The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master - Chapter 72

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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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Chapter 72
When she knew his name and accepted him anyway. When she held him without hesitation. When she kissed him.
He’d wept with joy, as if in a dream, happier than he’d ever thought possible—so happy he’d have gladly died in that moment.
But how could he confess everything to her? He knew he was far more broken and wretched than she realized.
He understood it was selfish, yet he wanted to eliminate even the smallest dust mote of risk that might cost him this miracle he’d barely found.
So he lied until the very end, forcing himself to bury the truth.
But…….
[I won’t abandon you.]
Even after every last dark secret came spilling out, she’d promised him that.
Suppressing the anxiety that made him want to flee entirely, he had no choice but to confess everything—every sin, every shame.
Cecilia had listened to that pathetic confession in silence.
“……That’s all there is to my story.”
His clenched fists were slick with sweat.
After staring at him for a long moment with eyes he couldn’t read, she finally spoke.
“How could you possibly do that?”
Was she reproaching him, then?
He thought there was nothing to be done about her anger—but even so, his body went rigid without his meaning to.
He couldn’t bear the terror of facing that same gaze, that same tone of voice as in his last life.
If you learn the truth and come to despise me again. If you finally abandon me.
Will I have to turn back time once more?
But he was far too exhausted to repeat the same cycle while waiting for a miracle that might never come again.
‘Perhaps it would be better if I simply died first.’
Learned resignation swept over him quickly, and his eyes—devoid of light—grew dull as a dead fish’s stare.
In that instant.
Smack!
Cecilia lightly slapped both his cheeks, forcing his slack face upward so he had to look at her.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but don’t you dare crawl into your hole and hide. I’m not the kind of person who says one thing and means another.”
‘……You won’t abandon me?’
Before joy came disbelief.
Even though you heard everything about me? Even though you know how pathetic, how dark, how contemptible I am?
Lien finally gathered his courage and studied her face. Her eyes held no scorn, no hostility.
“What I wanted to ask was—how could you keep loving someone who hated themselves so much? Enough to turn back time forty-two times?”
Cecilia narrowed her brow as if unable to comprehend.
So the only part she still didn’t understand was that.
The negative spiral of his thoughts dissolved as if washed away. Fighting down the surge of joy that threatened to overwhelm the empty space left behind, he answered at once.
Why he’d come to love her? That was not a difficult question at all.
“Because you were the one who taught me what emotion was. Joy and sorrow, jealousy and love—everything.”
Before her, life had been nothing but a tedious novel; through her, he finally understood what it meant to be alive.
“You were my only kindred spirit.”
Through her, he’d learned loneliness; through her, he was no longer alone.
She could never imagine how desperately he’d awaited this moment, when his love was granted once more.
As expected, Cecilia seemed unable to fully grasp it. Her brow remained creased.
“I can’t honestly say I understand…….”
“…….”
“But I think I see now why you became like this. That your heart carries a heavier burden than I thought.”
Yet she reached for him anyway, smoothed his hair, caressed his face—as if to say she would accept whatever form he took, in whatever state he found himself…….
“……Are you forgiving me?”
All he could do was cling to her gentle mercy, begging her to accept his sordid, ugly love once more.
“Yes. But do try to rein in the dark behavior a bit. Keeping even the teaspoon I used is rather…….”
Cecilia murmured this with exaggerated solemnity.
Even that was so precious to him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the ache behind them, struggling against the heavy, sticky urge that threatened to overwhelm him.
* * *
What must it feel like to live the same life dozens of times? And only for one person—enduring contempt, tasting despair.
Cecilia stroked the man who crouched at her feet for a long time, his face buried against her thigh.
As she did, she thought of the cruel span of years he must have suffered. She couldn’t even fathom attempting such a thing herself.
If love was something that persisted even after turning back time dozens of times, suffering again and again without surrender, then she did not know love.
[Because you were my only kindred spirit.]
How could such a reason ever be enough motivation.
How could one possibly love so much.
By the time he’d regained his composure, Cecilia spoke first.
“You said at the beginning that Cecilia didn’t hate you. So was she your lover?”
She wondered if perhaps he’d received such remarkable love that he couldn’t bear to forget it. When she asked, he shook his head.
“I wish it had been so, but when I confessed my feelings, she simply told me to go die.”
‘…… Why on earth did I love her?’
“It seems no different from any other life.”
“No. Rather, because of those very words, I felt that she cared for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The truth is, I could only understand that after I lost you. Far too late.”
……
“If only I’d known sooner how much of a miracle it was that you discovered me, that you accepted me.”
He wore a bitter smile.
“So now, every moment I spend with you feels like a dream.”
A dream that would kill me if I woke from it.
The words he added, barely audible, carried his usual melancholy tone, but hearing the story, they only seemed poignant.
Cecilia, who had been gently caressing his eyelashes, the tip of his nose, his lips as he offered his face to her like a puppy, suddenly asked a question.
“I wanted to ask one more thing…… Are your eyes originally red, and you’re hiding them with Magic right now? Even now?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
She had suspected as much, since Duke Dilanshe had black hair and red eyes.
Cecilia stared for a long while at the beautiful violet eyes like violets appearing and disappearing beneath his eyelids, then opened her mouth.
“Show me.”
“Pardon? But……”
He hesitated. Apparently he was recalling the past reproach.
Whether unable to refuse her request, he fidgeted helplessly before weakly nodding his head in surrender.
As the blue magical power drained away, red irises were revealed. With those blood-bright eyes cast down sadly, he stammered his question.
“…… D-Do you find them repulsive?”
They were identical to the Duke’s eyes that had glared at her, and for an instant she felt a chill. But this was Lien.
Eyes still brimming with nothing but affection looked like jewels the more closely she examined them.
“Not at all.”
Cecilia shook her head. Color rushed to Lien’s face, but she became deeply troubled instead.
Now she was certain of something.
What Lien had loved all along wasn’t actually herself, but the “real Cecilia.”
If the Cecilia he’d met in his previous life had been her, he would never have said such things as finding those eyes dreadful.
‘Besides, this is the first time I’ve entered Cecilia’s body.’
The Cecilia from his past life couldn’t possibly have been her.
In fact, it was a doubt that had surfaced ever since he first confessed his Regression.
‘I’m not the real one.’
If what he’d loved in his previous life was the real Cecilia and not herself, then wasn’t what he loved now also the real Cecilia?
‘Lien has loved Cecilia from the very moment they first met.’
She’d desperately feigned ignorance and delayed facing the truth……
But as she inevitably came to recognize it, her heart grew uncomfortable, then sank with a heavy thud.
Cecilia bit down on her lower lip firmly.
She knew it wasn’t right to pry into his secrets without restraint and yet not reveal her own.
But if he discovered that what lay within this body was a fraud, how would Lien truly react?
She was certain it wouldn’t be positive.
After all, the “real one” he’d loved had never accepted him even once.
So despite having been so angry at his deception, in the end she held her silence. She chose to deceive him.
‘Who exactly is being deceitful?’
Wasn’t she no better than Lien?
Now, she found herself beginning to understand, just a little, the way his heart wavered with her every word.
If this man were to treat her coldly, if he stopped speaking of his love to her, she thought she might cry a little.

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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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