The Obsessive Male Leads Want to Eat Me Alive - Chapter 137

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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 137
Always be happy—that was his wish for me.
That it was the most precious of all his desires….
Among all the words I had heard in my life, these were the gentlest and warmest.
I felt ashamed of my own heart, which had been calculating the wealth and mines of House of Valienne.
In truth, the love and care he had given me could never be repaid with material compensation.
―I had been such a fool.
Feeling his boundless tenderness, I feared my eyes would truly fill with tears this time.
I quickly turned away and wiped at my eyes.
From behind me came Bijeje’s warm voice.
“Anette.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. But….”
I turned around at once and spoke with absolute resolve.
“You cannot use your wish for something like that.”
“Hmm?”
“I will do my very best for you. As much as I have received, I will now become a steadfast pillar of support at your side.”
“….”
“I truly will do my best!”
“…Anette.”
Bijeje’s eyes trembled for a moment as though moved, then he smiled brightly.
His face was genuinely delighted. His refreshingly clear laughter was suffused with sincere happiness.
“I will repay Your Grace for all you have done for me, bit by bit from now on.”
Bijeje then placed a hand upon his chest and spoke.
“Ah, what a splendid daughter-in-law you will make! How could I not covet you!”
“…!”
“…!”
Oh my, did the conversation really go in that direction?
Over ten years have passed since he first proposed that I become his daughter-in-law, and he still wishes to make me one.
Unlike me, who was startled by his persistence, Kyle’s ears flushed red with embarrassment upon hearing the “splendid daughter-in-law declaration.”
In any case, to become Bijeje’s daughter-in-law, marriage to him would have to come first.
Kyle cleared his throat softly and spoke.
“Father, shall we go now? The other nobles are waiting for their greetings.”
“Wait just a moment, Kyle.”
Bijeje firmly held Kyle back with one hand and stepped closer to me.
“I have heard the rumors. Our Anette has received three marriage proposals, is that so?”
“…Yes?”
Has word already spread that three madmen (one of whom is your son, I might add) have proposed to me?
…Could it be that Kyle revealed it?
But I had not told Kyle everything.
As I looked at Kyle with barely concealed suspicion, Bijeje spoke.
“It wasn’t Kyle who said it, but look at me—aren’t I from an information broker background? Hahahaha!”
Wait, is it really okay to announce your information broker origins so loudly? Wasn’t that supposed to be a family secret?
In Bijeje’s refreshingly bright laughter, I sensed a faint glimmer of madness.
Thank goodness everyone was wearing masks and concealing their identities. I was also grateful that no one seemed interested in my bombshell revelation about being an information broker.
In any case, it appeared that Bayonere hadn’t only been home to Winston’s Shield members.
My persistent future father-in-law clearly had his own network of connections.
“Anette, I’m not using a wish token, but I do have a small wish.”
“…Please, tell me!”
Surely I could grant him a small wish?
I leaned in to listen.
Then Bijeje whispered in my ear (though his voice carried clearly enough for Kyle to hear).
“Even if you don’t choose my son, could you perhaps make me your ‘father-in-law’?”
“…!”
What did you just say?
C-can that even happen?
“The other fellows don’t even try, yet they expect to become your ‘father-in-law’ for free. It irritates me.”
“…?!”
Normally, a father-in-law becomes one for free once your son gets married!
‘He’s a father-in-law obsession maniac.’
He spoke with those innocent eyes now gleaming ominously.
“If I eliminate all the other father-in-law candidates, then yes, eventually it could be me.”
‘―That’s impossible, isn’t it?!’
Normally, people don’t devise assassination plans for rival fathers-in-law; they work toward making a marriage with their son succeed.
Kyle’s madness about gifting me a pet slave prison was clearly inherited from his father.
“…Father, please.”
Kyle, his face flushed, pressed his forehead with embarrassment (I distinctly heard him mutter “I’m losing it”) and tried to stop Bijeje.
“Oh my, I’ve been so delighted to see Anette after so long that I got a bit carried away.”
A man who, while slightly carried away, was devising assassination plans for rival fathers-in-law—I dreaded to imagine what he might do if he became very carried away.
Bijeje returned to his usual kind and harmless expression, smiling.
“Anette, I was just speaking off the cuff.”
It doesn’t seem like you were joking.
His hand suddenly appeared before my wavering gaze.
“Will you dance the next dance with me?”
Phew. Thank goodness.
Finally, a request I could actually grant.
