Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 138

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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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Episode 138
‘Edwin’s eyes are cold. I’d have run too if I were in her position.’
Edwin’s gaze had grown even more unsettling than before, as if to confirm her worst fears.
“She headed toward the seaside where the nobility keeps their summer villas, or so I’m told.”
All Helen could do was emphasize the word ‘summer villas’ as she spoke.
Edwin, having exhausted what little patience remained during the search for Lina’s whereabouts, immediately urged them forward.
Helen’s attempt had come to nothing.
“Go.”
Edwin clenched his teeth as he gave the command.
The taut tension of a predator about to seize its prey hung across Edwin’s face.
Their brief respite had ended.
The chase was drawing to a close.
Already exhausted horses drew upon their final reserves and galloped forward.
Upon arriving at the district where the nobility’s summer villas stood clustered, a waiting knight emerged and directed them to where Lina was.
Edwin glanced once in the direction the knight indicated, then continued without pause.
He leaped over the wooden fence marking private property as if executing an equestrian technique.
“Lina.”
His voice was dark, carrying through even the thunder of hoofbeats.
Hearing someone call her name, Lina turned toward the sound and startled.
“Edwin?”
The hem of her ornately patterned dress fluttered gently in the sea breeze.
* * *
“Edwin?”
Her first thought was why Edwin—who should have been at the Imperial Palace—was in Dietar.
‘Am I seeing things? Why is Edwin here?’
Yet the figure drew closer, too real to be a hallucination.
“Oh, Sister!”
At the same moment, Anika called out to her from the stairs leading down to the beach, a glass cup in each hand.
“Come over here!”
Perhaps thinking Edwin was someone suspicious, she hurried down and tumbled directly.
“Anika!”
Though she’d fallen on sand and only mistepped a couple of steps above the beach, my heart lurched.
I forgot Edwin entirely and ran toward Anika.
My feet sank into the sand with each step, making my pace painfully slow.
Had I managed more than twenty steps?
Edwin rode up on his horse and cut off my path.
“Edwin?”
Confused, I looked up as he suddenly dismounted.
His expression was cold in a way I hadn’t seen even when we first met.
“Lina, are you running off with the Emperor?”
‘Running off with? What does that even mean?’
For a moment, his words made no sense to me.
A few seconds later, I understood—and my face burned hot.
My eyes darted helplessly about, until they met Anika’s gaze.
‘Oh…….’
She’d understood everything and was only pretending not to for the adults’ sake.
She was doing her best to hide her shocked expression as she lay there on the sand.
‘This is a disaster.’
“Are you insane? You can’t talk like that in front of a child!”
My resentment turned toward Edwin.
* * *
“Are you insane? You can’t talk like that in front of a child!”
Smack, smack.
Lina’s hands struck Edwin’s forearm sharply.
The snap of her wrist was no light matter.
Edwin submitted his arm meekly while protesting in an aggrieved voice.
“You disappeared without warning!”
“Without warning? I did no such thing!”
Lina’s eyes sharpened at once.
“Are you yelling at me right now?”
Edwin immediately backpedaled and denied it.
“No, I wasn’t—I didn’t yell.”
His voice dropped to barely a whisper compared to moments before.
It was rather pitiful to see.
“You just did.”
Lina, sensing the same thing, replied coldly.
“I’m sorry.”
Edwin finally yielded to her intensity and apologized.
Lina’s eyes softened momentarily, then flickered toward her younger sister, only to sharpen again.
Anika—her younger sister who had just enrolled at the Academy—was watching with such keen interest that Lina seemed at a loss.
Her ire redirected itself toward Edwin.
The smacking resumed in earnest.
“What is this, really! And didn’t I tell you I was leaving in a week? What do you mean ‘running off’?”
Though less forceful than before, her resentment was unmistakable in every strike.
With each blow, Edwin’s cold expression thawed bit by bit, and the wild light fading from his eyes softened rapidly.
‘Physical catharsis?’
Kyle, who had been silently casting Ice Magic as a precaution, cancelled his casting.
