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Vivian’s POV
As soon as I had returned from the art museum, I stood at the foot of the bed and stared at the portrait that my sister drew for a long time. Even as I met the gaze of me in the painting, my complicated feelings did not disappear.
As I was ruminating over my sister’s name, I lifted a book.
This book was the painter Sasha Summers’s biography that Edmund had left in the room about a week ago, asking me to have a look at it.
For the past week, I consciously tried not to pay this thick hardcover book any mind.
“Even in death, I can’t break away from you, Sister.”
It was scary to flip the book open.
It was Edmund who brought the book over, but now he was trying to take it away.
“Vivian, you can leave this for later. You don’t have to look at it now.”
“There wouldn’t be an opportunity later.”
It was now or never. I had to know why my sister drew me.
With the flip of every page, stories of my sister filling the pages were reflected in my eyes.
The glamorous life of my sister as a mage, yet unable to conceal her fondness for paintings. The high society of the Empire at that time kept music in higher regard than painting. However, my sister was far removed from high society.
Some of the things written were things I was aware of, others I was completely in the dark about.
In fact, there were more things I wasn’t aware of.
Even when I had just skimmed through the book, there were too many things that I didn’t understand.
At twenty, except for the five years I spent after I was born unknowing of my identity as a Summers, there wasn’t a day where I had lived as my sister’s younger sibling.
“…I’m really, absolutely ignorant.”
After spitting those words out, the emotions that were intangible hardened into granules. Those granules pressed upon my chest, rendering me breathless.
“Don’t look at it anymore. There’s no reason for you to suffer while reading it.”
“It’s offensive.”
I could tell just by looking at Edmund’s expression what my expression was like. With a pale and stiffened face and my feelings dripping downwards, it was a countenance that’s very much unlike an aristocrat’s. My sister would always say that it looked unsightly.
Unsightly.
Just as Edmund had said, I didn’t want to look through this book anymore.
It was upsetting that the life of Sasha Laurel Summers was contained within such cheap pieces of paper and sold, and it was infuriating that I had only learned what I badly wanted to know only after 200 years had passed.
I flipped through the book quickly.
There were many more paintings that I wasn’t aware of. I guess that must be so. The portraits of me that were mentioned frequently but have no recollection of were accompanied by an explanation of how much fondness Sasha had for her younger sister.
Sasha’s muse, Vivian Summers.
“Sister didn’t really care about me. To Sister, I was no different from an obligation and responsibility in order to succeed the Summers family.”
I could also understand why others said that Sasha doted on me, as the painting was overflowing with affection towards me. It was present in both the painting of me raising my head while reading a book, and the painting of me dancing at the festival.
But my sister had never given me half of the affection that’s in the paintings.
I had lived my entire life suppressing my breaths so that my sister would not find me irritating.
“For now, Vivian, calm down.”
Perhaps he couldn’t remain indifferent, Edmund moved forward and stopped before me. His long and pale hands crept over the book that I was absorbed in.
“As long as Sister was taking over the family, she would also be taking on the obligations of the family, namely me. I’m like a burden in Sister’s life. She told me not to make her regret bringing me back. I was scared that my sister’s thread-like expectations would be cut off. But, she was fond of me? That’s just ridiculous.”
My voice rose naturally.
As my sister has said, I have to become a worthy Summers that she was proud of, but even controlling my feelings was hard for me.
“I hate ridiculous words like my sister loves me. I don’t want to, but there’s something else I’m more upset about.”
“…….”
“I’m completely clueless about my sister. Even though I was right next to her, I was still unaware of things that even those that did not live in the same era were well aware about. And it’s infuriating that I only knew after skipping a few hundred years in the future.”
Just because of one book.
‘Sister, I’m angry.’
With lowered eyes, Edmund gently brushed my hair tidily. His finger brushed past strands of hair and stopped at my forehead.
This book was filled with all the things that I had wanted to know, and the things that my sister had never entrusted me.
I grabbed Edmund’s finger that was tickling near my forehead. As I lowered his hand, he followed my movements obediently and withdrew his hand.
As I turned my head back towards the book, he who had been pacing around before me eventually sat down where he was standing. He looked at me determinedly as if he was simply about to throw the book back towards the corner it came from.
I focused as I turned from one chapter to the next. The father that had a blurry image in my mind had died, and the sister that became the matriarch of the Summers family.
