Olivia slowly mulled over Jade’s words. Jade spoke, seemingly unaware of the seriousness in that faint voice.
“Yes, defiance. The mood hasn’t been good since Esella collapsed. So don’t wear me out any more and come back with me now.”
“Come back where?”
“Olivia. Don’t act stupid,”
Jade said irritably and stopped. Olivia’s expression was strange. Olivia looked up at Jade with a face that truly didn’t understand.
Her alwayssmiling green eyes looked exceptionally dull.
“Where are we going back to?”
“That is……!”
She should have said, ‘To the Duke’s,’ but strangely, Jade couldn’t answer. Olivia smiled slightly.
“……Is what I’m doing now defiance?”
Olivia thought hard. Then suddenly, her throat felt choked. She couldn’t speak any further, as her throat inside was stinging.
Olivia thought her emotion was ‘desperation.’ Esella rejected me, and then my father, Conrad, and Jade pushed me away, and it felt like I was falling off a cliff.
I always laughed it off despite being hurt, but now it’s suffocating. So I came out.
In Jade’s eyes, all of it seemed like defiance.
How ridiculous must I have been?
Her words were blocked by emptiness. Olivia bit her lip. I always prioritized my family. But my place among them was just this.
“……I have nothing more to say. Lady Madelaine.”
“What? Hey, what are you saying?”
Jade, startled, poised to chase after me, but I wasn’t worried. My concern had to turn to myself now. Jade spoke with a flushed face, having chosen her words.
“You are Madelaine too.”
In Jade’s perception, I was not Madelaine. Just Olivia, claiming to be Madelaine. My head reeled at that terrible truth.
Really……
I was the only one who didn’t know.
Olivia ignored the faint ringing in her heart. It was a feeling she no longer wanted to feel.
“I told the Duke. From now on. No. It must have been originally.”
Olivia smiled faintly. When Jade, facing her pale and drawn face, seemed to realize something, her eyes widened.
“……I will erase Madelaine from my life.”
Madelaine, who was everything in my life.
The family I loved.
It was time to erase them.
Leaving Jade behind, Olivia pulled the Duke’s arm a little.
“Let’s go to the mansion now.”
The Duke’s hand gently wrapped around Olivia’s shoulder. Feeling someone support you was a very precious thing, and it also felt like crying.
Olivia, at twenty, only now realized it.
[This is the time separator]“Have you arrived already?”
When they entered the Duke’s place, Haena’s eyes widened as she greeted Olivia and the Duke. Olivia smiled secretly, as if sharing a secret among those who knew.
“I told you. I don’t really like banquets.”
“But you were really beautiful today.”
HaeNa spoke as if she was regretful. As if to cut off her words, the butler Sobel greeted her respectfully.
“Welcome back, Your Highness, Miss. Was there anything wrong?”
The sternfaced butler Sobel had been like this from the first day. He was curt but not cunning enough to hide his worry.
“Anything wrong? Ah, maybe just a bit hungry?”
Duke Vicander smiled leisurely and nodded his head. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen the Duke eat anything at the banquet. I would be fine since I’m used to eating less, but the Duke would be different.
“I’ll prepare some soup and bread since it’s evening.”
Sobel nodded seriously. Now it must be all over. It was when Olivia was turning her body towards the stairs as usual.
“How about you, Miss?”
Olivia’s eyes widened. Sobel spoke diligently.
“I personally want to serve you a steak right now, but since it might be hard to digest at night, how about a stew with meat in it?”
“I am……”
Her voice trembled slightly as it left her mouth. It seemed as if the cracks would spread on her cheerful smiling face. A lump of heat gathered in her throat.
It was the first time. After the banquet ended, someone was worried about her meal. The end of the unwanted banquet had always been tough.
Suddenly, Duke Vicander nudged Olivia’s back towards the stairs. Olivia went up the stairs with surprised eyes.
“Miss has danced so hard today that resting should come first. I’ll send up the food later.”
“Dancing! Should I send up a massage or bathwater too?”
“That later too. So, Miss, would you like to go upstairs with my escort?”
Jokingly demanding everything, Duke Vicander grabbed Olivia’s hand. The pulling touch made her able to climb the stairs without faltering.
At the door, Duke Vicander, who had silently led Olivia, stopped. Turning around, he spoke gently.
“Do you want to be alone? Or should I stay with you?”
“……Alone.”
“That’s too bad.”
The Duke, looking not disappointed at all, opened the door for her. Olivia met his eyes at the gesture that seemed to hurry her inside.
“Is there something you want to say? Are you hungry?”
“No. Just. Thank you.”
It was sincere. For not making her go to the banquet alone, for dressing her in a beautiful way, for coming out with her, and for creating a place to go.
Olivia only smiled as it seemed she couldn’t say it all with her low, cracked voice.
“……Suddenly, with a face about to cry?”
Duke Vicander pointed at Olivia’s face jokingly. She knew her face better than anyone. She had always practiced smiling alone in the mirror. So, Olivia smiled even more shamelessly.
“Yes. It’s a face about to cry, but I’m thankful when I’m thankful.”
“I’m thankful too.”
“What for, Your Highness?”
“For accepting the Duke’s mansion.”
