The Tragic Male Lead Chose the Wrong Partner

* * *
Duke of Recanosa’s estate.
Makia had visited Helene’s room and was now nibbling on the cookies she had prepared.

As she brushed her golden hair in front of the mirror, Helene asked,
“Capitano. Do you know what happened between the brigadier and Count Visente’s couple? Aside from him being adopted, Madam Eleonora hasn’t spoken of it herself.”
“Hmm. I don’t know anything at all.”

Makia shook his head with the familiar smile he always wore when lying.
‘It’s obvious what happened. But I suppose the princess, who’s lived her life without knowing what true tragedy even is, can’t imagine it.’
He approached Helene and gently took over brushing her golden hair, whispering softly.

“Princess, aren’t you curious about my past?”
Makia’s gaze dropped toward Helene’s delicate shoulder. As he noticed it flinch slightly, he looked back up at her reflection in the mirror.
“You’re not going to tell me anyway.”

You won’t even say your name.
At the wavering in her voice, Makia nodded.
“You’re right. But instead, I’ll tell you a boy’s story. Probably not much different from the brigadier’s past. That boy was a war orphan too.”

Like a bard who visited each night, he often shared strange tales.
Helene found his conversations interesting. With no one else to speak to in the house, she found herself looking forward to him.
She tilted her chin slightly, signaling for him to continue.

The brush in Makia’s hand touched the pale nape of her neck, almost like the tip of a blade. He lowered his gaze and continued.
“There was an Esat boy caught in a bombing while evacuating with his mother. His mother died at the hospital—but do you know why?”
“Oh dear. Was she badly hurt from the bombing?”
Makia smiled faintly.

“Wrong. She died because they couldn’t pay the hospital fees.”
* * *
Long ago, at the National Hospital of Lutemia.

“They say he fell from the second floor while trying to run away? At first, they took him to amusement parks and treated him like their own son. Why would they do something like this…”
“Maybe after losing their real son in the bombing, they brought in the orphan, only to slowly realize he wasn’t the same.”
“I hear they won’t be punished. The boy’s being labeled a troublemaker and sent back to a facility.”

While the nurses whispered among themselves, the Esat boy stepped out of his mother’s hospital room and into the hallway.
There, he saw a boy about his own age lying in the next room’s open hospital bed.
The boy was covered in wounds, bandages, and plasters from head to toe.

The previous day, the Esat boy had seen a middle-aged man with a large facial scar rush in, carrying the boy on his back. Since he didn’t know the situation, he’d assumed the man was the boy’s father.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
The Esat boy reached out and gently touched the platinum blond hair of the unconscious boy, who was breathing heavily.

“My dad will come soon too, right?”
He kept being drawn to this boy because his hair resembled his father’s. And maybe because he had no friends his own age, he was simply lonely.
He and his mother had come to Lutemia to meet his father, only to be caught in a bombing.

Now, his mother lay unconscious, critically injured.
The boy waited alone by her side, clinging to the hope that his father would come.
Before the bombing, at the bridge leading to the border, his mother had repeatedly told him:

“From now on, your name is Makia. Once we reach Lutemia, never tell anyone you’re from the Empire. Not your real name, not our family. Never.”
Now “Makia,” the Esat boy always answered, “I don’t know,” when the nurses asked about his father.
A few days later, the boy in the next room regained consciousness.

Makia, hoping he might make a friend, immediately visited.
“Hi.”
The boy with a plaster on his cheek and an eyepatch over one eye looked at him.

Even with his dull, unfocused eyes, they were beautiful—like dual-colored gemstones. Like the kind of serpent whose colors changed depending on the angle.
“I’m Makia. I like you. Want to be friends?”
Despite the cheerful offer, the boy with the eyepatch said nothing. The patient card by his bed read, “Masera Ghis.”

Makia glanced at his bandaged legs and asked another question.
“When will you be able to play soccer again?”
Even with Makia’s chatter, there was no answer. Young Makia just assumed he was shy.

So he kept coming every day.
The first words he heard from him, after all his effort, were: “Get lost.”
“He’s someone who’s suffered a lot, in body and heart. He can’t trust people,” a nurse said, comforting the downcast Makia.

“Nurse, why does a heart hurt?”
The naïve boy wouldn’t have to wait long to learn the answer himself.
The hospital billing clerk called him in and said,

“There’s too much unpaid debt. We can’t keep treating her. I can’t just take your word that your father’s coming to pay.”
That was the first time Makia felt betrayed by the world he’d thought was kind.
Not long after, his mother died. A small funeral was held with help from a nearby cathedral.

Before leaving the hospital to enter the child welfare facility, Makia asked Masera:
“Your dad will pay, right? He carried you into the hospital.”
Masera, still recovering, stared silently at him.

“That man’s a gardener. I don’t have parents.”
“Really? Well, that’s common, I guess. Maybe I don’t either. Looks like my dad isn’t coming.”
Speaking cheerfully, Makia pressed an apple—stolen from the neighboring room—into Masera’s hand.

“Bye. I’m leaving this place.”
Masera bit into the apple and said,
“You’ve got an imperial accent.”

“That’s because I’m from a vassal state of the Empire.”
Makia lied.
Masera looked at him quietly, then slowly lowered his gaze.

“Farewell. I hope you grow up safely, even alone.”
It was their first and last real conversation.
Though they later met again in the facility, they never acknowledged each other.

As if mutually choosing to pretend they hadn’t witnessed each other’s misfortunes.
* * *
“The gardener who ran with that boy on his back to the hospital—that was me.”

Milchenko, excluding all personal feelings, relayed the facts.
After hearing everything, Cynthia remembered Masera’s words the day she first came to the quarters, when Eugene slapped the back of her hand and stormed off.
“I raised him without manners.”
“Do you mean you don’t scold him?”
“I don’t know how. All the ways I know are too cruel.”

Now she understood what /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ that meant. Cynthia clenched her hands so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Milchenko, seeing her face go cold, removed his hat. His scarred face was fully exposed.
“Having scars doesn’t make someone a monster.”

He was asking her to treat him the same as always, as she had before.
After he left, Cynthia clutched her head in anguish.
“Saving up money secretly to attend school? Who gave you permission? Hand it over, right now!”

Her father’s violent outburst from her original life came crashing back into her memory, fragments spinning like shattered glass.
Even if it was just a memory, her whole body trembled, and her chest tightened with dread.
How much worse must it have been for the person who actually lived it?

“Even the affection they gave at first was a lie. I was just a replacement for their dead son.”
‘I’m a liar who deceived him too.’
At first, she thought she could be forgiven if she just helped him earn lots of money and supported him well.

But that feeling had faded over time, and now—after hearing this past—it had completely vanished.
Masera would never forgive them, no matter how much wealth they brought.
“If you keep deceiving me with lies that’ll be exposed anyway…”

Now she understood why, on the day of the engagement, his face showed not anger, but betrayal and sorrow when he pointed that gun.
“So please, don’t ever let me find out.”
That line wasn’t a warning—it was a plea not to make him a monster.

‘Is this not where I belong?’
Her wish to stay here with everyone… maybe it was just greed.
‘Even if it’s just while I’m here—I’ll do what I can.’

Cynthia once again put on her usual smile like a mask.
The next day, the shamelessly pampered Visente family’s situation changed completely—overnight.