The Obsessive Male Leads Want to Eat Me Alive - Chapter 123

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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 123
The moment Heinrich saw the child who resembled both me and my biological father, he understood.
‘That child’.
A newborn nestled in warm blankets.
The child who had slept peacefully in that very scene—the one he had gazed upon through the window as a boy, trembling in the cold.
A child born precious in a perfect household.
A child whose beginning was utterly different from his own.
The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, yet gazing into those crystalline eyes, Heinrich was seized by an inexplicable sensation.
And the emotions of that time resurfaced.
Upon seeing that pale, tiny newborn, the young Heinrich had apparently felt a flicker of affection.
“So he’s my younger brother… How beautiful…”
―or so he had thought.
Yet more vivid than that faint affection was another emotion:
envy of the child.
Consuming envy.
But feeling such envy seemed like a betrayal of his mother, so young Heinrich had buried and swallowed that feeling deep within himself.
That emotion from back then suddenly overwhelmed him.
It was a comprehensively unpleasant sensation.
“Oh.”
The boy, upon recognizing Heinrich’s face, quickly withdrew his hand in surprise.
“I’m so sorry! I thought you were someone I knew. You look so similar.”
The boy clearly didn’t know who Heinrich was.
The nine Grand Mages of the Mage Tower family resided only on the 99th Floor, so they rarely appeared in high society.
Besides, a child this young wouldn’t even participate in the mage conferences held at the Mage Tower.
“I’m Eric! I’m the eldest son of Grand Duke Valentigo!”
“…”
“Could you perhaps be a distant relative of our household?”
Eric asked with a face that had never known a single wound in his life—unmarred and pristine. The boy didn’t seem bound by noble formality either.
The feelings that noble children typically carried as a byproduct of high status—’discipline, responsibility, oppression’—were absent from his expression.
Raised entirely within overflowing affection,
as though nurtured with the utmost care.
Those who had endured difficult childhoods often felt intimidated by such radiance and the aura it emanated, but Heinrich thought to himself:
‘What the hell is this brat.’
―he thought.
He’d just made the mistake of grabbing a stranger’s waist, and now he spoke so cheerfully. Without knowing who the other person was, without any sense of propriety.
For most people, this would be something to agonize over—’Am I being too harsh on a child?’
But Heinrich, honest with his own emotions, simply frowned.
“Get lost.”
“…!!!”
It was then that the boy’s pupils trembled.
“Prince Eric!”
Just then, a woman rushed over and seized Eric’s hand.
As if shielding him from Heinrich.
“Ah, greetings. Grand Duke Hyacinth.”
She seemed to know Heinrich.
“Our young master failed to recognize you, and I apologize for the discourtesy. I am Mislin Blanche, a lady’s maid serving the Valentigo Grand Duke Household.”
Blanche was a marquess family.
She was a middle-aged woman who would seem perfectly natural as Heinrich’s mother.
Heinrich regarded her with an expressionless gaze.
“….”
“The master is waiting. Please allow me to escort you this way.”
Eric departed with another attendant, his face grim, while Heinrich followed Mislin’s guidance.
Beyond the common areas of the 99th Floor, nine corridors branched out in different directions.
She opened her mouth as she led him down the first corridor.
“Forgive my presumption, but I have always been watching over Grand Duke Hyacinth.”
“Me?”
“All of us servants know.”
Ordinarily, people simply thought Heinrich resembled Grand Duke Valentigo only in certain features—eye color, hair color.
They whispered among themselves that he must be a close relative, and that perhaps for some reason Heinrich had become an orphan.
Yet despite this, Grand Duke Valentigo coldly refused to take in that relative and pretended ignorance when he was adopted elsewhere.
But at least the servants knew the truth.
That a courtesan had borne his child.
That he had abandoned her coldly.
Heinrich’s eyes hardened, and his lips curved upward.
It was a smile so chillingly cold it raised the hair on one’s skin.
“What exactly do you think you know?”
“…!!!”
Ah, she had nearly overstepped.
The woman called Mislin, startled by that bleak gaze, immediately bowed her head, trembling with fear.
Just then, an attendant who served as gatekeeper appeared and bowed respectfully.
“If you would wait a moment, I shall complete the procedures. Grand Duke Hyacinth.”
The residence of the Mage Tower’s 99th Floor Archmage always had complex magical protocols governing entry.
“Lady Mislin, the master is looking for you.”
“…Yes.”
Mislin, seized by terror, departed like one miraculously spared from death, swallowing hard.
