NOVEL NEXT Chapter 45: My Beloved Sister
When I met Cassadin’s eyes, his expression was blank. His eyes were so amazingly expressionless that the events of that afternoon felt like a false illusion.
His silvery hair still glittered under the moonlight, but the purple irises under it had lost their luster.
“…How long have you been there?”
I purposefully used a cheery tone to hide my surprise.
“From the start.”
It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t hurt by his cold attitude.
“A little short on the words, I see.”
Cassadin wrinkled his eyebrows at my remark.
“Why should I care about your input?”
“…”
“I heard you even tried to kill Tuule without my knowledge.”
Cassadin responded to my question, merely cocking his head diagonally and said,
“So you decided to take him in.”
From the voice encased in an eternal ice of darkness oozed out a resentment directed at me.
“Am I not enough?”
Cassadin asked me, making an incredibly lonely expression. He almost seemed pathetic as the moonlight behind him accentuated the shadows looming over his face.
But that didn’t make his sins disappear. There were things that had to be sorted through first.
Such as why he attempted to secretly harm Tuule, and what else he was hiding from me.
“Why must you always act on your own accord?”
Cassadin straightened himself from his leaning posture against the wall and approached me. I was once again reminded of how long his legs were.
It only took him a few steps to reach a distance where our breaths could touch.
Remembering the instantaneous manner in which he consumed my finger, I instinctively backed up, but because Tuule’s room was at the very end of the second-floor corridor, there was nowhere to escape.
The walls felt chillingly cold against my back. Even though I was clothed, it felt like I was naked as I was cornered against a wall.
“You’re right, Sister.”
Leaning in closer to my cornered body, Cassadin whispered into my ear. As his upper body hunched down towards me, his glittery silver hair tickled my face.
“I only act of my own accord.”
Instead of denying my claims, he chose to agree. Ending his sentence, Cassadin gently caressed my cheek with his hand.
For some reason, Cassadin felt oddly insane as he caressed my cheek in a gentle manner.
“You said I was your savior. Was that also a lie?”
His hand stopped. His purple eyes, which stared into me above his pursed lips, seemed to contain endless darkness within them.
“How could that ever be a lie?”
Then his eyes curled into crescents. His pursed lips turned upward into an arch.
His smile was frighteningly beautiful to the point one may get lost in it, but my heart was beating uncontrollably for an unidentifiable anxiety.
“You are indeed my savior. However…”
Maintaining a gentle smile on his face, he uttered the words I wished he would never say,
“There hasn’t been a single moment since I met you where I considered you my family.”
His eyes glowed with an overwhelming amount of obsession. Several different emotions intertwined within them–there was both love and hatred towards me in Cassadin’s face.
“My beloved sister.”
When he compressed his emotions into those three words, his voice seemed to echo out from the bottom of a deep swamp.
I felt someone strangle my throat the moment I heard his voice. I couldn’t breathe, like water had filled up my lungs.
Unable to find the courage to look back at the eyes staring at me, I turned my head to the side.
“Why do you keep avoiding my eyes?”
Seeming to be displeasured that I avoided his gaze, Cassadin reached out and trapped me with his arms.
“Please don’t avoid me.”
The moment I met his gaze, I knew it.
That what I brought in wasn’t my younger brother, but a beast.
His deepened voice resembled the cry of a wild animal.
Hearing his resentful voice, I heard strings tear from the pressure. It was the sound of my patience, which I had been holding so fiercely onto, completely collapsing.
I couldn’t hold it any longer.
Staring straight at Cassadin, I finally erupted,
“Stop it.”
“What do you wish for me to stop?”
“What you are doing right now, the way you are looking at me. Everything.”
Cassadin tilted his head as if he were clueless about what I was saying. But that only made me more enraged.
“Just how foolish did you think I was?”
“…”
“When you changed my clothes while I layed there, oblivious. When I burst into tears after hearing about your past. Just how foolish must I have looked in your eyes?”
Feeling that this had all been pointless, I let out a small, airy laugh.
I wasn’t asking for much. I knew from the beginning that Cassadin didn’t truly think of me as his sister.
But knowing it and hearing it directly from him were two completely different things. Because that destroyed what we had been maintaining on the surface.
I had worked so hard to establish our relationship as siblings, but Cassadin just ruined all of that by revealing his feelings.
“I don’t consider you foolish.”
I knew he was speaking the truth. But what good was that? Our odd sibling masquerade had already met its end.
“I have never once considered you foolish.”
Cassadin used the word you instead of sister. But there was nothing that would change even if I pointed that out now. And I smiled bitterly.
“From the moment we first met, the moment I met eyes with you in that damned arena.”
“…”
“I’ve wanted you.”
I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted to block my ears right then and there.
But pushed against the corner, there was nothing I could do other than quietly listen to what came next.
“ I denied it at first. I even tried to use you for my revenge.“
“…”
“I’ve tried to draw the line and yelled at you not to cross it. Because there was once a time I thought there was nothing more foolish than letting another into my heart.”
“…”
“But the more I pushed you away, the more you embraced me. It was only later that I realized how precious that affectionate touch, that warm smile was to me.
A calm smile drew across Cassadin’s face, as if he were reminiscing the past. The hand that had stroked my cheek fell straight down to my lips.
“You have asked me in the past what I wanted. Now I will ask you.”
He was extremely careful as his hand grazed over my lips. My mind blanked, and I was unable to get even a remote idea of what to say. I felt like I’d become the world’s biggest idiot.
“What do you want?”
“…”
“I will become your loyal blade. And if it is your wish, I am prepared to dirty my hands.”
“…”
“If it is the world you want, I will place it in your hands.”
