“Are you disappointed in me? Do you hate me now? Will you cross the strait to escape from me, like you wrote in your letter?”
“…….”
“Don’t do that. Please, don’t. If you do, I…….”
He bit his lip.
“I won’t say I’ll die. Such threats won’t work on you, and it’s not the right way. You are your own master. Who you live with and how is entirely up to your heart. I’ve learned I mustn’t force you to choose me. But, while my mind knows this, my heart…….”
His dark eyelashes grew damp. Perhaps from melted snowflakes, perhaps from tears.
He placed his right hand over his left chest.
“My heart keeps saying it will stop if you leave. My mind keeps saying I’ll be miserable if I lose you. Laura, can’t you choose me? Can’t you believe my love is stronger than any constraint of reality? Can’t you see you’re the only key to my happiness?”
Clear tears, like morning dew, rolled down both his cheeks.
“Our love is true. Reality cannot defeat truth. Laura, let’s trust in each other’s truth.”
But soon, Laura’s silence seemed to him a clear sign of rejection. With a despairing face, he took out a handkerchief and wiped his wet face.
“I’ll return to Whitefield today. Since I’ve faced you directly, staying longer in Bath would not be respecting you.”
He placed the black umbrella he had just bought into Laura’s hand.
“Your face is very cold. Use this umbrella. The hired carriage stop is close by.”
He gave a lonely smile and turned toward the street where snow swirled fiercely.
At that moment, the umbrella slipped from Laura’s hand with a thud. Her empty hand grasped the hem of his sleeve.
He turned his head.
Laura took two steps, drawing close to Ian. Snow poured down over her head.
“Ian.”
His eyes widened. It was the first time she had called him by his name alone.
Laura’s voice was hoarse, feverish.
“I’ve tried my whole life not to be a fool. But now, I don’t know why being a fool is so bad.”
“……What?”
Laura’s eyes were filled with Ian.
“Ian, to me, you are…….”
At that moment, Laura’s eyebrows trembled faintly. Simultaneously, her body tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Ian swiftly caught Laura’s collapsing body in his arms.
Like when she had collapsed in his arms upon finding her father’s tombstone, his body offered a solid sense of stability.
Laura fainted as is.
“Laura! Laura!”
He shook her.
“That’s right, Laura has a cold……!”
He removed his gloves and touched Laura’s face. The skin he thought was red from the cold was as hot as coal fresh from the hearth.
“Damn it! Damn it!”
He lifted Laura in his arms and began running toward the hired carriage stop. In his embrace, Laura’s face was gentle and content.
Laura’s reddish-blonde hair glimmered like a sunset on the white pillow.
Her marble-white face was now as red as a rose. Her lips, usually a shy cherry-blossom pink, were as red as her skin, ripened by fever, and the long eyelashes beneath her tightly closed eyelids cast shadows so deep and mysterious they inspired awe.
Lying in bed, she was beautiful. But that beauty carried the ominous scent of death. Her rosy skin glistened with sweat, and from her pretty lips came endless panting and delirious murmurs in turn.
The doctor, leaning over Laura to check her temperature, shook his head with a grave expression.
“It’s a severe fever. When I visited before, it was just a cold that would heal with a week’s rest. How did it worsen like this?”
Miss Hyde, standing anxiously by the bedside, answered.
“She visited the daughter of a friend who had a fever.”
The doctor clicked his tongue.
“It must have been a contagious fever. To visit a fever patient while not yet recovered from a cold is like carrying kindling into a fireplace.”
“She’s not in mortal danger, is she?”
Miss Lotis, standing beside Miss Hyde, asked.
“I can’t say definitively. We’ll know after tonight. It will be a night that decides her life.”
The two women paled. They saw the shadow of death in the doctor’s words.
The doctor gave several instructions to Mrs. Rover, the nurse nearby.
Mrs. Rover showed no trace of tension, despite a gravely ill patient before her. With thirty years as a midwife and nurse, she was a medical expert who could nurse ten fever patients to recovery single-handedly.
The doctor addressed Miss Hyde and Miss Lotis.
“Judging by the symptoms, it’s definitely contagious. Everyone except the nurse must leave the room.”
They cast worried glances at the ailing Laura before leaving the room.
Once the two ladies were gone, the doctor looked toward a corner of the room.
“You, sir, must leave as well.”
The gentleman he addressed, Ian Dalton, did not move.
Since bringing the collapsed Laura here, he had been sitting on a sofa in the corner, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly as if in prayer, pressed to his lips.
“I’m not leaving.”
Mr. Dalton replied curtly. His face was as pale as a corpse, his eyes bloodshot. Since arriving, he had been staring intently at Laura, as he had all along.
“If you catch this fever, even a healthy gentleman might not survive. Please, leave.”
