“What? What did you just say…….”
Duke Valige, frozen, suddenly grabbed Lina’s hand, looking down at himself.
“I missed you.”
His voice seemed filled with relief and joy.
As if entranced by something, Valige, murmuring Lina’s name, pulled her wrist that he had been holding. Then, with his other hand, he wrapped around her neck.
“……Lina.”
Slightly glazed eyes and the pungent smell of alcohol. And even a trembling voice.
The moment she realized that Valige was not in his right mind, she was about to sigh in relief, but the man’s hot breath swallowed Lina’s lips.
“Ugh……!”
The soft yet impatient lips of the man that had overwhelmed her.
Lina tried to distance herself from him, grasping her fading consciousness, but it was in vain. She ended up yielding to Valige’s relentless body, continually pressing her.
‘Breathe, I can’t breathe.’
As Lina’s breath reached her throat, Valige, as if he had been waiting, tilted his head and delved even deeper.
A vivid stimulus climbing up from her toes.
‘I shouldn’t do this.’
Although the warning of danger kept ringing in her head without rest, her body did not obey.
His longing and passionate movements, and yet his breath wrapping around her softly as if comforting.
She did not hate it. No, rather, she liked it.
She wished that time would stop just like this.
This touch, this breath. This heat.
She liked all of it.
Finally, Lina, succumbing to the dizzying sensation, clung to his clothing with trembling hands.
Becoming intoxicated by the unfamiliar breath mingled with strong alcohol in her mouth, Lina accepted him without even realizing that the glasses covering her purple eyes had been removed.
How much time had passed? At the moment when the sticky, clinging sound filled the room, the man’s hand, which had been supporting Lina’s neck, suddenly let go.
At the same time, his lips parted, and his arms limply hung down. Only then did the sense return to Lina as she looked at the collapsed Valige.
“……Your Grace?”
But the only response was regular breathing. The man looked peaceful as if he had never suffered, no cold sweat, no fever.
Lina felt emptiness as her heated feelings cooled, confronted by the reality.
“What have I done…….”
Even though she had decided to leave the man, she was so shaken by a single kiss in a drunken moment.
Exhaling a short breath at the absurdity, Lina helped Valige, who was leaning against her, and laid him on the bed.
As Lina lit the wick of the chamomilescented candle she had brought, the fragrance began to gently waft through the air.
“…….”
Just as she was about to leave, Lina sat on the bed, staring pensively at the man lying there. The medicine bottle rolling on the floor and the scattered liquor bottles.
Lina murmured, stroking the man’s face with her finger.
“……I’m sorry.”
Her index finger gently traced from his forehead, to his nose, and down to his lips. As if she wanted to engrave his face into the tip of her fingers.
“I couldn’t be there for you.”
If her guess was correct, Duke Valige’s condition would be much better by tomorrow morning. It already looked visually better.
“But I don’t think it was this bad before…….”
She had known about the Duke’s insomnia and headaches before meeting him, but he had never suffered this much.
And probably, the reason he ended up like this was.
“Because of me.”
Lina’s eyes fell heavily as she looked at Valige.
If only they hadn’t met.
If they had lived without knowing each other’s existence back then.
“You would have suffered a little less.”
Lina whispered with a slightly choked voice. Then, with a resolute look as if deciding something, she looked at Valige.
“Your Grace.”
Why hadn’t she thought of this herself?
No, perhaps she knew but deliberately ignored it.
“Now, I’ll really let you go.”
Erasing his memory once more. That was the last gift she could give to the Duke.
Lina slowly closed her eyes and kissed his forehead.
And then.
[Obliviate.]She whispered softly.
The spell to erase her existence from his memory.
“Forget something like me now.”
Just like the day they first met.
(This is a time separator.)
The morning sun shining through the fluttering curtains was dazzling. Duke Valige, disturbed by the warmth that interrupted his short sleep, slowly opened his eyes.
“Morning…?”
Valige looked around to grasp the situation.
“Did I fall asleep in the bed?”
He had no recollection, just like when he can’t remember anything after a heavy night of drinking.
“Come to think of it.”
His head didn’t hurt. A refreshing feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time.
His body, which had been heavy for a while, felt light as if it never had been, and his head seemed clear as well.
“Is it because of the medicine?”
He picked up the medicine container lying next to him. The rather light container reminded him that he had taken quite a lot of medicine the day before.
Valige scrunched up his face and shook his head slightly. While brushing his tangled bangs off his face, he muttered,
“But I’m sure there was someone there….”
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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