118. You Can’t Help But Be Irritated

2024.01.26.

Lancelot had already sat up straight and was glaring at Clade.

He had sheathed his claws—determined to latch onto Clade like a hawk striking in an instant, refusing to let go.

“Rebellion. Isn’t that something you can’t do without full focus?”

“I told you to watch your mouth.”

Clade issued a low warning in response to the clearly accusatory remark.

But Lancelot didn’t flinch. Instead, he raised his tone further.

“If you’d gone alone to this title ceremony, do you think you could’ve properly exchanged greetings with the anti-emperor faction?”

Emperor Igor ruled through terror, but not everyone bowed beneath his feet as a sycophantic courtier.

Especially not the border nobles who had long maintained their own private armies without ever entering imperial politics, or the elderly nobles who still remembered the reign of the late Emperor Alexei.

Aside from those who had sent letters merely identifying themselves as southern nobles, there were occasional well-wishers who indirectly congratulated Clade on his title inheritance through Marquis Rev.

Most of these encounters happened in the servants’ lounge or along the twenty-odd corridors connecting the Glory Hall and the rest area—places carefully avoiding the Emperor’s eyes.

Marquis Rev of Mount San, who had supported Clade all along, received the most congratulations, so much so that he was still trapped in the capital amid an ongoing stream of celebratory visits.

This, too, was proof of how many people harbored discontent toward the current Emperor.

“If you’d gone alone, you absolutely couldn’t have done it.”

Lancelot, suddenly shedding his earlier smug expression, murmured with conviction.

“In the Glory Hall, instead of trampling on Gumnus Yotpa, you should’ve trampled on your own tongue.”

“You can’t fool my eyes. No matter where yours may wander, do you think I don’t know where your nerves are headed?”

At Lancelot’s sharp rebuke, Clade’s eyes—previously weighed down by exhaustion—snapped open instantly. Lancelot didn’t flinch; instead, he intensified his momentum.

“Stop being so stubbornly pointless. Can’t you just be honest for once? If there’s a misunderstanding, clear it up. If you’re angry, chase after her and hurl curses at her! If your wife left because she simply grew disgusted with you, fine—I can understand that! But regardless of the reason, you still need to respond appropriately. When you spend nights with other women, refuse to sleep in the bedroom, and act like a madman obsessively staring at documents all day, at least release whatever bitterness or unease you’re holding inside!”

“What do you know? Mind your own business. I didn’t know trying to pull myself out of that wretched state and actually do some work would be such a crime.”

“I know. I know everything! I understand you better than you understand yourself! You’re not normal!”

“You’re the one making me angry right now.”

“It was the same ten years ago. Damn it, Clade, it was exactly like this ten years ago.”

Suddenly, hot tears streamed from Lancelot’s eyes. His face twisted with overwhelming sorrow.

“After losing your entire family. Left alone, obsessing over your uncle’s betrayal and suffering—what did you do?”

Lancelot’s trembling voice struck Clade, who glared back with bloodshot eyes, directly in the heart.

“Rest? Convalesce? Resent? Or at least scream your grief out loud?”

By now, Lancelot’s cheeks were soaked. He pressed his palms against his eye sockets, biting his lips. Sorrow poured from between his teeth like blood spitting from a wound.

“No. No, Clade. You abused your own body. Without even a thought that you might die. You neglected both your body and mind, and instead crawled into the underground. During the day, you blocked the dungeon entrance with that damn rocking chair you’re lying on now. You never truly rested, never dozed off pretending to be lazy down there. You stayed alert at every footstep. You never had a single moment of peace. That’s how you lived for ten years, you.”

Lancelot trembled as if he himself had endured it.

“Whatever you plan to do about your wife, neither I nor Eddie care anymore. I’m completely fed up with you too—I don’t even feel like shouting into your blocked ears about why you won’t bring her back if you truly love her.”

Lancelot roughly wiped away his tears and lowered his voice.

Perhaps Lancelot Rev would never be able to stay angry at Clade his entire life. Whenever he saw Clade buried in darkness, Lancelot’s heart inevitably softened.

“You. You’re going to risk yourself in dangerous matters again. You’re planning rebellion, aren’t you?”

“If you’re scared, then back out, Lancelot.”

“If you’re going to do it, do it properly. Leave no lingering resentment behind. Resolve everything before moving forward—so your mind won’t wander anywhere except the rebellion.”

“I’m doing it properly. Do you think I’m made of stone?”

Clade snapped back sharply after a moment of silence.

“You can’t help but be irritated.”

It was a confession—admitting he had feelings for Yuan Pelliese.

Lancelot gazed calmly at Clade’s face, which he had just fiercely provoked, now seeing his own anger subside.

No matter how much he scratched, Clade’s expression didn’t change. He merely continued to speak in a voice tinged with self-derision, his face still heavy with exhaustion.