Heinrich merely frowned in displeasure but made no move to seize her or cause a scene.
―After all, they stood before his biological father’s residence.
It was at that very moment.
Murmured voices drifted from around the corner of the Mage Tower.
“I believe the master intends to apologize today. Now that the Grand Duke has become a proper Mage Tower Master, he will surely see the master more often going forward.”
“….”
My biological father was apologizing to me?
“I share that sentiment. As people age, they tend to dwell on past mistakes. …It’s late, but I must miss the son I treated so poorly.”
“It’s fortunate that you’re correcting it now.”
“It’s a shame, truly. A son with such prodigious talent would have been the pride of our house.”
“Indeed.”
Heinrich had overheard their quiet conversation from a distance thanks to his highly developed magical power, so the servants didn’t even realize he was listening.
They simply disappeared around the corner and down the hallway.
A moment later.
After the formalities concluded, Heinrich finally entered the Reception Room, his mind tangled and confused.
What were these feelings?
His chest felt unbearably tight.
‘An apology, now of all times.’
One thing, at least, was clear to me.
I was sad.
* * *
“My master….”
Duncan spoke. About everything that had transpired.
“Has been anxious from the very beginning.”
“….”
“From the first day we arrived on that island.”
―He said it would have been easier to have spent the past ten years in madness.
Since finding Anette on Bayonere, Heinrich had been perpetually uncertain and restless.
“Why won’t you sleep?”
“I cannot sleep.”
“Why not?”
Heinrich stood motionless, gazing at the small log cabin atop the hill as he spoke.
“If I fall asleep, I fear my sister will slip away forever.”
“….”
“She tried to leave in secret before, when I was asleep.”
“Did Anette not promise you she wouldn’t leave?”
“A promise….”
Heinrich’s lips twisted bitterly.
“She made one then too, before she abandoned me and left.”
Even when she locked me away and coldly departed forever. In truth, I wanted to ask her: how could you abandon me? I cannot survive a single day without you, yet to you, am I worth so little?
But the Anette I met again was so precious and tender that I couldn’t even bring myself to resent her.
―Swallowing my anxiety alone,
I could only endure, clutching the small fragments of affection she gave me like poison on my lips.
“Duncan, I’ve found a way. A way to make my sister unable to leave me.”
“Duncan, I found a way. A way to make it so she can’t leave her sister.”
Heinrich said that if Gerard found her, she would have no choice but to marry him.
“To avoid being registered under Gerard, marriage is currently the easiest legal path.”
“….”
“I’m not sure if I’m the man your sister finds most attractive.”
Heinrich was completely certain.
“But I’m definitely the easiest man for her to marry. Because I’ll seduce her with a ‘contract marriage.'”
After listening thoughtfully, Duncan asked.
“Is it that you wish to take Miss Anette to Eldorado, where the Grand Duke resides?”
“What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter where we live. If my sister is happy, I’d gladly spend my whole life baking bread on some small island. But….”
“….”
“If I don’t do this, my sister will leave me. She’ll go to Sisrain instead.”
As Heinrich spoke, his eyes held the anxious gleam of an eleven-year-old boy.
The look of someone terrified of losing the affection of the girl he loved, driven to do terrible things.
Just as he had once secretly revealed the location of the Secret Hideout to manipulate a well-behaved girl.
Heinrich’s heart had never matured since the day Anette left—it remained frozen in that moment.
“If Miss Anette were to discover this later―”
“My sister must never know what I’ve done.”
“….”
“Never.”
His narrowed eyes appeared arrogant as always, but the anxiety he couldn’t quite hide glimmered in Zian’s gaze.
Gerard would inevitably arrive soon.
Sisrain and Heinrich couldn’t remain on Bayonere Island indefinitely.
Rumors had already spread that they were searching for ‘Anette,’ and if they were both absent from the Capital for too long, Gerard would grow suspicious.
Therefore, Gerard would inevitably discover the truth eventually.
Once Anette realized this, she would flee Bayonere and run far away again.
Heinrich gazed out the window and muttered expressionlessly.
“I know. I’m not normal.”
“….”
“But this is the only way. The only method I have to be with Anette.”
Sister, I’m sorry.
Perhaps, as someone once said, some part of my brain is broken like Vivantum’s.
But I don’t know any other way.
How can I hold onto you….
How can I keep from being left alone.
How can I make you love me, even just a fraction as much as I madly love you.
I still have no idea.
It’s slowly killing me.
Anette, save me. Or kill me instead.
Tell me how to drive away this dark and terrible anxiety.
…Please.

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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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