Don’t Beg Me Anymore

Louis now was a completely different person from the man he had been back then.
Yet through the countless times I was used and discarded over and over again, I clung to hope.

Someday, my sincerity will reach him.
He used to be a good person.
The reason he changed is because I’m lacking.
So all I have to do is change.

How childish that way of thinking was.

Every time, using the excuse of ‘because I love him,’ I busied myself convincing myself that my actions were right, shutting my eyes and ears to the truth.

Foolishly, even when Louis beat me, locked me up, and violated me, I understood him.
And when I couldn’t understand, I forced myself to.

Because otherwise, all the devotion and pure-hearted love I had offered him until then would be denied.

I was foolish.

Even though I knew that the more I tried to understand everything, the more rudely Louis treated me, I never opened the eyes I had covered nor the ears I had blocked.

Meanwhile, Louis, unable to control his anger, came to treat laying hands on me as nothing more than a natural habit.

And he always coaxed me with “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

Then I always said the same thing.

“I’m okay.”

I did that for a whole twenty years.

I dragged on a marriage full of nothing but despair, even as it destroyed me.

Thanks to that, the death I met before each regression was always from illness caused by suppressed anger.

Of course, there was an exception.

In my previous life, I died just five days after developing a skin disease.

If someone asked me whether it was a fatal illness… Well.

The answer might be ambiguous.

Because the disease I had could be cured simply by applying ointment consistently—it was a minor ailment.

In other words, it wasn’t a fatal illness.

“Don’t resent me too much. I don’t want to do this either.”

Louis, for his part, found my skin disease utterly disgusting.

He said we should separate because it might be contagious.

I obediently agreed.

But he buried me alive in the ground.

I begged and pleaded until my voice went hoarse, asking him to spare my life.

In the end, I died of suffocation.

To Louis, it meant I had contracted a disease deserving of death.

Thinking back on it, Louis never changed—not once—across the countless lives I lived.
He always confined me, took everything I had, and in the end, abandoned me.

I had already gone through regression several times.
Even so, I always behaved exactly the same as I had in the past.

I believed that if I changed myself just a little more into the person Louis wanted, he would return to the man he used to be.
No—
I had to believe that.

Otherwise, I would be too miserable to bear it.

I was always trying to fix myself, never Louis.

But in my immediately previous life, I finally understood it clearly.
That people are not meant to be fixed in the first place.

And I admitted it.

This wasn’t devotion—it was madness.

In this life, I decided to stop everything.
The pathetic, foolish ‘me’ who begged for love no longer exists.

Never again.

***

“The weather is lovely today, Mia.”

As I mulled over my foolish past, the girl sitting across from me parted her lips and spoke.

“Is it? It’s cold enough that it wouldn’t be strange to freeze to death right now.”

With early winter settling in, the air was bitterly cold.
It was so chilly that even standing still, my breath fogged the air on its own.

And that wasn’t all.
Despite wearing thick fur-lined clothing, a chill crept in, raising goosebumps all over my skin.

“Oh—Mia, are you cold? Shall I call a servant?”

The place where I was spending this leisurely tea time with the girl was inside my estate.
If anyone were to call a servant, it should have been me.
That, too, was my authority as the lady of the house.

Yet that girl behaved as though she were the mistress here.

“If there’s anything uncomfortable, please tell me. I’ll have the servants prepare it for you.”

Just like now.

“I’m fine.”

That girl over there is Olivia Hursel, the woman Louis brought into the estate and dotes on.
She once learned etiquette under Louis’s guidance, and lately—perhaps struck by some strange whim—she has been behaving brazenly arrogant right in front of me.

“This is my house. I’ll handle it myself.”

“If the servants refuse to listen, please let me know. I’ll give them a proper scolding.”

Olivia covered her mouth and let out a small laugh.
It seemed that since she had Louis wrapped around her finger, she truly believed she had become the lady of the house.

At best, that girl was nothing more than one of Louis’s playthings.

“Thank you, Miss Hursel.”

Even knowing that, for some reason, Olivia grated on my nerves.
Was it because she was always the first person I encountered in every regression?

“I’m so happy to be spending time with you, Mia.”

More terrifying than this freezing weather is being alone with you.

“I’ve dreamed for so long of having tea outdoors. With a beautiful friend like you, Mia.”

Olivia narrowed her eyes slightly, smiling sweetly.
The way she smiled made her look utterly innocent.

“Is this your first time having tea outdoors?”

“Mm, no, not exactly…”

Just a moment ago, she said it had been her dream?

“If we’re going to be living under the same roof from now on, it’d be nice to get along, don’t you think?”

Oh, really?

“So let’s be close.”

You’ll never know how many women came before you, Olivia.
Thinking back, every single one of those countless mistresses said the same thing.

Let’s be close.

Since we would be living under the same roof with one man, shouldn’t we get along, she said.
Anyone watching might mistake the relationship between a legal wife and a mistress for that of sisters.

She may have said it with the intention of living here for the rest of her life, but a mistress was still just a mistress.
Like all the others before her, Olivia, too, would be cast aside the moment Louis lost interest.

That’s how affairs always are.

Perhaps it was some paltry sense of pity, but whenever things reached this point, a sigh escaped me first.
This time was no different.

“Yes. I suppose it would be… better to get along.”

Did I answer too hastily?
The end of my voice trembled slightly.

It’s fine.
Just because my voice shook didn’t mean I looked any less dignified.

“Of course, Mia! Let’s get along like real sisters!”

As expected—such a predictable line.

Without letting Olivia, sitting right across from me, notice, I let out a quiet breath and picked up my teacup.
Cold.

The tea, which had been only lukewarm to begin with, had now gone completely cold.
I had no desire to drink it.

“I like you, Mia.”

Smiling sweetly, Olivia tried to link arms with me.
I leaned back and returned her gesture with a gentle smile.

“I don’t like people touching me,” I said. “Please understand, Miss Hursel.”

“Oh—ah! Of course! That makes sense!”

Olivia immediately said she understood, but her displeasure was obvious.
It seemed she had tried to put on a polite smile, only for the corners of her mouth to twist slightly out of shape.

I noticed it, but simply waited quietly for what she would say next.
No doubt it would be nonsense.

“Oh my!”

After a short pause, Olivia widened her eyes.

“I’ve never seen those shoes before?”

With the hem of my skirt so long that they wouldn’t even be visible, Olivia put on an exaggerated look of surprise.
Yet there was something clumsy about the expression, as if it didn’t quite ring true.

I glanced down, and just as I thought, the shoes were hidden beneath my skirt.
Judging by the way she looked, she seemed desperate to bring up the shoes, so I decided to give her an appropriate response.

“Louis gave them to me this morning.”

To be precise, Louis had merely brought me the shoes I had ordered.
They were a pair I had prepaid for before the marriage, so Louis’s money—

These shoes were pre-ordered by me before marriage, so not a single penny of Louis’s money went into them.

I had originally planned to pick them up myself, but since he wouldn’t let me leave the house at all, he simply brought them to me.

In other words, these shoes weren’t a gift from Louis.

Still, I deliberately spoke ambiguously.

Would it be cruel if I said it was to tease Olivia?

“Ah, him?”

How naturally she calls him that.

Well, I don’t care about such things.

In fact, I rather like that arrogance.

“Yes, he said they’d suit me well and gave them to me. Aren’t they pretty?”