“Now shut up and leave. It’s none of your brother’s business. You’re someone I’ll never see again.”

As Lancelot, having cried his heart out and slightly relieved, watched Clade walk toward the bed, the back of Clade’s figure burned into his eyes.

“Someone I’ll never see again.”

Clade mumbled, closing his eyes as he roughly shoved his body into the bed.

“That was the end.”

Lancelot quietly left the bedroom with a deep sigh.

Before the door closed, a faint whisper scattered weakly: “You didn’t eat dinner, so I’ll stay at the mansion tonight too.”

The moment the door shut, Clade covered his eyes with his arm. A long sigh stretched upward toward the ceiling.

‘If there’s a misunderstanding, just clear it up. If you’re angry, chase after her and hurl curses at her!’

It’s not a misunderstanding.

It’s not even like a misunderstanding.

Chase after her and hurl curses if you’re angry?

Angrily, he dropped his arm and abruptly sat up from the bed.

Roughly throwing off the blanket, he slipped on his slippers and opened the bedroom door, which had barely been closed.

Like someone possessed, he climbed the stairs—three steps, four steps at a time.

Opening the tightly shut study door, he was greeted by piles of documents on the desk—messy like a slum commercial district before redevelopment, yet stacked with their own peculiar order.

Clade locked the study door behind him, took just a few steps, and sat down, turning on the desk lamp.

On the edge of the desk, documents awaiting approval had accumulated in neat stacks, accompanied by notes, piling up during the time he’d wasted in the capital.

With bloodshot eyes, he reached out an impatient hand.

His long, thick-fingered hand flipped through the white papers without hesitation, replaced the pen nib, dipped it in ink, and signed.

Within moments, the documents before him split into two piles—those pending approval and those already approved—each growing taller.

‘It feels hard to keep living in Roxenhardt. It’s barren, poor, and desolate.’

‘I’m tired of a consort who won’t let me near. Tired of this place with no signs of prosperity. Tired of this mansion that never feels clean no matter how much I scrub.’

‘It was all planned. There was a limit to what I could gain from the exiled prince and Roxenhardt. I didn’t want dried meat or potato soup—I wanted the Pelliese. And you know very well that’s not something just anyone can have.’

Each time the quill scratched across the paper beneath his hand, a woman’s voice tore through the silence.

It’s not a misunderstanding.

There is no such thing as a misunderstanding between Yuan Pelliese and himself.

Tell him to curse her? No—if he were in his right mind, he would have told her straight to her face that he understood.

From the very beginning, when she flirted with him under the pretense of good humor, he never believed in her sincerity. No, he couldn’t believe it.

She would never have approached him at all if not for Bollonico’s scheme.

She was a woman who threw herself at him for the sake of obtaining the Pelliese.

A woman who whispered love and embraced a monster—just to give Emperor Igor and his son a fleeting amusement, knowing they desired Clade’s despair above all.

There was no way a barren estate, neglected for ten years, could have appealed to a woman who craved the Pelliese.

She was extraordinary.

Hiding the ambition to swallow her own family within that innocent smile.

When those sparkling eyes, which had once delighted like a child seeing the outside world for the first time, looked upon his barren land.

Perhaps he understood why any slight affection she might have felt for him had turned cold.

The idea that she had opened her heart, thinking, “Since I can’t give him love, I can at least do this”—now, recalling it, that pitiful delusion was nothing but his own pathetic fantasy.

The illusion that offering even a sliver of his side to a lost woman trying desperately to get close to him was enough.

Even though he always knew in his mind that ordinary people wouldn’t be satisfied with such scraps.

Even as he casually said, “Just live like everyone else does.”

Perhaps the very act of leaving her unable to live like everyone else was the root cause.

Clade tossed the quill aside and walked toward the console.

It was filled with sleeping pills and painkillers he no longer needed.

Habitually, he chewed and swallowed them dry. The bitter taste of medicine seeped onto his tongue.

There is no disagreement about the separation.

Since their meeting was never normal to begin with.

As he had told Lancelot.

He was simply irritated.

He merely wanted to ask, just once.

Why, of all things.

Why did it have to be the son of Igor Euphris?

After leaving a mansion stained with soot that could never be cleansed, why go to a place pristine and needing no erasure?

Even after adorning herself with such beautiful things there, why didn’t she look happy?

After leaving because she was bored with me, why did she look at me like that?

Looking up at me with that expression.

How could she say, “I’ll do anything when your anger fades”—words she could never be held accountable for?

Do you even know.

What I want?

***

Butler Gustav, hearing that his master had finally gone to bed, headed toward Clade’s bedroom with a light heart, carrying breakfast as dawn broke.

Thinking he should start cleaning the bedroom more diligently from today onward for a master who began work so early, he knocked on the door—but heard no coughing.

Fearing his master might have collapsed from overwork, Gustav urgently opened the door.

But contrary to Lancelot’s implication, the master was not in the bedroom.