Chapter 3. A Chance That Will Never Come Again
2023.10.03.
Marquis Companni swept a glance over Yuan Pelliese’s deathly pale face and urged her to leave.
Yuan turned her head toward her aunt very slowly, instead of answering.
Her red-painted lips trembled, as if the idea were absurd.
“Your Grace? How could you commit such an insult!”
“If you hadn’t lied from the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Marquis Companni replied coldly, smiling.
His eyes, unlike his twisted mouth, remained completely straight, aimed at the furry ears.
“The request was made. The permission was granted. Wasn’t all of that settled a year ago?”
“But still, still like this…”
“If it were true that the late Count and Countess Pelliese had only one daughter, I could have simply conducted the funeral and left. But the circumstances are different, aren’t they?”
“You can’t take that child away!”
A shriek, sharp as a crack, cut between Marquis Companni and Countess Pelliese.
Then Count Pelliese finally emerged from the room.
As he descended the stairs supported by two servants, Marquis Companni’s gaze gradually sharpened.
Finally, gasping for breath as he stepped onto the first floor, her uncle shrieked.
The shout was directed at the Marquis, but his glare—like a flaming arrow—was clearly aimed at Yuan.
“That child is my niece! She’s my brother’s bloodline! She’s as precious to me as my own life!”
“Dear!”
The Count, fat and wobbling like a pig, swayed violently, and the Countess rushed to support him.
The thin woman was instantly swallowed by her husband’s bulk.
“His Highness is deeply angered, Count.”
“I offered my own lifeline—my beloved niece! Wasn’t His Highness asking for the ‘daughter of the late Count Pelliese’? I didn’t send some distant relative’s child! How exactly have I incurred such wrath?”
“You claimed the late Count and Countess Pelliese had only one daughter. And that esteemed lady…”
Marquis Companni scanned the obese figure of Count Pelliese from head to toe, then spread his arms as if introducing Louise’s coffin, stepping back.
“…didn’t pass away so quickly? Even if you bring a damn dog, if it dies too soon, you go to the farm to demand answers. Let alone…”
He seemed about to roar, but glanced around and tightly sealed his lips.
Instead, he strode toward the nearly collapsing Count and muttered in a low voice.
“You seem to be mistaken. The one who is furious isn’t Crown Prince Clade.”
The Count Pelliese’s face, flushed with rage, turned ashen.
“It is Crown Prince Bollonico who is deeply, deeply angered.”
At the mention of the First Prince, the mansion sank into a hollow silence.
Marquis Companni smiled gently again at the terrified Count and Countess.
It was clearly a forced smile, visible to anyone.
“The First Prince is extremely sensitive right now. He’s straining every nerve to carry out flawlessly the task entrusted by the Emperor. How dare a subordinate leave even a single flaw? When ordered to present the treasure of the Pelliese, you send not the treasure, but a burdensome invalid?”
“C-Companni Marquis… I… I…”
“What a fortunate thing. Since I’ve come to know the truth, all I need to do is correct this mistake.”
Count Pelliese looked up at Marquis Companni like a man facing the god of death.
The fierce demeanor from earlier had vanished. Upon hearing of the First Prince, he wiped his damp, trembling hands on his wife’s clothes and steadied his breath.
Yet, unwilling to lose Yuan just like that, he scraped together his last courage and shouted.
“I’ll ask the child herself! She’s not some commoner’s daughter. I’m not such a cruel uncle as to force a marriage she despises!”
“How noble of you.”
Marquis Companni sneered, snorting through his nose.
Every person gathered on the first floor turned their gaze toward Yuan.
“Your Highness the Crown Princess, what is your decision?”
As the Marquis’s voice faded, Yuan avoided her uncle’s gaze and looked up at her aunt.
The moment their eyes met, her aunt raised her heavily painted eyebrows and shook her head slightly.
Yet her voice remained soft and tender.
“Yuan. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. Wouldn’t you rather stay here with your dear aunt and your cousins, just as you’ve been?”
Then she looked at her cousins, who hid their vicious intentions behind her aunt’s presence.
Their faces burned with the desire to seize Yuan’s hair the moment the troublemakers left.
Since childhood, Yuan Pelliese’s only wish had been one thing.
A beautiful mansion and a complete family.
And over the past ten years, that wish had slowly shrunk in expectation and volume, leaving only its essence.
Home. Family.
This mansion, no different from a living hell, was Yuan’s only home, and those rude people were her only family.
So she believed that if she just behaved well, things would improve.
She did her best to assist her uncle’s research, preserving the Pelliese name.
She never refused to serve her aunt and cousins, who had become family on paper.
Because that was what this new family wanted, and thus she could remain in the mansion.
On some days, when the pain was too great, she wanted to ask, “Uncle, are we really family?”
She always swallowed those words, pressing them down with pain, and waited.
