Chapter 77
At the words flying from behind, his friend irritably furrowed his brow but didn’t answer.
As he tried to ignore her and exit, he couldn’t leave this time either.
“I think I understand why you told such a lie…”
This time, before she could finish her words, his friend burst out shouting.
“You know? You understand? You, Miss?”
He released his grip on the door handle and slowly turned around.
His lips twisted as he looked at his opponent, who still hadn’t moved a single step from the wall.
Someone who had secured the seat beside Lione merely through luck, without any particular effort.
A woman who became Lione’s marriage partner simply because she was in the right place at the right time, from a decent family.
Someone who received the opportunity to grasp Lione’s entire life through terribly good fortune—how dare she claim to understand?
“No, Miss, you’ll never know. You shouldn’t know. If you knew, you’d only writhe in agony. No, you might not even have the breath to writhe.”
His voice grew lower as he continued, until it was barely audible at the end.
But the words he added after exhaling once…
“Miss, you’re going to meet with an unfortunate accident before the wedding.”
Though his friend’s face was hidden in silhouette due to the backlighting, his voice alone made it clear that ‘meet with’ was extremely dangerous.
She, who had been pressed against the wall, unconsciously touched her throat.
But even while touching her throat, her red lips didn’t stop moving.
“You confessed to me in front of him with the purpose of interfering with my marriage to Young Lord Bartorio. Even if this marriage falls through, another person will take my place.”
It was extremely realistic logic that left no room for rebuttal.
But his friend chuckled.
As if he were dealing with something trivial.
He strode toward her, who remained motionless near the wall.
“What are you doing…”
She instinctively stepped back, sensing danger, but she was already close to the wall with nowhere left to retreat.
His friend smiled as he reached toward her.
“Another marriage proposal would take a long time to come. After you die and my marriage partner dies too, making these kinds of marriage talks disappear entirely, they won’t be able to rashly find a new partner.”
“That’s ridicu… mmph!”
His friend, who had roughly covered her mouth with his palm, was still smiling.
“Not just this time. If I keep eliminating them, marriage proposals themselves will stop coming. If time passes like that for a long while, and I alone continue to guard his side, if that happens…”
The rest didn’t need to be heard to be understood.
His friend’s eyes weren’t looking at the reality before him.
That’s why he probably didn’t even know who he was choking and strangling.
Bright red hair swayed near the shoulders of the person whose throat was being strangled by his friend’s grip.
And the next moment.
“Stop!”
Lione’s shout rang out.
And simultaneously.
-Crack.
With the sound of something breaking, his friend’s hand that had been choking her neck was bent in a direction it shouldn’t bend.
“Ugh, gasp, gasp!”
Riina, freed from his friend’s grip, staggered as if about to collapse while clutching her throat, and Einar, who had pulled her waist toward him, gathered her into his arms.
It had happened so suddenly that his friend, looking down at his wrist bent in the wrong direction, didn’t even feel pain.
And afterward, he felt no pain either.
Because Lione had appeared before him.
Lione couldn’t even bring himself to look back at Riina, only glaring at his friend.
If he took his eyes away, his friend—no, the stranger before him—might do something else…
A few minutes earlier.
In the plan to hear from his friend’s own mouth at the engagement ceremony that he had been deceiving Lione all along, and what the truth really was, they had originally intended to receive help from his fiancée.
No one was more suitable than her for making his friend explode.
But immediately after the main ceremony ended, Lione came to find Riina and bowed deeply.
‘I can no longer receive her help.’
He shook his head and added.
‘I couldn’t bring myself to do such a shameless thing.’
At Lione’s words, Riina showed no sign of surprise and simply nodded.
‘If that’s what you think, Young Lord, then do so.’
‘So this plan…’
Before Lione, who bowed his head as if ashamed, could finish speaking, Riina answered.
‘I’ll take the role the baron’s daughter was supposed to play.’
‘What?’
Toward Lione, who raised his head as if bouncing, Riina nodded indifferently.
‘If I cover my face appropriately and stay in the shadows, it should be fine. That young lord hasn’t looked at you closely enough or remembered you well enough.’
At her words, Lione smiled bitterly.
