Chapter 70
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 70
What is this?
I’m supposed to be listening to him right now, aren’t I...?
My bewilderment was short-lived.
This Benefit wasn’t like the last one; it didn’t feel like I was just watching a movie.
It was more like...
“Mother? Can’t I come too?”
The voices, the scenes, and the emotions of that night—the ones Leon Frezier had been too proud to describe in detail—began to shimmer into view.
Like film held up to the light. Like a blurry, yet all the more poignant, black-and-white silent film.
“I’ll be good. Please? Mother, I want to go with you.”
A much younger Leon Frezier stood there, his cheeks still round with baby fat.
Children have an instinctive fear and intuition about being abandoned.
Just like the young Leon Frezier in this black-and-white vision, whose eyes were brimming with tears.
“Leon.”
The woman’s face was hidden deep beneath the shadow of her robe’s hood.
Since she was the Marchioness, there might be a portrait of her at the Marquis’s castle in the Imperial Capital, but I had never seen her face—not in the game, and not through Tulia’s eyes.
All I could see were her enchanting lips, curved into a sorrowful smile.
“Leon, you have Lisian, so you know you aren’t alone, right?”
And in her arms, she held a small, sleeping girl tightly.
Tulia.
Young Leon’s eyes were fixed on Tulia.
Those young eyes were filled with question after question.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why are you leaving me behind and taking Tulia?
Why, after saying you love me too, are you only taking Tulia?
Why?
Those questions pooled in his eyes until they overflowed, streaming down his cheeks.
“Tulia is all alone, so Mommy has to take her. My poor Tulia. If I don’t take her, who will?”
“Mommy...”
“Our Leon is a good boy, so you’ll listen to Mommy, won’t you? Give this to Tulia. Okay?”
From inside the carriage, a man’s urgent voice called out, saying they were out of time.
It wasn’t the voice of his father, Marquis Aster Frezier.
Perhaps it was because of the Benefit.
I could feel all the shock, pain, sense of loss, and confusion that young Leon Frezier had experienced as if they were my own.
Mother abandoned us and chose another man.
Mother abandoned me and chose my sister.
Mother left me behind.
Even though I begged, she left me coldly.
Even though I cried for her to take me, she didn't hold me.
“Lisian is sick, so you have to take good care of him since you’re his younger brother, Leon. Understood? I love you, Leon.”
I knew all too well how cruel those words were.
I knew the fact that even though the Marchioness hugged Leon tightly with all her love and affection, he would never be able to feel warmth from those arms again.
I watched the carriage depart.
For a long time afterward, the small, young Leon Frezier stared blankly at the dark night road like a frozen stone statue.
Without moving a single step.
Until the sun rose and the world grew bright.
Not for a single moment.
“It was just... like that. That’s why I didn’t like you very much.”
Leon Frezier, of course, had no idea that I had seen everything that happened that day through the Benefit.
Because he didn’t know, he spoke lightly, as if it were no big deal.
As if it were someone else’s story.
As if it didn’t matter anymore.
How ridiculous.
I knew better than anyone that his heart felt otherwise.
I also knew that he couldn't bring himself to show those deep wounds to others.
“Le—Leon?! What—what are you doing...?!”
“Brother.”
A young Leon, his head covered in pink paint, was crying and laughing at the same time.
“Why can’t my hair be pink?”
His tears beaded and mixed with the pink paint. They left long streaks on his pale cheeks like thin trails of blood.
Young Leon Frezier cried like that for a long time.
The whole time Lisian held him and tried to comfort him, he wailed like a fool.
“...”
I stared at Leon Frezier for a moment.
His hair was a deep, dark black; even if he tried to dye it pink, it would never take on such a delicate color.
“So you didn’t like me very much?”
“Yeah. I’ll admit I haven’t been much of an older brother. I’ll apologize, too, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“What isn’t?”
“It wasn’t just that you didn’t like me. You must have hated me.”
“Why are you exaggerating again? What is it this time? What are you unhappy about now?”
“Because Mom left you and only took me. You must have hated me to death.”
“Ah, seriously. Here we go again. Fine, what do you want? Should I get on my knees in front of you? Or should I bark like a dog? Woof woof?”
“So that’s why everything about me was so loathsome to you...”
“Ha.”
Leon Frezier finally slammed the bowl of herbal medicine down on the nightstand with a thud.
“Hey. Tulia Frezier. What kind of answer are you looking for right now?”
“I understand.”
“...What?”
“I said I understand.”
I, too, had often hated the younger sibling who received all of our mother’s love.
I’m going to spend my whole life hovering on the outskirts of Mom’s life because of that kid.
I also knew that my older sister and brothers were grown enough that they didn't need as much parental love as I did.
That gave me a strange sense of inferiority.
Why am I younger than them, left to wander in this pain?
How much worse must it have been for Leon Frezier, who was abandoned so directly at an even younger age?
“I understand, but I’m still angry.”
“...Why?”
Leon Frezier asked a beat late.
“Are you angry all over again because I bullied you for such a petty reason?”
“Because you bullied me? No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I pity you.”
“...What?”
Yes.
I was angry because I felt pity.
This guy, Leon Frezier, whom I had hated with an annoying passion until this morning—no, until the very moment I opened my eyes.
Because I felt sorry for him.
Because he felt like the old Han Ina.
“Leon.”
Sometimes, thoughts don't pass through the head; they come straight from the heart.
“Why don’t we have normal parents like everyone else?”
Just like now.
“I didn’t want to be abandoned either.”
“...”
“You didn’t want to be abandoned either.”
“...”
“Why were we the ones left behind?”
“...”
“What did we do that was so wrong...?”
The words left a trail as they passed. No, they left a path. Moisture gathered along that narrow path and soon spilled over, running down my cheeks.
“I understand why you hated me. I would have hated me too.”
“...”
“I just understand everything. We were so young, Leon.”
“...”
“So...”
Yes, so.
I had so much to say, but nothing would come past my throat.
Only then did I realize that the balloon I had been blowing up endlessly—no, my heart—had already burst.
The wounds I had intentionally ignored, the scars that had been invisible like the patterns on stretched rubber, had shriveled up into something even more hideous without me even knowing.
“I’m just... sorry.”
Perhaps these were the words I had wanted to hear from my mother.
It was childish and petty, but maybe I had wanted to hear these words from my younger sibling too.
And from my older sister and brothers, who said they had never once considered me family.
The fact that I was the only one who thought of them as family was so infuriating and sorrowful—and at the same time, it hurt so terribly.
That was why the apology Tulia was offering to Leon Frezier was, in the end, the apology that I, Han Ina, had wanted to hear from everyone.
“Tulia Frezier.”
His voice sounded like trash sinking to the bottom of the ocean. It was that pathetic.
“Why are you sorry?”
“...”
“...I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“...”
“Really... I’m the one who should be sorry.”
We were still young, and so we didn't know how to escape the wounds inflicted by the adults we loved. We didn't know how.
That was true for Tulia, the greatest villainess in the game.
And it was the same for Leon, who, as one of the male leads, possessed almost every shining thing in the world.
Both of them just sobbed like fools.
Funny enough, the bowl of medicine was still warm.