After I Died, My Husband Went Mad [EN]: Chapter 19

Thud.

Long hair fell to the floor.

“Goodness, I should have done this sooner.”

With a lighter feeling on her shoulders, Sebelia smiled faintly.

“Neat.”

She shook her head once, then scanned the floor. The long hair she had grown for so long was sprawled out like tangled thread. Sebelia could hardly believe it had come from her.

“But you cut off too much. To cut it this short, above the shoulders like this…”

Sebelia left the despondent Denisa behind and picked up a broom, wanting to distract her from the rather gruesome sight.

“They say hair grows by eating time.”

Sebelia said in a flat tone as she dumped the hair into the trash can.

“I don’t need hair grown from pain, now that I’ve abandoned the past. So don’t be too upset, Denisa.”

She meant it. The memories of Weden, the time in Inverness, no longer held her captive.

“And actually, I tried to cut it once before. But people were against it, so I couldn’t go through with it.”

Sebelia smiled wryly, recalling that time.

After moving to Inverness, Sebelia had tried to cut her hair as she was doing now. If it hadn’t been for Diheart’s words, she certainly would have.

[The North gets cold suddenly, unlike what you imagine.]

[Pardon?]

It was an unexpected remark. But Diheart’s eyes were serious.

[To Northerners, hair is almost like thermal wear. And… doesn’t your neck get cold when you tie it up like that?]

He approached with a disapproving look, untied her hair tie himself, and gently brushed her hair back.

[Yes. This is much more reassuring.]

His voice was laced with laughter.

Before she knew it, Sebelia noticed a small pin stuck in her ear. In the end, she gave up cutting her hair.

‘There was a time like that,’ Sebelia thought.

Sebelia shook her head, dismissing memories that no longer needed to be revisited. In the past, she had dreamed of restoring her relationship with Diheart, remembering that day.

“But not anymore.”

The Sebelia of Inverness was dead.

It was time to live a new life, unrelated to Diheart. So there was no reason to carry around the hair that had grown by consuming that time, like baggage.

“Sigh…”

Still, Denisa couldn’t shake off her regret.

‘Well, cutting off hair that has been grown for over twenty years in one go is not something that can be done without a strong resolution,’ Sebelia thought.

Sebelia shrugged, recalling Nelia, who cherished her hair as much as her life.

“Hair grows back if you leave it alone. Stop sighing and help me dye it.”

Sebelia grabbed the end of Denisa’s sleeve playfully.

“Do you know how envious I was of Denisa’s hair when I was young? It looked so much prettier than my pale color.”

Sebelia took out the brown hair dye she had bought from the pharmacy and placed it on the table.

“You’re so good with words.”

“I’m not a Duchess anymore, so I have to be good with words for Denisa to care about me.”

Denisa smiled helplessly at her easygoing attitude.

A little later, the two were sitting by the sunlit window. Sebelia entrusted her hair to Denisa and flipped through a book. The scent of chemicals, the composition of which she didn’t know, gently brushed her nose, but it wasn’t too bothersome.

In fact, what bothered her the most was something else.

At some point, Sebelia realized she was reading the same page over and over again, so she closed the book and asked Denisa.

“Father… attended the funeral, I heard.”

A brief silence lingered between the two. Denisa hesitated, then nodded. As she was not a noble, she could not attend the funeral. But there was a story she had heard before leaving.

“I heard he looked very heartbroken. Of course… he probably wasn’t sincere.”

“Yes. Of course, he would be.”

‘If Father had sincerely repented his sins, how dare he show his face at my funeral,’ she thought.

“It’s funny, I guess I was expecting something new.”

Sebelia sighed and rubbed her cold fingertips. It was only natural for the Marquis of Weden to attend her funeral.

[Your mother passed on that dirty blood to you.]

[You pathetic thing, I had expectations because even half of Weden’s blood flows through you.]

No matter how he treated her, to the outside world, the Marquis of Weden maintained the image of cherishing his illegitimate youngest daughter quite a bit.

[I can’t understand the contents of the letters you send. I used you to extract information from the North? I knew you had a victim complex since you were young, but you’re crossing the line.]

Although his true self was a ruthless man who used his children and abandoned them miserably without any regrets.

‘Still, I guess there’s a big difference between vaguely thinking that’s how it would be and it becoming a concrete reality,’ she mused.

Sebelia leaned back in her chair, realizing her noticeably depressed state. She had held a very slight expectation that he might feel remorse for her death.

