Thought It Was ‘The End’, Only to Return to a Changed Genre - Chapter 102
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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 18. Truth Belongs to Each Person (6)
Edelaine shook off her thoughts and continued speaking.
“The novel’s ‘Edelaine’s’ evil deeds are repeatedly blocked by them, exposed, and she’s eventually killed.”
Whether it was the male lead or one of the male characters, she didn’t know. Edelaine didn’t care who it was anymore.
Because novels and reality were different.
However, Shane’s eyes darkened. He pulled their interlocked hands closer and said.
“By me?”
“Huh? No? I don’t know who it was either.”
“It was me.”
“The possibility isn’t zero.”
Shane nodded without much change in expression.
“Then it must be me. It sounds like something I’d do.”
She was momentarily speechless and stared at him. Shane smiled prettily, crinkling his eyes, and lightly kissed Edelaine’s slightly parted lips.
“What’s this, Edelaine. Acting all surprised now.”
“No… I was just thinking it really is surprising.”
Shane smiled charmingly as if saying ‘Right?’ It didn’t quite suit the face of a large man holding her so she couldn’t escape, but he knew his charm worked very well on her.
“You won’t dislike me for something like this, not anymore.”
“I hate how well you know me…”
“Take it back. Even as a joke, it hurts when you say you hate me.”
Shane grumbled sulkily as if he was really hurt. Edelaine buried her face in her hands.
‘Where did the shield-like male lead from the original go, and why is there a fox sitting here instead?’
As if her saying he wasn’t cute had been some great offense, he was openly acting charming.
He smiled leisurely as if he could see right through Edelaine’s fondness for him, then kissed her cheek and said.
“Poor Edelaine, having to die just for being a little jealous.”
“Think about it, Shane. What Edelaine did to the female protagonist in that world is exactly what I experienced in this world. Assassination attempts, poisoning attempts, kidnapping…”
“…”
Shane wrinkled his nose bridge with displeasure. Edelaine kissed his cute nose bridge and continued her story.
“I had to do something. The best option was to stay far away from the ‘characters,’ the protagonists forever. First, I tried to break off our engagement and go live somewhere in the remote countryside.”
“Aha.”
“But you absolutely refused, you wouldn’t even listen to what I had to say. A sudden broken engagement would only look like a child’s whim, so there was no justification. You kept following me around asking why, which was really troublesome.”
He had also persistently questioned who had told me to do such things.
Come to think of it, Shane had been tenacious even then.
“Honestly, I thought that as long as I didn’t commit any evil deeds, I wouldn’t be killed. Because the novel’s ‘Edelaine’ and ‘I’ were different. But that’s when the nightmares started.”
As if telling me not to forget my role.
“The nightmares only ended when I died each time. Since they wouldn’t end until I died anyway, I tried countless methods, but nothing worked. No matter what I did, ‘Edelaine’ would die. I couldn’t just dismiss them as random dreams. Everything in reality flowed exactly as in the dreams.”
“…”
“I first met Lloyd and Lucian in the places I had seen in my dreams. Shane, I saw the scene of you bringing Genevieve dozens, hundreds of times.”
Edelaine slowly told her story, answering Shane’s occasional questions in detail.
Surprisingly, Shane believed every word of Edelaine’s story without a hint of doubt.
‘It can’t be an easy story to believe.’
Above all, wouldn’t the fact that he was merely a character in someone’s fictional creation be shocking?
But Shane didn’t seem to care about such things at all. Even as Edelaine spoke, all of this sounded like foolish delusions or absurd nonsense to her own ears, but he was utterly serious.
Not once did he say something like ‘surely not’ or ‘that can’t be right.’
He seemed to believe that if she said so, then it must be true.
“So I ran away. I believed that was the only way. I planned to wish for your happiness from afar. With just me gone, a perfect happy ending would be waiting for you two.”
“What remarkable self-sacrifice that was.”
In the end, Shane couldn’t hold back one sarcastic remark and frowned. Then he quickly added.
“Sorry. That was a mistake.”
“No, well, I have nothing to say even with ten mouths…”
“Kiss me, Edelaine. Just thinking about that time makes me so depressed I might cry.”
Shane skillfully begged for a kiss. Edelaine kissed him out of habit. With a soft sound, their warm lip membranes touched and separated just a little late. Shane followed with another kiss as if unsatisfied.
“I wasn’t planning to pretend to die in front of you. I was going to finish it when you went far away.”
“Was the me in the novel such a bastard that I’d pretend not to see my dying fiancée? What an utterly despicable bastard.”