Instead, he regarded Lina—who was subduing an Aura Master with her bare hands—with admiration.
The continent’s strongest had just changed hands.
‘With that spirit and bearing, she’d make a fine Empress.’
Kyle cheered silently for Lina.
Edwin, his menace entirely drained, mumbled a question.
“So you hated me and were trying to go to another continent?”
His expression was still somewhat bristled, but his tone bordered on pouting.
“Well…….”
Lina flinched.
The hand that had been striking his forearm stilled once more.
When no explanation came, Edwin’s expression hardened again incrementally.
Fortunately, before his misunderstanding could deepen, Lina revealed the truth.
“I thought you were marrying the Crown Princess…….”
Embarrassed beyond measure, Lina’s voice grew small.
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
Edwin countered as though wronged.
“I didn’t know back then. But how did you find out I was trying to go to the Western Continent?”
When Lina pressed him, Edwin’s eyes darted nervously before he spoke with caution.
“Kyle received a Leave of Absence Notice, and I thought something had happened to you…….”
“That went through? Why?”
Lina’s eyes fluttered as though her adolescent diary had just been discovered.
“Anyway, it was sent by mistake.”
She then hurried to change the subject, unwilling to dwell on it further.
“So you weren’t actually fleeing the country?”
Edwin asked carefully.
He seemed to need Lina’s confirmation.
“How could I leave my family behind?”
‘Well…… my family all came to Dietar anyway, which is unfortunate.’
It seemed everyone shared similar thoughts.
Even the knights who’d harbored doubts throughout the chase were now increasingly convinced she actually had fled.
‘Now I understand what happened.’
Kyle laughed hollowly, grateful this could be resolved as a mere misunderstanding.
When he returned to the Capital, the first thing he’d do would be check when Lina had sent the Leave of Absence Notice from the post office.
It was probably sometime before that dawn when he’d sworn dozens of Mana Oaths without sleep.
Yet this gathering included more than just Kyle, who was accustomed to Edwin’s passionate first love.
“That’s definitely His Majesty, right?”
“Well, yes, but…….”
Some of the knights, seeing Edwin with Lina for the first time, were astonished.
“You don’t trust him?”
“No, I do trust him…….”
“Then why did you think I’d run away?”
“Well, the situation…….”
“Never mind.”
“I’m sorry. All right?”
While the knights rubbed their eyes in disbelief at what they’d witnessed, Edwin continued to apologize awkwardly to Lina.
Even Kyle, despite an Emperor’s reputation for invulnerability, found himself without immunity to this sight.
Kyle gestured coldly to the knights.
It was a signal to retreat before they witnessed anything more unbearable.
The knights, eager to see no more of their superior’s romance, withdrew from the beach like a receding tide.
Each scattered to maintain an appropriate distance and defensive positions.
Kyle, who was about to be the last to leave the beach, remembered Anika.
“Hello, Miss Anika.”
Kyle offered a gentle greeting.
“Hello.”
Anika responded to his greeting with only the briefest glance his way.
“It seems Lina has urgent matters to discuss with that gentleman. Would you like to come with us, Miss Anika?”
Kyle smiled kindly, his eyes wide.
“No.”
This smile had worked wonders on the children Kyle had brought from the Poorhouse where Ibeta lived, but it had no effect on Anika whatsoever.
“My parents told me never to go with strangers.”
Her cautious tone was remarkably similar to Lina’s.
Yet her eyes remained fixed on Edwin and Lina.
Kyle chuckled softly.
“If you’d simply like to watch a bit longer, I can’t stop you.”
As though stung, Anika—who’d avoided looking at Kyle since their initial greeting—turned her gaze toward him.
“That’s not what this is.”
Anika pouted and offered her proposal generously.
“Then just to the summer villa. If you try to go anywhere else, I’ll scream. Then my sister will come running right away.”
An Academy first-year, if he recalled correctly.
For such a young age, she understood the power structure remarkably well.
‘Or maybe one just needs eyes to see.’
Kyle thought this as he observed, from the corner of his eye, Edwin—whose knees were nearly touching the ground.

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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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