‘That can’t be.’

Sebelia closed her eyes, thinking that if possible, she wanted to scrape off half of the blood she had inherited from him.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Marquis of Weden, the target of considerable resentment, was leisurely spending time at a salon [a social gathering, often in a private residence].

It was a party hosted by a famous figure from the North, and Silas had to buy quite a bit of wine to secure an invitation.

‘But it wasn’t a wasted expense.’

He sat down, listened to the stories flowing into his ears, and raised his glass.

Today, as always, the gossip about Inverness was a hot topic.

“Is lightning still striking there?”

“The Duke must be a little strange. You know, that curse that appears from time to time…”

The nobles, sitting in groups of twos and threes in the salon, competed to tell their stories.

The hottest topic was, of course, about the Inverness family. A duchess who committed suicide due to a ghost’s curse, followed by a duke whose blood awakened a curse. It was a series of events that made the hearts of the idle nobles flutter.

“I heard that the Hiland servants are leaving one by one. They say they can’t live there anymore because they’re scared.”

“My goodness, then that’s quite a reliable rumor.”

“How scary, a curse that drives people crazy one by one. The Duke might commit suicide following his wife.”

Small laughter erupted, and a strange smile spread across Silas’s lips as he listened to the story.

‘Suicide, huh.’

Was that bastard the kind of child who would commit suicide?

Silas shook his head, recalling her bloodline. She was a child with an obsession with life and tenacious vitality, befitting her lowly origins.

And above all…

‘That bitch must have awakened her abilities.’

Silas emptied his glass, recalling Nate, who had returned with an uncontrollable face, telling him what had happened.

[She must be crazy. She was summoning spiders, learning strange things from somewhere!]

As soon as Silas heard that story, he sighed with belated regret that he should have checked on Sebelia.

But what could he do? The funeral had already been held, and Sebelia was either in that coffin or…

“Running away.”

He knew very well what Sebelia’s abilities were. Her mother had cheated him and ran away in that way.

“I won’t be fooled twice.”

The man’s vile face was reflected on the empty glass.

* * *

Sebelia, standing in front of the mirror, swept her short hair back with her hand. She saw a woman with striking hazelnut-colored short hair. No matter where you looked, you couldn’t find the pale and listless Sebelia.

“…I like it.”

Sebelia smiled freely, looking at herself in the mirror for the first time in a long time.

She couldn’t do anything about the blue eyes she inherited from her father, but changing her hair made her look like a different person.

“It’s just a change in hair color, but it creates a completely different atmosphere.”

If it had been like this from the beginning, would people have liked me a little more?

Sebelia inadvertently thought that, but immediately dismissed it.

‘That can’t be.’

The people of the Weden family would have hated her for some reason, even if she had been the most beautiful person in the world.

‘Because I’m the daughter of the mother who abandoned me.’

That’s what an illegitimate child who is not recognized in the family is like.

“…That’s enough. It’s all in the past now.”

Sebelia, with a determined expression, put on her coat. Now that she had finished getting ready, it was time to leave for the new town.

“Denisa, have you packed all your luggage?”

Calling Denisa, Sebelia turned lightly. The sunlight that came in through the open window softly landed on the hallway. A bluebird followed behind, hopping along.

“Come here.”

The small bird, fluttering up, sat on her shoulder.

It was time for a pleasant start.

* * *

The mansion where the funeral was over was usually shrouded in a gloomy atmosphere.

Because everyone spends their time reminiscing about the departed and organizing memories that they couldn’t bear to let go of. But there was no such case anywhere.

Roman, who had been the Inverness family’s doctor for three generations, strained his voice with all his might.

“D, Duke. Just calm down and be rational…”

“Calm down and be rational.”

Diheart, who grabbed Roman by the collar, stared at him with eyes so calm that it sent shivers down his spine. The surface of his eyes, polished like well-ground gold bullion, was eerie in itself.

“That’s a virtue that you should have as a doctor. It’s not an ethic that you dare to apply to me.”

“Cough, cough…”

“So, as a doctor, you were so overly rational that you didn’t even properly see my wife’s last moments and left it to a worthless town doctor?”

A chilling voice echoed through the room. Roman swallowed hard with a pale face.

‘Damn it, damn it, damn it!’

He closed his eyes tightly and thought about how he had ended up in this situation.

It was after he was urgently called after hearing the news that there was a fire in the mansion.