The Abandoned Prince’s Ghost Bride - Chapter 48

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

The Abandoned Prince’s Ghost Bride — Episode 48

[A human has arrived.]
“A human?”
Lucian’s expression darkened. As he approached, he caught sight of five humans huddled tightly together.
“It’s the first time someone has found their way here.”

[They must have heard the rumors. Since you came, this hasn’t happened once, but it used to occur a couple of times a year.]
“Tch, worthless fools…….”
Lucian’s eyes narrowed with irritation.
[I’ll handle it, so they’ll leave soon.]
“Someone’s coming. Look.”
[……What?]
Lia peered urgently through the window. Someone wearing a hat pulled low over their face was approaching the mansion.
“Let me get a good look at whoever’s bold enough to do this.”
Lucian positioned himself beside the front door and waited for the intruder to enter. Lia watched uncertainly, then looked back through the window.
The face of the hatted figure grew clearer as they drew nearer.
[Something’s strange…….]
In an instant, her eyes widened. A face far too familiar yet utterly unfamiliar appeared before her.
[Lu, Lucian! Get away from there right now!]
As Lucian turned toward her with a puzzled expression, the door swung open.
He immediately focused on the doorway, waiting for the visitor to fully enter.
The moment the hatted figure stepped completely inside, Lucian lunged at him. Realizing it was too late to stop him, Lia quickly shut the door to contain whatever might happen.
“What kind of vermin sneaks into my home……!”
Lucian gripped the visitor’s collar with his left hand and raised his right fist. But then, suddenly, he could do nothing.
“……What?”
A small voice snapped Lucian back to reality. The sight before him felt surreal.
“……Me?”
The other’s words seemed to voice Lucian’s own bewilderment. But Lucian understood: this was not him. Rather…….
[Let go of him now!]
Lia separated the paralyzed Lucian from the child who bore his exact likeness.
The crown prince!
If this wasn’t a doppelgänger who happened to look identical to Lucian, then only one possibility remained.
This person was Leopold Odelion, Lucian’s twin brother.
She glanced back at Lucian, who stood behind her.
He still couldn’t tear his gaze away from Leopold. The feeling was mutual.
“How did this happen……?”
Leopold’s eyes trembled. But soon he seemed to collect himself, crawling toward them on his knees from where he’d collapsed.
“……You look exactly like me, don’t you?”
Lucian was currently wearing the Diamond Necklace, which had transformed his hair and eyes to brown. He must have been preparing to venture into town.
[A small mercy in misfortune.]
At her murmur, Lucian—rigid as stone until now—flinched.
“Who are you? How do you come to look so identical to me? I am Leopold Odelion. What is your name?”
Leopold’s extended hand was full of warmth and curiosity. Lucian stared at it, then ground his teeth.
“Lia! Get him out of here now!”
She responded as if she’d been waiting for the command, channeling her Magic. Leopold gasped as his body lifted into the air.
As objects throughout the mansion groaned and shifted with an eerie sound, he glanced down at Lucian.
“What is this……—Ahhhhh!”
Lia kept him suspended, preventing him from completing his thought. Leopold screamed as he found himself suddenly airborne.
She made certain to light lamps throughout the house and create unsettling toy noises to heighten the sense of ghostly activity.
Lia pulled Lucian further back, then opened the door.
In that moment, Leopold and Lucian’s eyes met.
“Never come here again.”
The instant those words left her mouth, she hurled him out of the mansion.
As Leopold tumbled across the ground several times, the children beyond the fence rushed out to help him up.
She watched them flee beyond the fence, then turned to face Lucian.
[……Lucian, are you all right?]
Lucian was trembling violently, lost in confusion.
What on earth should she say?
Should she tell him that you were born as a twin and abandoned here? Or that the child who just left is your older brother?
Neither answer felt right.
“……He really does look exactly like me.”
Lucian mumbled something indistinct, then suddenly looked up.
“Lia…… What am I supposed to do now?”
His golden eyes were filled with such despair that Lia felt her jaw tighten involuntarily.
[Lucian…….]
“I’m a twin. I was born as the younger twin and abandoned by my family.”
At his words, Lia’s spirit faltered for a moment.
“I was never supposed to be born, never supposed to exist…… I resent the family that made me this way. I wanted to say something—anything—to them when we finally met……!”
Lucian’s cheeks trembled as tears filled his eyes.
“But I couldn’t say anything……!”
[…….]
“And my brother didn’t even recognize me! How am I supposed to live with this?! Who do I pour all this anger into?!”
The anguished cry seemed to explain everything Lucian had done until now.
He had known all along. That’s why he suffered so, why he couldn’t tell her anything.
Lia found herself at a loss for any comfort to offer.
Nothing she said right now would reach him.
So all she could do was hold him close.
As he leaned into her embrace, his body shook all the more. His tears fell to the floor in heavy drops.
“Lia! Why was I even born……? I didn’t choose to be a twin! Why do I have to suffer alone……!”
She understood his anguish was unbearable, but speaking this way now only gnawed at him from within.
Lia cradled his cheeks in her hands and met his gaze. His golden eyes, wet with tears, shimmered.
[Lucian, there is no being in this world that should never have been born.]
“……Lia.”
[Yes, you may have been abandoned by your family. They may have forgotten everything while you alone suffer. But that does not make your existence something to deny!]
“…….”
[I am beside you! Because of you, I spoke with a human for the first time and found the will to live again! And yet I would reject you just because of your family? That would be rejecting myself! Without you, even though I exist, I do not truly live!]
Three hundred years is a long and endless span. A tedious, agonizing stretch of time with no certain end, no way to foresee when this suffering would break.
And then Lucian appeared before her. She could see him, speak with him, and for the first time in three hundred years, she felt what it meant to be alive.
[Lucian, what does family mean to you? Does it require shared blood? Then what of me? What of Caesar? What are we who have stood beside you all this time?]
Lucian bit his lip and let the tears flow.
“You and Caesar are my family…….”
[That’s right. Family is what we build by standing together. They are merely people bound by blood, utterly unrelated to you.]
“Lia…….”
[Yes.]
“Promise you’ll never abandon me…….”
[That will never happen. So…….]
Don’t hurt yourself so much.
Lucian let his tears flow freely. It was the first time he had wept since he was ten.
It spoke to how long he had carried his burden, how deeply he had agonized, how much he had suffered in silence.
Lia opened her arms willingly, letting him unburden himself completely.
‘For Lucian, I would give even more than this.’