Riina’s comment that he probably didn’t even know the Miss’s face properly reminded him again that his friend’s confession of falling in love at first sight had been a lie.
‘As long as he doesn’t come too close…’
Recalling up to that point, Lione swallowed a sigh.
He hadn’t known that the person before him would express such extreme hostility and cause harm.
Even while coming so close and choking her throat, hadn’t he been in such a deranged state that he couldn’t even properly recognize who his opponent was?
“Just who are you…”
At his muttered words mixed with emptiness, bewilderment, and disappointment in himself, his friend’s ears twitched.
His friend’s name leaked between the lips of the friend who had been staring blankly at Lione.
“Lione…?”
On the face of his friend—no, Young Lord Count—who had been looking at the devastated Lione, the same smile as always spread.
“So you were here.”
The young lord acted as if the events that had just occurred had never happened.
Glittering eyes and a mask-like smile.
The young lord, who had been reaching out his hand, realized that hand was now useless and promptly raised his other arm.
Though Lione was looking at him with an indescribable expression, the young lord didn’t withdraw his smile and determinedly patted Lione’s shoulder with his good hand.
It was close to madness.
No, it was madness.
The young lord, with his arm around Lione’s shoulder, spoke as if nothing had happened.
“Since we’ve met like this, shall we have a drink?”
It had just been moments ago that he had choked someone’s throat, broken his wrist, and whispered that he would kill both Lione’s and his own marriage partners one by one.
“Stop it! Stop now. I’ve already heard everything…”
Before Lione could finish speaking, the young lord tilted his head while putting enough force into the hand around his shoulder to make veins bulge.
“Heard? What? Ah, what I just said? Yes. You heard that.”
The next moment, insane silence fell.
How much time passed where truly one second felt like a thousand years?
Without blinking once, the young lord whispered in Lione’s ear.
“So you know now. Really, I’ve endured and endured for such a long time playing the role of friend by your side.”
The moment his words flowed along his ear, Lione shuddered.
It felt like terribly sticky, indescribably viscous things were crawling in through his eardrums.
Lione tried to break free from him, but the young lord wouldn’t let him go.
“Marriage, you say. Congratulations, you say. And what else? Getting along well as friends through future generations? Ha!”
The young lord’s voice, coiled around him like a snake, began to grow louder.
“How long do you think I’ve endured and persevered to have you!”
“You… endured?”
“Yes! Friends! Best friends! I never even wanted to be friends with you! I endured it thinking that someday you would become mine!”
Along with his shouts, as if all kinds of emotions had exploded in a whirlwind, veins bulged on the young lord’s forehead and his eyes became red with blood.
Lione, looking at him from right up close, tried to say something but couldn’t speak a word with his throat blocked.
Over the years, countless people had confessed their love to him and done crazy things.
But no one had revealed madness while expressing such persistent, sticky emotions for such a long time, so tenaciously…
“I-I love you.”
The moment the confession finally flowed from the young lord’s mouth.
Lione’s eyes, which had been shaking as if in an earthquake, became clear.
Because he had been clinging desperately like grasping at straws, not wanting to lose his ‘only’ friend, he could finally let go of those things.
Isn’t it truly absurd how people are?
That they can suddenly not even glance at something they had clung to so desperately.
The young lord, who was closest to him, couldn’t fail to notice Lione’s air becoming calm in an instant.
“You…”
Lione escaped from the young lord who had been constraining him with a movement like flowing water.
It was a movement that made a mockery of evaluations that he had no talent whatsoever for swords or physical activities, but in this situation, no one noticed—not even himself.
Lione bowed politely before the young lord and gave a faint smile.
And the young lord’s face became horribly distorted.
He had seen Lione with that attitude, that expression, more than once or twice.
Such a Lione would surely…
“I’m grateful for your feelings, but I must decline.”
A polite but sharp, resolute rejection.
Seeing Lione draw an absolute line that could never be crossed, the young lord’s mind boiled over.
Already turned upside down, all kinds of emotions were tangled in such a mess that he couldn’t tell what or how things were, flowing out of his mouth in chaos.
As everything around was erased and only Lione’s face and his rejection spun around and around.
A short blade flashed in the young lord’s good hand.
