The Way To Protect The Female Lead’S Older Brother [EN]: Chapter 204

How to Protect the Heroine’s Older Brother – Episode 204

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Deon was still wandering in the abyss.

He was torn apart by the swarm of red butterflies until not even a fragment remained, dying and being resurrected countless times to repeat the same ordeal.

At the beginning and end of it all, there was always Roxana.

Invariably, Deon gazed at the fifteen-year-old girl weeping before him, and irresistibly reached out his hand.

Until now, Roxana had never once touched his fingertips.

But surprisingly…

This time, his hand touched the tears of the girl he faced.

A warm sensation permeated his cold fingertips.

At that moment, the weeping girl transformed into a young woman.

Likewise, Deon, who had become an adult, silently watched her.

Before he knew it, he was lying in a room that was both unfamiliar and familiar.

Rustle.

The curtain hanging by the window fluttered.

Deon slowly blinked, his eyelids heavy.

Faint streaks of light seeped in through his hazy vision.

For some reason, he couldn’t even twitch a finger, but it didn’t matter since he didn’t feel like moving in the first place.

It was a very real sensation, but this, too, would just be an extension of a dream.

Otherwise, Roxana wouldn’t be in front of him.

“How brazen.”

As expected, Roxana, who was looking down at him with the same cold eyes as ever, parted her lips and spoke, her voice devoid of warmth.

“To try to die so selfishly.”

Even so, it was clear that this was a new kind of dream.

A scene from the future, not the past.

Judging from her words, the current point in time was clearly after he had been swallowed by Roxana’s poisonous butterflies in that plain at sunset.

So, is this heaven?

No…

That couldn’t be.

There was no way he, who was not Asil, could die and go to a place like heaven. [Asil is likely a character who is considered virtuous or deserving of heaven.]

He would rather fall into hell and be trapped in an endless swamp of hallucinations.

“I haven’t allowed it yet, who do you think you are to try to die at your own will?”

If so, this was a very realistic illusion.

The voice that echoed in his ear and the face that formed in his vision were all vividly real.

So, Deon unknowingly let out a soft chuckle.

Roxana, who was sitting by his bedside, silently stared at him.

Golden hair illuminated by sunlight.

Quiet red eyes.

A faint fragrance that wafted around him.

Even the lukewarm breeze coming in from the open window.

It was a terribly warm and gentle scene, as if to prove that it was a dream or an illusion.

However, contrary to Deon’s thoughts, this was not a dream.

Roxana looked down at Deon, who was lying in bed.

He looked so helpless now, as if he could be easily killed by a child’s gesture.

He had escaped from the brink of death, but his body was still not fully recovered.

Perhaps that’s why he seemed to be only lying still in his place, merely opening and closing his eyes.

The faint, unfamiliar smile that fleetingly passed over Deon’s lips reminded her of what had happened not long ago.

At that time, Deon had clearly smiled as he was engulfed in her swarm of butterflies.

“Deon Agriche.”

After a while, a voice that somehow felt distant echoed in Deon’s ear again.

And finally, the whisper that pierced his eardrum penetrated even the depths of Deon’s heart.

“I won’t shed a single tear when you die.”

It was then that the remnants of the past, which had remained in his memory, surfaced from the depths of his slumber.

“Deon, did you think I wouldn’t know what you really wanted?”

The night Roxana sent Cassis Pedelian out of Agriche flashed through the back of his mind.

“Deon, shall I guess what thoughts have been inside you until now?”

The calm voice mixed with the sunlight and melted into the air.

“You were actually envious of Asil.”

However, the low voice, which felt almost gentle, rummaged through Deon’s insides as sharply as a rake.

Would it have been better if it had been a scathing tone to ridicule him?

This was even more absurd than what Sierra, Roxana’s mother, had bravely spouted in front of him before.

“Because he has what you don’t.”

But incomprehensibly…

Deon couldn’t refute those words at all.

Seeing him like that, Roxana sighed and laughed.

“You have a look on your face like you’ve been hit right on the mark.”

For some reason, a sensation as if someone was tightly clutching his heart momentarily swept through him.

“I know why you wanted to be by my side.”

The quiet voice descended upon Deon.

As before, she said that she knew something that even he didn’t know.

“It’s probably the same reason I kept you by my side.”

But Deon frowned, unable to understand those words.

The reason Roxana kept Deon by her side was clearly to take revenge on him up close.

Deon knew that, yet he handed his leash directly into Roxana’s hands.

However, Deon didn’t make that choice because he wanted to torment Roxana by her side.

If asked what the reason was…

He couldn’t answer that clearly either.

Still, he thought that the inner thoughts of the two people behind the veil could not be the same.

But the moment he met Roxana’s eyes.

A shallow ripple began to form in Deon’s heart, which had been frozen all along.

It was just like the last night he spent in Agriche. [Agriche is likely the name of a place or family.]

