Clearly, he was waiting for her answer.
A cold sweat broke out behind Dalia’s back.
‘I, I’m screwed.’
I thought things were going smoothly these days, but as expected, an ambush has hit me. But why of all things, such contents that you take from that book?
Dalia had a hunch. If she says something wrong now, the relationship between Hikan and Dalia will be over.She worked hard in pretending to be the innocent sister, but then suddenly looking at the book that said transcendents are beings that are different from us?
‘Even I won’t believe in me either.’
“Well, I’m friends with the Duchess of Blueport. I wouldn’t think like that…”
Fortunately, she remembered to make an excuse. She put her best smile.
“And I just wanted to know more about the transcendent. I want to understand my brother more.”
“Understand?”
Hikan frowned his eyebrows.Dalia nodded eagerly. However, her enthusiastic response did not change his expression at all.
“You’re talking nonsense.”
He pushed the book to the chest of the fallen Dalia.
“This book is right, Dalia.”
“What?”
“You and I are different beings. Even if you die and wake up again, you’ll never understand me.”
Dalia shook her head hard this time.
Even if she thought about it, it was a tearful effort. However, Hikan looked at her for a long time with an unknown look.
Normally, he would have gone right back, but instead he took a step closer to Dalia.
As a result, Dalia’s body became stiff.
“It seems like you don’t understand. Do you know how our beloved maternal grandfather, the previous great Duke Pesteros died?”
“……”
He was killed in a mana frenzy.
It was a story that was hard to tell even though she knew it. Hikan said such a story casually and coldly.
“He blew up all this Pesteros mansion. He tried to kill his own daughter. Our mother.”
Dalia looked up at him blankly. Hikan also saw her. He still had a cold face with no expression on his face.
“So, mother handed over the title of Pesteros to father. It was so disgusting that she couldn’t handle it.”
“……”
“Our mother saw me and her father as being the same in nature. A man who will one day try to kill her. He was a transcendent and stronger than anyone else, but she couldn’t get out of it all her life. So she drove me away from the mansion. Then how about you, Dalia?”
His question came in at an unexpected point.
Dalia looked at him, blinking quickly. Hikan also stared at her with a grim expression.
“I asked how about you.”
For some reason, I felt like I had heard a story that I shouldn’t have heard.
Hikan’s background, which did not appear in the original work. I never knew Dalia’s mother had kicked him out because Hikan is a transcendent. That’s why I’ve never seen him at the Pesteros mansion?
But this is not the time to worry about that. If she keeps her mouth shut here, Hikan will consider Dalia to think the same as the previous duchess.
She stuttered.
“I…..I don’t think so. Brother, is my one and only brother…..and a good person.”
“…….Yes, I guess.”
It sounded sarcastic, and it just sounded weak.
Hikan’s gaze turned away from Dalia and looked in the distance. As if it doesn’t matter what Dalia says.
Perhaps Dalia’s desperate words did not reach Hikan at all. Hikan left Dalia alone and left the study.
Dalia stared blankly at the spot where he had left. My heart still thumped. On the other hand, strangely enough, I remembered the words of the Duchess Blueport that I heard last time.
“Being a transcendent is a solitary and lonely place.”
Is it because Hikan, who asserts that Dalia will never understand him, seems lonely for some reason?
Dalia recalled a scene from the original. It was a conversation between the two after Hikan kidnapped the original female protagonist, Adrisha.
「It’s not too late yet. Everything can be turned around. We understand each other and…」
「No, nothing can be reversed. You loving me or understand me, it will never happen.」
「………..」
「So this is the only way left.」
It was only when I was playing the game that I swore with excitement saying that he was an unconventional icon. I only thought that the original female protagonist who showed sympathy for him was an angel.
But…..did he have that expression back then too? Somehow Dalia’s mind got complicated.
While limping out of the study and walking down the hallway, she met her nanny. The nanny was startled and took Dalia to the nearest room, the drawing-room.
She had the maid bring a bandage and disinfectant to treat Dalia’s knee wound.
“Ah, it stings.”
Dalia shed tears.
The nanny knelt down.
“How did you get hurt like this?”
“I fell while playing with a ladder in the study. “
“Goodness, Miss, you’re lucky that you got hurt only this much.”
Of course, the nagging continued for a while.