While helping her uncle’s research, she believed that once she cured her sister’s illness, this suffering would end.
She thought they would become a real family, that she would finally be accepted as family in this mansion and find happiness.
But…
“Yuan. This uncle will surely resolve it. You just speak your heart.”
In this strange and terrifying conversation, Louise was absent.
They erased Yuan’s existence and cast Louise out of the mansion.
Now, even though Louise had returned in death, no one asked about her, no one grieved her passing.
Relatives, Louise, and Yuan.
Under the name Pelliese, they had deceived themselves into believing they were the most perfect form of a family—and the price was cruel.
“Isn’t family something no one can tear apart?”
Uncle, aunt, cousins…
None of them had ever truly been Yuan’s family.
And the belief that they were an unavoidable family had been Yuan’s delusion alone.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to Eloise Tailor? Even to that desolate ‘Roxenhardt’… Where do you think you’re going? You, who’ve lived in luxury here—how could you survive there, serving that person, with even imperial support cut off?”
Her aunt’s voice buzzed in her ears, and her mind went completely blank.
Her thoughts shattered. No words came out.
‘Family? My home?’
Words she had cherished so deeply they were like tattoos on her heart had all been erased.
Only one fact remained, burning in her mind: a single word could free her from this beautiful, horrifying mansion.
She no longer needed to endure every moment of sacrifice she’d made to help her uncle, just to find a way to save Louise and avoid being cast out.
The silent, endless moments she’d endured—unable to belong to this mansion, unable to leave it—ever since Louise’s death, no, ever since her parents passed and she was crushed, now swept through the stillness like a ghost.
She still felt the pain of strangers’ suffering brought in yesterday, fresh in her heart.
That terrible agony had already passed, leaving only the memory of pain—but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
“Yuan, you still don’t want to separate from your family, do you?”
She no longer wanted to suffer for her uncle, for the Pelliese name.
Under normal circumstances, she might have gladly accepted even the false warmth in that voice—but not today.
A corner of her heart flickered like a warning signal, but her entire body rejected staying in this mansion any longer.
She had a place to go.
And it was a place her uncle would never dare reach.
A chance that will never come again.
‘I’ll come to get you.’
Louise’s voice filled her head, pulling her relentlessly outward.
The white teeth that had bitten her lower lip until it bled finally parted, and at last, a faint voice slipped from Yuan’s lips.
“I’ll… go.”
“Y-Yuan?”
A home without parents, without Louise.
People who treated her pain as natural, who lied without a trace of guilt…
The trembling of her lips stilled. Yuan, her eyes bloodshot, raised her voice.
“I want to go.”
It was a simple sentence.
Yet it had taken so long to say.
The fury that had burned her mind subsided, if only for a moment.
Perhaps because she finally believed she could leave this house with no regrets.
Or perhaps because of her uncle’s stupid, dazed face, as if someone had struck him from behind.
“Well decided.”
Marquis Companni relaxed his furrowed brows and nodded at the servants.
The previously chaotic surroundings quickly settled.
Her uncle only opened his mouth again at the very moment Yuan began to rise, escorted by Marquis Companni.
“Impossible!”
Her uncle’s face burned like molten metal pulled from a furnace.
Forgetting he had needed support moments ago, he staggered forward rapidly and seized Yuan’s wrist tightly.
Yanking her away from Marquis Companni, he pressed hot breath into her ear.
“How dare you!”
Seeing the fear seeping into her eyes, her uncle twisted his lips and whispered fiercely.
“What do you think you can do there? Do you think being Crown Princess makes you a real Princess? Do you think you’ll be treated well there? I kept you from going to that monster’s place, and you repay me with betrayal? You could die there. No—you will die! You can only live if you stay here!”
Yuan, who had been turning away from him, slowly turned her eyes toward him.
Count Pelliese hesitated for a moment.
Because Yuan’s eyes—usually fearful, obedient, and cast downward—were now bloodshot and unlike their usual self.
As if, for the first time, she dared to resent him.
“I want to go.”
“I don’t want to die or live one more moment here.”
Her eyes, filled with hollow rage, met her uncle’s gaze directly—for the first time.
Male lead says he’s pregnant — and it’s female lead’s child
Something seems a bit off about this world.
Wang Zhao thought as she watched a pregnant man walking towards her…
Intro
Female lead finds herself in a world where the men who possess the ability to bear children.
As she navigates this unfamiliar reality, she is caught off guard by the sudden appearance of her boyfriend, who reveals that he is pregnant.
Is this truly her boyfriend?
Why can’t she recall any details about their time together?
She begins to doubt whether the child her boyfriend is carrying is even hers.
Is there a hidden reason behind her amnesia, or could it be a side effect of her sudden arrival in this strange new world?
Just when it seems the protagonist’s life couldn’t become any more entangled, her ex-boyfriend makes an unexpected appearance, raising questions about the protagonist’s past.
__________
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