The Obsessive Male Lead Is Obsessed With Me! - Chapter 181

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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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Side Story 12
“I want to tuck my child to sleep every night too. Until the child knows me, until the child smiles at me.”
“But you…….”
“What am I? What’s the problem? Is it because I was once your brother’s wife? Is that why you won’t make me Empress?”
“That’s not it…….”
“Yes it is! If you won’t make me Empress, then make me your mistress! I’m the child’s mother—I have the right!”
Approaching Cecilia as she wept bitterly, Lionel at last wiped away the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“That you were my brother’s wife is not the problem.”
“You’re lying……. Then why did you drive me away?”
“Because I wanted you to smile.”
Cecilia’s eyes widened at Lionel’s words, and soon her lips curved upward. It was a smile that felt awkward, forced as it was.
“Like this?”
“No. This isn’t beautiful.”
“You’re cruel. Now you’re even criticizing my smile…….”
Cecilia made a sniffling sound and wiped her eyes messily with the back of her hand.
Moisture still clung to her face. Whether or not she noticed, Cecilia spoke to Lionel with her face flushed crimson.
“Tell me you love me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Tell me you love me. You could at least say that much to the mother of your child.”
Lionel gazed at Cecilia without speaking.
The longer his silence stretched, the more Cecilia’s lips lost their strength and crumbled.
Just as tears began to seep from her eyes again, Lionel opened his mouth.
“I love you.”
“……Just once more.”
“I love you.”
Finally tears burst forth from Cecilia’s eyes.
But soon her lips, which curled upward at the corners, formed a smile that was far more beautiful and natural than any she’d shown before—a tender smile she couldn’t even remember when she’d last worn.
“I do too. I do, Lionel.”
Unable to resist, and now in a state where he could no longer suppress such impulses, Lionel brought his lips to Cecilia’s.
“Wah-wah-wah!”
The child wedged between them burst into cries, cutting short their kiss.
As Lionel hastened to gather the baby in his arms, Cecilia’s mouth opened in bright laughter.
It was precisely the laugh Lionel had so longed to hear.
* * *
When Lionel opened his eyes, the world beyond the window was beginning to brighten faintly.
“Chirp-chirp…….”
Ruda lay asleep not in the birdcage where the nest was placed, but sprawled atop his forehead.
Last night, the bird had chirped away at his pillow while humming a lullaby alongside Cecilia, and apparently had fallen asleep right there.
Lionel rose carefully, freed Cecilia’s hand from around his waist, lifted Ruda, and descended from the bed. He then lowered Ruda’s small body into the warm, soft nest.
“Mmm……. Where did you go…….”
Realizing even in her sleep that the space beside her had emptied, Cecilia began to fumble and whimper.
Knowing that leaving her this way would wake her quickly, Lionel returned to the bed at once.
“I’m right here.”
“Don’t you dare run away again…….”
Though Lionel had never actually fled from Cecilia’s side, she spoke as though he had abandoned her countless times.
As Lionel adjusted Cecilia’s uncomfortable sleeping posture to something more restful, he suddenly recalled a story she had once told him.
“When I was young, I once had a dream of the future…….”
When she had died in the form of the Blue Bird, crossing the threshold between life and death, Cecilia had witnessed a vision of that future.
“But truthfully, it wasn’t a pleasant future at all. So I worked incredibly hard to change it. If you heard what I did, you’d probably be shocked.”
Thinking about it now, Lionel realized that had Cecilia not approached him so actively, had she not devoted herself to developing magical artifacts to help end the Monster Wave, their future might have unfolded as the dream had shown—or perhaps in a similarly tragic manner.
Of course, when he recalled the dream’s ending, it seemed as though the two of them had eventually found their way to a kind of happy ending…….
“Liri, Liri.”
“Mmm…….”
“Liri, wake up.”
“Why……. Is it morning already?”
Perhaps because she had fallen asleep late the previous night, Cecilia could barely open her eyes.
With half-lidded eyes, only managing to lift her head slightly, Cecilia—a mother of four—looked so gentle and girl-like it was hard to believe.
“What is it……. The sun hasn’t even risen yet…….”
As Cecilia glanced around drowsily, she buried her head against Lionel’s chest with a petulant murmur.
“You torment me all night and then wake me early like this. What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t torment you. You tormented me, didn’t you?”
“……Oh, hush!”
Complaining that she was too sleepy for conversation, Cecilia swatted Lionel’s shoulder and turned away from him, pulling the blanket up over her head.
Cecilia had the habit of sleeping with her back against a wall, and she often fell asleep this way, her back against Lionel’s chest instead.
Ordinarily he didn’t mind her turning away—after all, she was still beside him—but at this very moment, he didn’t want to see her back turned toward him.
So Lionel threw the blanket aside and positioned himself in front of her instead.
The moment the warm, soft heat covering her body vanished, Cecilia’s eyes opened. She blinked in surprise at Lionel, who had moved directly in front of her.
