The Abandoned Villainess Takes Everything This Time - Chapter 153

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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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153.
Lillian was trapped motionless in her bed.
Even though her fever had broken, Marguerite insisted she stay wrapped in blankets without exception.
“I’ve returned, Miss.”
Marguerite had come back just then, having checked on the two men.
“Marguerite, how was it?”
“Peaceful so far. He hasn’t destroyed anything else.”
“He didn’t say anything to you? Either of them?”
“No, ma’am. After he looked at the notebook, there was no fighting, and neither said a word to us. Don’t worry.”
“Phew, good.”
Lillian wriggled deeper under the bedcovers.
‘Good heavens, my whole body aches.’
Tampering with an Imprint was no trivial matter.
Still, compared to the time her right leg wouldn’t move at all, this was nothing.
What mattered was this:
‘Those two need to cool their heads.’
In truth, both men were thorns in Lillian’s side.
‘It’s not as if I don’t understand attachment, lingering regret—those emotions.’
In fact, Lillian was the supreme expert in that field.
One had only to look at what she’d endured from the Tillard Family.
‘But this? This is too much.’
Had she thought watching one of them die would make her happy?
When she watched them destroy themselves in battle, did she truly feel—
—not even a flicker of sorrow, not the hint of tears?
‘And what has Ren done to his own body?’
Eyes that changed color were no ordinary thing, even in mad Perniers.
Physical transformation itself was extraordinary.
‘Just look at what Princess Melliora endured each time her body changed. The pain she suffered.’
And now, as Lillian was, there was nothing she could do for them.
That genuine villain, Eunjeok.
“And His Highness too.”
When there was no world left to return to anyway, why cause such heartache?
Why must identical faces tear each other apart like this?
‘…Sigh. Before I get angry without reason, let me compose myself.’
There was one thing she needed to examine.
Lillian’s eyes shifted between the two hairpins resting in her palms.
…
One was the hairpin Lillian wore daily now.
The other was the one Ramio had discovered—identical, yet far more worn.
Kuern had said of the latter—
‘That you gave it to our parents.’
‘That you made it, an artifact, which is why they kept it!’
…that Lillian had given it to them.
‘When did I ever do that?’
But as she held both hairpins and examined them slowly,
“…!?”
A soft glow emanated from inside the worn hairpin.
And Lillian’s vision plunged into sudden darkness.
* * *
The limits of patience.
That was Ren’s conclusion.
He’d never possessed patience when it came to Lillian in the first place.
He could no longer wait quietly.
Even if it had only been an hour since receiving the card through Marguerite Rubelli.
‘Lilli said she didn’t want to see me and him.’
There was no clause about not hearing his voice.
So instead of officially visiting her room, he took the shortcut across the garden.
As expected,
the glass terrace door was firmly locked.
His resolve wavered.
“…Hah.”
Come to think of it, that door had never been locked before.
Because they always walked hand in hand through the garden together.
‘Lilli. We should take a walk.’
‘Ah, just let me finish this artifact a little more…’
‘No. You’ll atrophy your leg muscles if you keep this up.’
‘Mmm…uuugh.’
Even that simple moment now felt unbearably precious and longed-for.
…
Ren wiped the back of his hand across his left cheek.
The mark his mother had engraved there.
The web-like patterns appearing unbidden.
‘So Lilli saw all of this long ago.’
She’d remained with him despite her fear.
She’d believed in him in the strangest of ways.
Not once, holding his hand, had he felt revulsion or distance from her.
So had he ever properly repaid that heart?
‘You all never believed in me.’
Ren spoke, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Lilli… I…”
His throat went dry the moment he began to speak.
These were words he’d never used once in his entire life, making this moment considerably awkward.
“I’m sorry. To you.”
His hands, grotesquely cracked from monsterification, clenched into fists.
He felt no regret.
Without it, having lost the Controller, he could not have defeated himself from another timeline.
But…
“There are things I did to you without speaking first. Forgive me.”
He regretted only that he could no longer see Lillian’s face.
“If you wish it, I’ll do anything… I’m, after all, your fiancé.”
Even if you don’t love me.
“So let’s face each other and talk, Lilli.”
Whether it killed him or not to look, the latter was preferable.
But no sound came in response to his words.
So this is how the woman he’d fallen for responds when truly angry—by turning her back completely. A bitter lesson indeed.
Yet Ren suddenly drew breath at an ominous atmosphere.
…
Even if she were angry enough to turn away, shouldn’t he at least hear Lillian’s breathing?
He could distinguish Lillian’s breathing, her smallest footsteps, the rustle of fabric when she moved, the whisper of wind when she drew out a torch—everything.
But now there was nothing.
Most of all, her scent had vanished.
Without another thought, Ren shattered the glass door and entered.
“…Lilli.”
The room was empty.
“Lilli!”
A ringing filled his ears.
Bad enough that she was angry with him—but vanished?
Surely not…
Ren slowly turned to look behind him.
“Is it you.”
The abomination with his exact face now stood in the garden.
Had that wretched thing hidden Lillian?
Evren’s teeth ground together as he regarded his other self with contempt.
“…That’s rich, coming from you.”
Having witnessed Lillian’s death, he could refuse nothing when she suffered and begged.
But he had come to this place because of the Imprints’ maddening response.
The two men stared at each other with bitter hatred, then looked down.
On the floor, two hairpins glimmered softly.
* * *
“…Gasp!”
Lillian’s eyes snapped open.
‘Damn it—was it just an ordinary ornament?’
So it deactivated when a condition was met…
‘It must have been a Memory-Infused Artifact.’
Among the Tillard Family, there were those who crafted such artifacts from time to time.
‘Those who poured in Control Power and accidentally melded away fragments of their own memories.’
If that was the case, then Lillian should be seeing the memories of whoever had made that worn hairpin…
But what appeared before her eyes wasn’t the familiar Crown Prince’s Castle.
It was a place familiar in an entirely different way.
‘…? This is the Tillard Main Residence from my childhood.’
She remembered it clearly.
Because when her parents were alive, Lillian had occupied the eldest daughter’s room.
Later, after they died, she was driven from it by Iris.
“Huh?”
And Lillian looked down at her own hands, squeezing and releasing them.
“Huh, what?”
They’d become a child’s hands.
Lillian tumbled from the bed in astonishment.
She cupped her face reflected in the window with both hands, making a soft sound.
No amount of touching could convince her these were a grown woman’s cheeks—they were decidedly soft and small.
“Huh, huh, huh?”
Lillian had been sent back to when she was seven years old.

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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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