As the book gradually approached the ending, my sister’s painting changed gradually. Her brushstrokes became rough, and the shape was indistinct, making it hard to see what she was trying to draw.
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I had finally arrived at the last chapter.
Did Sister die?
I still flipped through the pages at a fast pace, though it was slower than before. But my speed of flipping through the pages slowed down as the book neared its completion. I was afraid that after this, my sister would really die, so I savoured each line till the last period with my eyes.
It was too young to be the last moments of her sister.
I was much younger than my sister, so she always felt like an adult to me. It was the case when I was six and my sister was thirteen, when I was thirteen and she was twenty, and when my sister was twenty-seven.
She was always far from me.
But differing from that, my older sister mentioned in the book was too young. She was less than thirty, but I had already reached her last moments written in the book.
Although my sister didn’t love me, I loved her. I may have bore hatred for her, but I still liked her more, and admired her.
So my sister had to live for a long time and spend her days more brilliantly than anyone, unlike me. She would welcome death while recollecting moments where she was more blissful than anyone.
Only then will the times of my loneliness be compensated.
She shouldn’t be like me, dying while thinking of my memories of sadness and loneliness while I was in this family.
The book was quickly flipped through. The letters written were crammed into my head.
Next, another page. Next, another page.
Just like that, I flipped through dozens of pages and only when I reached the last page, did I slowly place the book onto my lap.
Thump, thump.
The sound of my heartbeat shouldn’t be that annoying.
With my fingers together, I slowly touched my forehead.
My eyesight became blurry. As I blinked, the tears clouding my vision were cut off and flowed down my cheeks.
“…My sister, she died.”
The sound of a sob was mixed within my breathing. I didn’t even know I was crying. Something hot rose up from underneath. As I spoke gaspingly, Edmund immediately removed the book from my lap.
I didn’t even realise when he came to stand in front of me. In a blink of an eye, Edmund was in front of me, and when I wiped the tears away with the back of my hand, his fingers wrapped around my wrist.
When I exhaled rapidly again, Edmund knelt down and looked up at me from his position below.
His fingertips hesitated for a moment, before brushing my cheek once and moving away.
She was only twenty-nine. It was neither an accident that occured at the age of less than thirty, nor was it like me, dying from an illness.
Execution.
My sister was purged.
It was an ending that I had never imagined would happen. Summers was a family that persisted for a thousand years along with the Empire. But my sister ended up dying at the hands of the crazy Emperor.
The book states that my sister could not leave the fact that the country was slowly going downhill alone, and eventually intervened in the fight for the throne. Apparently, although my sister had supported the Fourth Prince, he was eventually murdered and with the reason being her support for the defeated Prince, she was executed under the crime of treason.
The author of the biography interpreted that the fall of the Magic Empire had perhaps begun with the fall of Summers family.
It was disgusting that the author said that such a tragedy made her sister’s paintings even greater.
I wouldn’t feel so difficult if the family’s extinction was a long while after my death. But only three years after my death did the Summers fall, making it hard for me to accept that.
“…….”
That’s not right.
In fact, it’s none of my business whether the family goes bankrupt or not. In my eyes, the Summers was Sasha Summers’ family, and not Vivian Summers’ family.
Normal aristocrats would bear love for their family to the extent that they would risk their own lives unhesitatingly, but to me, Sasha was such an existence, and not the family itself.
“Sister isn’t someone that would die like this.”
Perhaps he couldn’t stand the fact that my hands were trembling, Edmund reached out to hold my hand, and the hands that were trembling stopped. He had a pale complexion.
As I slowly stood up from my seat, he too got up and took a step away from me.
While generally she was too much to me, she would save me during critical moments.
She, who saved me dozens of times as I fell due to the overly strong flood of mana. When everyone else mocked me for being a half-baked mage, at least my sister didn’t blame me for being unable to wield magic.
Just based on this point alone, she was very kind.
Whenever I endured the pain that came with every breath while my body fell onto the cold marble floor, I would always be thankful that my sister didn’t blame me.
“I want to go back.”
I seem to have found the reason why I had fallen here.
“I want to go back to where my older sister is.”
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I want to save my sister. Even if I hate her and couldn’t understand her, I still want to save her.
However, as I declared that, things that could be called emotion disappeared from Edmund’s face.
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