Episode 50
To Make Or Break Us
Tell me you like me. I didn’t even ask if you love me
Anakin’s mouth slowly opened. The moment he tried to answer something. I suddenly came to my senses. What did I just say? What if he likes me? I was going to leave anyway. Nothing could be returned to Anakin. I shouted urgently.
“Don’t say it.”
“…But.”
“I told you not to!”
I quickly closed Anakin’s mouth by covering it with my palm. Until just now, I had reprimanded Jason not to be trash and use other people’s emotions, but now I almost used Anakin like that.
I’m his master. He can’t refuse me, so I shouldn’t have gone this far.
Funny. People are so deceitful. Other people’s flaws looked bigger than anyone else’s, so we struggled to fix them. Even if they could be our fault, we would search for excuses first.
I’m disillusioned with myself.
When I stopped him, he pulled the palm that covered his mouth to his cheek and just looked at me silently. That was a good look.
I liked that he waited for me. Amid all the commotion pouring towards me, he alone was quiet, so that was good.
I wanted to show only a cool and strong image to you who liked that. I didn’t want to be a burden even if could get help from you.
I’d rather die than look weak to you.
I thought, stroking his cheek. If Anakin likes me……. Was that really ‘me’? Could it not be that the causality of this novel made him fall in love with ‘Eris”? With suspicion, fear grew.
What if I don’t want to go back?
I’m afraid I’ll love you too much.
‘If you make me ‘Eris Misérian’, if I stay here because of you and lose you, I will have to live the rest of my life without dying.
No, come to think of it, it wasn’t a life that I was really afraid of. Even if I loved you and stayed here, I could never be happy. In the end, it will be filled with regrets and I will resent myself and you who made me remain. I am afraid that I might become the type of person I despise the most.
“It’s okay, you can go out. About… thank you.”
I got out of his arms and laid quietly on the bed. He wrapped the blanket up to the end of my neck and turned his head away. Anakin didn’t leave for a
moment, then looked at me. But in the end, I heard the sound of walking away.
Don’t go. As the door closed, I suddenly became caught in that thought and hurriedly turned my head,
And I made eye contact with Anakin who was still looking at me. My face was burning up. What if I was being impatient? Several excuses passed through my mind. But Anakin only asked me quietly.
“Are you in so much pain that you can’t sleep…?”
“Yes.”
“Can I stay by your side?”
“…..Yes.”
Anakin quietly knelt next to me. I looked at Anakin like that and closed my eyes. Then he carefully grabbed my fingertips on the blanket. To confirm his existence even if I couldn’t see him in front of me.
Finally, let’s make one more excuse today. I’m sick. All humans will get sick so that doesn’t mean I look weak.
Tomorrow is the debutante ball, and I am now entering the palace as if I am revising everything at the last minute.
Helena was a sincere student, so she had thoroughly reviewed even without me. At this rate, if she studied a little more after the debutante ball, she could become a crown princess without difficulty.
In the first place, there was not much to teach except for court manners.
Political sensibility and state administration were tasks that required some sense, and it was not something I could teach.
Still, I gave Helena a brief word of praise for her obedience to my instructions.
Now, for tomorrow’s sake, I was going to go there, but suddenly, there was a commotion outside.
Before his attendant could even say his name, the crown prince suddenly opened the door and entered
As soon as he saw us both, he scrunched up his face, grabbed Helena’s wrist and hid her behind him.
“It’s been a long time, Your Highness. It’s a dazzling afternoon. Is there any reason for you to come in a hurry, even breaking the etiquette?”
“Why are you with Helena?”
It doesn’t matter if I tell you the truth because the training is already over, but somehow I was reluctant. It’s not that I’m nervous because I’m not.
Come to think of it, breaking up with me and Helena becoming the crown princess are all good things for the crown prince, so I didn’t want to nicely tell him that. Helena, who was alternating her gaze between the two of us, slipped in between.
“1, 1, I caught Lady Miserian for a cup of tea, right, Lady Miserian?”
“You… have no fear! What would you do if that harmed you?”
The crown prince, who referred to a person using a direct pronoun and not a personal pronoun, carefully checked to see if Helena was injured. As I watched, asked in annoyance.
“Am I a monster?”
“You’re more poisonous than a monster. If I had been with a monster, I wouldn’t have been so concerned.”
