After I Died, My Husband Went Mad [EN]: Chapter 53

‘Why are you acting like this?’

Sevelia was bewildered. She felt surprised, dazed, and a little put off. This was the husband who had ignored her, even after losing his memories.

“Then, enjoy your meal.”

With those words, Dihart turned away. Sevelia stared at the lavishly prepared breakfast, her mouth opening and closing several times. A delicious aroma rose, but a spicy scent also tickled her nose.

She picked up her fork and started with the salad. The salad, with its variety of dressings and seasonal fruits, was perfect for stimulating her appetite.

‘I never thought the day would come when I would receive such treatment from Dihart.’

She realized her mistake. The Dihart now was different from the one in the past. Just as she had changed, she had to treat him as a completely different person. But she couldn’t help it.

Same face, same physique, same voice. Even without memories, everything about him kept reminding her of the past. Suddenly, she felt like she was losing her appetite.

“Is there nothing to your liking?”

Sevelia was picking at her salad when Dihart, who had been standing by the wall, hesitated and asked. She hadn’t realized Dihart was still in the room, so she was startled and jumped up from her seat. Dihart quickly approached and steadied the swaying chair.

“Oh, when did you get there?”

“I’ve been here since the beginning… I startled you.”

Dihart lowered his eyebrows and apologized. Sevelia almost stabbed her hand with the fork she was holding. The Dihart who had lost his memories was strangely affectionate, but this was too much.

‘Is that really Dihart? Isn’t he just someone else with the same face?’

The past and present Dihart flashed through her mind: the times she endured the maids’ mockery while walking through the hallway, his cold eyes glancing at her, and now, the crestfallen look on his face like a dejected puppy.

Even if he lost his memories, how could a person change this much? Sevelia felt the need to deeply explore the nature of people.

She took a deep breath and sat back down. Dihart was standing right next to the table. Sevelia looked up at him in disbelief.

“You’re not planning to attend to my meal, are you? Dihart, you’re not a servant.”

“I’m not a servant, but Mr. Worth asked me to help Bella.”

Dihart said, pushing the sour salad away. It was one of the things she didn’t like. Sevelia muttered, watching the receding plate.

“I don’t know when ‘help’ became watching me eat.”

“It’s dangerous if you suddenly collapse while eating. You don’t know how dangerous the tool you’re holding is, do you?”

Dihart replied calmly, filling her empty glass with water. His skillful movements were like those of an experienced butler.

“Dihart, this is…”

“Can’t friends do this much for each other?”

‘No, since when were we friends?’

The words caught in her throat. Sevelia stared at him with wide eyes before turning her head. This was all due to a difference in experience. She may have heard harsh words throughout her life, but she had never uttered them herself.

“Still, this is uncomfortable.”

Sevelia said with a deep sigh.

“Just sit across from me instead.”

“Me?”

“Who else would be here?”

Sevelia said, tearing a piece of bread with her hands. Strangely, being around him seemed to make her personality a bit rougher. She had even wanted to hit him on the forehead earlier.

‘Did I have such a bad side in me?’

Was it because of the abuse she suffered from her family since she was young? She was afraid that she would become violent. That was also why she didn’t utter harsh words. She didn’t want to become like her father.

Meanwhile, Dihart, having received permission to join her, gripped his pounding heart and left the room to get a chair. Just then, Claude, who was passing by in the hallway, saw him and rushed over in surprise.

* * *

After confirming that Dihart wasn’t about to have another seizure, Claude breathed a sigh of relief and went to the dining room with him. Worth was sleeping in, so no one else was in the dining room.

“Looks like it’s going well according to plan?”

Claude asked, cracking an egg on the frying pan. Dihart paused while counting the types of desserts Sevelia would eat. Reading his hesitant attitude, Claude frowned and turned around.

“What’s the problem this time?”

“……”

“Dihart, talk to me. You know by now that brooding alone doesn’t solve anything smoothly.”

Dihart swept back his hair and sighed. With his hands on the table, he only turned his head and gave a bitter smile.

“Thinking that she might be real… makes it even harder. I don’t know how to treat her, what to say. My mind goes blank, and my heart beats like crazy, so I don’t even know if I’m speaking properly.”

