The Obsessive Male Leads Want to Eat Me Alive - Chapter 140

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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 140
The world spun in dizzying circles. Crimson blood, Heinrich’s collapsing form, and finally, a cascade of brilliant fireworks shooting up into the black sky.
All of it blurred together, consuming my vision like a chaotic, nauseating palette.
I caught Heinrich as he fell.
“Heinrich!”
So much blood, far too much blood….
It poured from his mouth and his side in torrents.
I gasped and pressed my hand against his bleeding wound, trying desperately to stanch the flow.
Cruelly, no one around us understood what was happening.
Only Heinrich and I wept while the magnificent fireworks continued overhead.
Help! Please, someone has collapsed here!
I cried out, but my voice was swallowed by the roaring cheers of the crowd watching the display.
It was at that moment.
“Anette.”
A pair of shoes appeared before the pool of blood.
Sisrain wrapped his arm around my shoulders, checking me first for injuries.
“Sisrain, Heinrich is…!”
Once he confirmed I was unharmed, Sisrain immediately lifted Heinrich into his arms.
Watching Heinrich’s limp form, I rose to my feet.
A sudden clarity washed over me.
The thought that if I remained paralyzed by panic, I would lose Heinrich—that realization tore away the veil obscuring my mind, and a terrifying sharpness flooded through me.
My carefully dressed gown and Heinrich’s clothes were both soaked in blood.
“Your Grace!”
“Victoria, summon a physician and have the assailant arrested!”
I pointed toward the perpetrator, who lay with eyes rolled back, having dropped the dagger.
Those who heard my command were not only Victoria. Beside her stood Owen, the adjutant who had shadowed his master like a second self.
As the Imperial Guards waiting outside the Banquet Hall rushed in alongside Owen, Sisrain and I slipped out without delay.
Meanwhile, there was a man observing everything unfold without missing a single detail.
Gerard’s lips were bitten so hard they bled. A scream erupted from beside him.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
As the fireworks display ended, the nobility belatedly noticed the commotion and grasped the situation.
“What a horrific tragedy!”
“…Whose blood is this? Has Duchess Valienne been wounded?”
That was how it should have been.
That wench should have been the one struck down!
“It is Grand Duke Hyacinth’s blood, it seems. He appears to have been stabbed quite deeply—his life hangs in the balance.”
That he would risk his own life to shield that woman was utterly incomprehensible.
“Damn it…!”
Unable to contain his fury, Gerard clenched his fists and cursed under his breath.
The surrounding nobles stared at Gerard in shock, but his mind burned so fiercely that he could not even maintain the image he usually cultivated.
Wasn’t today’s plan flawless?
When I coated the finely honed dagger with Belesak Valentigo’s poison, I was certain of victory today.
I cast a spell on the mentally unstable nobleman and made him attack Anette—I even laughed at the thought.
Wasn’t the timing itself perfect?
Everyone wore masks and enjoyed the fireworks, so even if chaos erupted, no one would notice.
Even Sisrain wouldn’t be able to find her immediately.
The attack would take only one second!
How exhilarating it would be to see Sisrain’s face twisted in frustration, unable to protect the woman amid the chaos!
So instead of poisoning her directly, I cast a spell on her just like last time, making her stab herself.
It was a choice born from the dark desire for Sisrain to feel the same pain of failure and despair that I had felt.
But then I collided with an enormous variable—Heinrich.
‘Have I lost my mind? Is dying in his place really sanity?’
I trembled as I stared down at the pool of blood. The owner of that blood was supposed to be predetermined!
Then the Noblewoman spoke to me.
“…Your Highness, are you alright? You’re trembling quite badly.”
“Get out of my way!!!”
“…!”
The Noblewoman’s eyes widened at the prince’s unexpected violence as he shoved her aside.
It was so different from his public image.
Gerard didn’t even notice this as he hurried out of the Banquet Hall, his lungs constricting painfully as the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air.