“Your Highness…….”
When Helena stopped him, he stopped staring at me and looked down at Helena. Those were the eyes that saw the most adorable thing in the world. The prince whispered as he carefully tucked her hair behind her ear, as if he was afraid of breaking Helena.
“I have something to tell you.”
“Yes? What do you have to say……”
“Would you like to come to Young Lady Kazar’s debutante ball with me? As my partner. Don’t you know the lady too?”
Helena looked at me for a moment. I nodded my head slightly as a sign of permission.
I was going to talk to the crown prince first about this today anyway. This way was more plausible than the crown prince being rejected by his fiancée who had been pinning after his love.
“Did you plan to come too?”
“Of course I have to go, Your Majesty. It’s the Young Lady’s debutante ball, how can I miss it?”
“Alone, without a partner?”
The nobleman, who should have been my partner, was laughing at me after he requested for someone else to be his partner right in front of me. I knew from our first meeting that the crown prince was shameless, but I just smiled and accepted it. In the first place, it’s more annoying if you treat these things casually.
“Why don’t I have a partner? Isn’t there Anakin?”
“Anakin?”
“You probably saw him last time. My escort knight, Your Highness.”
The prince’s expression hardened.
“Isn’t he… a commoner?”
“Your Highness, with all due respect…… Lady Antebellum is still a commoner.”
You’re taking a commoner partner too, is this something I can’t do? If both of us take a commoner partner, it will be worth seeing people’s faces. I didn’t bother to say that. He asked with a cold face.
“Does your father know this?”
“If my father doesn’t know, are you going to be my partner then? You’re not going to do that…..”
“Are you going to pretend to lose the imperial family?”
Even though I was struggling, the crown prince hit the nail on the head with a serious face. So I answered seriously with a thin expression.
“Yes, Your Highness. I’d like to break ties with the imperial family this time.”
“The Marquis……”
“My father may be able to re-establish the connection, but it will never be through me.”
Why is your face so shocked? You didn’t think that “Your Eris’ would ever say something like this for the rest of her life? No matter what you said, did you think she wouldn’t let you go?
Yes, Eris Misérian wouldn’t have. Even if it was closer to regret than love, she would have never let go of the prince’s hand.
But standing here, I only put on Eris Misérian’s outer shell and I am a completely different person from her. Now I’m going to do what she said she had to, but never did.
“I will have to go through a number of formalities.. but I will tell you personally first. We will break up our marriage in the near future, Your Highness. If we break up, we will become strangers so we won’t have to face each other anymore.”
“The affairs of the imperial family are not at your disposal. Didn’t you say at first that it was the marriage between the imperial family and the marquis?”
The crown prince must really know nothing.
All of this broken engagement, broken marriage, just knew how to sing in line, but what did I do with my own hands…… (PR/N: she’s likely referring to herself as a puppet.)
“It was approved by Her Majesty the Empress. Is that an answer?”
“Oh, my mother?”
I bowed my knees slightly to greet the prince and just before leaving the room, I opened my eyes wide and as if wondering, I added to the crown prince who was still looking at me.
“Your Highness, didn’t you want it as much?””
Finally, the day of the showdown has come. Somehow since it was the day of the showdown, I looked determined.
In fact, it’s an adult ceremony at someone else’s house. Still, it was like an implicit declaration of the breakup so I had to work hard to decorate.
The dress that Madame sent me was so pretty that there was a possibility that my face would be pushed back.
After this pretty dress arrived, I decided to match all the jewellery to the dress.
I also matched my makeup using a soft coral tonel didn’t normally wear and untied my hair which I had always kept neat in a half ponytail. Instead of a gorgeous jewel necklace, a ribbon was tied with black silk, and the earrings were instead crafted with large emeralds.
The fluffy and soft dress looked just like cotton candy. I wore lace gloves of the same colour as my dress and had a crafted pink diamond flower on my hair.
Hmm, I don’t look like a villain who came to harm someone.
However, even if I dressed up like this, I might want to f*ck with someone again when I go to the debutante ball. Because people never know how to act. And there’s nothing that can be done. I have no choice but to instill a lesson to not judge people by their appearance. (QC/N: the author literally used f*ck”, in this case, meaning ‘to mess with or annoy.)