The Way To Protect The Female Lead’S Older Brother [EN]: Chapter 242

Protecting the Heroine’s Older Brother – Episode 242 (242/253)

Side Story 33

“Where do you think you’re going, you rat? Ignoring me now, too? Someone like you…!”

“Ah!”

Roxana was shoved against the door, which had been flung open, and tumbled to the floor.

“Father and Deon, that bastard, they all look down on me! And now even you dare to underestimate me? You have nothing but a pretty face, yet you dare!”

Fontaine, reeking of alcohol, grabbed Roxana roughly by the collar. Her upper body was half-lifted, and a button that had been torn off bounced on the floor.

“I should burn that face so you’ll come to your senses!”

Roxana’s body, pushed by Fontaine, slammed into the wall. A sob-like groan escaped her lips.

Then Fontaine, seemingly out of his mind with drunkenness, grinned vilely.

“Right. No matter how skilled the Agrikan medical arts are [Agrikan is likely a reference to the family or region’s medical practices], can they really fix your face if it’s so mangled that it’s unrecognizable? It might be fun to test it out?”

She had been threatened like this occasionally before.

But each time, it stopped at threats. Fontaine never actually laid a hand on her.

If he had that much audacity, he would have tried to stab Deon, the source of his inferiority complex, in the back long ago.

So there was no way he would dare to rashly touch Roxana, one of the commodities that Lant was patiently waiting to increase in value.

But she couldn’t be sure that Fontaine wouldn’t do something in his drunken state.

The candlestick on the wall was close enough for Fontaine to reach easily if he stretched out his hand.

“P-Please…”

Roxana trembled and parted her tightly closed lips.

“I was wrong…”

Tears quickly welled up in her eyes as she looked at Fontaine.

In reality, she had done nothing wrong, but she deliberately sobbed more and begged for mercy.

“I was wrong, sob… Please forgive me, Brother…”

But even as she did, Roxana groped to the side, searching for something useful among the objects on the side table that had fallen when Fontaine pushed her.

As expected, the lowly Fontaine looked satisfied as Roxana teared up and begged.

Then suddenly, his reddened eyes fixed on Roxana’s white skin, exposed by the unbuttoned shirt from his earlier actions.

“Really…? You admit you were wrong?”

A look of contempt and disgust flashed in Roxana’s eyes as she keenly noticed it.

“If you know you were wrong, you have to be punished.”

As she initially thought, Fontaine didn’t really intend to touch Roxana directly.

But he could humiliate her. And get some eye candy.

At the same moment Fontaine moved his hand, Roxana’s fingertips caught on something hard.

But before she could grab it and swing, a dark shadow fell over Fontaine from behind.

“Aaaagh!”

The next moment, a man’s thick scream tore through the silence of the night.

Roxana blankly watched as her toy, who had approached unnoticed, bit into Fontaine’s neck like a wild beast. Fontaine writhed in pain and swung his arms, but the boy clung to his back tenaciously and did not fall off. The chain connected to the boy’s body rattled roughly.

But it was impossible to hold on forever, and eventually, the boy was thrown off after being hit in the solar plexus by Fontaine’s elbow.

Fontaine, having regained his physical freedom, staggered greatly.

Blood streamed from the torn flesh, soaking the floor.

“You… you son of a bitch!”

Fontaine, his face flushed red, exploded with murderous intent as if he would tear Roxana’s toy to pieces right away.

However, before he could approach the boy, the vase in Roxana’s hand was swung.

Crash!

Almost withered sky-blue flowers fluttered to the floor.

Fontaine’s unconscious body collapsed on top of them.

Roxana stood among the broken pieces of the vase, gasping for breath.

A sudden silence descended on the room, which had been noisy just a moment ago.

The sound of someone approaching could be faintly heard from outside the half-closed door.

Roxana quickly regained her senses and bent down to Fontaine.

She roughly smeared blood on her lips and dragged the unconscious Fontaine out with difficulty.

Just then, several servants who had heard the commotion were almost at the door.

“I did it. Take him away.”

They were horrified to see the two bloodied people.

Roxana left Fontaine in the hallway, slammed the door shut, and went back inside.

Her toy had moved to a corner of the messy room.

Roxana slowly approached him.

Each time the crushed glass fragments crunched under her feet, the energy emanating from the boy grew fiercer.

Whatever had stimulated him so much, the boy, who always had unfocused eyes, was now staring intently at the approaching person with raw eyes.

Roxana lowered herself to meet his gaze.

