The Obsessive Male Leads Want to Eat Me Alive - Chapter 127

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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 127
* * *
After Victoria finished speaking and left my chamber, my chest felt unsettled as I stared at the door for a long while.
‘Sisrain….’
What did Victoria see in you?
“Looking at the Crown Prince’s eyes, one can feel such earnest sincerity.”
I decided to think it through.
Erasing my circumstances and everything around me, focusing only on Sisrain and my relationship with him.
‘Am I missing something…?’
What was this unsettling feeling of having overlooked something?
As I sat in my chamber, gently tracing my wrist, it happened.
“―What?”
The pattern on my wrist began to move. With a soft whisper, the delicate lines connecting the lush petals trembled once, then very slowly….
And rapidly, they were ‘withering’.
My heart plummeted.
“…!!!”
I understood instinctively. Something had happened to Sisrain. Something terribly grave and catastrophic.
“Sis.”
I murmured his name and bolted from my seat.
Without even knowing what possessed me, I rushed toward the Imperial Palace. I didn’t care if my clothes were properly fastened, if my shoes were on right.
Moving as fast as I possibly could, without a moment to spare.
‘Sis, please hold on just a little longer.’
What was happening?
‘They said Sis’s heart is connected to this….’
It’s withering away!
Arriving at the Imperial Palace in a state of delirium, half-mad with panic, the palace felt as silent as always.
The atmosphere unchanged from usual.
But on my wrist, the petals were blackening and withering.
Even if something happened to the Crown Prince, it would naturally be kept quiet for political reasons.
In this vast Imperial Palace, there were so few people who could tend to Sisrain’s crisis.
‘I have to step forward.’
Not as a servant, but directly, I commanded the gatekeeper.
“Tell the Crown Prince’s aide that Duchess Valienne has arrived!”
The black doors blocking my path swung wide open.
My heart raced with urgency.
* * *
“…Sisrain.”
He was in the corner of the darkened room.
His back hunched in agony, his body collapsed toward the floor, looking as though he might crumble at any moment.
My chest seized.
“Duchess Valienne!”
Owen rushed toward me, his face glistening with cold sweat. He looked terrified.
―As was I.
The attendants all bore expressions of fear.
Only then did the situation become clear.
‘They’re all too afraid to approach him.’
“The Crown Prince’s condition has suddenly… worsened.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“Please be careful. It could be dangerous.”
His condition had deteriorated to the point where he couldn’t even remain properly on the bed?
I approached cautiously yet with urgency, and his form came fully into view.
It was far worse than I had imagined.
Beads of sweat clung to his temples, and blood trickled down his cheek and neck as if he had struck his head—indistinguishable from the perspiration.
The breathing emanating from his hunched back was ragged, like that of a beast pierced by a spear.
He was barely breathing.
“Sisrain. It’s me.”
I slowly knelt before him.
My trembling hand reached out to caress his back.
“…Are you alright?”
Sisrain gave no answer. He seemed to have lost consciousness.
Shards of what had once been a glass bottle were clutched bloodily in his hand.
The surroundings were filled with broken and damaged objects. He must have thrashed about quite violently.
To forget the pain, he had chosen instead to grip sharp glass fragments.
“….”
Fortunately, when my hand touched him, he did not struggle.
“Look up for me.”
I slowly cradled his cheek.
‘What am I supposed to do.’
Even as I watched his life force wither in real time through my fingertips, even as I witnessed his suffering before my eyes…
I could do nothing to help.
“I’ll move you. Sisrain.”
Yet I forced myself to smile as I spoke.
“Trust only me.”
Just as I had done for the silver-haired boy who once barely survived in the Cave beneath the Kitchen.
At that moment, he made a small sound—metallic and so faint I could not discern the words.
“Hmm?”
―What did you say?
I brought my ear closer.
Only then could I make out Sisrain’s words.
* * *
“The Crown Prince’s attendants are behaving strangely. They’ve all rushed to the Crown Prince’s Chamber, it seems.”
“…!”
“…Something appears to be unfolding there, Your Highness.”
At my aide’s report, Gerard sprang from his seat.
Ssshhhhh―
The Black Snake, coiled in the corner, spoke with a laugh.
[ It’s finally begun, human contractor. ]
“What a glorious night.”
Exultation blazed across Gerard’s face. He burst into raucous laughter.
I had despised him my entire life, my entire life!
My presumptuous younger brother, not a drop of blood shared with me.
Tonight, at last, you will crumble under the curse’s sorcery.
“I’m tempted to exhume Derkis’s corpse from his coffin and waltz with it!”
Gerard filled a glass with spirits to the brim in celebration, and drank deeply.
I wanted to immortalize this moment.
This moment when I, at last, would crush Sisrain and emerge as the final victor.
[ You seem quite pleased? ]
“Of course.”
I made a contract with a repugnant creature like you, consumed by this life-devouring disease, all for a cherished ambition I’ve harbored.
To be born in the most wretched station in the world, and die as one of nobility.
No—before I die, Eldorado itself will become mine.
There will be nothing I cannot possess from this day forward!
Once I survive this night!
Gerard issued an immediate command to his aide.
“Prepare a ‘summons’ from Duchess Valienne in advance. Addressed to the Crown Prince!”
Moonlight fell upon his face, unsettlingly flushed with excitement.
“The first thing I’ll do after becoming Crown Prince is to claim that woman!”
“Yes, sir.”
The aide bowed and immediately departed.
Gerard chuckled softly, placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it.
The exhilaration would not easily subside.
“Sisrain….”
Through the haze of rising smoke, I raised my hand, watching the blood vessels turn a sickly crimson as they died.
“You must have lived in such anguish in Crevasse your entire life—truly, what a pity.”
―You’re the one I pity, yet why do I laugh?
“To be trapped in the most excruciating moment of that lifetime of suffering and perish.”
Your body torn asunder, burned countless times, devoured alive by demons with your entrails spilling forth.
You will experience that endless, unbearable torment of hell once more.
A laugh erupted—terrifyingly, delightfully cruel.
* * *
Clink.
A shard of glass slipped from Sisrain’s hand and fell to the floor.
The large hand that had wielded the sword without hesitation now hung in ruins, trembling faintly in the empty air.
That hand gripped mine as though it were life itself.
“…Don’t go.”
Sisrain….
For a moment, I could only listen to that voice in silence.
Only then did he lift his head from the floor, clinging desperately to my hand.
Like someone abandoned by the world, like someone whose only hope had been extinguished. He whispered to me.
“…Please don’t go, Anette.”
Beneath his cheek, smeared with sweat and blood, hot tears fell in succession.
“….”
I froze at the sight of him.
Because I knew this expression.
This was the face I had seen before. The face of a boy who chased after my departing carriage with desperate fervor on the day I left The Forest.
The face of that boy who, even when he stumbled beneath the barrage of threats, continued to follow me with knees torn and bleeding.
I didn’t know the reason, but one thing was certain.
Sisrain had returned to that moment when we parted.
“…Please go back!!!”
“If I go back, will Anette come back to me again?”
He wore that crumbling expression—the one he had shown me when I couldn’t bring myself to answer that question.
“….”
The boy’s eyes wavered. His parched lips, stained with blood, moved slowly and deliberately.
―Words that were barely more than a whisper.
“Don’t go.”
Tears streamed from his burning eyes. He clutched at my collar and pleaded like a sigh.
“…Please.”
Only then did I understand what I had been missing between Sisrain and myself.
It was…
The time when I was not there.
The emotions he had nurtured alone in that absence, swallowing his pain with quiet desperation.
“….”
My own vision blurred without my noticing.

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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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