As he boldly announced his resolve in a dry voice, Cassadin’s eyes were completely mad. It felt like he would be eager to steal the crown and give it to me if I said I wanted to.
His confession was an honest one. To the point that if I hadn’t brought him in as my younger brother I, who died after being stabbed by Damian, could eagerly accept him as a lover.
“So…I wish for you to only look at me.”
It was the pure truth, without even a speck of dust to dirty it.
Cassadin was expressing his true feelings in every word, almost making me want him to lie again.
I could no longer stand listening to his desperate confessions. The anger boiling within me projected clearly into my voice, its coldness making me doubt if it was really my own.
“You’ve gone completely mad.”
Hearing that, Cassadin’s hand that had been caressing my lips froze. I slapped away the hand on my lips and glared at him.
“Did you know, Cassadin? I never even expected you to consider me your sister.”
“…”
“But this is over the line. Confessing to me. How could you to me, after I’ve…”
I didn’t know that my resolve to become his nest would return to me like this. My entire body trembled in fury. Looking at my state, Cassadin calmly responded,
“Do you hate me?”
“What…?”
“The way I am, do you hate it?”
Cassadin asked me with a sorrowful expression. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that in that moment, he could have been the embodiment of sadness. An expression that made the onlooker fall into even deeper anguish than themselves.
“If you don’t like me, just kick me out of the family.”
“What did you say…?”
“It’s alright. Even if you kick me out of the family, I was going to take your father’s place in the war anyway.”
‘How did he…?’
I lost my voice in the midst of the confusion. Since when did he know? When I looked up at him with a bewildered expression, Cassadin drew a serene smile and said,
“I knew from the beginning.”
“…”
“Since the day you bought me in from that gladiator arena.”
Just how much did Cassadin know? I felt a cold shiver run through my spine.
“If I’m not what you want and if you don’t like me, then expel me from the family.”
I felt something strange about what Cassadin was saying. It almost sounded like he wanted to be expelled from the family.
“Do you want to be abandoned by me?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why?”
“…”
“Why are you doing this all of a sudden? Cassadin.”
Cassadin quietly lowered his gaze. The response that finally returned sounded like it came from the depths of a deep cave.
“The rumors that I was a gladiator slave have already been widespread. It will most definitely ruin the prestige of the family, and also receive the judgment of countless people. Won’t it be better just to expel me right now?”
Not only was he predicting what was going to happen next, but he was also looking several steps further than that. But I resented that intelligence at this moment.
“I don’t want to become your weakness. So…”
Then he finally said it,
“Expel me from the family.”
Meanwhile, Earl Zigen was downing hard liquor alone in his office. He had already been through several glasses of it.
Unlike the original use of an office, which was meant to be a place for processing important documents, the room had multiple empty bottles of alcohol rolling around on the floor.
He’d gotten insomnia because of the damned slaves that Aren brought into the house. The Earl is unable to sleep these days without the assistance of alcohol.
Before his daughter brought slaves into their house, the Earl had been a man who lived far from drinking. But the continuous accumulation of stress automatically lured his hand to the bottle.
To prevent his daughter from worrying, the Earl spent his nights sipping away inside his office. He had also made sure that the few servants who knew he was drinking would keep their mouths shut.
Seeming to have become slightly tipsy, the Earl murmured to himself with a reddened face.
“Cassadin’s still better.”
Earl Zigen recalled the first time Aren brought Cassadin to him. At first, he thought his daughter had brought this boy just for his looks. That maybe she was feeling lonely.
But to think that they accepted a slave, who was treated as less than livestock, into their family. He believed it to be a disgrace to the family. It hurt his pride.
Though he had accepted Cassadin into the family because of Aren’s pleads, he felt his insides being eaten from the inside out.
He didn’t like it. So he made up his mind that if the man did anything to hurt his daughter or do anything wrong, he would use that as an excuse to expel him right away.
But the more he watched Cassadin, he felt closer to a noble than a slave. The way he presented himself was different from other slaves, and he emitted elegance.
Not only was he literate, but his learning abilities were extraordinary as well. A single Cassadin was more useful than ten butlers who knew how to read and write.
He felt a little sorry for ignoring him because of his identity. Cassadin’s first impression was terrible, but at some point, the Earl slowly started to open up to Cassadin. But of course, this wasn’t the case for the tanned slave.
However, after reading the newspaper published today, the Earl felt as if the skies were collapsing on him.
[One of the Most Popular Nobles in the Empire! Son of an Earl Praised to have the Beauty of Gods Revealed as Gladiator Slave]
The thing he had been concerned about truly happened.
It was not a common occurrence to be described as having the beauty of Gods. There hadn’t been anyone Earl Zigen had seen who was better looking than Cassadin.
[Son of an Earl Praised to have the Beauty of Gods Revealed as Gladiator Slave.]
The meaning of that sentence was more than clear.
Whoever had a grudge against them did research on Cassadin’s background and spread the news that he was actually a slave.
“That crazy!”
Enraged, the Earl slammed his fist down on the desk. Thanks to that, the liquor glass in his hand shattered on the ground, but he paid no attention to it. He couldn’t.
‘Who dares to attack the family that is under the protection of the crown? Whoever it is, they will regret it.’
The Earl rang the bell located in the office to call the butler. Not long after the bell rang, the butler arrived at the office.
The elderly butler was the oldest servant who had worked in their family, and was trustworthy.
“Have you called, Sir?”
“I don’t care how much it costs. Find the man who spread this rumor.”
Kindly pointing to the large sentence printed on the newspaper, the Earl added,
“And find out who the bastard that wrote this article was!”