The Male Leads Were Stolen By The Extra [EN]: Chapter 155

Tan stood frozen, as if struck by lightning. He never imagined their reunion would unfold like this.

Following Jainy’s gaze, the woman who had been extending her hand looked up at him.

“Oh, are you the child’s father? I was clumsy and fell. I’m so sorry,” she apologized, bowing her head. Her demeanor was that of meeting a stranger for the first time.

“Whoa… That’s the woman I saw,” MacRyan, who had been stammering in surprise beside him, finally regained his composure and muttered.

“Umm, Uncle!” Jainy, diligently looking back and forth between him and the woman, exclaimed.

“Ah, you’re her uncle. I’m sorry,” a look of embarrassment spread across her face as she realized her mistake.

“It’s… alright,” a choked, cracked voice escaped his lips.

With that face he had never forgotten, not for a single moment, she helped Jainy up.

Then, kindly, she brushed the dirt off Jainy’s skirt with her own hands.

Tan could only watch the scene with trembling eyes.

“Then,” having finished what she needed to do, and with no reason to linger, she slightly bowed her head and walked past him.

Tan didn’t stop her.

He didn’t ask her name.

Because he already knew of her existence, and her name.

* * *

Passing them by casually, she hurried out of the market and hid behind a pillar near the entrance.

“Oh my gosh…” she whispered, trying to calm her racing heart.

Her name was Renia Astell.

The youngest daughter of Count Astell, born and raised in the southern part of the county.

Born as the cherished youngest daughter, she had black hair and brown eyes, unlike her parents, who had blonde hair and blue eyes.

Even her two older brothers resembled their parents, but she was the only one who was different.

She had often wondered if she was adopted when she was young, and the thought had hurt her.

But she was indeed her parents’ biological child.

Moreover, her parents cherished her, who was different from them, even more, as did her older brothers.

In the end, she grew up happily within the warm embrace of her family, surrounded by their unchanging and infinite love.

Then, during a family trip for her upcoming 24th birthday, something unbelievable happened.

The man she had just met.

How could such a person exist?

“How could there be someone like that…” she thought.

From the moment their eyes met, she couldn’t look away.

She had never seen anyone like him before.

A height that towered over other adult men. A body that looked so strong that her bones would break if she bumped into him.

Everything about him was overwhelming, but especially his face was breathtaking.

Black hair and bright red eyes. Everything about him was intense.

His high nose, his sharply defined jawline, that unforgettable face.

He must have been the greatest masterpiece among God’s creations.

Otherwise, there was no way to explain that face.

“Uncle, he’s her uncle…” Renia muttered without realizing it.

“Huh?” Then she was puzzled by her own reaction.

Why did she feel relieved after learning that he was the child’s uncle?

Why was she happy that he wasn’t the child’s father? Was she crazy?

She was dumbfounded and couldn’t believe these feelings.

She had lived for 24 years without ever being interested in men.

But that face…

“He seemed to have a lot of stories,” she thought.

The man’s face didn’t show much emotion, but his eyes were different.

It might be a far-fetched assumption, but the red eyes that looked at her seemed somehow sad, beyond mere affection.

So much so that her heart ached.

“What?” Just then, her second older brother, who had followed her to the market, approached.

“What is it?”

“That child you bumped into earlier. She looked like you, Rea.”

“Really? Even to you, Oppa [older brother]?” Renia’s eyes widened at those words.

When she first saw the child’s face, she was also surprised.

The child who had bumped into her and fallen looked a lot like her.

“Black hair isn’t common, but her face resembles you.”

“I see. That’s strange.”

Could there be something related to her?

“Rea.”

While she was lost in thought, a gentle call was heard. It was her father.

With lingering feelings, she turned around, but she couldn’t find them in the market.

“I wish I could see him again…”

“What did you say?”

“No. Nothing.”

With regret, she walked towards her father, who was waiting with her second older brother, Wharton.

* * *

“So you knew all along?” MacRyan asked again and again, as if he couldn’t believe it.

The three of them were in a park not far from the market.

Jainy, exhausted, was lying on a bench.

“Ha, really…” MacRyan ran his hand through his hair in disbelief.

He couldn’t understand.

The woman they met in the market today.

That woman was definitely Eun-young’s reincarnation. Her hair, eye color, and even her face were exactly the same.

And what was even more certain was the aura he felt from her. It was the aura of Eun-young that he knew.

Since reincarnation actually existed, that woman couldn’t be anyone else.

It was Eun-young.

“Knowing that, why… weren’t you waiting until now?”

He knew that the reason he had been holed up in the Grand Duke’s castle for over 30 years after she died, the reason he had never taken off the ring to the point where the mark wouldn’t disappear, and the reason he had been tending the garden every year was all for her.

But he stayed still even though he knew? Why?

“Then instead of this, go right now…!”

“Go. And do what?”

“What? What else can you do! Of course, tell her who you are…”

“If she had her memories, she would have come to find me first.”

Tan pressed his eyes, feeling tired.

24 years ago, he instinctively realized that the one person he had longed for had reappeared in this world.

But she had never come to find him even once.

That meant she had reincarnated as promised, but she didn’t remember him.

“Then just explain it from the beginning! Who you are and who she is!” MacRyan punched his chest with his fist, frustrated. He couldn’t understand him acting like a fool.

“Go up to someone who doesn’t have memories of her past life and suddenly say, ‘You were my lover, and we were a couple’? Would you be able to accept that if you heard it? No, would you even be able to believe it in the first place?”

“That’s… !” MacRyan, who had been raising his voice, closed his mouth.

There was no way he could answer that.

Unlike MacRyan, who was only thinking about his own emotions, Tan, who had been waiting for this moment for decades, was even considering the confusion that Eun-young would experience.

“She doesn’t have memories of her past life, so I should recklessly invade the life of her who is living in the present, when I am living in the past?”

“But…”

“Would you be able to fully accept that if you were her?”

The fierce red eyes glared at MacRyan before averting their gaze.

Tan looked at the sky with a complicated feeling, recalling the face he had seen earlier.

Several years after she was born, he went to find her.

He watched her from afar.

The new family she had were very good people.

She was being loved. He was relieved.

So sometimes he would go to find her when he thought of her.

He just watched her from a distance so she wouldn’t notice.

Every time he saw her, she was smiling, and her family was next to her.

Her face, having forgotten all about her past with him, couldn’t have looked happier.

So he couldn’t recklessly break that happiness.

Even if she was Eun-young, he couldn’t arbitrarily invade her life or take away her current happiness. He had no right to do so.

The her who was with him had passed away, and the current Renia didn’t remember him.

So Tan could wait.

Even if it was just waiting, spending all day locked in a room, looking out the window, he could wait as he had been doing.

Then, he thought, wouldn’t the day come when she would remember him and come to find him first?

“…Foolish guy. Who’s going to recognize that?” MacRyan, who had learned everything, said to Tan.

He had been waiting for only one person until now, but when the opportunity to meet finally came, why was he dismissing the result of that wait as selfishness only for himself?

Even a human couldn’t be this considerate.

He was so foolish that it was suffocating.