The Magical Holy Woman Seraphina - Chapter 43

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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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The Saintly Mage Seraphina
Chapter 43
“Am I being sulky because I spent time with Plum?”
“What?”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Why are you with another woman—pay attention to me instead. You’re throwing a tantrum.”
……
“This is maddening. You should at least have the sense to throw a tantrum at the right time and place.”
……
My wife’s mouth fell open.
So did mine.
‘Wow.’
This man had no intention of respecting the other person to begin with.
Wife or not—even a complete stranger, even a dog on the street—if someone explodes like that and spills everything out, you’d think they’d at least listen once to understand why. But what he’s doing now.
This husband’s behavior.
‘He’s just dismissing what his wife is saying as nonsense.’
It would be better if he’d at least counter with gibberish.
But to respond like that?
To completely ignore my words?
No couple could survive even a single day together like this.
And my wife seemed to feel the same way.
As anger rose in her chest, her skin flushed crimson all the way to her neck, and she cried out.
“Fine! Yes! I’m the kind of person who throws tantrums regardless of time or place! So let’s get divorced! Please, can we just separate already!”
“Keep your voice down—!”
“If I keep quiet, will you actually listen to me?! I have to scream and shout and act like a madwoman just to get a hint that my words are sinking into that thick skull of yours!”
My wife’s voice cracked. “After all this time living with you, trying to solve things through calm conversation, what have I gotten? Nothing! I don’t care if you go to Plum or anyone else! I don’t care anymore! Just sign the documents and leave!”
“I don’t care if you go to whoever—Plum or Drum or whoever! I have no interest! Just sign the papers and get out!”
“Ha, well…”
Even as his wife reacted like this—and she was no other woman, but his own wife—the husband only looked around, concerned with the gazes of onlookers.
As if she might chase after him the moment he stepped away, he finally made a show of examining the documents.
“Hmph.”
The husband skimmed through the divorce documents, which I could see clearly from where I stood, and let out a cold laugh.
“For you, you’ve prepared quite thoroughly. Well done.”
……
“But you’ve forgotten something rather important.”
What!
“If I refuse to sign here until the very end, you’ll have to prepare and submit these documents to the court alone. That’s when a divorce trial will be held. You understand that much, don’t you?”
Speaking in the tone one uses to instruct a child, the husband continued.
“But how exactly do you intend to complete and submit the divorce documents? I have the ring bearing your seal.”
As if to show me, the man opened his left hand.
Now that I looked closely, even his fingers seemed short relative to his hand size.
On the fourth finger—already short—next to the wedding ring, a thick ring sat on his pinky, even shorter still.
“This is the seal ring you gave me directly, and without the stamp made by this ring, your documents will have no legal validity.”
There’s no way to prove that you wrote them, the husband added.
“That was something your family forced on me! They said it might be good to entrust the ring to my husband in case I needed to make urgent, important decisions!”
My wife cried out, “On my wedding day, your entire family, the butler, and the head maid surrounded me and pressured me until I had no choice but to surrender it! When I refused, your whole family stopped speaking to me! They didn’t stop until I agreed to hand over the ring!”
“‘You don’t have to give it, but if you don’t, we’ll have to assume you have no intention of getting along with our house’—that’s what they said! When I refused, every one of them stopped talking to me! Until I agreed to give you the ring!”
“Regardless, you chose to entrust the ring. If you disliked it, you should have refused to the end.”
“Then give it back to me now!”
“Why should I?”
The husband checked his watch, facing his wife who had run out of words.
“I should have brought this up from the start. We’ve just wasted time.”
……
“As long as I have this ring, you have no way to submit the divorce documents. Because I won’t permit it.”
……
“Calm yourself and go home first. Think about what you’ve done wrong and reflect on it. I’ll be late, so don’t wait for me.”
Having said that much, the husband left his wife standing there with tears brimming in her eyes.
Left alone, my wife stood motionless for a moment, at a loss for words.
Then she quickly wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.
Honestly, I think a murder wouldn’t have been out of place at this point.
But the woman’s display of emotion was only brief.
As though she’d never wept at all, she smoothed down her dress with sharp little pats and walked off in a third direction—neither toward me nor the way her husband had gone.
“Phew.”
Only then did I emerge from behind the Dolphin Sculpture where I’d been hiding.
My hands were damp from gripping it so intently. The sculpture’s torso gleamed with the sheen of my fingerprints.
