The Former Empress Roughly Hides Her Abilities - Chapter 100
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 100】
Yuna felt wronged.
‘Isn’t this all rigged?’
Even to Yuna’s eyes, it was a plan far too clever for a young princess to devise.
So rather than thinking the princess had received assistance, she imagined the possibility that the Empress Dowager had already decided on a satisfactory answer and the princess had moved according to it.
Perhaps rejecting her gift and humiliating her was all part of that design.
‘Are the Emperor and now the Empress Dowager working together to isolate me?’
It was an almost paranoid delusion, but Yuna firmly believed she was the most pitiful victim in the world.
In the midst of this, seeing the Emperor eyeing Rianel.
Yuna was consumed by rage bordering on madness.
‘Are you really going to choose that woman?’
Abandoning me to keep that woman who resembles the Former Empress by your side?
On top of that, Yuna had failed to achieve any of her intentions.
Her attempt to offer a gift to the Empress Dowager to lift her suspension had failed. Her plan to make an impression on people with a splendid gift had also failed.
Even her plan to approach the sub-male lead Asil to probe what information he might have had failed.
Plans going awry was one thing.
‘But I can’t let what I have be taken away too.’
What Yuna had barely managed to grasp in this world, the possibility of becoming Empress, was about to slip away to that woman.
‘When I asked to be crowned Empress all this time, you didn’t even pretend to listen. What’s the reason for fawning over that woman as if you’d give her everything?’
What was more unbearable than not becoming Empress herself was someone else becoming Empress.
Yuna walked hurriedly and failed to notice someone blocking her path.
“Ah!”
The drink glass the man was holding tilted, soaking Yuna’s robes and the other person’s clothing.
The damp sensation made Yuna instinctively frown.
‘Who dares…’
On purpose.
I definitely saw his foot coming this way!
As soon as their eyes met, she was about to snap ‘How dare you look at me,’ but.
“Oh my.”
The other person was faster.
“Deliberately damaging clothing to continue a meeting with me, such a clichéd method it seems.”
The other person was Asil.
He was being sly with his usual fake smile.
Even his words were nonsense that only a terminal narcissist would say.
Though she wasn’t originally good at logical reasoning, Yuna, whose intelligence had further decreased due to excitement, stammered.
“Wh-what. I didn’t do that! The one who bumped into—”
“But I have no interest in the Saint, you see.”
Flutter, a letter fell from Asil’s hand to the floor.
Of course, that letter was indeed sent by Yuna.
Wanting to confirm if what she’d heard from Asil was true, it was a letter containing an appointment location and content to talk quietly after the ball ended.
It was extremely private and personal.
‘This bastard…?’
To take it out at this timing and use it to humiliate her?
As the surrounding gazes and even the Emperor’s attention focused on her, Yuna felt a surge of emotion.
‘Why are you looking at me with those eyes…!’
She didn’t care about people who didn’t know the situation. They were just looking for gossip material.
‘But you shouldn’t be doing this, should you?’
You were the one who tried to abandon me first, who threw flirtatious glances at another woman!
Why am I the only one who’s done wrong?
“Saint, considering what the Empress Dowager said, wouldn’t it be better to return and exercise restraint?”
Even the Emperor was maintaining his dignity until the end!
“I’m being wronged…”
Yuna tried to make excuses but bit her lip.
Making a scene now wouldn’t benefit her at all.
Among the people gathered here, there was no one who didn’t know that she and the Emperor were in a romantic relationship.
However, she shouldn’t reveal that the relationship had grown distant. A powerful person’s favor was power itself.
‘I have to retreat for now.’
Though fuming, Yuna had no choice but to leave.
“I… I should go change my robes.”
After Yuna disappeared as if fleeing, Rianel approached Asil.
Since she had been watching Asil from before the commotion started, she knew the whole story.
“Why did you deliberately bump into her?”
Asil’s lips curved up slightly, but more distinctly than before.
It was a real smile, not his usual fake one.
“I didn’t like you looking at the Emperor.”
Only if a commotion occurred would your gaze fall away from the Emperor and turn to me.
Rianel wiped the moisture from Asil’s clothes with her handkerchief.
Even that small gesture seemed like evidence that she cared about him.
“…This is nice indeed.”
Asil embraced Rianel.
“The drink got on my clothes too.”
“Now there’s one more reason you can’t separate from me. If you pull away, the stains on your dress will show, won’t they?”
“Always looking for opportunities…”
As much as Rianel showed distaste, Asil breathed in deeply.
This sensation of breathing properly. The fullness of being alive made him happy.
Then Asil raised his head.
The Emperor was there.
With the same gaze as when he took away his master, scanning his teacher’s back and spilling traces of dirty desire.
