As I stared at his face, which seemed to be a mixture of bewilderment and worry, Mahir cautiously opened his mouth.
“Kyle, I’ve told you this before, but you can’t judge a person based on their appearance.”
“No, it’s not the appearance that’s the problem. I mean, if that was… anyway, it’s not about appearance.”
Mahir laughed as I spoke.
“I’m not necessarily talking about appearance. How unfamiliar must this country be if one comes from so far away? At first, they’ll be so anxious to adapt that they can’t afford to care about anything else.”
“…Brother, I appreciate you saying that, but that’s not really the problem.”
Mahir tilted his head once again as I spoke weakly. I couldn’t tell him that Aegis had adapted so well that she thought of this place as her own home.
“Are your personalities incompatible?”
I pursed my lips as Mahir asked in a worried voice.
“Kyle.”
As I lowered my head, Mahir called out to me. I glanced up and saw his brow had creased slightly.
“I’m just asking just in case…”
“Hm?”
“Did you get into a fight?”
“……”
I was so surprised by those words that I stopped breathing. Come to think of it, I had a split lip from being beaten up yesterday, but I’d forgotten all about it.
“Who? With whom?”
“……”
“What are you talking about? Am I the kind of person to go around getting beaten up?”
I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, but the suspicion still remained. Mahir looked at me for a moment without saying a word, then asked.
“So it’s just an injury from a fall?”
“Huh? Yeah, I fell.”
I couldn’t help but panic as the excuse I had in mind came out of Mahir’s mouth. Outwardly, I replied casually, but on the inside, I was screaming.
“Did you apply medicine?”
“Yes.”
“If you say so, then.”
“……”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
P vlvc’a xcbk ktja ab rjs ab atbrf wfjclcuoei kbgvr, rb P ibbxfv jgbecv, obecv j afjmeq, jcv delmxis qbegfv lar mbcafcar lcab ws wbeat.
“Jbeut…!”
“Gglcx ribkis. P kbc’a jrx jcs wbgf defralbcr.”
“Jbeut, mbeut… mbeut!”
Zjtlg, ktb qjaafv wf bc atf yjmx jr P xfqa mtbxlcu bc afj, jrxfv.
“You didn’t hit her back, did you?”
“You said you wouldn’t ask!”
“No matter how angry you are, you can’t treat a girl like that…”
“I didn’t hit her! I didn’t hit her! I said I didn’t hit her!”
I shouted, giving up altogether, and Mahir sighed again. My throat was still sore and I was coughing forcibly when the nagging started.
“That doesn’t mean you should be the one getting beaten.”
“I know.”
I couldn’t bear to say that she said she wouldn’t hit me, but as soon as I let go, she punched me in the face without even thinking about it.
“It’s your problem, so I won’t say much. Anyway, you understand, right?”
“Yes, I’ll do my best, so don’t worry about me.”
I couldn’t have Mahir bothering with such a trivial matter. I sighed heavily, and his large hand patted the top of my head.
“It’s okay to be nervous. I’m just worried that bad rumors will start spreading about you.”
“……”
Mahir’s affectionate words made me wrinkle my nose. I wanted to cling to his back and whine all day like I did when I was a kid. If I were a year younger, I would’ve acted like that, but now that I was almost seventeen and just got married yesterday, I had act like an adult.
As I was getting myself together, Mahir spoke to me, as if he suddenly remembered something.
“You know that Velaine-nim was from the Western Continent, right?”
The familiar yet unfamiliar name left me speechless for a moment.
“I’ve heard so… but why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?”
“Well, there’s something else you don’t know.”
“What?”
When I asked Mahir, he closed his mouth with a troubled look on his face. Somehow, I started to have an ominous feeling.
Velaine Calderaia.
She was my mother, the woman who gave birth to me. She died shortly after having me, so I’d only seen her portrait a few times, and she wasn’t in my memory.
The reason I had light-colored eyes, which were impossible for an Akhtan to have, was because my mother was from the Western Continent. In her portrait, her eyes were pale gray with a hint of blue.
It seemed like I’d inherited them.
“Why all of a sudden? Why are you talking about that?”
When I asked, feeling uneasy for an unknown reason, Mahir, who had been hesitating, spoke cautiously.
“She was a princess of the Kingdom of Calderaia.”
“Oh?”
“…Maybe His Majesty thought of… the Kingdom of Calderaia must’ve reminded him of her.”
“……”
My head was spinning, and I couldn’t understand what Mahir was saying. I stared at him blankly and tried to piece things together.
“Aegis is from Calderaia.”
Mahir nodded.
“The reason His Majesty suddenly asked me to get married… is because my mother is from Calderaia… So… No, wait a minute, then Aegis and I… .”
My heart began to beat faster and faster as I began to get things straightened out. Feeling at a loss, I asked in a low voice.
“We’re not distantly related or something, are we?”
It was true that I was angry at Khalifa for thinking like that, but this was the biggest problem.
Please, please.
I prayed desperately on the inside, and fortunately Mahir shook his head.
“I looked into it, but it’s not like that.”
Those words made me sigh in relief. But that didn’t mean the situation wasn’t absurd.
“That’s ridiculous, really. I mean, what if we were?”
Did Khalifa really think that if he committed incest, that everyone else would be okay with it? Either way, he was a lunatic.
“Is that all there is to it? Did he suddenly go ahead with the marriage because he thought of my mother when he saw me?”
“I guess so…”
“Should I ask him if it’s really like that?”
I couldn’t follow his thought process with common sense. When I asked, pondering, and Mahir looked serious.
“No. Mentioning Velaine-nim is forbidden by imperial order.”
“Don’t you have any information?”
I asked, but Mahir shook his head heavily.
“I looked for it, but it was all erased a long time ago.”
“……”
I had a feeling it was so, but hearing it in person was a surprise. Why was the Akhtan imperial family so fond of hiding and destroying their past?
Probably because they’d done things that they deserved to be punished for.
As I inwardly answered my own question, Mahir spoke again.
“And there’s something else you need to know.”
“What? What else do I need to know?”
When I asked with a frown, Mahir pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to my mouth.
“The royal family of Calderaia has a foreign race among its ancestors.”
“……”
“As time passes, blood thins and they’re no different from ordinary humans, but sometimes… they say that a particularly unique person is born.”
“……”
When I opened my mouth a little wider to speak, I reopened the injury on my lip. I felt a dull ache, but that wasn’t my problem right now.
“The last king, who’s now deceased, was like that. In the current generation, it’s said there’s one such person… but I don’t know whether it’s Princess Aegis or not.”
I asked with a dumbfounded look on my face after I listened to Mahir’s words.
“So you’re saying that the blood of a different race might flow in my body, too?”
Mahir shook his head at my words.
“Velaine-nim was an ordinary person. Since there’s such a thing as generational inheritance, it’s not completely impossible. But as I said, it’s so thinned out now that most are no different from ordinary people. You’re not even a direct descendant.”
I wasn’t sure if I should’ve been relieved by Mahir’s words or not.
No, that wasn’t what was important right now. I quickly racked my brain to make sense of the shocking facts Mahir had told me.
“You say so, but you mean that Aegis might not be human?”
Mahir frowned and nodded at my words.
“First of all… in short, it’s like that, but the probability is low.”
“……”
He said it was unlikely, but when I heard that Aegis might not be human, I began to understand her unnatural appearance. I thought it was strange, but it turned out she wasn’t human, after all.
Aegis is so mysterious
Thank u for the update ❤️
Thank you for the update<3