“I don’t care about my life.”
“Are you saying you’d die too, sir?”
“I have no intention of fleeing to safety while she battles for her life. If she stands at death’s crossroads, I must face a similar peril.”
‘Good heavens, a Romeo.’
The doctor sighed and instructed Mrs. Rover.
“Make sure this gentleman doesn’t get too close to the patient, ma’am.”
“Don’t worry.”
The doctor picked up his medical bag and left the room.
Mrs. Rover loosened the patient’s collar generously, fed her warm wine and water prepared for fever reduction, and wiped her body with a towel dipped in cold water.
As time passed, Laura’s panting grew worse. She twitched as if in a nightmare, shaking her head and gasping as if short of breath, sometimes striking her chest with her hand.
Mrs. Rover suddenly began to sing. It was the folk song “Greensleeves.”
[Alas, my love, you do me wrongTo cast me off discourteously
Alas, my love, you treat me harshly
To cast me off so cruelly
And I have loved you oh so long
Delighting in your company
And I have loved you for so long
Rejoicing in your presence
Greensleeves was my delight
Greensleeves was my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my joy
Greensleeves, my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my Lady Greensleeves]
Her clear voice filled the room. She soothed the patient as if lulling a child in a cradle.
[I have been ready at your handTo grant whatever you wouldst crave
I’ve been ready at your side
To give whatever you desire
And I have waged both life and land
Your love and goodwill for to have
And I have staked both life and land
To win your love and favor
The petticoat of silk and white
With gold embroidered gorgeously
The petticoat of silk so white
With gold so splendidly adorned
The petticoat of silk white
And these I bought gladly]
Like a music box that plays endlessly once wound, she sang without pause, all while feeding Laura wine and water and wiping her face and neck with a cold towel.
The wine and water ran out. The cold water for the towel had grown lukewarm. She picked up the water bucket and turned toward Ian.
“Will you sing to the patient until I return?”
He sprang to his feet.
“May I?”
“It doesn’t matter who sings. The song itself is what matters. Folk songs are excellent for calling a patient back to earth when heaven beckons. Devout folks insist on hymns, but hymns call the soul to heaven. Stand by the bed and sing ‘Greensleeves’ until I return. Don’t get too close.”
Mrs. Rover left the room.
Ian cautiously approached the bedside. He stopped two handspans from the bed. Not out of fear of catching her illness, but because he didn’t trust himself not to embrace her if he got closer.
Laura was suffering. Burning in a fever that seemed to consume her.
“Oh…….”
Ian clutched his chest in agony. Tears rolled from his bloodshot eyes. If he could take her illness and suffer it himself, he would give everything—wealth, youth, even his life.
‘Laura, I won’t ask you to accept me anymore. Just live. Please.’
He opened his lips. The song his nursemaid sang as a lullaby in his childhood, the song he sometimes heard from village women as an adult. “Greensleeves.”
[Alas, my love, you do me wrongTo cast me off discourteously
Alas, my love, you treat me harshly
To cast me off so cruelly
And I have loved you oh so long
Delighting in your company
And I have loved you for so long
Rejoicing in your presence
Greensleeves was my delight
Greensleeves was my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my joy
Greensleeves, my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my Lady Greensleeves]
In contrast to Mrs. Rover, Ian’s singing was a mess. How could someone weeping sing skillfully?
Tears streamed down his cheeks as he sang. Drip, drip, the tears fell to the floor, sounding like rain.
He barely finished the song. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his face, and opened his mouth to sing again.
At that moment.
Laura opened her eyes.
When yandere male lead believes she loves him — but she never did
“How dare you!”
“How dare you make me love you, only to cast me aside as nothing more than a friend?!?
“I will never accept that.”
“I will never let you return to him.”
“Even if I have to burn myself to ashes.”
“Even if I must shatter my purity, my dignity, my very soul.”
“I will never let you escape me!”
This was the first novel that introduced me to the matriarchal genre. I’ve read it three times already!
At first, the male lead despised the female lead. Later, he misunderstood that she liked him, so he condescendingly and reluctantly reciprocated her feelings.
Then, he suddenly discovered that she was kind to everyone in the same way, and there was already someone she cherished in her heart, and that person was not him.
The male lead couldn’t believe it, he became angry and crazy. He was determined to capture her body and heart by any means necessary.
Synopsis:
Want to see how a green tea bitch male lead falls in love with the female lead?
Want to see how he flirtatiously pursues the female lead?
Want to see how he gets slapped in the face repeatedly?
The male lead is a green tea bitch, a poisonous lotus, jealous, ruthless, unscrupulous, with a venomous heart, and he’s also a delusional maniac.
The female lead is righteous, positive energy-filled, kind, a holy mother.
Let’s see how two people with extreme personalities come together~
_____
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