Chapter 20

Chapter 20

I called him again. Then, Bleon raised his head to look at me. I already knew when I felt my dress getting wet, but his face was full of tears.

“…Forgive me……?”

“What can I do other than forgive you…”

Bleon wasn’t really at fault. All of this happened because of Astell, but he continued to blame himself, never Astell.

I thought for a moment. I was going to get a divorce so he wouldn’t die. Then will he not die? The process was terrifying. However, he still liked Astell, and the treatment to get rid of the drug in his system was now over. It seemed unlikely that he would die like that in the future.

‘Is it okay then…’

Perhaps it was just a trick of the light that his eyes seemed to have had within them a strange glint. Bleon had returned to the kind and obedient man he had always been. I weighed both options in my mind. To get divorced. To not get divorced.

And the scales tilted towards the latter.

In fact, the decisive reason was made by my simple and selfish heart. I was worried about the days I would live outside this estate. I don’t know this place well yet, and I’ve lived here for less than a month.

I never went out of the mansion, and they wouldn’t welcome me at the Marquisate, where Astell’s family resided. Neither did I want to return there. This was the safest place for me right now.

“Then… You won’t leave me…?”

He said this in a nervous voice, probably worried because I had been silent for a long time while I was thinking.

“If you promise that you’ll do everything you just said, I will stay here. If you break even one, I will leave this house. Is that fine?”

I asked him again to be sure. Then, as if he understood what I meant, Bleon’s face brightened in an instant, even if his tears were still welling up, he answered with a smile.

“Yes. I will listen carefully to my wife…! Thank you, Wife…!”

Bleon buried his face in my lap and rubbed his cheeks like a child. I stroked his hair, a habit now. But again, when I felt a big part of him on my leg, I hurriedly withdrew my hand.

“…Sorry. I don’t want this either… It didn’t go away, so…”

Bleon groaned slightly as his body didn’t follow his will, tormented by it.

“Ha…”

I heard the sound of a long, painful sigh, and I looked down at Bleon for a moment. The back of his hand, which was placed on the sofa, was gripping the sofa so tightly that the veins were prominent. When I saw it again, I felt very bad for him. But there really wasn’t anything I could do about it.

“Let’s be careful what we touch in the future…”

I’m just saying to be careful going forward.

“What…? Yes, yes… I have to listen carefully to Wife… I will.”

To my words, Bleon answered in a gloomy voice.

“Should I go out for a while?”

“Oh, no…! Just a moment… A moment…”

Did you forget that you said it was a while before, and it still didn’t go down after you said it? As I had a disbelieving expression on my face, Bleon hurriedly added,

“It’s true… So don’t go, Wife, please… Please don’t leave me…”

“I’m not going anywhere, I’m just going out for a while.”

“Still…”

It seemed that the words I said eventually enhanced Bleon’s anxiety. Bleon refused to let me go with a desperate look.

“Can’t I hope for this much…?”

Bleon looked me in the eye and asked cautiously. I nodded my head and Bleon smiled slightly. After that, I understood his feelings a little bit and waited patiently this time. Unlike before, it was not because he was sick. And fortunately, as time passed, the veins on the back of Bleon’s hands gradually faded as if he had calmed down.

“It’s gone now…”

“You did well.”

I raised my hand to stroke Bleon’s head as a compliment to him and I paused. And withdrew my hand.

“Are you okay now?”

Then he looked at me and smiled awkwardly.

“…I’m sorry……”

“It’s not something Bleon has to apologize for.”

Even if Bleon didn’t want to do that, it seemed a bit strange to apologize about it. His body just wasn’t listening to him.

“But shall we use separate rooms now?”

“…What……?!”

Bleon looked up at me as though the world collapsed when I said this.

Astell and Bleon have never slept apart since they got married. Astell wanted to monitor and intervene with Bleon’s every move. The bed we slept in was very large, so I didn’t feel any discomfort, so I continued to sleep and wake up the next day with Bleon.

Well, except for that one day when he pleasured himself, it didn’t really bother me that much. But now it seemed better to use separate bedrooms in order to establish a more secure relationship with him. So I brought it up, but his reaction was stronger than I expected.

“I don’t want that…! Wife please… You know I can’t sleep when Wife isn’t around… Please, please…”

Was it…?

Bleon couldn’t sleep without Astell. I never heard of it.

“I’ll hold your hand and just sleep… I will never, ever, ever come close to Wife. So please…”

“Okay. Then just like now.”

He keeps begging like this, and I don’t feel good about refusing it, and there’s nothing particularly uncomfortable about it, so I decided to do nothing about this case.

“Thank you, Wife… What luck have I been born with… A guy like me…”

“Bleon…!”

I cut off his words and called for Bleon in a slightly angry voice.

“…Yes?”

Then he looked at me with a puzzled expression at my sudden shout.

“Why do you keep blaming yourself? Don’t do that.”

Even before, Bleon had called himself some kind of bastard, and now he was demeaning himself.

“But in the first place, I’m not a good person… My wife told me…”

“No. Bleon is a precious person from the beginning.”

I looked him in the eye and said, to assure him that what I was saying was true.

“Bleon is the most precious person ever. You’re so kind, you’re so pretty, why must you think that way? So what am I supposed to be when I am the wife of such a person?”

“No!”

Bleon strongly denied my words.

“The wife is not like that…! My wife… My wife… is radiant.”

“The same goes for Bleon. So, don’t say those words again in the future. Understand?”

Bleon looked at me intently. He seemed to understand the truth of my words now.

“I guess I really have all the luck in the world… You are my wife… I’m so happy…”

Saying so, he smiled brightly.

“Look at this. Your smile is as pretty as the sun.”

And I looked at him and smiled broadly.

The divorce attempt ended as a failure, and I fell asleep and woke up at dawn. Next to me was Bleon, holding my hand as he slept peacefully.

I couldn’t go back to sleep anymore, so my eyes were kept open. There was something that bothered me about the conversation I had with him before, so I thought about it for a while.

We sat next to each other on the sofa and talked about what to do next. Then I suddenly wondered what Bleon thought of the changed Astell, so I asked him.

“By the way… When I woke up after a week when I fell ill, didn’t I seem like a completely different person?”

“Well… Not really. Because this wasn’t the first time.”

Ah, yes.

Astell had suddenly changed even eight years ago. Back then, she changed for the worse. But this time, the change was for the better.

“I see.”

“Something just happened to the wife. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”

I was contemplating whether to talk about this or not, and then I opened my mouth.

“I had a dream.”

And I changed the future I knew into the word dream and told him.

“What dream…?”

“I just dreamed that you were tired of me like this and left me. So, as soon as I woke up from the dream, the thought that I couldn’t keep living like this, like my life flashing before my eyes?”

I said with a joking laugh, as if taking it lightly.

“It was a ridiculous dream.”

In contrast to my smiling face, Bleon’s face was seriously hardened.

“Huh?”

“I left because I got tired of Wife? So because you think the dream was real, did Wife try to abandon me first?”

“No, it’s not like that…”

In fact, he hit it right on the mark, but I vaguely denied it and trailed off.

“How can you… I can never live without you, Wife. I will never ever leave my wife’s side.”

His determination was evident in the look in his eyes.

“It was just a dream, Bleon.”

He took it more seriously than I expected, so I comforted him with an awkward smile.

“Even if it was a dream, I can’t believe that I will do something like that. But in the end, it means that Wife thinks I’m not enough, that this is only the extent of my feelings for Wife.”

“No…”