The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 67

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 67

Black bob cut and a sharp face. Though the olive-colored eyes were unfamiliar, the rest was familiar.

Her hurried approach and Olivia den Luna Blen closing the box she had been looking at and rising from her seat happened almost simultaneously.

“Oli—”

“Rita Pascal?”

Cutting off Lillieta’s words, Olivia asked as if confirming. Rita answered with a delighted smile.

“Yeah, it’s me. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

A sharp sound rang out as her head turned.

“…!”

She saw Olivia raising her hand but didn’t think to dodge, taking the slap directly across her cheek. She never expected Oli Pascal to strike her.

It didn’t hurt much, but she was very surprised. Rita turned her head back to its original position in a daze and looked at Oli.

“…Why?”

“Rita, you.”

Olivia was sobbing with her face contorted in a way that didn’t suit her cold expression. Her tear-filled eyes rippled like an olive-colored surface.

“You really, you….”

Olivia’s hand, frozen in the position from slapping her, trembled violently. She screamed out.

“Are you finding this funny?”

“….”

“After leaving like that on your own, are you finding this funny now?!”

The tears that had been pooling in her cat-like eyes burst forth. Mixed with sobs and in a terribly broken pronunciation, she said.

“Rita, was your… was your death so trivial to you? Light enough that you can laugh it off with ‘it’s been a while’?”

“….”

“I can’t laugh. I couldn’t laugh. When I thought of you, my head would go blank and tears would suddenly well up. It was hard enough holding back tears, how could I laugh?”

The corners of her mouth trembled violently.

Rita stared at her blankly. More shocking than being slapped was seeing her always-proud friend with such a hurt expression.

Gid’s question came to mind. Have you imagined what it must have felt like to gather up the pieces of your corpse? Rita bit her lip and released it.

“Oli, I—”

“How is it that you don’t appear intact even in dreams.”

Oli sharply cut off her words.

“In that wretched state, moving your torn lips, you ask me. ‘Oli, didn’t you know I would do this? Did you really not know I would do this? You knew, didn’t you? You’re not stupid, Oli Pascal.'”

“Wait, what?”

“Then I scream. I only told you to find a way to destroy it, how was I supposed to know you’d pull that kind of stunt! Who could have guessed you’d blow yourself up when I told you to stop messing around with your body! Then you laugh, coughing up blood as you laugh. ‘You didn’t say anything because you suspected, didn’t you?’…”

“Wait, Oli. What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? You really don’t know? I’m also a Processing-type, do you think I wouldn’t have noticed that the aurora-like energy around that star could be processed like Oaths? My head isn’t just decoration for my eyes, you know?”

“…!”

Rita finally realized what Oli was talking about.

Back then, when Beacon discovered the star in the Underground Experimental Facility of the Ruins, when Oli Pascal suggested everyone take a look since she didn’t know how to destroy it.

‘This… even if directly touching this star is impossible, the aurora-like energy rippling around it… seems like it could be processed like Oaths.’

She had thought that and found it strange.

There was no way Oli, who was also a Processing-type Oathbinder and a mage much better at analysis than her, wouldn’t have noticed this, yet she made no mention of it.

“…You deliberately pretended not to know and didn’t say anything back then?”

“That’s right!”

Olivia snapped back fiercely, tears streaming down as she twisted her lips.

“When I realized that as a Processing-type, I might be able to process the energy around the star, what do you think I thought? I had this exact intuition that if I mentioned this, that damn Rita Pascal would try something reckless. So I decided to pretend not to know until we escaped from that fucking ruins.”

“You thought I’d do something reckless the moment you realized that? Isn’t that too much of a leap?”

“A leap? It’s obvious, so obvious. How many times have I seen your crazy stunts? You’re the insane girl who just does whatever she thinks she can do! What could I expect from someone who’s even detonated the Oaths in her own body?”

