My Sister’s Man

Frankly, there were not one or two oddities.

She just made an effort to bury it and didn’t mention it. Unlike the past, her hair had turned white, her eyes ashen, and the house where she woke up after being unconscious for a week and not receiving a single communication from her family. 

She couldn’t sleep at all in an unfamiliar space, so she looked around the dressing table and the room, but among the many letters, she couldn’t find a letter from the Duke of Atrice.

It was really strange. The fact that they hadn’t sent a letter after nearly a year of marriage meant that the relationship with her family had been completely severed.

Larne was vaguely aware.

However, she had never properly felt the four-year hiatus right away. Like a person whose mind was floating, like a person who was dreaming, it was just difficult to accept the reality.

She couldn’t understand the words that came out of the man’s mouth. Her ears were deafened by shock.

She committed sin, stealing her sister’s man and marrying him…

Her head was filled with confusion at the sudden burst of information.

“W-what are you talking about?”

The moment she raised her head to ask for an answer, Larne met the man’s cold eyes.

“Just because you pretend not to know doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

The man harbored a terrible aversion to her. It was like a solid wall. Leandro looked at Larne, who still seemed to know nothing, with disgusted eyes.

“You would have done really well if you were an actor.”

“My, why would I like a man like you?” 

“You are that kind of person.  You have to trample on others and take anything away to make yourself feel better.”

Larne’s eyes trembled.

“Isn’t that why you married me? Because I’m your sister’s man.”

“That’s a lie.”

Since she suffered from a chronic illness since childhood, Larne’s 17 years were flat and monotonous. Her human relationships were all about her family. That was why she thought there was no way she could steal her sister’s man. Because her family was her everything.

“Ah, I need to meet my sister.”

Larne hurriedly got out of bed. But she couldn’t even balance properly and she stumbled and fell. But Leandro didn’t even reach out to support her as she fell to the floor, or to catch her as she fell. He just looked at her with cold eyes.

A cold look, an icy gaze, a disgusting attitude that shouldn’t be used to treat humans.

No, livestock was treated better than this. She couldn’t understand herself for marrying such a man, risking losing her sister.

And the strangest thing was her heart, beating wildly with heat, despite the hateful cold gaze.

Her pounding heart was telling her that she liked that person. But she didn’t want to believe it.

“Ha….ha….it’s not right.”

Larne squeezed her chest and exhaled heavily. Despite the fact that she was gasping for air as as if she was dying, there was no trace of warmth in the man’s expression.

“Huh…?”

He showed a look of dismay and walked out of the room without any regrets.

And he ran into the restless butler at the door. 

“Why are you worried about that woman?”

He chuckled bitterly.

“But the madam really seems to have lost her memory. Can’t you be a little kinder to her? Are there no words in existence to give to the one who was injured while saving Your Excellency’s life?”

Carl’s words reminded him of a memory he didn’t want to recall, and he bit his lip.

“Why did you save me? You hate me.” (Larne)

It was an emotion he never tried to hide, and a feeling he never hid. The woman didn’t react to any of his attitudes, so he thought she was fine.

He was sick of the nightly banquets held at the mansion. Because of that woman, there was a lot of commotion at the banquets.

And, he hated Larne’s attitude the most, always laughing as if nothing was wrong.

When she said that she would gladly divorce him if they attended the banquet together, Leandro went with the feeling that he would be fooled. It meant nothing more, nothing less.

He was more than a little surprised when the woman who hated the most was the loss of her dignity ran towards him. He was so focused on the woman running towards him from afar that he didn’t even notice the dangerous chandelier. He knew that if the woman saved him would have the audacity to ask for much.

But the woman did not move after pushing him out of the way. She stood still under the swaying chandelier with an expression he had never seen before. He remembered it as vividly as if it had been etched into his brain, even though it had been a while since it had happened.

As she stood under the brightest light, she embraced all the darkness in the world.

“No. I used up all my remaining affection to save that woman that day. And I think it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

After that, Leandro turned around without hesitation. She didn’t want to waste any more time on the woman.

Leandro left after leaving a cruel comment and Carl hurriedly entered the bedroom and approached Larne, who was still lying on the floor.