―Damn it all.
* * *
“This is strange. His complexion certainly suggests poisoning, yet there are no traces of toxins in his body.”
I gazed at Heinrich. The face that always smiled warmly at me now lay deathly pale, like a corpse.
Seeing him like this felt so unreal—as if I were dreaming.
The physician had already visited, as had a priest wielding holy power and a Mage skilled with magical potions…
Yet all of them said they couldn’t determine the exact cause.
However, the physician did say something.
There had been some blood loss, but not enough to render him unconscious from bleeding alone.
Perhaps it was a ‘poison’ of some kind.
“Currently, there is another person displaying the same symptoms as Grand Duke Hyacinth and has lost consciousness. The complexion and symptoms are identical.”
“Who is that person?”
“It is the ‘former Mage Tower Master.'”
“…!”
The moment I heard those words, I knew who the poison’s creator was.
‘Belesak Valentigo—Heinrich’s father!’
In the original story, around the latter half, he coveted the position of Mage Tower Master and used ‘paralysis poison’ on the current Master to put him to sleep, intending to take the position himself.
It was never an important episode in the original work, and since I couldn’t pinpoint the exact timing or prevent it, I had paid it no mind.
After all, the original story and this current reality had already diverged far too much.
‘Belesak gave the poison to Gerard.’
―The two of us had joined hands.
Though the target was me, it was Heinrich who ultimately fell victim to Belesak’s poison that day.
“….”
I reached out and gently traced my fingers across Heinrich’s cheek.
“…this is too cruel.”
He had walked a tragic path, abandoned by his father even before birth, and now that same father’s poison sought to take his life….
―If God existed,
this should never happen.
Fate had been far too merciless to Heinrich alone.
“Your Grace, your body was already weakened before the poisoning… if you do not awaken, you will lose your life.”
If you die like this, I cannot live either.
Heinrich.
With trembling hands, I slowly caressed his eyelids. I could not be certain I would ever see those violet eyes of the boy I loved open again.
Those eyes that were always arrogant yet beautiful, that voice that called to me with playful tenderness.
A boy who had been twisted and hardened by abandonment, yet possessed a heart more tender and pure than anyone else’s.
My Heinrich, who had not grown a single step beyond the place where I had left him.
“…I’m sorry.”
Watching Heinrich’s fingers and body wither away to skeletal thinness in mere days,
I wept without breath.
I’m so sorry.
I should have understood you better.
You are the only one who knows you completely, Heinrich. And yet, knowing everything, I made you this way.
Because I understood what our final conversation meant to you, that scene kept returning like a wound that would not heal.
Those words he spoke so painfully, trembling, pretending to be cruel.
“If you won’t love me most, then hate me instead….”
Even as he wounded himself with those words, even as he despaired, he could not stop.
“Just hate me instead.”
I should have held you then….
“I shouldn’t have done that, Heinrich.”
Hot tears streamed down both my cheeks. I grasped Heinrich’s hand desperately with both of mine.
His warmth was shockingly cold.
No matter how tightly I held his hand, no matter how my tears soaked the back of his hand, I feared that this coldness would never return.
You seemed to slip further and further away.
“Heinrich, I cannot forgive you.”
I should not have been so cruel to you….
The memory of myself turning away coldly came back to me, and I bit my lip with regret, closing my eyes.
Even with my eyes closed, I remembered it vividly.
How lonely his expression had been that day.
“Heinrich.”
Please wake up.
“Please, just wake up. …We can’t let our last conversation be like this.”
If things continue this way, how am I supposed to live? My heart aches so deeply that even in death, I would weep while clutching my chest.
“I’m begging you. Wake up.”
With nothing left but to pray to the heavens, I kept vigil at Heinrich’s side through the night, neither eating nor sleeping.
And I prayed with desperate fervor.
Only moonlight filtered quietly through the window, and the night crawled by with agonizing tension, as if scraping away at bone.

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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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