As if like then, Roxana faced Deon with a calm face without pouring out thorny words.

However, her eyes were faintly tinged with self-deprecation and cynicism.

She had never said these words to anyone before.

First of all, Roxana herself didn’t want to admit the underlying feelings within her.

Whenever she thought of Deon Agriche, contempt, hatred, and disgust rushed in like a habit.

But after that, like the gritty sand grains left in the wake of the receding waves, contradictory emotions wandered aimlessly in her heart.

“The relationship between that person and you is somehow strange.”

What Cassis had once told her was not wrong.

Clearly, Deon Agriche was not as simple an existence to Roxana as she thought.

Since she was young, she hated Deon so much that she often thought she wanted to kill him with her own hands if she could.

At first, it clearly started that way.

But in fact, that wasn’t all there was to it.

Roxana confessed for the first time to her weakness, which she could no longer deny.

“…In the end, I just didn’t want to be alone. You and I both.”

It was a truly ridiculous and pathetic reason.

While living in Agriche, there was never a moment when she wasn’t scared and afraid.

But because there was no one she could confide in, no one she could trust and rely on, she always had to be alone.

She couldn’t survive unless she became strong on her own.

So, as if she had forgotten the nights she locked herself in and cried, she would smile in front of people again as if nothing was wrong when the day dawned.

The Agriche mansion, with no place to rest, felt colder than ever, as if it would freeze her skin even in the middle of summer.

Deon Agriche was the man who had been standing behind her like a shadow since some time ago.

From the beginning, he was in a relationship where he could never be family or friends with her.

But Roxana was able to have one conviction when she looked at him that she had never felt from anyone else.

This person will surely always be in this place until the moment she dies.

There were countless times when she felt sick and tired of it while living.

Still, when she was struggling with a suffocating sense of loneliness in the hellish Agriche, even that tiresome gaze was sometimes comforting.

She knew. This was a terrible contradiction.

At that time, Roxana had no one who could be called her eternal ally, but there was someone who could be called her eternal enemy.

Even so, she had not accepted Deon, who had killed Asil.

She had not opened her heart and relied on him, regarding him as her own.

Still…

At least as long as he was there, she thought that she would never be alone in this cold place until the day she died.

“The fact that we chose each other as the partner to relieve our loneliness is proof that you and I are foolish humans.”

And Roxana knew that Deon also harbored similar feelings to her.

This foolish man still didn’t seem to know it himself.

“Deon, I hate you.”

Her feelings towards him were still unchanged.

But…

There, something else had been growing together since some time ago.

“I may never forgive you for killing my brother, perhaps until the moment I die.”

As she thought, Deon was confused because he didn’t fully understand Roxana’s words.

However, only what Roxana had said now was nothing new to Deon.

In the first place, he had never wanted Roxana’s forgiveness.

Rather, if he could remain in her heart with hatred that would never disappear, Deon would rather rejoice at that.

However, while listening to Roxana’s words, just a little.

Somehow, just a little, his heart ached.

Her voice, scattered softly, felt like shards of broken glass piercing him.

“So Deon, you can’t die yet.”

Now Deon seemed to know that this was neither a dream nor an illusion.

Such vivid pain could not be a dream.

The conclusion drawn from that was clear.

In the end, Deon had not died at Roxana’s hands that day.

And she was clearly planning to put a leash on him again and leave him unattended in a place where he wouldn’t be seen.

Until Deon died alone outside of her sight.

As he thought that, what had been filling his heart began to flow out at a rapid pace, like sand grains held in his hand.

The emptiness that had been there from the beginning rushed in.

But the next moment, what pierced his eardrum was a different word than expected.

“To die in my hands without paying the price like this. Where is there a more brazen story than that?”

Deon unconsciously held his breath.

And he listened to Roxana’s words that followed.

“You haven’t given me anything yet.”

The eyes he faced were still cold.

“So you don’t deserve to die yet.”

Her voice was as cold as those eyes.

“I…”

But to Deon, those words were taken as permission to stay by her side.

“Didn’t you say you didn’t need it anymore?”

Roxana’s eyes changed very slightly.

They contained emotions that Deon could not easily fathom.

He vaguely thought that he had seen it somewhere…

Deon realized that those eyes resembled Sierra’s.

“I don’t need the Deon Agriche of the past.”

Roxana also spoke in the Agriche way that was most familiar to them in the end.

“But I don’t know about the future you.”

Again, her voice faded into the distance.

“So live a little longer.”

The figure in front of him blurred hazily.

“The day you become completely useless, I’ll kill you then.”

Roxana’s figure, caught between his eyelids, slowly faded away.

In the scattering light, everything that was visible in his vision finally shattered into pure white.

Everything was dazzlingly distant.

Submerged in the distant light, Deon closed his eyes.

Soon, pure white darkness enveloped him.

But the same dream he had been having until now did not come again, so Deon was able to fall into a quiet sleep for a very long time.