……
Let me think this through.
So even if that woman submits the Divorce Documents to the court, it doesn’t mean the divorce goes through one hundred percent.
It only means a Divorce Trial will be held to determine whether it’s approved.
‘But that husband is preventing the trial from even opening.’
And he’s doing it through the contemptible means of holding his wife’s Seal Ring in his grasp.
‘Whenever he returns it, shouldn’t he have to give it back if his wife asks for it?’
“…I really don’t like that husband.”
I don’t know which of them is the At-Fault Spouse. I don’t know whether the woman’s claim that her husband’s family has neglected her is true.
But when someone speaks, you have to listen, don’t you? The husband doesn’t listen to his wife at all.
He completely dismisses her.
As though she were a child or someone lacking in sense—words not worth hearing.
If I could, I’d steal that ring from him and slip it to her…
“No, this isn’t the time for that.”
The husband was heading toward where the men of the Social Club gathered to play poker. I had to follow him quickly.
With my short legs already trailing far behind him, I quickened my pace.
A room with the door left half-open so anyone could pass freely—furnished with wartime-style brown furniture and plush violet sofas.
“Hey there!”
The men lounging about greeted the husband as he entered, frowning deeply.
“Why are you so late?”
Using the moment when all eyes fixed on the husband, I slipped behind the half-open door.
“Something came up on the way.”
“What kind of something?”
“Were you stuck to Plum again?”
“Your wife is really something else. Her husband spends time with an unmarried lady and she doesn’t say a word.”
“She did say something, actually.”
“What? So you did get an earful after all?”
“I knew it!”
The man at the table tossed a card at the husband and snickered.
The husband, struck by the card, grumbled and pulled the cigarette box that sat beside the chessboard toward him.
The other men chuckled and asked him what he meant, and he tossed out his answer without much care.
“She wants a divorce.”
“Oh!”
“I knew it!”
“So the lady has finally drawn her sword!”
The men sitting around the table burst into laughter, throwing down their pipes and chess pieces.
Not a single one of them took their friend’s divorce seriously.
It was the sort of reaction you’d have hearing, “I scolded the dog I was raising and it peed on my clothes.” That degree of reaction, exactly.
Friend 1, who’d been leading the conversation, snickered and asked.
“So, will you do it?”
“Of course not.”
“That figures. Divorcing now would be inconvenient. You’d have to hand over money.”
What money?
Before I could even puzzle it out, Friend 1 answered for me.
“Be honest about it—you’ve scraped together all your wife’s savings too and poured it into an investment, haven’t you? That’s why a divorce would be inconvenient right now.”
Wait it out just three more months, and you’ll give her the divorce and the assets, Friend 1 joked, trying to persuade him.
“Who knows? Maybe she’ll agree without complaint. Your wife’s good-natured, after all—goodness knows she puts up with you and Plum laughing together every day.”
“Don’t keep bringing up Plum.”
The husband had stayed silent when they mentioned his wife, but at the mention of a woman named Plum, his expression hardened and he lashed out.
“She’s a lady who shouldn’t be bandied about so carelessly in your mouths. And.”
“And?”
“I won’t divorce her even after three months.”
“Huh?”
Why? Do you love her? At his friend’s question, the husband shook his head.
“From what I saw today, she doesn’t seem to be in her right mind. I can’t allow her to run about recklessly and damage my reputation. My wife will go to the Convent.”
“Oh!”
“What a wretch!”
His words drew a round of laughter from the gathered men.
“Once she’s sufficiently repented, I might even release her by the time I find myself a new bride.”
You could read between the lines well enough.
Sending her to the Convent meant locking her away under the guise of madness.
His words poured gasoline on the embers of anger that had been smoldering in me since the start.
I’d heard enough.
I rose from my seat with crisp finality and cast a quick glance around the room.
‘Social Club or whatever. Today, I’m going to dispense some justice of my own.’
“Though it pains me to confess, my wife seems to rely rather heavily on Lord Chase. For his sake—to spare him further trouble—I find I must exercise proper restraint over her behavior….”
Crack!
“What—what is this!”
“What is it!”
The startled men scrambled to their feet at the sudden sound.
Without a second thought, I tossed aside the doorknob I’d just torn loose and slipped away.
Arden, forgive me.
This was supposed to be your swearing-in ceremony.
I’m going to have to disappear for a while.
But I’ll make sure no one ever knows I was here.

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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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