The Mansion Awaits Spring - Chapter 99

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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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Episode 99
Pejin drew her close by the waist and spoke.
“I understand what you mean, but you can’t resolve your anger like this—it’ll become a habit.”
“I like badly behaved boys.”
“How so?”
“You grew up in an environment that made you that way.”
“So you’re saying you prefer a well-mannered man?”
“I mean I prefer a man brazen enough to carry it off.”
“Your tastes are set in stone. They always have been, though… Still, don’t think you’ll resolve things this way again.”
“I know. Only today.”
“Besides, it doesn’t resolve anything.”
“I didn’t expect that.”
“I tend to value the heart over the body.”
“You don’t look it.”
As April teased him about his heated state, he responded with perfect calm.
“I’m just matching you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“That’s not possible.”
At his reply, April nodded in understanding, then wrapped her arms around his neck and asked.
“How was your day?”
“Ah, pretend play, was it?”
“Yes. Focus.”
As April spoke, she tapped the back of his neck sharply. Pejin scowled in irritation at first, then laughed it off and answered.
“It was fine. Difficult to complain about. How was yours?”
When Pejin asked, April studied him for a moment before speaking.
“I missed you.”
Now Pejin understood why April had suggested the pretend play. She continued in her usual calm, almost austere tone.
“All day long…….”
He lost for words, his lips parting slightly as he fell silent.
Meeting her gaze, he saw what she wanted to hear.
She wanted to hear that he had missed her too. She wanted love, she wanted longing, she wanted to be needed by each other.
The storm in his mind came to stillness only when her voice sounded again.
“It’s pretend play. Answer however you like.”
At her words, Pejin snapped free from his frozen state with an ‘ah.’
His heart was pounding frantically, like a child stealing—whether it was guilt, fear, or love, he couldn’t tell.
He hadn’t thought he missed her, yet it was true he’d thought of her all day. Being together was torture, and being apart was torture too.
Pejin touched his lips lightly to hers, then spoke.
“I love you.”
“……What?”
“I said I love you.”
Every night, he dreamed that April Lunos stabbed his heart with a knife.
“Liar.”
In the dream, April Lunos plunged a dagger into Pejin’s heart as he lay fallen, then straddled him and looked down, repeating the same words.
“Liar. Liar.”
And afterward, he felt better. Her retaliation was sweet solace.
Pejin held April close and murmured.
“That was fun. It was fun because I got to play your husband.”
…….
“Let’s do it often from now on.”
Not wanting to see what expression she wore, he simply held her—yet the feel of her hands clutching his collar conveyed her emotion. It was bittersweet.
“……Yes. I’ll invite you again.”
Her voice, heard against his ear, carried the same quality. Bittersweet, utterly bittersweet.
Pejin held April in silence for a long while.
* * *
Pejin returned home before midnight.
He could not let others see an unrelated man leaving her house on the day of the funeral.
Rising early the next morning, April was dressing when Pejin’s voice came back to her, and she froze.
His words of love had chased sleep away all night and now interfered even with her morning preparations.
She had no time to dwell on it now, so April shook her head to scatter the tangled thoughts. This was not the moment for such things.
Hanna and Fred were busy under Baumann’s direction preparing to receive mourners, and when Fred kept examining his own face in the midst of it all, April, bothered by this, asked.
“Fred, is there something you want to say?”
“I…….”
“Tell me.”
“Well……. Miss, it seems you have no time to grieve. We can manage things here, so please go inside and be with your parents.”
Having finally spoken what he’d been thinking all along, Fred watched April carefully.
April smiled with relief and replied.
“Haven’t they been gone long enough that I should be grieving now?”
“Even so. Even so…… No, rather than ‘even so,’ isn’t that precisely why I can grieve now?”
April recalled how Hanna used to seem troubled when her reading was slower than Fred’s.
She hadn’t realized it at the time, but she’d come to understand only recently that Hanna wasn’t slow—rather, Fred possessed an overwhelming gift for language. The moment he learned to read, his capacity for expression blossomed rapidly.
Fred continued.
“My grandmother told me that when our mother—that is, my grandmother’s daughter—passed away first, she didn’t feel it at all at first. It wasn’t until the funeral, when she held the crematory urn in her arms, that it felt real. That’s when my grandmother felt it.”
Then he smiled sheepishly and went on.
“She wasn’t talking to me—I overheard her telling grandfather. I didn’t understand it back then, but now that I’m older, I do.”
After listening quietly, April gently chided him.
“You’re growing up too fast. Can’t you slow down a bit?”
“Yes!”
“You do answer well.”
April nodded with a smile.
“You’re right. Then I’ll go speak with them for a moment.”
“Please do.”
Fred said this, then rushed back into the Grand Banquet Hall to continue his work.
April took a deep breath and made her way to the room where the crematory urn was kept.
It was a space Baumann had thoughtfully arranged. After the funeral, the urn would be moved to the cellar of the Convent beneath the Estate.
Realizing this would be the last time they could be together, April knelt before the urn and the thought settled into her.
She tried to feel sorrow, but it wouldn’t come as deeply as she expected.
She had believed she loved them, yet perhaps she hadn’t loved them as much as she thought.
April sat there and simply asked what she wanted to know.
“I have questions.”
She gazed at the urn for a time, then spoke.
“How did you know? That this dye would let me survive in the fog? Why did you stain every scrap of wallpaper in this house with that dye just before your arrest? Why did you change all my clothes? As if to say only I should live. Only me, in this hell…….”
The crematory urn bore only the words ‘In the Sea of Eternal Rest’ carved by a nun from the Convent—no other decoration.
Yet April liked the meaning behind their religious inscription, so she had not transferred the remains to a more ornate urn.
“Is it enough if only I survive? I feel as if the two of you died because of me, and I haven’t been able to cry for the guilt. I’m so lonely. The house is too large. The world is cold, and it hates me. I want to hate it in turn, but there’s nothing in my hands to hate with, so I can’t even do that. I can’t cry, I can’t hate—what am I living for?”
She swept back her hair covering the scars that remained, and spoke.
“Look at this. The wound still hasn’t healed. It still aches. How could you. You hit me—me, whom you treasured so dearly. Yet you haven’t come once to see me? How could you, calling yourselves parents? How could you……. How could you…….”
Tears poured forth.
Not from sorrow, but from rage.
Not from longing, but from injustice the tears came.
Living day by day without dying—it was too unbearably unfair.

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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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