He had committed so many sins that just being near her made his heart ache. He wanted to put in effort to build rapport and trust with her, but it felt like he was only making things worse.

The breakfast that had startled Sevelia earlier was actually made with great care, remembering her tastes. Claude had especially struggled to find the spicy spices that Sevelia liked.

‘Although it failed.’

Perhaps she didn’t crave spicy food in the morning. The salad with spicy spices was thoroughly ignored. The refreshing salad, prepared remembering that she often ate sour fruits, met the same fate.

“Is there no choice but to aim for next time?”

It would be easy to dig into her and track her down, assuming she was fake. It was an easy and simple path, and there was no need for heartache. Back then, she was just an object to vent his anger on. But moving with the thought that the other person is real… his path was thorny.

“It’s daunting.”

He slumped into a chair and repeatedly washed his face with his hands. Claude sighed, moved the fried egg to a plate, and sat across from him.

“I know that feeling well. That’s how I felt yesterday.”

“What?”

“To be honest, I thought you were crazy, Dihart. I seriously wondered if there was mental illness among the side effects of that damn medicine. My newly met nephew is really crazy. I felt like the world was going dark.”

Dihart had told Claude yesterday about why he was chasing Bella. Her real name was Sevelia Inverness, and she was his dead wife.

Claude sighed, recalling that moment.

* * *

“Your wife? Are you talking about the wife buried in the Hillen Hall cemetery?”

At that time, Claude spoke calmly, looking around for a weapon to knock Dihart unconscious. Dihart, unaware of this, was immersed in sorrow and busy telling his story.

“That’s right. So, until just now, I thought Bella was fake. I thought she had stolen her appearance to seduce me. But… why would a fake person have such a painful disease? It doesn’t make sense.”

Dihart took out the pendant he was wearing around his neck, opened the lid, and handed it to Claude. Inside was Bella he knew. The hair color and length were different from now, but it was the same person inside.

“……”

“I was the one who discovered her from the beginning, and I was the one who chased her. If she is innocent, then she came here to treat the disease, not deliberately wearing Sevelia’s shell with me in mind.”

So Claude was reluctant, but decided to listen to Dihart’s words further. And he noticed one suspicious thing in Dihart’s subsequent testimony.

“Wait, hold on. When you caught Sevelia falling from the inn, did you feel any weight?”

“Weight……? I think so. For a moment, I thought I had caught the real her.”

Dihart said that he vividly felt the touch and weight, and Claude swallowed a hollow laugh. Unless some transcendent magician appeared in the world, it was not an area possible with magic.

That was the realm that only illusionists could reach. Claude was sure. The Nightmare Forest was proof of that. It was a work created by him, an illusionist, and a shaman [a person believed to be able to contact the world of spirits].

* * *

After that, Claude told Dihart about the illusionist. He seemed to be in great shock and lost his words for a while. Then, he suddenly went into a frenzy and wandered around the room like crazy.

“So, that illusionist thing can create the same existence as a real person…!”

“It’s not permanent, but it’s possible. If she prepared a corpse identical to her with the help of an illusionist, it is understandable that the funeral was held safely.”

“Ha, ha…!”

Dihart knelt down and trembled like a priest who had received a revelation from God. The last puzzle was put together. The end of the maze he had been wandering in pain was visible. He finally found the answer. The last correct answer—that Sevelia was alive—was finally in his hands.

“That’s how she ran away from me.”

All the evidence that had stubbornly shaken his intuition that the brown-haired Sevelia might be real was scattered like dust.

The funeral that day when he ran in with muddy shoes, Sevelia with a white face lying in the coffin, the last kiss he left on her forehead, her coffin, eternally buried under the ground.

The ‘facts’ that stood on the side of reason and stabbed his wavering heart became lies. He wasn’t crazy. The evidence that people pushed at him, saying she was dead, had now lost its power. She was alive.

Sevelia did not die that day.

“Ah.”

Dihart slumped down in his seat as if exhausted. He knew that even this was just one of the possibilities for now. But to him, this faint hope was like nectar.

Until just now, he had not been given any hope, for the sole reason that he had clearly seen her dead at the funeral.

“Haa…….”

Something he had forgotten flashed through his mind.

[Please take care of me too. From now on, call me Bella, Dihart.]

Even though he said he had lost his memories, she called herself Bella.