That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 50

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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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Episode 50

What he wanted was for Bridget to feel humiliated and wounded.
He wanted to torment her.
To make her suffer as he did.
Bridget had no intention of accepting that.
It would only be him driving a knife into himself.
She bit down hard on Julian’s finger and wrenched herself free from his arms.
“Don’t do this.”
He, who seemed never to let go, released her without resistance.
“And yet you dare to cross over here, without even that much resolve?”
He laughed—a harsh, bitter sound.
Bridget met his gaze steadily.
“If that’s what you want, then do it.”
“Do it?”
“If you want me—to hold me, to touch me—I’m willing. Completely willing.”
“……What?”
“But if you mean to hurt me, then no. That, I won’t allow.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll forgive you. But you won’t forgive yourself.”
……
The twisted smile vanished from his face in an instant.
He stared at her in silence.
Behind his blank mask, his bewilderment bled through completely.
Bridget smoothed her disheveled clothes and lifted the lid of the plate she’d brought.
Inside lay an apple and a sandwich.
“Eat, Julian.”
He turned away as if disappointed.
“Leave.”
Bridget stepped in front of him.
“You’re hungry. I know you haven’t eaten in days.”
“I won’t eat anything unless Millea cooked it.”
“I made this myself.”
“Then I absolutely cannot eat it. So the traitor who sold me out now generously offers me her food—how thoughtful. What if I end up in a lovely glass coffin after biting into a poisoned apple? I’d become history’s greatest fool, betrayed twice over, the world’s laughingstock.”
Julian sneered, tossing the apple into the air and catching it again.
“I survived this far only to be put on display in some museum. The absurdity of it all.”
“It’s the sandwich you loved. I made it every time we met, every day I came to see you.”
“I abandoned that past long ago.”
“Then let me use Purification on you. You said it made you feel better.”
Julian set down the apple and slipped past Bridget with a hollow laugh.
The air of someone humoring a bad joke.
It was a refusal.
He draped his outer coat over a chair and began unbuttoning his shirt.
His bare chest came into view.
Bridget’s gaze dipped slightly.
He noticed and jeered.
“All willing, you said—yet you can’t even look. How pathetic.”
“……I mean it.”
“Then come in and wash with me.”
He pulled off his shirt entirely and wandered leisurely toward the bathroom.
Bridget recognized it for what it was—an expulsion.
“I’ll leave the food here. Eat it when you’re done.”
He didn’t answer.

* * *

A moment after Julian entered the bathroom, she heard the door open and close again.
The sound of Bridget crossing over to her own bedroom.
Julian stood against the wall with his eyes closed for a moment.
“Damn it. What am I doing?”
He had brought her back because her endless rush toward danger had begun to grate on him.
Isaac Winston. That pathetic fool had no idea what treasure he held in his hands.
The one person Julian would have given his life to possess.
A precious jewel beyond the price of anything in the world, yet he let her slip through his fingers without a care.
He had no right to keep her by his side.
Julian had stolen her away because he could not bear that foolishness.
He hoped that one day Isaac would realize what he’d lost and taste the bitter sting of true regret.
But it was Julian himself who was already drowning in it.
‘Was bringing her here the right thing to do?’
He didn’t know.
The realization that what he was doing differed little from Isaac’s own actions filled him with self-loathing.
He despised leaving her at Winston Manor, yet he could not bring himself to forgive her.
She repulsed him.
Bridget was no longer the jewel he had once yearned for.
The luster had drained from her within him.
And yet when he looked upon her, the radiant past came rushing back unbidden.
Seized by those memories, he felt the urge to pull her close like a fool and confess how desperately he had missed her, how unbearable it had been not to see her.
Even knowing she was no longer the Bridget he had loved.
The contradictory tangle of his emotions was slowly tearing him apart.
‘Dangerous.’
Bridget was a threat in herself.
She was the one person who could tear him down or build him up.
Why had he brought such a vulnerability into his sanctuary?
He looked down at his own hands.
He memorized the sensation of touching her, of her skin beneath his fingertips.
A ragged sigh escaped through his teeth.
“If what you want is to wound me, then no. I won’t allow it.”
Her words were half right and half wrong.
But the half that rang true—the part that desperately wanted to claw at her—meant her flight had been wise.
“I will forgive you. But you will never forgive yourself.”
Perceptive, wasn’t she.
‘Unfair.’
How unfair that she could see straight through him like that.
‘But I understand nothing.’
She claims to love him and then betrays him. She betrays him and then asks him to keep her by his side as his fool. What is her true heart?
What could possibly be her genuine feeling?
Julian slipped quietly out of the bathroom and gazed at the food Bridget had left behind.
He reached out and picked up the Sandwich.
Without hesitation, he took a bite.
Even if it had been poisoned, it wouldn’t have mattered.
Bridget’s Sandwiches were so devastatingly delicious that he would have wagered his life on them.
It tasted exactly as he remembered.
Beautiful memories came flooding back beneath the familiar taste and smell—the anchors that had kept him tethered to this cursed existence, preventing him from ending it all.
A starving soul found itself sated.

* * *

The next morning, Bridget woke and crossed over to Julian’s room.
As she had suspected, Julian was already gone.
But on the table lay an empty plate.
Bridget, whose heart had been heavy all night, felt relief wash over her at the sight.
‘Foolish man. Acting so sullen when he knew perfectly well he’d like it.’
She had known he would enjoy it.
Julian had always been wary of food.
Before she knew his true nature, she hadn’t understood why, but later she learned it stemmed from a near-fatal poisoning.
Yet even so, if she told him she had made it herself, he would push aside his fear and unease and accept what she offered him.
In truth, it was shabby, unpresentable fare.
Bridget only knew how to make sandwiches.
It was simply a matter of stuffing various flavored jams and whatever ingredients caught her eye between two slices of bread.
Still, Julian never tired of praising it as the finest food he’d ever tasted.
This time she received no compliments, but the plate cleaned bare spoke just as loudly.
Bridget scraped away the Dark Energy that lingered in the master’s empty room, purifying it thoroughly.
The gloomy air grew fresh and clean.
Then she gathered the empty plate and returned to her own chamber.
That afternoon, Nicholas, Julian’s secretary, came to find Bridget along with Millea.
“Here is the Official Concubine Contract. You’ll need to sign it tomorrow.”
Count Nicholas reviewed the document once, then pointed to the space where Bridget’s signature should go.
There were also spaces designated for both Julian’s and Isaac’s signatures.
Bridget accepted the contract with trembling hands.
‘All I have to do is sign here….’
She would officially become Julian’s woman.
Her heart raced.
Though it wasn’t a marriage contract, the thought that a place beside Julian would finally be hers thrilled her.
The secret meetings they’d stolen away to hide from watchful eyes, the long and aching days she’d spent yearning for him — all of it flashed through her mind.
At last, she had come back to him.
Forgiveness hadn’t yet been granted, but it didn’t matter.
When she’d signed the marriage contract with Isaac, she’d nearly wept with disgust; now her chest swelled instead with joy.
Meanwhile, Count Nicholas, misreading Bridget’s silent contemplation of the document, grew slightly uneasy.
When people heard “the king’s concubine,” they typically conjured images of a scheming, calculating woman.
If she was the only one capable of pleasing a king as volatile and capricious as Julian, then naturally her influence would be formidable.
Bridget surely understood this.
So the Count found himself wondering if she might prove to be willful and difficult.
‘One wrong step, and she might throw a tantrum.’
It was merely his prejudice about what a royal concubine would be like.

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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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