The boy’s face and body, as seen in Roxana’s view, were covered in Fontaine’s blood. That made him look even more ferocious and dangerous.

Of course, Roxana was also dirty with blood. Even so, having witnessed firsthand how the boy tore at human flesh, it was something to be feared and avoided.

However, Roxana fearlessly reached out her hand as if she had no concern that the boy would harm her.

In that instant, the boy growled in his throat like a threatening beast.

“It’s okay.”

“…”

“I’m going to wipe it off.”

A quiet voice whispered softly, as if to reassure him.

A cautious hand approached the boy very slowly.

Fortunately, the boy did not attack her.

Roxana’s hand finally touched him.

She gently rubbed the blood-stained corners of the boy’s mouth.

As expected, that wasn’t enough to wipe off the blood.

The boy was staring intently at Roxana.

His eyes, though still turbid as if covered by a film, were more focused than usual, and filled with a quiet stillness.

Roxana gazed closely at those eyes and moved her head somewhat impulsively.

The blood-soaked lips met very slowly.

It was an action Roxana herself had done unconsciously.

The first kiss reeked of thick blood.

After a moment, Roxana’s lips, which had parted from the boy’s, moved slightly.

“…As expected, it doesn’t taste very good, probably because it’s Fontaine’s blood.”

A faint whisper lingered slowly in the moonlit room.

“But…”

“…”

“It’s not as bad as I thought. It’s strange. Is it because it’s on you…?”

Trailing off, Roxana kissed the boy once more.

Even with such close proximity, the boy did not bite her as he had done to Fontaine.

Knowing that it wasn’t proper permission, she cowardly justified her actions by the mere fact that she wasn’t rejected this time either.

“You know, Cassis…”

And then, now, she was making a cowardly atonement for a coward.

“You can kill me now if you want.”

She expected something to happen after that, but her world was still frozen.

Looking at the boy’s indifferent face, who had once again locked himself under the endless deep sea, Roxana laughed as if crying.

“…I wish I had found you as soon as you came here.”

And if only I had been strong enough to get you and protect you right away.

But in the end, all of this was just a futile and meaningless assumption.

* * *

On days when the sunlight sparkles white, the memory of that day invariably comes to mind.

The maze garden, dyed with the light of lush greenery.

The boy who appeared before her, bathed in the dazzling sun.

She saw his brilliant golden eyes freeze like an ice wall after discovering Roxana.

At that time, Roxana was trapped and in such a wretched state that she was ashamed to run into her other half-siblings.

The slippery sensation of poisonous insects and snakes crawling into her clothes, digging into the torn wounds all over her body, was shudderingly gruesome and terrible.

Even if she tried desperately to shake them off, it was a futile effort, and only bloodstains increased on the tips of her nails that scratched the open wounds.

Surely she had experienced more terrible things in her life than this, but strangely, she felt like she was really going crazy at that time.

Emily’s last words, which she had heard like a will a month ago, echoed loudly in her ears.

She had lost the strength to scream, so she just sobbed and gasped for breath.

The eye contact was fleeting. The boy quickly disappeared from Roxana’s sight, leaving only a white afterimage.

It happened so quickly that she wondered if she had seen a hallucination.

Soon, the terrible things swarming in the trap covered her body and gradually obscured her vision.

However, a moment later, an intensely bright light pulled Roxana out of the swamp-like darkness.

As an arm wrapped in an unfamiliar warmth pulled her upward, her vision was filled with dazzling white.

Inside the golden eyes that were closer than before, the anger and self-destruction swirling wildly within him, and a bit of resignation….

No matter how many times she recalled the memory of that day, it was impossible not to be captivated by it.

* * *

After the incident in Roxana’s room, Fontaine was quiet.

It was unexpected, if anything.

He didn’t seem to have told anyone what caused his sudden injury inside the mansion.

Well, even if he was drunk, being ambushed and injured by a broken toy was no small disgrace.

Perhaps he was so drunk that he had lost his memory of the time and knew that Roxana had done it, as the servants had told him.

Either way, it would have been shameful for Fontaine.

“Hey, I heard you made a dent in Fontaine’s shoulder? Not bad for you.”

Although it was not what she intended, her half-siblings reacted as if they had seen Roxana in a new light.

The incident seemed to have spread secretly as a rumor among the servants, and some of the brothers seemed to have heard about it.

They looked at Roxana with eyes as if they had just realized that even a cornered rat could bite a cat.

As for Roxana, it was not even funny.