did the nightmares and sleeplessness plague you even before you enlisted?”
Eric looked at her in wonder.
“Somewhat. They became far worse after I entered service.”
He hesitated a moment, then gathered his courage and spoke.
“You must already know that my parents’ marriage has been unhappy—it’s scarcely a secret. Mother is truly strong and wants to appear so to others, but I once saw her hiding and weeping after an argument with Father.”
His tender heart had been deeply wounded by the instability of his childhood home.
He offered a bitter smile.
“Seeing my towering, invincible mother in such fragile pain—it shook me to my core. That’s when the nightmares began, I think.”
“I see.”
“Do you know what a sugar figurine is? It’s made from compressed sugar powder—press it even lightly and it crumbles to dust.”
“They’re used to decorate cakes, aren’t they?”
“Yes. In my dreams, Mother is always a sugar figurine. Always crumbling, always breaking apart. The nightmares began with her, but sometimes it’s not her at all. People I know, people I’ve grown close to, my comrades—in the dreams they all keep crumbling and collapsing.”
Eric laughed, a little embarrassed.
“Of course, I understand that people don’t actually break apart like that in reality.”
“I understand what you mean.”
Bridget had thought Eric bore little resemblance to Milia, but hearing him speak, she saw the perfect mirror—mother and son.
Both concealed their weakness before the world, nursing their pain alone where no one could see.
“It may offer some comfort to know that when people weep, the dark energy trapped within them flows outward and dissipates.”
“Truly?”
Bridget had witnessed it herself—seen the Magical Miasma slip away with tears from those who wept.
It had happened to her, too, sobbing alone in a carriage not long ago.
That day, the Magical Miasma that had been buried with her from her family home dissolved with her tears before she could even cleanse it herself.
“When Milia wept that day, she shed the dark energy along with her tears. A person who can cry is far stronger than one who cannot.”
Eric’s eyes grew bright as he looked at her.
“That does give me some comfort.”
Confused as he was, Eric’s face lit up the moment he saw Bridget, and suddenly he broke into a broad smile.
It was the kind of laughter that flows from a lightened heart—emerging without conscious thought, unbidden and pure.
Bridget met his gaze and smiled back at him.
Magical Miasma could be purged through her Purification ability, but that couldn’t heal the heart that had drawn the Miasma in the first place.
Sometimes such wounds mended simply by listening to another’s tale.
“Now then, let me cleanse that dark influence from you.”
Eric yielded himself to her without hesitation.
Bridget placed her hand gently on his shoulder.
A faint luminescence spilled from her palm, drawing the Miasma from his form.
The Miasma that had spread like mist was purified the instant it touched the light, but the denser clusters were compressed in her hands into a small sphere.
‘Smaller than before.’
Bridget tucked the compressed sphere of Miasma—no larger than a finger-sweet—into her shadow.
Then she paused, regarding her shadow with an odd, searching look.
‘The Miasma I stored last time… it’s gone.’
It was something she’d set aside, not yet purified, yet no matter how closely she examined her shadow, it had vanished.
Instead, something unfamiliar, distinctly different from usual, seemed to emanate from within the darkness.
‘Am I imagining things?’
She tilted her head, but Eric’s voice broke through her reverie.
“That’s refreshing! It felt the same way last time, but I was so half-conscious then that I thought you’d simply come and gone without my notice, and I assumed it was just sleeping well for once. But feeling it again now, it seems your touch must have been what helped me then.”
Eric laughed brightly, his fists clenching with newfound energy.
He had such a beautiful smile.
‘Like a puppy.’
It felt odd to think such a thing of a grown man, yet Eric had an undeniable cuteness to him.
“It’s as if the fog in my head has lifted and my vision has suddenly opened wide. I feel exhilarated all of a sudden.”
“…Is that so?”
Bridget hesitated.
Her mastery over Miasma had only truly begun after she entered the Convent in her previous life.
Before that, she could do little more than lightly purify the mist-like Miasma, and had never produced such dramatic effects on anyone.
The only person at the Convent she’d worked on significantly was Milia, who shared a room with her, and Milia was never one to be greatly affected by Miasma anyway.
No matter how much of it clung to her body, she remained unmoved.
So no one had ever given her such praise before.
No one, that is, except Julian.
“When I’m with you, I feel strange.”
“Is it bad?”
“The opposite. I feel a kind of rapture I’ve never known before. Why is that?”
He always said he sensed a unique aura from her, and he was deeply responsive to it.
On the day they first met, he’d complained irritably that he felt oddly giddy, but as he grew accustomed to her presence, he’d begun to say he couldn’t stop thinking of her when she was away.
“Madam Bridget? Are you all right?”
“Oh, have I worn that serious expression again?”
“No.”
Eric studied her quietly.
“A sad one.”
“…Have I?”
“I thought you were crying.”
Bridget flushed as though her hidden secret had been discovered, and quickly denied it.
“That can’t be it. I was simply relieved that the purification worked.”
His warm, light-filled eyes—a pale tan-brown—regarded her gently and unwaveringly.
“You once told me that a person who can shed tears is stronger than one who cannot, madam.”
……
As Bridget looked away in confusion, Eric offered a thoughtful smile.
“I simply found those words striking. I thought I’d made you cry, so I’m relieved I was mistaken.”
He chose to overlook her sorrow.

* * *

Once Eric had finished his conversation with Bridget, he left the Tea Room to find Milia.
The moment the door shut behind him, he pressed his hand to his chest and drew a long, deep breath.
‘I didn’t expect her to be so young.’
He hadn’t let it show, but he was startled. His heart had trembled.
‘And beautiful at that.’
Her elegant smile and deep-set eyes kept drawing his gaze.
There was something captivating about the way she spoke—soft and measured—and the ease of her conversation, grave yet comforting.
No man with blood in his veins could stand before such a woman without trembling.
‘Winston… whoever he is, I envy him.’
Could there be any greater happiness than having such a woman as one’s wife?
Eric, who kept himself utterly removed from the latest gossip of society, laughed ruefully at his own regret, then turned to search for Milia nearby.

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