Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 141

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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 141
Edwin looked rather menacing when he wasn’t smiling.
The wariness in Mother’s voice made him belatedly lift the corners of his mouth, but it had little effect.
“Lina.”
Mother called my name as if urging me to explain.
“Well…….”
I was confused about how much I should say.
Anika, who had been watching me fumble through my words and then watching Mother watch me, stepped in.
“He’s someone my sister is dating!”
Using a child’s privilege to speak innocently without seeming to notice, her blunt words softened Mother’s wariness somewhat.
At least he wasn’t a suspicious person.
“I see.”
Her eyes shifted from cautious to observant.
“So you must be Dietar. Running into each other here at this hour tells me that much.”
Mother chided my sudden arrival and my daughter’s paramour with a smile, all while we were on a family holiday.
“No, I had something urgent to attend to, so I stopped by to see her face for a moment. I’ll be leaving soon.”
I made an excuse on Edwin’s behalf.
Before the conversation could go any further, I just needed to send Edwin off safely.
But Father opened his mouth faster than I could offer my farewells.
“We can’t just let a guest leave like that. Come in for a moment and have some tea before you go.”
Father spoke with unusual gravity, his tone heavier than usual.
The way he said it, if we followed him in, it would be liquor, not tea, that he’d bring out.
‘And he’ll ask how much you love our daughter.’
Wanting to cut an imposing figure, Father went ahead into the villa before Edwin could even respond.
Mother followed, and the twins too, both doing their best to look composed as they trailed after Father.
This invitation clearly had the concept of ‘How dare you covet our Lina!’
‘This is not the mood for that!’
I watched Edwin’s expression with anxious eyes.
‘Please don’t be angry with me.’
Edwin was such a gentle boyfriend that I never could have thought of him as a ‘tyrant emperor.’
After learning his true identity, I’d been even more careful with him, worried he might take fright.
But now I knew that Edwin was far warmer than the male protagonist I’d read about in that novel.
I also knew that Edwin loved me sincerely.
Yet I couldn’t be sure his love extended to my family.
Father was a tender-hearted, sentimental man, but a hopeless homebody with nothing but his children on his mind.
‘He was kind to Anika, but whether he’d smile and overlook it if the would-be groom tested him harshly is another matter.’
Because Edwin wasn’t actually meek—he only played that role with me.
‘How long will this pretense hold up?’
But contrary to my fears, the moment my family moved out of sight, Edwin hurriedly began adjusting his appearance.
Of course, brushing off the dirt from his clothes wouldn’t make them clean.
“I should have come later, like you said.”
Edwin sighed, looking helpless.
He looked like nothing so much as an ordinary man genuinely worried about his appearance after meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time.
But even if Edwin was acting ordinary, he was still an emperor.
‘I wonder if our parents will be more shocked than Edwin.’
I couldn’t help but worry more about my family’s reaction.
‘I wish I’d sent him away earlier.’
But what’s done is done.
“Edwin, would it be all right if I told my family about you?”
Edwin seemed put out, but he understood why I was saying this.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close, then kissed him lightly as a gesture of apology.
Edwin’s cheeks flushed as if he hadn’t been disappointed at all.
“Let’s go now.”
His tone was relaxed, but his limbs on the same side were moving in sync.
* * *
Even opening the door required a moment of mental preparation, as if I were sneaking out without my parents knowing.
As we entered the entrance hall, the reception room door stood open like a signpost beckoning us in.
Edwin and I exchanged a glance before heading slowly toward the reception room.
It seemed the twins and Anika had been sent back to their rooms—only our parents remained.
As Edwin followed me into the reception room, both Mother’s and Father’s gazes fixed on him at once.
Though he’d steeled himself beforehand, Edwin was startled.
Seeing Edwin’s reaction, Father was even more taken aback.
Edwin was too tense, and Father too unprepared for this sudden encounter.
A tense silence hung between them briefly.
