“It hurts my heart.”
At Kirian’s whisper, I once again rubbed the stain on my palm.
“Guilt, no.”
It’s a sense of unworthiness.
“Just, I wonder what would have happened if I had handled it differently…… that’s my regret.”
Kirian stared at Reina’s face, stained with complex emotions, for a moment.
“Me too.”
The regret that I shouldn’t have put my sister out of his sight.
A determination that such a thing will never happen again.
(This is a time separator.)
After returning to the Academy, Hees suffered from a fever for a few days.
Despite the doctor’s words that he would wake up in a few days, I couldn’t feel relieved.
The sleepless nights were so agonizing that I tired of pacing in front of the bed all night, and eventually practically lived in the library.
Since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I repeatedly flipped through books without any progress, intending to prepare for the rapidly approaching council meeting.
Then one day, while repeating this.
“What are you doing here?”
It was Kirian. His face was hidden in the shadow, so his expression was not clear, but only his red eyes quietly smoldered like embers.
I stood up awkwardly.
“Kirian.”
“What are you doing here?”
Kirian asked again, pressing each syllable.
“At midnight.”
I clumsily picked up the materials scattered on the desk.
“What am I doing. I’m preparing for the council meeting.”
“So[Dash].”
Swallowing a rough breath, Kirian continued calmly.
“Why are you doing it, sister?”
“Why…… Obviously I……”
Faced with Kirian’s increasingly sharp eyes, I fumbled for words again.
“I just can’t sleep. I guess I’m worried about the council meeting.”
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled weakly.
It was true. Half a truth.
Certainly, I had stayed up all night before for the council meeting.
However, what was different now was that before, I had forced myself to stay awake to prepare, whereas now, I didn’t even feel sleepy.
“I want to make it a success.”
If I succeed and make Hees the Crown Prince, won’t I be able to lighten this burden a little?
The weight of Hees shielding me with his body, the weight of the harpoon forcibly grasped in my hand, the weight of the rough voice whispering, “I’m sorry,” and the like.
Kirian only quietly watched me, as if he didn’t trust me.
“You know. How much I’ve prepared so far.”
Still, I clumsily fabricated lies.
Facing those red eyes that seemed to see through all my shallow tricks.
“I want to succeed, even if it’s just for the sake of the effort I’ve put in so far.”
I couldn’t tell the truth.
That when I close my eyes, my whole body is still covered in Elding’s stench of blood, Hees is dying leaning on me, and a bloody harpoon is handed to me.
I couldn’t tell.
“I have no clever ideas, and the council meeting is the day after tomorrow.”
Because I felt like I was drowning in an inexplicable guilt, and I didn’t have the courage to close my eyes.
Because I don’t even understand myself, I didn’t know where to start explaining.
“Since Hees is sick, I have to be strong.”
“I know.”
It wasn’t a remarkable word.
“I know.”
However, facing Kirian, who was smiling bitterly,
I fell into the illusion that the two insignificant syllables contained everything I didn’t know where to start explaining.
“I know everything,”
Kirian took my hand again. In his cold touch, I realized how boiling hot my hand was.
“Let’s go to sleep now.”
I had no choice but to follow obediently. Even though I dragged my feet slowly, I think I was following him wholeheartedly, clutching Kirian’s hand tightly.
Somehow, if I held Kirian’s hand, it seemed okay to close my eyes.
(This is a time separator.)
Kirian watched the sleeping Reina as he breathed evenly. Her irregularly panting breath and slightly furrowed brow had relaxed at some point.
She must have been very tired, for she did not even stir when I touched her forehead.
Of course, the skin under her hand was excessively hot.
Reina probably doesn’t know that she’s sick. She probably won’t know until the council meeting is over.
There would be no one who knew less about herself than her sister.
That was her sister’s way.
Whether it was sorrow or pain, she even denied the very existence of anything she found troublesome.
So, there was no choice but to realize it earlier than Reina.
After changing the cold wet towel about three times, her fever had abated slightly.
As her feverish energy subsided, Kirian, who was watching Reina sleep as if dead, soon turned to the messy desk.
After examining the randomly scribbled design, Kirian left it in its original place.
“It’ll all return to how it was.”
Once the engagement is broken, there will be no more sleepless nights, no suffering from absurd guilt, no rushing around handling all sorts of matters.
So,
“Don’t resent me too much.”
(This is a time divider.)
The next morning, I felt much lighter. When I felt my forehead, a watersoaked towel fell.
It still felt cool, so it seemed like it hadn’t been changed long ago. Even though there was no one in the room, I was certain.
“Kirian.”
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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