The Villain Is Obsessed With His Fake Wife

She felt a great sense of crisis when she saw the flowers suddenly blooming around her.

‘Aren’t they going to find out that I’m a fairy like this?’

She swallowed her saliva because she was nervous, but fortunately, John let her go. So she calmly opened her eyes and said to him,

“What? I was the only one surprised! Do you want to keep playing around like this?”

“Sorry. Your reaction is so cute that I keep pranking you.”

John raised his hands with a mischievous smile.

It was a friendly atmosphere. However, the red eyes of John she met were immersed in a strangely deep darkness.

‘Is there some problem?’

While she was tilting her head, John held her hand and guided her, saying he would take her somewhere else. It was a staircase leading down to the bottom of the ferry.

“Be careful. Because the stairs are steep.”

“It’s not like I am going to slip on the stairs, right?”

“What if you fall alone in an empty hallway again?”

“That was a mistake!”

To be precise, she was walking while talking to a tree, but she got distracted and fell.

As expected from a luxury passenger ship, the interior of the ship was also clean and beautiful.

‘There is definitely something…’

Originally, she reacted sensitively to other people’s emotions. This was especially true if the other person was John, the person she cared about the most.

A change occurred in John’s heart just now. When she thought about that, an unknown fear came over her. Suddenly, she felt anxious even going down to the basement of the ferry.

‘…What is he planning to do now?’

She asked John, who was walking with his arms around her.

“John, you’re not really going to surprise me this time, are you?”

“When have I ever lied?”

John asked softly, shaking his clasped hands slightly. But she asked with eyes full of disbelief.

“You lied just now, too.”

“I’m not lying. It’s more like preparation for a brief surprise.”

“No matter the reason, a lie is a lie, right?”

John laughed at her face.

“I didn’t know I could be so unreliable.”

“So, try to be nice. Don’t be anxious all the time.”

The atmosphere was so natural that her true feelings came out without her even realizing it.

“If you keep deceiving me, it becomes difficult to tell what is real.”

“…”

There was a room at the end of the hallway. John left the room and looked at her blankly. The smile on his lips remained the same, but his red eyes contained an unknown emotion.

She quickly added another word.

“Of course I will trust you no matter what you do.”

“Yes, you can do that.”

John nodded his head slowly.

“There is no need to be confused. Because everything is real. Everything you see, feel and experience is real. There is no need to be anxious and have unnecessary doubts.”

John whispered sweetly, affectionately grabbing her disheveled hair and tucking it behind her ear.

“But maybe it was my fault for making it all confusing. I’m sorry for not being trustworthy.”

“No. What does John have to apologize for? I said this lightly too.”

She waved her hands to keep her true feelings from sounding too heavy without realizing it. Then John kissed her forehead and slowly opened the door.

“I will try not to make you anxious from now on.”

And whispered into her ear.

“So, try opening the door. If you open this, you will feel less anxious.”

Another gift?!

‘Surely there won’t be anyone this time?’

She believed that the dark side would not have prepared such an original gift twice in a row. Still, she did not relax and carefully entered the door.

There was a pile of newspapers near the gray pillar.

When she glanced at Johan, he nodded his head as if he had done well.

‘These are newspapers about me, right?’

Unlike the one that had been scraped around the reporters’ necks just now, it was a full transcript. Even if she just glanced at it, her name was written in large letters.

‘This is all about me…’

There were dozens of bundles of newspapers piled up. Even all the newspapers gathered were published on different dates.

“John. Why are these newspapers…”

“These are the things I gathered while researching your rumors.”

John looked at the newspaper in her hand with a strange look.

“Then I found out that there was a mastermind at the forefront of the absurdly spreading articles.”

She swallowed her saliva.

‘I was planning to find out clearly from Mireyu in prison.’

“So who is behind it?”

“The Libertan Dukes.”

John put his hand in his pocket and kicked away a bundle of newspapers. As the gentlemanly John smiled crookedly, he looked oddly delinquent.

“Of course, it wasn’t just the Libertan Dukes who did it. Quite a few other nobles also participated. But the place that started first was the Libertan Dukes.”

Red eyes glowed in the backlight. Even as he was discarding the newspaper like trash, John’s eyes were only focused on her.

“It’s so strange.”

“…”

“When I was researching you, nothing like this came up. Until now, these reporters had nothing to do with Libertan.”

“…But suddenly evidence related to Libertan emerged?”

She barely managed to separate her lips that wouldn’t separate.

“How can you do that?”

John slightly furrowed one of his eyebrows.