* * *

“Seriously, I’m telling you! There was a child who looked exactly like me!”
“Sigh, Your Highness, you must have been seeing things.”
Leopold returned to the Imperial Palace with his retinue, everyone save Harry having already retired.
The children were already on edge about Shullan claiming to have seen a ghost, and now Leopold was spouting more strange nonsense, so they’d been sent home promptly.
‘If this keeps up, we’ll have strange rumors spreading.’
At least these were people he’d known for some time; if it had been someone else, they might have told everyone that Leopold saw ghosts, or worse, that he’d taken a blow to the head and was raving.
“I really did see one!”
“Please stop, truly! Didn’t you perhaps mistake a mirror?”
“Do you take me for a fool? And since when do ghosts grab you by the collar! Besides, that child had different hair and eye color than me!”
“Then it must have been the ghost’s doing! Didn’t Shullan say he saw a ghost? Or perhaps there’s a doppelgänger?”
“A doppelgänger? Yes…… that’s it!”
At Leopold’s enthusiastic confirmation, Harry’s eyes grew cold.
“I mean this with good intentions, but please don’t speak of doppelgängers or such peculiar things to anyone else.”
“Why not?”
“Why? Because it damages Your Highness’s reputation, that’s why! No one would just blindly believe such talk!”
Leopold made a sullen face. But Harry showed no sign of backing down.
“In any case, take my words to heart. As the sole heir, your position is secure, but you shouldn’t give anyone ammunition to use against you.”
“……Hmph, fine. Not that you believe me anyway—who would? Go on, leave.”
“Then I shall take my leave. And don’t think of going back there again. Understood?”
“Are you my teacher now? Why do you nag so much?”
“Because I’m worried! Who else is going to look after you? You said you wanted a sibling? Well, know this: if you had a brother, you’d fight far more often than this. I’m really leaving!”
Harry snorted and stalked out of the room. Leopold grumbled after him.
“That stubborn fellow, refusing to believe me.”
But I really did see him. A doppelgänger who looked exactly like me.
Though his hair and eyes were different colors, if he were disguised the same way Leopold was, others would likely mistake them for twins—they resembled each other that closely.
“Then again, if they looked like twins, stones would be thrown.”
He knew well how fierce the prejudice against twins ran throughout the Odrian Empire.
As a child, he had accepted it as natural, but after studying abroad for the past two years, his perspective on twins had shifted considerably.
“In other countries, they actually view twins as symbols of abundance and fertility.”
Here in the Odrian Empire, it was the very opposite. During his time abroad and in the neighboring lands he’d visited, the sentiment toward twins was uniformly positive.
Moreover, thanks to the twin sisters he’d befriended during his studies, twins seemed not the least bit grotesque—rather, they fascinated him.
Those two sisters understood each other’s thoughts without speaking and spent their entire lives as the closest of friends.
Perhaps it was their sisterly bond and friendship that had so moved him? His longing for a sibling had only deepened since his time abroad.
Since he was the eldest, an older brother was out of the question, and the only realistic hope was a younger sibling…….
“What if that child were actually my twin brother……?”
Leopold, recalling the boy from the Haunted Mansion, let out a soft laugh and shook his head.
“That’s absurd. I’ve been an only child since birth.”
The child was probably just someone who happened to bear a striking resemblance to him.
Leopold flopped onto his bed, thinking of that boy.
Whether his eyes were open or closed, the image wouldn’t fade from his mind. Rather, it grew sharper, dancing right before his eyes.
“……I want to see him again.”
A moment of silence fell. Leopold lay with his eyes closed, picturing the child. How long had he lain there? Suddenly, a brilliant idea flashed across his mind.
“If I don’t have a real brother, I’ll make one instead!”
Their faces were strikingly alike—certainly possible, was it not? Even if they weren’t blood brothers, many people became Sworn Siblings and grew close.
“That’s it! Perfect!”
Leopold congratulated himself on his ingenious scheme.
In his excitement, it never occurred to him that the other might refuse.
Or rather, it would be more accurate to say he didn’t entertain such a thought at all.
Leopold, born to nobility as a prince, had scarcely ever been refused by anyone in his life.
And so, under this blissful delusion, Leopold simply made plans to return to the Haunted Mansion.

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