Mansion? Olivia tilted her head, not understanding the Duke’s words.
“If you’ve gotten used to the Duke’s mansion, then it’s a thankful thing for me. If you had said you had nowhere to go, really.”
The Duke paused for a moment. When his light smile disappeared, his real face became visible. The raw face without a mask met Olivia’s eyes. In the moment when that face, which had been holding Olivia tightly, slowly bent,
“……I think I would really be sad.”
The soft voice dispersed like a sigh. As Olivia met his deep, sunken red eyes, her eyes slightly bent as if about to cry.
[This is the time separator]“Then rest.”
Olivia repeated the Duke’s words as she stared at the closed door, and then looked at the room where she was alone again.
She always felt empty after the banquets. It was like she was starving; her back always felt hollow. But not today.
Even though she had ended everything, the feeling of emptiness was greater than the usual sorrow.
Her fingertips were numb, and her skin stung.
It was a strange sensation.
Ailing Essel complained that her flesh would sting, and she would soon be sick. Every time she did, Olivia prepared Essel’s medicine without even understanding what stinging flesh meant.
That was Olivia’s role.
But now it had changed.
This small change seemed to be the beginning. Olivia looked at her fingertips with a willing heart. Her head seemed dizzy too.
Olivia, who had smiled faintly, walked to the bed. When her staggering step didn’t go straight to the bed but headed towards the table, Olivia found the diary placed on the table. Her own diary that she had been writing for over ten years at the ducal residence. It appeared that Haena had just bought it.
It was really an impulse. Instead of going to the bed, Olivia sat in a chair. She seemed to be breathing heavily but didn’t care.
When her thin trembling hand opened the diary, of course, nothing was written on the pure white paper. The words that always tormented Olivia were gone.
So Olivia wrote to herself for the first time.
I did nothing.
It was more crooked writing than usual. But at that one line in the diary, Olivia burst into tears. Without any worry that someone might hear, or any concern about losing dignity, she cried like a child.
Now truly, everything that had bound Olivia was gone.
Madelleine and the family, erased. Leopold.
It all seemed strange and unfamiliar. Yet delightful.
Olivia cried and laughed. Thick tears dropped on the letters and spread arbitrarily, like the sentence of the first diary she had written a very long time ago.
Ex-husband Wants Reconciliation
One-line summary: Chasing the wife to the crematorium (making an effort to attract someone who has become indifferent), the female lead doesn’t look back, the second male lead takes the position.
Intro:
To repay the kindness of the older generation, Su Mu crossed into a female-dominated world and became a live-in daughter-in-law of the Yan family, single-handedly saving the Yan family from fire and water.
But her husband, Yan Jiyue, the eldest son of the Yan family, treated her with sarcasm and never showed her a good face.
It wasn’t until after Su Mu’s death that this pampered and arrogant young master shed a few fake tears and pretended to want to die for love.
This life’s kindness was enough. If there was a next life, she would definitely kick Yan Jiyue away.
Who knew that the heavens would be so kind as to allow her to be reborn, returning to the time when she had just married into the Yan family.
Su Mu glanced at the Yan eldest son, who still spoke coldly to her, and threw a divorce letter in front of him.
“Let’s divorce!”
***
Yan Jiyue never imagined that he would be reborn. He happily went to find Su Mu, wanting to make up for the mistakes he had made in his ignorant youth.
Wasn’t the reason the heavens allowed him to be reborn to let him reconcile with Su Mu?
But when he pushed open the door to Su Mu’s room, the person lying on the bed was another man.
Su Mu’s personal attendant, Xie Yi.
Yan Jiyue hated him so much that his teeth itched. In front of Su Mu, Xie Yi was a gentle and considerate whisperer of sweet nothings, but in reality, he was vicious-hearted and deliberately sabotaged their husband and wife relationship.
In the previous life, it was he who secretly hid in Su Mu’s coffin and committed suicide, stealing a step ahead of him to be buried with Su Mu.
Yan Jiyue’s eyes were filled with hatred as he cursed, “What kind of thing are you? Your background is lowly, what right do you have to occupy Su Mu?”
Xie Yi looked at the sleeping Su Mu and no longer pretended to be a whisperer of sweet nothings.
He proudly stuck out his belly, “I have the right because my belly is capable of giving the Wife-master a daughter.”
***
Yan Jiyue was consumed with jealousy. He spread rumors that Xie Yi had once been branded with the mark of a “harlot” on his chest.
But on the night Xie Yi cut off the flesh bearing that mark, Su Mu suddenly realized something was amiss.
“How did you know the exact moment I was poisoned? And why did you show up a month early?”
Xie Yi remained silent, blood from his wound soaking through his robes. His sapphire eyes brimmed with anguish – or was it just a flawless act?
Between a once-arrogant husband now seeking redemption, and a gentle soul willing to die for her – who truly held the darkest secrets? And could it be that Su Mu and Yan Jiyue weren’t the only ones given a second chance at life…?
[Reading Guide]
1. True divorce, chasing the wife to the crematorium, the female lead doesn’t look back, the male lead is Xie Yi.
2. The ex-husband did not cheat, he just realized too late and didn’t realize that he liked the female lead.
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