The Tragic Male Lead Chose the Wrong Partner

I stood caught between the sharp gazes clashing between Major Rodriguez and Masera.

I wanted to say, Don’t fight over me! but really, it was just Masera throwing a tantrum.
“Gentlemen, I hope you reach an amicable understanding.”
Now wasn’t the time to watch two men wrestle over pride.

I saw Eugene trudging away somewhere and quickly chased after him.
* * *
Emil, who had impersonated the dead Professor Hayden, was a terrible villain—but to Eugene, he was still someone important.

Eugene sat on a wooden bench in the garden, wiping his teary eyes and staring up at the sky.
“Master Eugene, would you like to play ball?”
Emil had once been a servant in Eugene’s home.

He used to play with Eugene like a father would—gentle and kind. He had cared for him warmly. As a child, Eugene had adored him.
No one knew why Emil had left the estate, but after all the hardships Eugene had endured, meeting him again had brought him immense joy.
“Due to circumstances, I must hide my identity. I’m pretending to be Professor Hayden as your tutor. I promise I’ll never speak of your mother.”

Later, even when Emil started treating Eugene as a subordinate, Eugene still liked him.
Because he had been like a friend during Eugene’s happiest time.
But he didn’t want to lie just to drive Cynthia out.

Eugene worried to himself.
Where should I go now? I really am all alone.
Emil would surely reveal everything about his Esat mother, and Uncle Masera would start to hate him.

Just like what had happened in the principality’s hospital and orphanage.
He would probably have to part with the kind people at the residence too.
Eugene sat motionless, the sun setting and then rising again before it peeked from the other end of the sky.
That’s when he heard Cynthia’s distinct, gentle voice.

“What are you doing there?”
Eugene didn’t respond.
“Are you very upset, Eugene?”

Cynthia stood behind him, watching his lonely little back.
“Sis… about the frog house.”
Eugene recalled when he’d caught a hibernating frog just to tease Cynthia.

“Yeah.”
Cynthia squatted down beside him and answered.
Still gazing at the sky, Eugene spoke again.

“They say frogs that wake from hibernation early mostly don’t survive.”
He already knew the frog was no longer in the aquarium full of dirt.
Seeing Cynthia widen her eyes in surprise, Eugene turned his gaze back to the sky.

“I killed it, didn’t I?”
“No.”
“I killed Emil too, didn’t I?”

Cynthia shook her head in alarm.
“He’s not dead. He’ll be investigated, and if he’s guilty, he’ll go to prison.”
“I know what ‘seditious literature’ is. Everyone who read it got dragged away and never came back. They probably died.”

Back when the Empire occupied his homeland, Eugene had seen friends’ families and kind neighbors being taken by police for owning such books.
Eugene had learned about death and cause and effect far too early.
Cynthia looked at Eugene’s emotionless face.

His pale green eyes looked composed. Gone were the fear and anxiety he sometimes showed—now replaced with complete resignation.
“Eugene. That was what the Empire did to suppress its colonies. In a country that values freedom, that doesn’t happen.”
Cynthia tried hard to reassure him.

But Eugene lowered his eyes and said quietly,
“Sis… my mom and dad died because of me.”
It was the first time he’d ever brought up his parents.

Cynthia made a pained expression and patted his back.
“Why do you think that? I don’t know what happened, but…”
Eugene said no more. Just like when he first arrived, he watched the drifting clouds in silence.

Even when Cynthia talked by his side, even when Masera spoke to him, even when officers tried to cheer him up with horse rides, even as he lay down and woke again—he remained silent.
The child had once again chosen to build a wall around himself and retreat into isolation.
* * *

Several days passed since Eugene stopped speaking.
The doctor said that instead of worrying or pressuring him, they should treat him as usual and wait for him to regain stability and open up on his own.
So Cynthia spent time with Eugene, just as she always had.

“Eugene, the mama cat brought her kittens! Aren’t they cute?”
Eugene looked at the mother cat rubbing against him and the fluffy little kittens.
“Cats raise their babies with help from their companions. She brought them to us because she considers us companions too.”

Cynthia lifted her chin smugly at the unresponsive Eugene and smiled.
“Winter’s coming. We’ll build a shelter for them. Want to help? We’re their guardians now.”
Eugene nodded silently.

Though he didn’t talk, he no longer avoided Cynthia and quietly followed her lead.
He probably doesn’t like me—he just thinks he’ll be abandoned soon.
Cynthia, who knew that children familiar with death often behaved like adults, felt a pang of sorrow.

* * *
That evening, Cynthia visited Masera, who had just returned to the residence.
“Instead of just waiting, I think we should do something.”

She was aware that Eugene was experiencing postwar trauma.
But at that time, PTSD was not officially recognized.
People dismissed such symptoms as exaggeration to demand state compensation or viewed them as weakness.

So there were no proper treatments, either.
“He went through a bombing at a young age and lost his parents. I don’t think his emotional wounds have healed. I’d like to find a psychiatrist who’s researching postwar trauma.”
Masera, who had been reading over documents, looked up at Cynthia.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with our Cynthia. She grew up sweetly in the countryside, far from war. Once, she did have a panic reaction to gunshots during a hunt. That’s probably why she fears gunfire and fireworks.”
That was from Count Queensguard’s letter in response to an inquiry about Cynthia’s condition.
Masera reread the letter and sighed. He felt foolish for even momentarily pitying her.

“Why do you speak so casually about the pain of those who’ve experienced war, when you know nothing of it?”
Cynthia stared at him blankly, expressionless.
“I’m not speaking casually.”

“So what—you want to lock a child in a mental ward?”
Families of veterans used to send those with symptoms to psychiatric wards without understanding them.
They thought the soldiers had become possessed by demons after killing in war—saw them as cursed.

The so-called treatment was just locking them in cramped rooms and injecting sedatives. Far from recovering, those people only worsened.
“Colonel Ghis! Salute! No abnormalities during duty!”
When Masera had visited a comrade abandoned by family and hospitalized, he was still mentally stuck on the front line.

Masera had seen far too much of that.
His anger-filled gaze darkened to a deep blue.
“So you think he’s useless and troublesome just because he seems abnormal?”

“Why are you saying such harsh things…”
“Just because you married me, you think you’ve become my family?”
Masera stood {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} up and approached her with a threatening air.

“To someone like you, raised in a greenhouse, the world might look beautiful. But many people are still trapped in pain. And someone who trembles in fear at a mere hunting rifle has no right to speak about real war.”
His cruel, cutting words turned Cynthia’s face even paler. Her red eyes shimmered like glass marbles submerged in water.
She recalled her past life.

Her mother, wrapped in bandages and dying after a bombing. Her father, taken by enemy gunfire. Her brother, returned only as a dog tag. Her sister, crushed beneath a collapsed building—body never recovered.
And herself, standing in the middle of a dazzling rain of artillery fire, watching the sky for the last time like it was a festival.
In that moment, the world looked beautiful.

She could find beauty in the world only because she knew its horror so well.
“I know why you’re angry.”
Because he knew the public’s scorn and the cruel reality that war victims lived through.

“But your words were too much. You don’t even know me.”
Cynthia smiled faintly and walked out of the room.
Her wounded face and sorrowful smile lingered like an afterimage in the now-empty space.

“…Goddammit.”
Left alone, Masera rubbed his forehead and let out a long, weary sigh.