The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 146

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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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Part 2, Episode 16
He bore guilt for his past deeds, and so he harbored no thought of making crude demands in this moment.
Yet Garren, once he had decided to come to this place, had offered the Marquis’s wife a choice.
He had given her the book written by humans that best described the existence called Bashin.
After she had finished reading it, he told her that he was a Demon.
For all the long ages he had lived, this was undoubtedly the first time Garren Wilbred had ever revealed his true nature of his own will.
He had simply existed since some point in the past, and just as naturally, he had hidden his identity all these years.
Even throughout that long game of deception, only one person had ever seen through him—a close friend he had met ages ago.
In that distant past, when demons had been far more numerous, there had been a young boy whom people commonly called the hero chosen by the gods.
Of course, somehow one more person had been added to that count since then.
In any case, he had explained everything to the Marquis’s wife.
He had told her about his nature, about demons, and that he had reason to leave this world for a time.
If she wished it……
He would erase himself from her memory.
It was the first and last chance he could offer her.
As he recalled what had happened not long before, he rested his elbow against the window frame, propped his chin on his hand, and traced a faint smile across his lips.
* * *
“So choose. I will respect your choice, madam.”
“…… You’ll respect my choice? By foisting all the responsibility onto me, you mean? Well, how convenient. Then erase it. Erase everything—every moment I spent with the Marquis. I want all of it gone.”
……
“You’ve always been this way. Always. ‘For your sake,’ you say, ‘since you chose it, don’t regret it,’ forcing choice after choice on me, forcing responsibility after responsibility onto my shoulders. And when I finally tried to shoulder that burden…… this time you claimed you loved me again, and you turned everything inside me upside down……”
Patter-patter—
Her pale blue eyes suddenly grew hazy, spilling forth tears like crystal streams.
Not sorrow, but undisguised fury etched across her face as she glared at him, her fists clenched tight.
The expression written plainly there was one of longing to strike him across the face with her bare knuckles if only she could.
‘She’s always been like that,’ he thought.
A person who hid nothing of her heart, who met him with unvarnished honesty.
Despite her shame, she had gathered what courage she possessed and stood before him; rejected countless times, she had returned to him again and again.
The saying went that we do not appreciate what we have until we’ve lost it, and when he finally grasped her true worth, there was nothing left in his palms.
All that remained was a pathetic figure draped in the skin of a mortal, retracing and ruminating over a human life lived in fleeting moments and then abandoned.
“I’m sorry.”
Watching her eyes grow wet with disappointment, Garren Wilbred found himself speaking before thought.
“I was wrong.”
“…… That’s enough. It’s better this way, really. Without you, I could meet someone better, someone who would make me happy……”
In that instant, her body was pulled forward and fell—soft against his chest.
“I’m sorry.”
Garren reached out and drew her into his embrace.
“I spoke words I didn’t mean. The truth is, I don’t want that. I wish you would remember me always, and I find myself wanting to lock you away where only I could see you.”
……
“I wanted to pretend. If I told you that I wish I could cut the throats of every man you’ve met, you’d be horrified, wouldn’t you?”
“…… No—you’re already doing it anyway.”
“I wish you would love me the way you used to. I wish you would believe in my love…… and smile for me as you did before.”
His forehead—that of a man standing just slightly taller than she—came to rest gently against her shoulder.
“I’ll set things in order as quickly as I can and return. I do hope you’ll wait for me.”
……
“…… I’m sorry for making you lonely all this time, without anyone by your side.”
After a long hesitation, he whispered those words to her.
The answer to that first true confession took a very long time in coming.
He never did receive an answer to his apology.
Yet she had asked him the way to preserve her memory, and Garren Wilbred had willingly shown her how.
And so she had entered into a temporary Contract with Garren Wilbred.
As his Contract partner, she would be able to retain her memories of Garren Wilbred.
* * *
And whenever the young Selena on this side fell asleep, the spirit of the Marquis’s wife Selena from the other side would cross over into this one.
This was the result of that arrangement.
“I still can’t believe you’re a Demon who’s lived for thousands of years.”
Though he’d lived far longer than that.
He let that remark pass lightly, swallowing it without comment.
He had learned through bitter repetition that it was far better not to deliberately reopen old wounds in matters of the heart.
“Even if one is a Demon, it is merely a difference in race and ability. There is nothing fundamentally different. The primary distinction is perhaps only in lifespan.”
A being who lived a life close to eternity, and a human who burned briefly and vanished—fleeting beyond measure.
He understood precisely why that made humans precious.
Garren Wilbred, unlike other Demons, had come to appreciate humanity in his own way—those mortals who kindled their brief lives into brilliance.
That was why he could move through countless worlds across the ages, wearing different faces, living entangled with humans.
“Is there perhaps a true form you have?”
“Well… there is one, but it’s not remotely human-shaped. It’s a form I can’t quite describe in words…”
He shrugged, adding that if he had to compare it to something, it would be something like a dark, amorphous mass.
“I’d rather not show it to you.”
“Is that girl really the Bellion princess?”
“What’s inside her is, yes.”
Garren Wilbred moved closer to the woman sitting on the bed and settled beside her, offering his reply.
“Does she have a tail? Horns?”
“…What?”
Garren Wilbred faltered at the curious gaze of his wife.
What she wanted was unmistakably clear.
“…Do you want to see?”
“Yes.”
Garren Wilbred’s brow tightened briefly before he rose. With an air of embarrassment, he smoothed the back of his neck and exhaled a short breath.
Then, with a soft crack, horns sprouted from the crown of his head; his nails darkened to black and sharpened into points, and from his lower back emerged a dark tail that swayed gently.
His skin darkened slightly, his ears sharpening and lengthening, and the Marquis’s wife’s eyes widened in wonder at the sight of him transformed.
“…It’s not the most pleasant form to display, I’ll admit.”
“It really does look like those Demon drawings people make sometimes.”
She regarded Garren Wilbred with fascination, then reached out and grasped his tail firmly.
He shuddered, his expression troubled as he lowered his gaze and covered his mouth with his hand.
“Wow, the texture of the tail is strange too…”
She’d expected it to be rough, but it was far softer than anticipated, and as her fingers caressed it, Garren let out a low sound of distress before speaking hesitantly.
“My lady, I’d prefer if you didn’t handle the tail quite so… thoroughly. It’s rather a sensitive area, you see.”
Only then did she look up, and upon seeing the young man’s flushed face, she froze in alarm and quickly withdrew her hand.
“I-I’m sorry. I was only…”
“No, it’s understandable.”
Garren Wilbred lightly rubbed his heated face as he watched her, then leaned forward and bent down toward her.
“My lady.”
“…Yes?”
“May I kiss you?”
As he whispered against her ear, he watched her trembling eyes slowly close before carefully pressing his lips to hers.

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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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