“Well, I’m curious too. How is that possible? After conducting such a thorough investigation, a witness has finally come forward who remembered that the reporter who wrote this newspaper actually visited the Libertan. No matter how inaccurate a person’s memory is, how can it still be so consistently strange?”

The red eyes were as ferocious as a wild beast about to eat its prey. She could sense some kind of anger in his voice.

‘I’m scared.’

She lowered her head, afraid to meet John’s gaze. Her shoulders were shaking without her knowing. Newspapers were seen scattered on the floor.

Estelle Libertan.

Her name was visible at a glance even in small letters.

‘The Libertan duchy even did something like that?’

This was her first time hearing this.

‘I just thought people hated me…’

In fact, didn’t the reporters whom John just brought in also testify that they had no choice but to slander her, the most talked-about person in the empire?

She thought that was why she became a villain. Because people wanted to hate someone who was lucky as much as they admired them.

‘Will John trust me?’

She was a victim of this, but she knew nothing. Even though she lived in the Libertan duchy for so long, she never noticed it. In short, it didn’t help at all.

‘That’s the same question.’

Now that they knew what the Duke and Duchess of Libertan did, how could they know about the strange phenomenon?

She heard John stepping on the newspaper and approaching. But she couldn’t bear to raise her head. John’s shoes came into view.

John asked after looking at her quietly for a while.

“Do you know anything about this place?”

“…I don’t know.”

John’s elegant, long hand grasped her chin. It was a careful touch. Fortunately, the man she encountered did not seem angry.

“I didn’t know that my parents even manipulated my notoriety. When I think about it, yes. I think my parents had no choice but to do that.”

She thought the Duke and Duchess of Libertan hated her and allowed Mireyu to spread strange rumors in social circles.

But that wasn’t it. They wanted to make her the villainess anyway, so Mireyu would have been a very good vehicle. John’s mouth hardened at her empty yet quiet smile.

“Other than that, is there anything you want to say?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

She looked at Johan, who was as handsome as a picture, and spoke as carefully as she could.

“I really never thought about this. Because my body was weak and I was always at the mansion, I was insensitive to news-”

“But why does your expression look like that?”

“Huh?”

He held her squirming hand and touched her cheek.

‘What kind of expression am I making?’

John gritted his teeth at her reaction and spoke slowly.

“You don’t look sad at all right now. Like you knew it would happen.”

“…”

“Really, you have nothing to say?”

Her mind went blank.

‘John ​​is suspicious of me.’

Her heart was pounding loudly. The back of her neck became chilly and she broke into a cold sweat. She was so scared that her head couldn’t turn properly.

‘I’ve already won a lot of awards…’

It was quite shocking to her that the Libertan Dukes wanted to turn her into a villain. But she had already gotten rid of her lingering feelings for those two people a long time ago. So it wasn’t that sad. And he ended up exposing that face in front of John.

‘I should have kept acting.’

All this time, she wasn’t just in front of John as ‘Estelle’. She had to be in front of John as an adopted daughter who was ‘loved by Libertan’.

‘Since when did this start happening?’

At some point, she probably even forgot about having to act in front of John. She was putting her guard up too much. And it was so simple to fall into the trap.

‘John ​​must have already known that I was not loved since he had even researched the newspaper like this.’

Instinctive fear ran down her spine.

‘But in the meantime, it seemed like he knew something too.’

At least she could have pretended that she was not loved from the beginning. She had no idea how disgusting she would look in John’s eyes.

“I, I. So I…”

All this time, she acted innocently, like she was a beloved daughter.

‘What should I do now?’

In times of crisis like this, she needed to keep our heads cool. But she couldn’t calm down at all. She thought she was walking towards the right answer, but she seemed to realize that she was falling off a cliff.

“I, I didn’t mean to fool John.”

Tears welled up in her voice.

‘Why am I crying again?’

Now that she’s been caught pretending to be a beloved daughter, it’s going to look even worse. So she needed to show a more resolute side. Even now, somehow, she needed to resolve this situation.

“So I…”

Her body didn’t work the way she wanted it to. John’s red eyes seemed to shine more fiercely. She was scared and pulled on John’s sleeve.

“I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Her true feelings came out again without explanation.

“Because I’m scared of this moment ending.”

“…”

“It’s my fault. If you ask me, I will answer everything you ask. I’m sorry for deceiving you all this time.”

‘John. Why don’t you say anything?’

“Therefore…”

Because, as an unloved daughter, she was no longer worthy of revenge. Because she knew that for sure.

‘Are you planning on throwing away the worthless me?’

 

—————————————————————

Translator Note: