The Way To Protect The Female Lead’S Older Brother [EN]: Chapter 240

Protecting the Heroine’s Older Brother – Episode 240 (240/253)

Side Story 31

“Huh?”

“Don’t touch anything with those filthy hands, and get out of my room right now!”

It was almost a hysterical scream.

Fontaine, momentarily stunned, crumpled his face like a piece of paper.

“Are you crazy? Where do you think you are, yelling like that!”

A rough hand painfully grabbed Roxana’s hair.

“Just because Father’s been favoring you a bit more lately, you think you can act up in front of me now? Huh?”

Roxana glared fiercely at Fontaine.

Fontaine paused, looking down at her venomous face from close range.

*Damn it.*

She was unbelievably beautiful.

It was understandable why Lant hadn’t killed her and kept her alive, even while disliking her incompetence.

“You’re yelling at me over a broken toy like that? Do I need to rip out his spine in front of you for you to come to your senses?”

Roxana flinched for a moment.

Soon, her murderous red eyes slowly lowered.

Long, lush eyelashes cast a deep shadow, instantly creating a pathetic feeling.

“I’m sorry… I said something presumptuous.”

A delicate voice, like wet dew rolling over a blade of grass, flowed from her red lips, as luscious as flower petals.

“I was just surprised because it was the first time someone else came into the room…”

The fiercely sharp face instantly transformed into a pitiful one, as if she would shed beautiful tears at any moment.

“I won’t do it again. I was wrong, Fontaine, *oppa* [an affectionate Korean term for older brother used by females]…”

The breathtakingly beautiful face, with even tears welling up in her large eyes, looked up at Fontaine imploringly.

“So, don’t be so scary…”

At that moment, Fontaine shuddered as if stung by a bee.

The anger in his heart melted away as soon as he faced Roxana’s pathetic face.

*What an endearing beauty that could captivate even a stone statue. That was quite a talent.*

“Hmph… Well, at least you know your place.”

Seeing his beautiful younger sister so frightened and pleading, Fontaine’s heart was quickly satisfied, as if he had never been angry in the first place.

“I’ll let it go today, but be careful next time.”

Fontaine decided to let it go for today and released Roxana’s hair. *How could it be that even the sensation of her hair brushing against his hand was so soft and sweet?*

Roxana glared at Fontaine’s back as he swaggered out of the room, her eyes filled with murderous intent once more.

Finally, after the door closed, Roxana silently walked over and locked it securely.

Only then did she feel at ease.

From Roxana’s lips, as red as a rose, a voice filled with vicious venom instead of a sweet fragrance flowed out.

“You stupid, disgusting moron… You can’t even say a word in front of Deon, can you?”

The room that Fontaine had entered and left seemed to have been dirtily contaminated in that short time.

Roxana turned around, intending to open the window to let in some air.

“I’m sorry, were you very surprised?”

But first, she needed to soothe her toy. Roxana ran to the boy and hugged him tightly, trying to calm him.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to pay attention to such a vulgar person. They say that cowardly dogs bark the loudest. He’s just a loudmouth who can’t do anything but show off because he’s full of inferiority complexes.”

“…”

“So, don’t be scared…”

The broken toy didn’t seem to recognize what had happened in the room a moment ago, as his unfocused eyes slowly blinked, staring blankly at the door.

Even so, Roxana didn’t stop hugging, stroking, and comforting the boy, who was bigger than her.

But it was her body that was trembling slightly as she constantly whispered that everything was okay.

* * *

Roxana Agriche was a peculiar person.

When she left her room in the morning, she looked more vibrant and beautiful than anyone else, like a rose blooming with dew.

But late at night, she would lie on her bed, curled up as much as possible, looking as if she had dropped all her fully bloomed petals and only an empty stem remained.

Sometimes, she would even hug the toy she had brought into the room, as if she were a child.

“You know what? This beauty isn’t mine. Someone else is enjoying it, so how can I call it mine?”

On those days, Roxana would often utter intermittent whispers, not knowing who they were directed at.

“Actually, I sometimes think about it these days. Even if I was told that I had no talent for anything since I was young, what if I had held on to something more persistently?”