“Hey, that was ages ago…”

“Why do you think I stuffed anti-crazy parts into your magic gun? I installed them to supplement your screwed-up survival instinct! But it was a huge miscalculation—I didn’t know that damn Rita Pascal didn’t just have a screwed-up survival instinct, but had none at all!”

“Even so, saying I have no survival instinct is a bit much—”

“Much? You were about to say ‘much,’ weren’t you? Don’t give me that shit. You ended up exploding like that, so what, do you have a survival instinct?”

Rita’s mouth, which had been about to make excuses, closed on its own. Olivia ground her teeth.

“I let my guard down, no, I acted like my eyes were just decoration. I knew perfectly well that Rita Pascal has terrible Oath aptitude but analysis skills at the level of a mage, yet I hoped you wouldn’t notice and would let it slide. As if I were a five-year-old thinking a broken vase wouldn’t be discovered if hidden under a carpet.”

“….”

“And damn it, your ideas are genius-level only when it comes to risking your own life, but your Oath control is so abnormal that perfectly realizing those insane ideas is Rita Pascal’s fucking specialty, isn’t it? Knowing all that, how does it make sense that I, ‘Witch’ Oli Pascal, couldn’t think of the possibility that our crazy Matan might self-destruct like that?”

She gripped her dress hem tightly. With her knuckles turned white, she spat out her words.

“So I knew but couldn’t stop it. I anticipated that you might do such a thing if the situation became worst-case, I foresaw it all but couldn’t stop it!”

Rita quietly looked at the tear-stained face of her friend, who had the most brilliant mind among all the people she knew, her shoulders heaving rapidly.

And she whispered.

“You didn’t anticipate it.”

“What?”

“Looking back later, it was a result you could have fully anticipated, but you didn’t anticipate it at the time. You can’t believe that about yourself, so you’re blaming yourself saying there’s no way you couldn’t have anticipated it, that you actually foresaw it but failed to stop it, Oli.”

“What kind of sophistry is that?”

“It’s obvious. Just as you know me well, I know you too.”

Rita wore a bitter smile.

“If it were the Oli Pascal I know… you might have guessed that the aurora could be processed. Hoping I wouldn’t realize that fact and keeping your mouth shut while pretending not to know, yeah, that’s exactly what you’d do.”

She reached toward the eyes of Olivia, who was still shedding tears.

“But Oli, you couldn’t guess what I would think after noticing that possibility. Right? If you had anticipated it that specifically, you would have immediately grabbed me by the collar and shouted right there. ‘Rita Pascal, if you try to mess around with that aurora, I’ll really kill you.’ Then you would have made sure I couldn’t even touch the star.”

“…!”

“You regret not being able to do that, thinking you could have stopped it but didn’t, so you’re crushed by unnecessary guilt and having those nightmares.”

Rita continued while wiping Olivia’s eyes.

“Oli, you didn’t foresee everything and fail to stop it. I just did something crazy that was beyond your expectations. So… that incident wasn’t because of your carelessness or mistake.”

Oli’s lips trembled. Rita added calmly.

“It’s not something you should blame yourself for being careless about, but something you should be angry at me for doing on my own.”

Olivia was silent for a moment.

She glared at her with moist eyes, then slowly opened her mouth again.

“You do know, don’t you, Rita? That you deserve to be cursed at.”

“Yeah, when I belatedly imagined it from the other perspective, curses came out naturally.”

“None of us wanted you to sacrifice yourself for us to survive like that.”

“I know.”

“I’m not grateful at all.”

“It’s fine, it was something I did selfishly anyway.”

“….”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t have been grateful either, I would have just been angry. Who asked you to save us, right?”

“…I’m really pissed off.”

“Want to hit me more? I’ll take it until you feel better.”

“Damn it, even if I hit you it won’t hurt you at all, wait a minute.”

Olivia, who had been grinding her teeth, suddenly focused on Rita’s lips and her eyes widened.

“You, you, there’s blood.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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