Sensing that her novel promotion had failed from his voice full of contempt, Edelaine changed the subject.
“After that, as you know, I was caught alive and dragged back by you.”
“And you’re still caught now.”
Shane tightened his arms around Edelaine. It was slightly suffocating, but that actually gave her a sense of security that felt good.
“When I came back, everything was completely different from the future I knew. My goodness, Genevieve married someone whose face she didn’t even know, and you went crazy and kidnapped and confined someone. I wondered what genre this world had become.”
“Hahaha.”
The main culprit who had turned a bright romance into a crime thriller laughed. Annoyed by this, Edelaine bit his chin gently so it wouldn’t hurt.
“Don’t laugh. I was serious. I didn’t know what had happened, and I was anxious because I didn’t know when the nightmares might start again. If the story had gone wrong because I didn’t die normally, I thought maybe this time I really had to die.”
“No one can kill you. I won’t let that happen.”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I didn’t know that then. I thought you hated me. Besides, there was a villain in the story, someone who tormented the protagonists, but they hadn’t appeared. That villain tries to kill the female lead, so if they were alive somewhere, I couldn’t just ignore it.”
“…”
Shane seemed to disagree completely.
Though he wasn’t asking out loud, his blue eyes held an indifferent incomprehension of why she couldn’t ignore it.
“Then Genevieve was attacked, and they said the culprit was caught. I had hope that everything was resolved with that. I thought that just as all the story in the novel had gone wrong, the villain’s ending had also gone wrong, had disappeared. I just wanted to believe it.”
Hearing Edelaine’s explanation, he could understand her behavior all this time.
From young Edelaine who acted as if she knew all their futures, to Edelaine who seemed shocked as if the world she knew had crumbled when they met again.
“If only the nightmares hadn’t started again, I would have told you all of this when the culprit was caught.”
“…”
“I died dozens, hundreds of times in dreams. Sometimes you killed me, sometimes Lloyd, His Highness Edwin, sometimes Genevieve, sometimes Jeff’s older brother or Patrick’s older brother looked down at me dying…”
“You don’t have to say anymore.”
Shane brushed back Edelaine’s hair and kissed her round forehead.
The kiss lasted as long as Edelaine’s silence. It touched and lifted from her eye corners, nose tip, hair behind her ears, chin tip, and eyelids carefully.
“I’m sorry, Shane.”
She hoped her voice, words, expression, and eyes would convey sincerity.
“It’s not a lie. I kept liking you, hoping you’d be happy. I hoped you wouldn’t miss the happiness you could have because of me. It’s natural that you don’t believe me. That’s why I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid you’d think even my saying I liked you was a lie…”
“I would have believed it even if it were a lie.”
“I told you it’s not a lie!”
Is this how Pinocchio and the boy who cried wolf felt? When Edelaine spoke with indignation, Shane chuckled.
“What I mean is, Edelaine, even if you had intended to lie, if you had told me you liked me, I would have had no choice but to believe it.”
And her lie would have become his truth.
She seemed unaware that if it came from Edelaine, he could turn even pity and lies into love.
Even hatred and anger.
As long as it was Edelaine’s, even if it wasn’t true, it could become love.
Edelaine grabbed Shane’s collar as if frustrated.
“It’s real. I really liked you. I always did.”
Her voice was tinged with moisture. She seemed quite indignant.
“Yes, I believe you. I love you too.”
“…I said I liked you, I didn’t say I loved you.”
“Now this is a lie.”
Shane said confidently and grinned.
“You already love me, Edelaine.”
She could feel his determination to make her love him somehow if she didn’t already. Before Edelaine could say anything, Shane sucked on her lower lip and grinned.
Her lips were moist and warm. His throat burned with the desire to swallow everything soft inside her mouth. Thirsty, Shane licked his lips with his tongue and caressed the hollow of Edelaine’s waist.
“As long as you didn’t run away because you hated me, that’s enough.”
“Actually, I did hate it… You kept clinging when I said we should stay apart, making my heart weak…”
Shane smiled crookedly and moved his hand down from her waist to grasp her slender ankle.
“You said it would hurt.”
And he bared his teeth and bit the inside of her ankle.
“Cancel that.”
“Ah, wait. I’ll cancel it! I’ll cancel it!”
Only then did Edelaine notice her skirt hem that had rolled up to her thighs and cried out urgently.
He gently bit between her calf and ankle without hurting her, then pressed his lips above it and smiled mischievously at the bright red Edelaine.
“Too late.”
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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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