He  thought she had fainted, but luckily she was conscious.

“Is it true what that man said? That I stole my sister’s fiancé..?”

Carl said nothing. Unspoken silence meant affirmation.

“Get out, get out…!”

It was so uncharacteristic of her to commit such an abominable act that for a moment she wondered if she had been possessed by someone.

There was a time when she coveted her sister’s things, but that was in a very immature childhood.

Since that day, Larne had been bedridden. When she was under a lot of stress, her body couldn’t stand it. At a very young age, it was the first time she had accepted that she was different and weak. She lay sick for quite some time.

When the nightly held banquets seemed to stop, numerous letters were sent asking her why, but still, not even a formal and clichéd letter inquiring about her wellbeing came from the Duke of Atrice.

After a bout of fever, Larne called the butler.

“Uh, call my sister. I miss my sister.”

Her body was twenty-one, but her mind was seventeen. She didn’t know how to speak in a roundabout way, and her face showed all kinds of emotions. They were too honest to be called acting.

 know how to talk around her, so her emotions are revealed and her face is so honest that it can’t be called acting.

Carl couldn’t hide his pity.

“…I will try. However, a reply may not come.”

A negative answer came after a while. Carl’s words shocked Larne further. Would her family turn her away? The hand that was gripping the blanket unconsciously turned white.

****

Larne wrote letters to Duke Atrice every day. The letters returned were torn apart every time, but there was no reply.

She thought that if she sent a letter, anything would change.

Even when she wrote that she had lost her memory, there was still no answer from her family.

She finally realized that she had been abandoned by her family.

Was it because she stole her sister’s fiancé?

Still bedridden, Larne pulled the covers over her with disappointment. Tears fell, racing in a torrent of sorrow.

‘Oh, I want to see my mother. She must have been very disappointed in me.’

Every time she looked at the unfamiliar ceiling and furniture arrangement, she felt sick to her stomach. After crying for a long time without turning on the lamp, Carl came to visit her.

“Duke Deron Atrice has arrived.”

Deron Atrice, Larne’s only older brother. Larne rushed to the parlor looking exhausted, having no time to change her clothes.

Carl couldn’t stop Larne from running away.

She did not have a good relationship with Deron, but the fact that her family was coming to the unfamiliar space made her heart overflow with excitement.

That was why she was completely oblivious to the change of Deron’s title.

Her breathing quickened after she had run a little, and her head throbbed with an incoming headache, but she did not stop.

It was both an unfamiliar and familiar path, but there was no hesitation in Larne’s steps toward the parlor. 

Full of anticipation, Larne opened the door to the parlor, and a man with a somewhat unfamiliar aura was sitting there. 

The man was much taller than she remembered from the past. He definitely had the color of Atrice’s eyes, and traces of the past were visible on his grown face.

But it was not the Deron she had imagined.

Larne wet her dry lips. She just stared blankly at him for a long while.

“I read the letter you sent to Aria.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Don’t you dare call me brother. If you had a conscience, you wouldn’t have contacted me like this. It’s a nuisance to those who want to forget what happened back then.”

Deron looked at Larne. Larne looked very thin in that flimsy pajamas.

Anyone else would have felt sorry for her looking so fragile, but Deron wasn’t. He was sick of how she was always being forgiven for her faults on the excuse of being ill.

He and his sister Aria were the ones always had to deal with the damage.

“Uh, mother and father?”

“… Ha, did you forget that too? They passed away while being worried about you until the end.”

Larne’s heart fell with a thud.

A cold feeling came back like a blade. Her skin felt sore as if it had been scratched.

“They are dead?”

Larne’s eyes shook violently.

“Ha, you disgust me. Don’t you even remember when your parents died? Didn’t you say that was a good thing?”

Larne trembled in shock. Did she say that to them? To the ones who loved her…?

“Oh, I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything. Why is everyone pushing me away?”

“You’re going to get divorced soon, so now you want to come back to the mansion? It’s not even funny, I’m sorry, but there’s no place for you in my house anymore.”

With a brutal announcement, Deron left the Marquis’s residence.