“……Are you acting strange today? Is something wrong?”
“Yes. I had a terrible dream.”
“What kind of dream?”
Lionel’s expression looked so sorrowful that Cecilia opened her arms and drew him into an embrace.
Her hand, stroking his back, was as gentle as if she were soothing a child. It was likely a habitual gesture from all those nights spent cradling and rocking their four children to sleep.
“In the dream, you married another man.”
“What did you say?”
“In the dream, you…….”
“That’s just a silly dream. Forget about it.”
Dismissing the concern with a wave, Cecilia rested her forehead against his shoulder, yawned, and nestled into his embrace.
“I had a really good dream…….”
“What dream was that?”
“……What was it? ……It felt really nice…….”
Her voice trailed off, as though she were trying to drift back into that dream.
In the meantime, Lionel pulled Cecilia close and kissed her cheek.
As if it were no great disturbance, Cecilia kept her eyes closed and began breathing more quickly. This time, Lionel drew her neck toward him and kissed her lips—a deep kiss that threatened to disturb her sleep.
“Mmm…….”
“…….”
“Wait, I need to breathe…….”
Gasping for breath in the sudden onslaught of his kiss, Cecilia received a very brief respite from Lionel.
After confirming she had caught her breath, he pressed against her again. Still half-asleep, Cecilia wrapped her arms around his neck and met him with equal fervor.
“Oh, really……. I said I was going back to sleep. Why do you keep disturbing me? Can’t you sleep?”
“I can’t. I’m afraid I’ll have a nightmare that you’re marrying someone else again.”
“You’re going to make my heart weak. Wait. Why are you speaking casually to me?”
Just as he had done with young ‘Liri’ long ago, Lionel spoke informally to Cecilia only late at night in bed. Though he also did so when comforting her as she whined, in a tender manner.
“You started it. Didn’t you give me permission?”
Lionel’s hand slipped subtly behind Cecilia’s waist. Cecilia swatted it away and glared at him.
“I did not. Really, now. Even our Pip would be more mature than you.”
As if granting him one last reprieve, Cecilia wrapped her arms around Lionel’s back and began stroking him slowly.
“You will sleep……. you will sleep……. you will sleep…….”
“Promise me you’ll marry me in my dreams too.”
“You will marry me……. You already have, but you will again……. In any case, you will…….”
Her drawn-out voice held no sincerity whatsoever—a pacifying tone with the air of ‘there, there, now go to sleep’—though even that consolation faltered as Cecilia drifted off.
“Liri.”
“…….”
“Liri.”
No answer came to his soft whisper. Though he continued speaking to her, she was clearly asleep—she must have been quite exhausted from the night before.
Lionel eventually abandoned any attempt to wake her further, pulling his sleeping wife firmly into his arms.
Though his own sleep was already shattered, simply holding his sleeping wife and matching his breathing to her soft exhalations seemed to dissolve the tension from his body.
‘I should take some time off in a few days.’
Venturing beyond the Imperial Palace was impossible with their youngest, who couldn’t yet stand alone, but surely an afternoon spreading a mat in the Empress’s Palace Garden would be manageable.
Just as always, when he lay with his head on Cecilia’s lap and drifted to sleep, she would steal kisses when the children weren’t looking.
With four children, they might well be discovered. But that was fine too. He would kiss the children’s cheeks in turn.
Then the children would laugh and kiss his cheeks in return.
Suddenly, Lionel found it remarkable that he had come to take such things for granted.
When he first learned he would become a father, he had worried greatly—he who had never called his biological father ‘Father’ nor his biological mother ‘Mother’—whether he could ever be a good father.
‘It’s all because of you.’
Love was truly wondrous. The more it was shared, the more it grew. He who had never been loved, who didn’t even know what love was, now spoke and heard the words ‘I love you’ as part of his daily life.
“Sleep-sleep…….”
Then Cecilia patted his chest with her hand and murmured something—sleep-talk or who knows what.
It was something that felt more natural directed at a child than at a husband.
Yet Lionel gladly accepted the words as his own, closed his eyes beside Cecilia.
‘Even now, in this moment, I find myself falling for you again.’
Had Cecilia heard this, she would have been bewildered, asking why he was suddenly and inexplicably falling for her again. But Lionel found her such reactions genuinely puzzling.
It was a love she had planted directly in his heart, watered, and nurtured in the light. If a tree wondered why its branches bore such abundant fruit, surely the gardener would be baffled too.
Because his heart had become rich enough to share in many directions, Lionel finally understood how parched and barren his heart had been before meeting Cecilia.
He was grateful his heart had been desolate only enough to be enriched by someone’s efforts.
Lionel drifted slowly into sleep, feeling the warmth and fragrance of Cecilia held tightly in his arms.
Perhaps because of that, he dreamed once more.
A happy, everyday dream of spreading a mat beneath a tree laden with plump, abundant fruit, sitting there with his beloved family, and sharing the harvest together.
-Side Story Complete-

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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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