I smiled happily and took his hand.
“Of course, Your Grace.”
* * *
After Anette and Bijeje danced together, Kyle finally succeeded in letting her go.
He was satisfied that he’d managed to prevent the situation where they might have danced together two or three times according to Bijeje’s greedy desires.
I couldn’t stop him from going on about daughters-in-law and fathers-in-law, but….
‘He shouldn’t have felt burdened by it.’
Kyle’s gaze followed her trail as she vanished into the throng of masked revelers.
Even this brief parting left me yearning for her desperately.
Yet the Banquet Hall blazed with such brilliance and light that I couldn’t catch sight of Anette.
She was a woman who moved like a butterfly forever free, always leaving me wanting.
Sometimes, I felt like a fool hovering at her side with nothing but a single white flower to offer.
But today was….
“I’ll go with ‘Kyle’ as my answer.”
‘She recognized me.’
It felt as though I’d finally received a small reward for the one-sided love I’d been pouring out.
My heart swelled, turning crimson and sweet like an apple ripened in autumn sunlight.
Even my breath felt refreshed, as though I’d drawn my first breath on a beautiful dawn.
“Why are you standing here alone, flushing like that? Kyle.”
“…!”
At Bijeje’s words, his hand settling firmly on my shoulder, I straightened slightly and looked at him.
My face flushed as though my innermost thoughts had been exposed.
“…Has my face turned red?”
“Even from a hundred meters away, you looked like a pitiful soul drowning in unrequited love. My son.”
Bijeje shook his head.
“From the look of things, Anette still hasn’t given you any answer to your ‘proposal.'”
“That is….”
I clenched my fist against my lips and cleared my throat once, then deliberately straightened my posture with noble dignity, casting my gaze back toward the crowd.
“I’m working on it.”
My eyes continued searching for Anette as I spoke.
“She needs time, after all.”
“Do you think so?”
At Bijeje’s words, I finally turned my gaze toward my father.
“…What do you mean?”
“Love is terribly unfair.”
Bijeje’s lips curved upward, recalling the simple and beautiful woman who had passed on her wheat-field hair to his son.
Mariel—the wife he had loved most ardently until illness claimed her and she departed this world.
Though she had been the only love of his lifetime, the intensity of that love meant he understood such emotions well.
―How that sweet feeling,
sometimes works with such cruelty.
“Unfair means it never corresponds to ‘time’ and ‘effort,’ Kyle.”
“….”
“Even if you devote your entire life to loving someone, there’s no guarantee their heart will turn toward you.”
“Father, Miss Anette―”
Kyle opened his mouth in small protest.
“I lost my mother not long ago. Moreover, I’ve grown distant from my younger brother, whom I cherished and trusted. I’m in no position to concern myself with love.”
“Tell me, son—did you ever choose love based on your circumstances?”
“…!”
―Of course I hadn’t.
Even when I’d spent sleepless nights on the Battlefield teeming with monsters, even when facing the most tangled of complications, I had never—not for a single moment—forgotten Anette.
Without room to deliberate or hesitate, she consumed me entirely.
That obstinately relentless pull of the heart.
Bijeje’s serene eyes turned toward his son.
“The cruelty of love is that it makes you fall regardless of circumstance or situation.”
“….”
“That’s why it can shake your entire life to its foundations.”
He spoke with his son in mind—the one whose life was being shaken to its very core by Anette.
Of course, he himself had experienced the same, and perhaps Anette was experiencing it now as well.
An intense emotion that neither fear nor reason could ever hold back.
That was the true nature of love as Bijeje had known it.
“….”
Kyle blinked as though something had struck him. Bijeje continued, his expression composed and measured.
“The fact that you still have no answer from her doesn’t seem like a positive sign.”
“…!”
Kyle lowered his head quietly, his lips sealed as though he’d forgotten how to speak.
Perhaps deep down he’d always known the truth that Bijeje was now laying bare—the very truth he’d been desperately avoiding.
“You mustn’t be faithful only to your own feelings. What matters is her heart.”
“….”
‘…Her heart.’
I knew it. Above all else, what mattered was Anette’s heart.
No matter how ardently I loved her alone, love was meant to be shared between two people.
“Don’t love for your own sake, son. Love for Anette’s sake.”
Bijeje placed a hand on his son’s shoulder—the young man who had grown into someone as magnificent as himself—and imparted this wisdom, just as his own father had done for him.
“That is how the men of Winston’s Shield love.”

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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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