Chapter 25

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Translator: Harry Potta

Chapter Title: Chapter 122

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“You’re not family! Someone like you...!”

Dillon shoved Rozhi roughly, and her frail body couldn’t withstand the force as it toppled over.

“You wanted our mother to die, didn’t you?”

Dillon glared at Rozhi with murderous intent.

He was itching to kill her but lacked the guts—a total coward.

“Why else would you and your mother move right in after our mother passed away!”

Less than a month after the Herthas Countess’s death, the Count had taken a new wife.

Society buzzed with gossip: he must have been cheating before her death, no doubt he’d been waiting for her to die, and so on.

Dillon seemed to despise those rumors.

They tarnished his late mother’s name.

And his father, who hadn’t visited her once while she lay dying, had brought home a new wife the moment she was gone—a fact Dillon couldn’t stomach.

All that rage poured straight onto Rozhi.

And it manifested as violence.

“Stop it, brother.”

Yurta was the only one who ever stepped in to halt the violence.

Which meant he was the sole person in this Herthas household who ever saved Rozhi.

So, Rozhi...

This might sound pathetic, but I’m still better than Dillon, aren’t I?

A searing pain burned through his entire body, leaving Yurta’s mind in a haze.

In the biting whirlwind of cold wind, cold sweat poured from him in sheets.

Would it feel like this if his skin were peeled off while he was still alive, or if every vein burst open?

To hold onto his consciousness, he forced out slow breaths.

Summoning every ounce of strength, he rose and staggered off in search of Rozhi—only to collapse against a tree.

“Ugh... damn it...”

A drug potent enough to inflict wounds this fatal had to come from the Cursed Land.

Dillon must have given it to Rozhi, no doubt.

Normally, items from the Cursed Land could only be obtained through illegal channels.

The Empire managed the Cursed Land with ironclad isolation, making legal access nearly impossible.

Dillon was just as rotten to the core as Yurta.

And yet Rozhi thought Dillon was kind and gentle.

Always painting me as the villain.

That had to be one of the countless reasons she hated him.

Yurta couldn’t comprehend it.

What made Dillon and him so different?

If anything, wasn’t he better than Dillon?

Back in their youth, Yurta had no intention of denying the wrongs he’d committed against Rozhi.

But if he had one grievance to air, it was this: hadn’t he done less wrong than Dillon?

Dillon had been violent toward Rozhi, tormenting her relentlessly.

At least he had never laid a hand on her.

Rozhi was constantly getting into trouble because of Dillon, her body covered in wounds.

“...Why do you only hate me?”

Why just me?

If you’re going to hate someone, hate us both.

Yurta muttered through sobs.

His voice carried the petulance of a child discriminated against by their parents.

But soon his mind faded again, and the sorrow consuming his body sank into darkness alongside it.

Yurta passed out and came to repeatedly amid the agonizing blaze of the drug Rozhi had doused him with.

After several brutal cycles, when he finally regained full awareness, the vise around his throat had loosened.

He dragged his battered body upright and set off to capture Rozhi.

And so he walked. And walked.

How much time had passed?

A sweetly intoxicating scent brushed his nose, numbing his brain.

Yurta followed it, entranced.

At last, he found Rozhi collapsed at the edge of a cliff.

Why is she all the way out here...?

Though bewildered, he rushed to her side.

And pulled her into his arms.

“Sis.”

Before seeing her, resentment and fury had clung to him like chains, but her pallid face dissolved them all.

All that remained was an endless urge not to let her go—a feeling that dominated him completely.

“Sis, please come to.”

“...”

“Sis.”

Her body was ice-cold.

How long had she been like this?

No—how much time had passed while he’d been blacking out and waking?

It felt like ages, but without a way to measure it precisely, frustration gnawed at him.

Come to think of it...

She wasn’t wearing the clothes she’d had on when she’d abandoned and fled from him.

A robe?

Collapsed in different attire—it seemed something had happened to her...

“Umm...”

As he pondered how she’d ended up like this, Rozhi let out a faint groan, stirring back to consciousness.