It seemed that it didn’t matter if the target listening to her secret words that she had never revealed to anyone was the air, or a person who was no different from an inanimate object.

“Instead of just avoiding things because they were scary and difficult, if I had gritted my teeth more fiercely, wouldn’t I be able to live more like a person than I am now?”

No, perhaps that was why it was easier to take out the words inside.

“Of course, these thoughts are just ridiculous self-consolation.”

Because there were definitely nights when she just wanted to tell anyone anything, and she felt like she couldn’t bear it if she didn’t.

On nights when she swallowed those feelings alone and fell asleep, she invariably had terrible nightmares.

Sometimes, like last time, she would wake up in a cold sweat, breathing roughly, and then murmur the name of a dead person in a choked voice.

“I miss Emily…”

The torn black dress that Roxana secretly kept was Emily’s only remaining memento in Agriche.

“Emily was my only confidante, and I first met her in the fall five years ago.”

On nights when she couldn’t sleep, Roxana would weave the fragments of her memories one by one and release them into the fleeting darkness of the night.

“This is a secret, but actually, when I was young, I wanted to escape from Agriche, so I secretly searched for a way out. I actually found a secret passage. It was too dangerous, so I ended up giving up without even trying.”

She laughed self-deprecatingly, saying it was a futile struggle.

“But I found Emily then, so I can say it wasn’t such a useless thing to do.”

At that time, Emily was tied up and surrounded by ferocious beasts.

She later learned that Emily had been falsely accused of stealing valuables from the mansion.

Agriche had thrown a person in front of the beasts, without giving her a drop of water or letting her sleep for a long time, leaving her exhausted.

Then, they said that if she escaped on her own or survived for ten days without dying, they would spare her life.

It was fortunate that she was not summarily executed because there was no evidence, but it was practically the same as telling her to die.

Perhaps that was why there was no one guarding her.

Roxana found Emily while wandering around the remote parts of the Agriche mansion on the third day.

The supports that held the leashes in place rattled and shook each time the hungry beasts bounced around, barking fiercely. It had already come halfway out of the floor and didn’t seem like it would last another day.

In the meantime, the woman who was left alone had a hollow face and was barely able to keep her eyes open.

She seemed to have tried to escape several times, but the blood that oozed from her wrists and ankles, which had been chafed by the restraints, seemed to stimulate the beasts even more.

Roxana was terrified and tried to run away.

But in the end, she stopped and hesitated for a long time before clenching her fists and running to where the woman was tied up.

Releasing restraints was almost the only thing Asil was good at, and Roxana, who had learned directly from him, was the same.

The beasts, excited by the sudden intrusion, immediately raged even more fiercely from behind.

The woman was startled and stiffened, then shouted at Roxana to just go.

But Roxana, with her face a mess from crying so hard out of fear, didn’t run away and helped her.

In the end, she had to be carried away by the woman because she had run out of strength.

That was the first time Roxana had become such a useful person to someone.

“So, I was so happy when Emily was later cleared of the charges and came to find me on her own accord.”

And two months ago, Emily was executed for killing Roxana’s personal tutor.

Everyone thought Roxana had used her.

Because she didn’t like the personal tutor that Lant had directly assigned to her, or because she was afraid of getting bad grades in the monthly evaluation…

But it wasn’t.

Emily was not someone who could be exchanged for something like that.

She was too precious to Roxana to be lost for something like this.

Today, Roxana faced the toy and lay down, muttering empty words and then smiling faintly.

“But since I met you, the number of days I suffer from nightmares has decreased.”

Her hand stroked the face of the boy who was closing his eyes. Then, the lowered eyelids slowly lifted upwards.

Roxana met the eyes that shone like the evening star in the night sky and parted her lips.

“Instead, I often have strange dreams… In those dreams, the events in this Agriche are written down somewhere in a book and passed on as a story, and I’m reading it.”

It was a peculiar dream that had started to come to her recently.

“The me in that dream is a really ordinary person. It was kind of amazing.”

In that place, Roxana was not Roxana Agriche.

Dreams are usually absurd, but this dream was especially so.

Another world that she didn’t know.

A strangely free world.

Perhaps it was a dream created by Roxana’s unconscious mind, which longed for such things.