Chesterfield Mansion: The House of the Man Who Hates Me - Chapter 38

His thoughts became a jumbled mess. In the dream, he had just passed the age of majority. But his mental age was that of a ten-year-old child. Not knowing how old he was, Izer clung to his father’s waist, crying.

「I want to go too. Please take me with you.」

If they say they won’t take him, he’ll just go with them forcibly. The adult man’s left hand gripped the carriage door as if to crush it. David tried to pry him off with a scary face, but Izer closed his eyes tightly and clung to the carriage.

However, a sound that shouldn’t be heard in a happy dream of family togetherness was heard.

「Young Duke, you need to open your eyes.」

Izer squinted and looked around. The owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen. But it kept being heard.

「Young Duke, wake up!」

No, I’m perfectly conscious. Izer thought to himself. Where he was right now was reality. His name was Izer Ren. He was not the young duke of Chesterfield. It was a golden opportunity to discard the cursed Chesterfield name.

「Izer, you crazy bastard, open your eyes!」

By this point, even Izer found it hard to concentrate. Crazy bastard…? In the moment of hesitation caused by the clear voice and the not-so-clear word choice, the strength in his hand holding onto the carriage loosened.

As if it had been waiting for this, a gap formed between the carriage and him. The ground split like an earthquake, and the distance became too far to cross.

Izer looked at his parents on the other side, dumbfounded. Cruelly, both of them were smiling. They seemed to be saying something, but he couldn’t read their lip movements accurately.

With a rumbling sound, everything around him crumbled. The sky, the ground, the carriage, all broke apart. He couldn’t even tell where he was standing anymore.

Everything was taken away from him. His parents, his smile, his happiness, all were snatched away. He turned towards the most resentful target now — the owner of the voice that had separated him from his parents.

「……」

His feet that had been floating in the air touched the ground. Now the man gritted his teeth for a different reason. That dream, that dream that had bound him so frustratingly, was starting again.

It was a room shattered to pieces. He was lying face down. They must have been in the middle of lovemaking, as his p*nis, concentrated with pleasure, swelled in size as if resenting its owner’s slowed movements.

The woman looking at him with a flushed face reached out her arms.

「Izer, I love you.」

The shattered bedroom was reconstructed. The ivy-patterned wallpaper he had always thought pretty was neatly pasted on the newly built walls. The gilded pillars emitted light even in the darkness, and even the furniture that had been broken beyond recognition regained its shape.

Among them, the most complete was the woman who was smiling brightly. Reaching out her arms as if asking him to embrace her quickly, constantly professing love with those pretty lips, looking only at his face as if the shattered fragments didn’t exist at all… the damned Celian Berienne.

The man knew what he was going to say.

「I love you too, Celian.」

The wind whistled joyfully in the place where the king and queen had returned. Spring flower breezes, summer grass scents, autumn maple leaves, and winter snowstorms all rushed in at once to complete their kingdom.

A splendid cape for the king covered the man’s back. It was a familiar pattern.

“……!”

The moment he recognized the pattern, his eyes opened.

* * *

The air coming through the open window in the early dawn was humid. There was also a pungent smell of blood in the air. It was coming from the extravagantly ornate blanket.

‘I must have vomited blood too. I must have been quite ill.’

Izer closed his eyes that had opened faintly. He had no strength. But as soon as he tried to close his eyes and sleep, the memories that had stopped came flooding back.

“……”

His mother’s face lying in the coffin, the long funeral of which he had no memory, the pillow he had buried his face in while staggering.

He involuntarily let out a groan at the pain felt near his heart.

“Ugh.”

Fear overwhelmed the man. It was because he realized that he was truly alone now. The man, who was about to wipe his tear-soaked face with his trembling hand, stopped moving.

“……”

His right arm felt heavy. His red gaze turned to the side.

He saw a woman sleeping, lying on his arm. She was on a makeshift chair pulled up next to the bed. Her face, sleeping while collapsed on his arm, looked quite peaceful.

As he turned his head a little more, the surroundings came into view. Blood-soaked cloth bundles, a basin filled with water, a wet towel that had fallen from his forehead.

Simultaneously, the dream that had been pushed away by oblivion raised its head with a flash.

‘Izer, you crazy bastard, open your eyes!’

“……”

The voice he thought was from the dream was real. It was possible with this woman. Izer whispered, pressing between his eyes with his free left hand.

“Hey.”

“……”

Celian seemed to be in a deep sleep and didn’t respond. Izer gave up on trying to pull his arm out and turned his body completely to lie on his side.

Then her small face became even clearer. Her forehead with silver hair sticking to it from sweat, eyebrows darker than her hair, a straight nose bridge and the cute dent below it, plump lips protruding three-dimensionally. Her expression was bright, perhaps dreaming a good dream. The corners of her mouth were turned up too.

Something welled up inside the man who had been blankly admiring her face.

The fragmented dream pieced itself together, and the broken sounds were heard. Both what she had said and what he had said vividly came to life, busily rummaging through his brain.

‘I love you too, Celian.’

“……”

He wasn’t foolish enough to profess love to the woman who had plunged him into hell. The reason he had uttered words he didn’t mean was only to break free from the damned dream. To escape from the woman shouting that she loved him…

His thoughts abruptly stopped.

His breathing quickened. His heart beat loudly. He could feel the pulse in his temples, and his head was buzzing. Yet his gaze didn’t leave one spot. From the clear face sleeping wearing the necklace he had given her, whom he met after escaping from the Celian Berienne in his dream.

‘I love you too, Celian.’

All his misfortune had started with this woman. She had existed before him, pulled him into her bedroom, and finally tried to keep him by her side forcibly, ignoring his opinion. Wearing a blue dress more dazzling than the clear sky, with her glossy silver hair fluttering, she had shattered his hand, his father’s life, and his mother’s happiness with a smiling face.

However…

He too had existed before this woman. He had opened her door with his own hands. Bewitched by sweet words, he had dreamed of an impossible future. The woman in a white negligee lying down with disheveled hair, breathing heavily… he had loved her entirely of his own will.

The man opened his mouth. The sound he uttered with a face that could neither cry nor laugh was choked.

“Lian.”

His arm, which hadn’t properly consumed food for days, trembled. As he painfully raised his left hand to her hair, clear sky-blue eyes opened hazily under thin eyelids.

“Ah…”

Her blinking eyes held a question. Her face showed that she didn’t understand why this man was gently stroking her hair.

So he called her once more.

“Lian.”

The voice from his mouth sounded quite affectionate. The name he called with utter sincerity, without any mask, was truly beautiful. The word he had called hundreds of times was so beautiful that tears welled up in his eyes.

In fact, the cause of that sob was that he was intoxicated by the fact that hers was now the only name he could call with affection. Lian, Lian, seeming to have grasped the situation from her name being repeatedly called, the woman who straightened her back asked about his well-being.

“Young Duke, how are you feeling……”

“‘Izer.'”

“……”

It was just three months ago that he had contemptuously taken her because she had called his name. Regretting his past self, Izer put desperation into his sob.

“‘Izer’, quickly.”

Even while thinking it was truly childish, he couldn’t help it. Just as Celian’s was the only beautiful name on his lips, hers was the only beautiful mouth to call his name.

Her hesitant lips opened.

“……Izer.”

The body that had been lying down was easily pulled in. Embracing the warm female body that didn’t understand what was happening, Izer laughed and cried.

“Yes, Celian.”

Celian Berienne, my queen.

<To be continued in the next volume>