“Sis.”

“...Uhn.”

“Are you awake?”

Her pink lashes quivered, revealing eyes of deep rosy pink.

“Yurta...?”

“Yes, sis.”

Of all people, he was the one who’d found her awake—wouldn’t that fill her with despair?

As pointless thoughts swirled, Rozhi smiled with genuine joy.

The unexpected reaction startled him badly.

Dismissing it as a trick of the eye, he looked again—still, she smiled.

“Yurta.”

“Yes, sis.”

“Yurta.”

“...Yes.”

“Yurta.”

“...”

She didn’t seem to expect a reply, simply calling his name over and over.

Something felt off, but the fact that she was saying his name made him happy regardless.

“Yurta.”

Rozhi called his name again, beaming brightly.

His eyes stung for some reason.

In this moment, he felt he could hand her his very heart.

Even give her a knife and tell her to stab him with it.

But whenever Rozhi smiled at him like this, nightmares inevitably followed.

“I hate you.”

Just like now.

Yurta let out a hollow chuckle.

What had he even been hoping for?

“Yurta.”

Yet hope had a way of sprouting against his will.

When she smiled so tenderly and called his name, he’d foolishly start hoping again.

“Yurta.”

Seeing her smile so purely at him once more, he stupidly harbored hope again.

And in that instant—stab—something sharp plunged into his abdomen.

Rozhi had stabbed him with a knife, yet she kept smiling radiantly.

Even as blood trickled from his mouth.

“Bye, Yurta.”

Without hesitation, she shoved him over the cliff.

She watched his limp body plummet, laughing all the while.

Moments later.

Crunch. The sound of a man’s body shattering echoed up.

Rihart searched everywhere for Rozhi.

All day long. Without rest.

The sky grew ever darker, signs of another blizzard brewing.

The Northern Region was in utter chaos right now.

The sudden assault on the Holy Knight Captain—Rozhi vanishing at the same time. And the Demon Worshippers’ attack.

All the misfortunes had crashed down at once.

Fortunately, the Demon Worshippers’ raid had been swiftly resolved.

They’d retreated the moment they started losing, and hadn’t struck again since.

The search for Rozhi pressed on.

“Come to think of it, Young Master Yurta’s missing too.”

“Herthas Young Master? Since when?”

“He vanished around the same time as Marquis Evantes’s fiancée...”

Everyone had been so fixated on monitoring the key figure, Rozhi, that they’d only just noticed Yurta was gone.

Hearing that, Rihart felt his mood sink.

Yurta Herthas. He didn’t care what happened to the man, but if he’d kidnapped Rozhi...

The possibility loomed large.

He called her ‘sis.’

Three years ago, she’d mentioned having some past connection with Yurta.

But ‘sis’ didn’t sound like typical siblings.

Didn’t they say the Herthas family’s eldest daughter vanished long ago?

He’d never cared much about the Herthas family, so it was just peripheral knowledge.

Everything felt off.

But investigating could wait—he had to find Rozhi first.

And so more time slipped by.

A day. Two days.

“We found her!”

At last, at the edge of a snow-swept plain, they spotted her collapsed form.

Her pink hair disheveled, cheeks deathly pale.

Rihart approached her as if drawn by a spell.

The woman lay as if dead. No, she truly seemed gone.

“Captain!”

He brushed past the knight and pulled Rozhi into his arms.

Anxiously, he swept her hair aside and pressed a hand to her neck to check.

The skin beneath his fingers was cold.

Like a corpse.

“...Please. Please.”

He kept murmuring frantically, lips parting and closing.

He held his hand to her neck for ages, but what he desperately wanted never returned.

Warmth. A pulse fluttering like a living fish.

The basics of a living human—Rozhi had none of them.

“...Rozhi.”

This couldn’t be happening.

Something was wrong.

“Rozhi.”

He called her name.

I’m calling you.

So answer me like always—frowning, curt, grumpy.

“Rozhi, please...”

Please, just answer me.

But no answer came.

She was dead.