The Way To Protect The Female Lead’S Older Brother [EN]: Chapter 190

How to Protect the Heroine’s Older Brother – 190

Nix instinctively tried to fight off the attacking dolls, but the restraints activated in response to his resistance, and he was helplessly pinned.

“What are you doing…!”

The dolls threw him to the floor.

“Can’t you just stop this now? Noel…!”

With his cheek pressed against the cold glass, Nix glared at Noel, his eyes wide.

Noel flinched at the intense gaze, then offered a flimsy excuse.

“It’s your fault! Because you keep avoiding me…!”

A sharp premonition pierced Nix without warning.

He shuddered, an ominous feeling crawling down his spine.

“You… you didn’t come to save me, did you?”

Finally, the low, rough, and strained question escaped Nix’s lips.

Noel’s pupils flickered.

“I….”

A stammered word escaped Noel’s dry, cracked lips.

The words that followed hit Nix like a physical blow, so unreal he couldn’t process them.

“I need your heart.”

“What…?”

What did he need?

Heart?

Did he really say heart?

Surely, he must have misheard….

And then, as their eyes met again, a different emotion filled Noel’s face.

He rushed closer to Nix and bent down.

Nix flinched at the sudden closeness, but Noel didn’t seem to notice.

“Nix. Dante….”

He seemed to have forgotten that he was the one who had ordered Nix to be bound and pinned to the floor.

“Dante is d-dead.”

“What the hell….”

“When I found him, his neck was twisted at a weird angle, he wasn’t breathing, and his body was so cold….”

Noel’s voice was thick with emotion, as if confiding in a close friend or family member.

In truth, this was the first chance Noel had had to express his shock and grief to anyone since Dante’s death.

From the beginning, the only people he truly kept close and shared his feelings with were Dante and Nix, so it was only natural.

“So I tried everything to make him move again, but nothing worked….”

Noel continued to ramble, his words tumbling over each other.

The more he spoke, the more agitated he became, until his face twisted with grief and he began to sob in front of Nix.

As if to emphasize his suffering, Noel’s face was a mess.

The words he poured out, unable to hold back, were equally chaotic.

But Nix was able to piece together the meaning.

Dante’s death was a shock to Nix as well.

Now he understood Noel’s strange behavior.

He finally understood why Dante, who was always at Noel’s side, hadn’t been seen during the hearing [an official inquiry or trial].

However, the more he heard Noel’s fragmented and broken words, the more a different emotion began to build within Nix.

“B-but it’s okay.”

Whether he realized it or not, Noel stared straight at him with eyes that seemed almost blindly devoted, whispering words that sent a chill down Nix’s spine.

“Nix, you’re here, so it’s okay now.”

The same madness he had seen yesterday was etched on Noel’s face.

The light in his eyes shone so intensely it seemed almost blue.

Once he understood the meaning of Noel’s words, he couldn’t suppress the goosebumps that prickled his skin.

So, now….

“If I just have your heart, then Dante will come back.”

Was he saying he would take his heart out and give it to Dante?

To turn Dante into a doll instead of Nix?

If he did that, he would die…?

“Nix, you’re my doll. So you’ll understand, right? Right?”

Noel looked down at Nix with desperate eyes.

It was an earnest tone, even though he never intended to ask for his consent.

His face looked so pitiful that Nix felt a pang of sympathy before he could stop himself.

Nix bit down hard on his chattering teeth.

He had never truly and sincerely served Noel as his master from the bottom of his heart.

Yet, at this moment, he felt a chill so intense it was unbearable.

In the end….

Was this the end that awaited him?

He knew that no matter how much he was cherished and called pretty, that affection was no different from the affection given to a pet kept for amusement.

Whenever he saw the dolls being broken in Noel’s hands when Noel’s mood soured, he comforted himself by saying, ‘I am different from them,’ but deep down, he knew he wasn’t that different.

That was why.

That was why Nix had always felt such a chilling revulsion towards Noel….

“…Don’t be ridiculous.”

A suppressed voice leaked from his tightly clenched lips, tasting of bitter blood.

Nix glared at Noel, as if spitting the words out.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you crazy bastard…!”

He made him as he pleased, and now that he was no longer useful, he was trying to kill him?

He brought him to life and killed him as he pleased….

He didn’t even want to be born like this in the first place!

His insides burned black as if his heart had been seared with a hot iron.

His whole body trembled with a raging fury, and his vision turned red.

“You’re going to take my heart?”

Surely, Nix’s beginning was Noel Vertium.

But did that mean that the end of his life had to be determined by him as well?

“Who do you think you are?”

This was why he hated humans. This was why he loathed humans so much.

They always treated him like an insect, always trying to manipulate him as they pleased.

And then they treated him like useless trash, and him, him….

“Father, I… I don’t want to die.”

A strange illusion bloomed before his eyes. It was a tiresome sight that he had seen in his dreams dozens of times already.

“Please save me. Please save me, Father. Please… please save me….”

Forgetting his pride, he clung on, overwhelmed by the desire to live.

He was desperate, even though he knew that such pleas would be useless.

But the person in front of him kicked him away with a merciless foot that held no pity, as if he were annoyed.

The left eye that was injured at that time still throbbed as if it were on fire.

A black shadow appeared through the blood spreading before his eyes.

As always at the end of the illusion, it was the figure of the Grim Reaper coming to kill him.

When he closed his eyes and opened them, the face of the black monster had changed to Noel’s.

“Who do you think you are to kill me as you please?”

A cold flame swallowed him whole from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

…That’s right. He couldn’t tolerate it any longer.

“Who gets to decide.”

This time, he would not allow his end to be decided by someone else.

Such a thing….

“Who gets to decide…!”

Such a thing was enough with just one past life!

Nix threw off the dolls with all his might and lunged at Noel.

Clang!

The restraints activated again, but from the start, Nix was not a complete living being.

So the effect was incomplete, and moreover, he was now losing his mind and couldn’t even feel the pain flowing through his veins.

Because the last order Noel gave to the dolls was to capture Nix, they tried to restrain him instead of attacking him.

Noel was surprised by the sudden turn of events and couldn’t react immediately.

But before Nix’s hand could reach him, the dolls succeeded in grabbing him.

Of course, Nix wasn’t going to be caught so easily.

Clang! Swish!

He wrapped the chain connected to the restraints around the neck of the doll in front of him and kicked off the floor. The doll, suddenly used as a support, staggered.

Bang!

Nix kicked the glass wall again and twisted his body.

Having freed himself from the dolls that were restraining him from both sides, Nix clung to the back of the doll with the chain around its neck.

Then he reached down and grabbed the doll’s arm.

The doll’s arm, held by Nix, swung towards Noel.

“What, what are you doing! Stop Nix, quickly!”

Crash!

As Noel ducked and avoided the blow, a terrifying sound rang out from above his head.

The glass that took the impact instead of Noel cracked slightly.

The dolls rushed at Nix.

However, the doll that Nix was clinging to didn’t seem to have decided on a course of action yet.

In the meantime, Nix moved the doll as he pleased to block the other dolls.

But the dolls’ defense was solid, so his attack didn’t reach Noel.

Noel was still leaning against the wall, sitting blankly and staring at him, as if he had never expected Nix to do this.

But it was not a funny situation at all.

Because it was Noel who had tried to kill him first.

For Nix, it was the first betrayal of his life.

He had been abandoned by the creator who made him, and conversely, he was abandoning such a master.