Even after treatment, the nagging was not over. Dalia laughed and listened in one ear and out the other. Then, the nanny stopped talking for a while, as if she had an idea.
“Wait, I just saw the young Duke Hikan come out of the study, perhaps…?”
It was a good point. Dalia couldn’t make up a lie this time. The nanny’s eyes changed.
“Did he see you got hurt and just go away? He’s too cruel.”
From the way she spoke, it seemed like Hikan had deliberately pushed her off the ladder.
Well, to nanny, Hikan’s first impression was a man who pushed recklessly into the room and told Dalia of her father’s death. The nanny, who is on Dalia’s side, naturally hated him.
‘I don’t like him either.’
Dalia grumbled inside.
But somehow she couldn’t blame him because she remembered his lonely expression earlier. She defended him unknowingly.
“My brother is a good person.”
“But…”
“Someday, if I work hard, there will be a day when my brother will like me, too.”
Actually, I didn’t want this.
“My poor lady……”
The nanny dabbed her tears.
Dalia was soothing her and saw someone pass through the half-open door of the drawing room.
‘Did he hear that? I’m glad I didn’t curse with the nanny.’
Thinking that it might be Hikan, Dalia exhaled a breath of relief.
The book that I brought was also hidden in the secret diary box. I couldn’t believe that I had to suffer just because of this one.
* * *
‘……I did something useless.’
Hikan regretted.
At first he was just going to scare her from doing something useless. But when he saw the big eyes looking up at him, he talked nonsense.
“Someday, if I work hard, there will be a day when my brother will like me, too.”
And I heard useless words.
Even when he tries to ignore it, Dalia keeps on bothering him. He didn’t want to admit it, but from one day Hikan often thought of her.
Maybe from the day I first met her.
On the first day, there was a heartfelt desperateness in Dalia’s eyes, holding her hands together and looking up at him when he tried to throw her uninteresting gift, on the floor.
A girl who didn’t care a bit when she heard that her father had passed away.
Hikan has never been so desperate for anyone. So the look in her eyes made him feel weird.
But he shouldn’t.
He had to hate Dalia. There were plenty of reasons for that.
The family had been destroyed for decades just because they were transcendents, and Dalia was the success of the family after the failures.
He turned his head and looked at the portrait of his mother in his study.
She was staring into space with a gentle smile. Even after she died, she didn’t see herself. (*t/n: I’m not too sure about this part.)
One corner of his mouth twisted up.
It’s just as he told Dalia.
His mother, the previous duchess, hated the very existence of transcendence after her father became like that. Enough to deny her own identity.
Of course she didn’t want her child to be transcendent. Since the child didn’t have to be smart and didn’t have to be upsetting, she just wanted him to be normal like everyone else.
But her first child is a transcendent. Hikan grew too fast to fit into their fantasies, too clever, and also independent and cold.
From the moment the Duchess began to overlap Hikan with her father, the destruction had already been expected.
Since then, the Duchess has complained to the Duke that Hikan is not like a child, that his eyes are scary, and that he is looking down on her.
Hikan is smart, so he knew what his mother wanted him to do.
However, he didn’t feel the need to adjust to it. What’s more, he had a tendency to return what he had received.
When Hikan was three years old, his mother’s friend’s son had come to visit the mansion. The whole time he is in the mansion, he keeps on messing with Hikan’s temper.
He tried to push the Hikan down and intentionally destroyed his favorite toy as a joke.
After a small scuffle, Hikan pushed him away. He rolled down the stairs and break his leg. He could have died, but was lucky to stop there.
However, her mother began to despise and reject Hikan even more, claiming that it was planned.
And Dalia was born. I don’t know how she was able to conceive a new child after she was diagnosed sterile after having him.
However, mother thought that it was a blessing from God.
And she wanted to get rid of him, the only stain in the family.
In the end, Hikan was ousted to a province’s branch family estate as part of his experience as successor. He lived there for more than a decade even after his mother died.
Like a ghost attached to this mansion, she still had a terrible influence on Pesteros even after she died.
She was very meticulous. Enough to convince her husband so that he will not let him in the mansion again.
So only after both of his parents died could he return to the Pesteros mansion.
On his return he made up his mind. He will never forgive this family for abandoning him so completely and thoroughly.
‘Yes, never, I’ll never love her.’
It was like he was brainwashing himself.