“…”
Asil deliberately tightened his arms around Rianel and pulled her deeper into his embrace.
Intentionally leaving not an inch of gap, firmly.
In that state, Asil looked down at the Emperor.
The smile on his lips melted away like snow.
How dare you covet her.
* * *
On the day the last ball ended, I had encountered Duke Vincenheim.
This time, I came to see Rupert.
In any case, it was much better than encountering the Emperor, so Rianel stopped.
“It’s been a long time.”
“Do you have business with me?”
I wondered if he might apologize like the Duke, but.
“What would change with a feeble apology now? In any case, being manipulated by that woman and failing to protect you was my mistake. I know the resentment remaining in your heart won’t be washed away by a few words from me.”
Rupert smiled bitterly.
He knew it was already too late to turn everything back.
He was satisfied with just the fact that Rianel was safe.
Above all, that man seemed to be properly protecting Rianel.
‘Then I should respect Rianel’s choice.’
Having not been there when needed, he couldn’t interfere now.
“I thought meeting me might be a burden to you… so I waited for a time when others wouldn’t be watching.”
He scanned the surroundings, confirmed no one was watching, then stepped forward and held out what he had in his hand.
“I came to deliver something to you.”
A single metal key.
It was a rather crude object, far removed from the splendor of the banquet hall.
“There’s a villa in the Southern Coastal District.”
When he was under Vanessa’s brainwashing, Rupert had lost much of his wealth.
However, there was something he had tried to protect at all costs.
“Mother left it in her will. It’s yours.”
He knew the Duchess had cherished Rianel, but he hadn’t expected her to leave behind such an inheritance.
“You said you’d never been to the sea when you were young, didn’t you?”
“….”
“Mother seemed troubled by those words. She said she wanted to give this to you as your twentieth birthday gift.”
Whether Rianel stayed with the family or left, she wanted to give her a space where she could always escape and stay.
‘The Duchess really did love Rianel.’
Rianel found it remarkable.
It would be normal not to feel affection for a child born from her husband’s affair.
Yet the Duchess had cherished that child dearly.
They said she was from the Temple, and she truly seemed to have the heart of a Saint.
‘Or perhaps there was some other reason I don’t know about.’
“Visit when you have time. Mother would be happy enough with just that.”
Though her current self wasn’t the ‘real Rianel,’ there was no need to argue in front of someone lost in memories of the dead.
“Yes.”
Rianel answered briefly.
Satisfied, Rupert nodded and slowly turned away.
Rianel stood there until his presence completely faded, clutching the cold metal sensation remaining in her palm.
For a long time, until the scent of wind on the cool metal transferred to her grip.
* * *
After the ball ended.
“So to summarize, His Majesty is unilaterally pursuing Team Leader?”
“I am not the Team Leader.”
“Right, Former Team Leader.”
The Tax Bureau people burst out with questions.
Everyone had witnessed the Emperor approaching Rianel and was curious about the full story.
“That’s the least important fact in the current situation.”
There was receiving the villa key, the Saint’s suspicious circumstances, and other matters.
Rianel was displeased that they were interested in something as trivial as the Emperor’s advances when there were more significant events to consider.
However, people felt greater interest in others’ trivial personal affairs.
“Are you a femme fatale? Why does everyone say they like Former Team Leader? First the Desert Kingdom Prince, and now the Emperor is added to the list.”
To Mel’s question, Rianel spoke in a flat tone.
“I am cute.”
“…??!”
“Wh-who says that?”
Rianel turned her head to stare at Asil.
He was smiling more brightly than anyone.
Wilbrin said.
“I believe generalizing from a single case is not logically valid.”
“Oh, your rhetoric has improved quite a bit?”
It was the result of spending time with Rianel.
Of course, inductive reasoning cannot be done with just a single case. However.
“But that doesn’t serve as evidence to refute my cuteness.”
‘What?’
What kind of sophistry was this?
“If you wish to deny my cuteness, please submit specific supporting documents.”
“…From my perspective, Former Team Leader is not cute at all.”
“Such subjective statements are inappropriate as grounds for judgment.”
“Someone who says ‘roughly’ all the time but handles everything perfectly isn’t cute by anyone’s standards, you know?”
“Whenever I see you stating only facts regardless of who you’re talking to, I get nervous. I worry you’ll get stabbed somewhere and end up floating in a river as a corpse.”
Wilbrin thought ‘scary’ would be more appropriate than cute.
‘Or annoying.’
“As I mentioned earlier, such vague assumptions cannot be adopted as evidence.”
“Arghhhh!”
Afterwards.
The Tax Bureau people suffered for a long time as punishment for being unnecessarily curious about someone else’s love life.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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