“Lina, don’t keep standing. Please, sit down.”
Mother, maintaining her composure, smiled elegantly and gestured us to our seats.
As Edwin and I sat side by side, tea was brought out as if on cue. Thankfully, it was tea and not liquor.
His lips parched, Edwin moistened them with the tea.
Mother watched carefully as he drank.
When Edwin set down the teacup, Mother asked in a formal aristocratic accent she rarely used.
“How did you meet Lina?”
She must have discerned that his status was high, even if she didn’t know he was the emperor.
‘It showed in how he drank the tea.’
As someone who had barely learned the basics of aristocratic etiquette, I couldn’t fathom how she’d noticed.
For me, it was easier that Mother picked up on some of it.
Edwin didn’t seem to feel the same way.
He answered like a messenger delivering urgent news, stiff with tension.
“At first it was chance, but when chance overlapped, before I knew it I had grown fond of her……is that right?”
He started off serious and well, but stumbled at the end.
He seemed unsure how to conduct himself with our parents.
‘Well, he’s only ever been around subjects.’
Now that I thought about it, even when he pretended to be Everett Rohas, Edwin rarely spoke in proper formal speech—he’d cut off the endings or lose track of them.
‘At least this much counts as respectful.’
Edwin’s eyes wavered like an earthquake had struck, far more than my own, which had lower expectations.
“You can speak comfortably.”
Seeing how he struggled with formal speech, Mother decided his status was higher than she’d anticipated, and her own tone became accordingly more courteous.
The eyes that had been searching before now held a glimmer of concern.
As if she’d instinctively sensed that I would walk a different path than hers.
Mother’s gaze, which had been fixed on Edwin, briefly touched me.
I smiled brightly, as if oblivious to the meaning behind her look—the way a woman blinded by love would.
While pretending not to notice the weight of her glance at all.
Seeing me smile, Mother’s gaze returned to Edwin.
Her face carried all the heaviness of her thoughts.
Mother hid her troubled expression behind her teacup.
Because she knew all too well how difficult a marriage between nobility and commoner could be, she couldn’t manage her expression.
Mother still loved Father.
For Mother, once the daughter of an earl, becoming a viscount’s wife with no fortune must have been terribly arduous, yet she’d never shown even a hint of regret.
But the absence of regret didn’t mean it hadn’t been hard.
Heavy silence filled the reception room.
But Mother exhaled once and returned to her usual demeanor.
“If you oppose it, the flames only burn brighter.”
Mother laughed hollowly, speaking as if to herself.
To anyone listening, it was clearly words born of experience.
Mother turned to Father with a smile.
Her face held far softer emotions than before, when her laugh had been hollow.
Father smiled back and took Mother’s hand.
“Lina resembles Bia so much—my mother, that is.”
Father was still clinging to the concept of the skeptical father-in-law testing his prospective son-in-law.
His tone was stiff, but affection overflowed from his eyes.
Even so, his expression relaxed somewhat compared to when he’d stood there with crossed arms and a disapproving look.
“Especially her voice……is similar.”
“Her voice?”
Father asked, as if the remark had caught him off-guard.
“It’s similar to Lina’s voice when she’s working.”
Edwin smiled softly, his eyes distant as he recalled a moment whose timing I couldn’t place.
Perhaps the uncaged emotion of love on his face earned him points with my parents.
“Better late than never—would you tell us your name?”
Mother, who had deliberately avoided asking Edwin his name until now, posed the question.
This question meant she had come to terms with the situation to some degree.
Concerned that I might reconsider my earlier request, Edwin’s gaze turned toward me.
I gave him a barely perceptible nod.
“Edwin…….”
He was about to cut the name short again, so I poked his ribs firmly.
Only then did Edwin add with a sigh.
“Edwin Regencia.”
Only the direct imperial lineage could use the empire’s name as a surname.
And there was only one member of the imperial family left.

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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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