The original story began three months ago.
For three months after becoming Belita, I had been relentlessly engaging in obsessive behaviors that Kane would find loathsome, until one day, an invitation arrived for the banquet that signaled the start of the original work.
The banquet was held at the Imperial Palace for the first time in a while, and as Belita always did, I stuck right by Kane’s side throughout the entire event.
Since monitoring Kane at every banquet was her most important task, I had no choice but to do it, however bothersome it was.
Belita reacted sensitively and violently whenever Kane looked at someone or whenever someone even glanced at Kane.
Especially on days when she was in a particularly bad mood, she would openly act out like a madwoman to prevent anyone from approaching him.
‘Belita certainly lived an exhausting life.’
Having observed Kane out of necessity for three months, he was, as I expected, a man without a shred of charm.
Always the same hairstyle, an expression dripping with a coldness that suggested not a single drop of blood would spill even if pricked, an outfit without the slightest disarray, and a daily routine that repeated every single day; if boredom and tedium were personified, it would be the human known as Kane Maxius.
Such a man has now encountered love for the first time.
Even though Belita monitored him with such eagle-eyed intensity, Kane and Adela met for the first time at the banquet.
Adela had been weak since childhood and had been recuperating at home until she reached adulthood.
Because she was born with weak vitality, treatment was difficult.
Yet, her physical condition became perfectly fine for just one day, quite unlike her usual self, and that day happened to be the day the banquet was held at the Imperial Palace.
So, once her condition improved, Adela, who had never been to a banquet in her life, attended one for the first time.
I did not personally witness the two of them meeting that day.
If I were to vaguely recall the contents of the novel I knew, it is said that Kane fell in love at first sight upon seeing Adela taking care of a cat wandering inside the Imperial Palace.
Adela, who had stepped out of the hall to walk in the garden because she found it hard to adjust to the unfamiliar banquet, and Kane, who had fled to the garden to escape Belita’s suffocating surveillance, met like destiny.
It was also the first time Adela had seen a handsome man around her own age other than her younger brother.
Furthermore, it was written in the novel that she felt a deep attraction to Kane, who approached her affectionately.
‘Affectionate, my foot…’
It’s absurd.
Based on my experience as Belita, Kane’s personality was not affectionate at all.
Of course, I wouldn’t know if he was hiding his true personality because he found Belita annoying and disliked her, but as I mentioned before, he was a dry, uninteresting, cold-blooded human whose emotions never showed on his face.
Anyway, from that day on, the two of them secretly nurtured their love for one another.
This was because the relationship between the Maxius and Bayon families was not particularly good, and Adela also knew that Kane had a fiancée.
However, Kane was different.
From the moment he awakened to his love for Adela, he treated Belita as if she were a person who never existed from the start.
He poured out endless displays of affection toward Adela, regardless of the eyes watching them.
On the other hand, Adela kept rejecting him because she was concerned about the relationship between Belita and their respective families.
However, as a result of Kane’s continuous pursuit of Adela for three months, Adela could no longer push him away and eventually accepted his heart…
That was exactly now.
The day Kane mentions breaking the engagement to Belita for the first time, and the day Belita, after violently refusing, resolves to maliciously torment Adela in earnest.
For the past six months, I had performed actions similar to those the original Belita did to win Kane’s heart.
Of course, I put in a bit more effort than the original to maximize the negative emotions Kane felt toward Belita.
If the pre-possession Belita visited the Duke’s estate only two or three times a week, lately I had been stamping my attendance every day, showing my face to Kane without missing a single day.
Wow, thinking about it now, this was truly difficult work.
I traveled back and forth for an hour by carriage just to see someone I didn’t even particularly want to see.
But for the sake of the future, I endured it and frequented the Maxius estate.
On top of that, I even bribed the servants of the Duke’s estate to receive reports on his every move during the twenty-four hours I couldn’t be there.
Of course, I was caught using this method before long, but naturally, that too was something I had planned in advance.
And I provided ample compensation to the servant who was fired after acting as my spy for a few days.
There were many other things I planned specifically to be caught by Kane, but the one I devoted the most effort to was using an aphrodisiac.
In truth, I agonized a lot before doing this.
Although it was an incident that appeared in the original work, I spent many days in anxiety, thinking,
‘Do I really have to go this far?’ and ‘What if this trick doesn’t work?’
This was because it was a situation where, if this method didn’t work properly, I might end up stuck having to sleep with him.
Thinking about it even now gives me goosebumps; it was truly the most dangerous gamble for me.
Fortunately, as the head of a family that controls water, Kane immediately realized that the alcohol I offered contained an aphrodisiac.
And because of that, he, who normally showed almost no emotional changes, was so furious that I didn’t see him for a while.
‘What else was there?’
I displayed an excessive obsession toward Kane as naturally as breathing, to the point where it’s hard to list everything I did, and the results were always successful.
Now, just by seeing my face, his expression would harden coldly, and even if I spoke to him, he would hardly acknowledge me.
However, contrary to my expectation that harassing him to that extent might make the talk of breaking the engagement come out even a little bit sooner, there was no word from him.
It seemed that since I had targeted only Kane while excluding Adela, he could endure it to some extent
regardless of his dislike for me.
But this engagement was finally over as of today.
To make it so, I placed the bottle containing blood under his bed today.
While I was sitting in the drawing room drinking tea and waiting for Kane while lost in various thoughts, he entered the room right on cue.
And as expected, having realized what I had done, he looked at me with an expression colder and more menacing than usual.
“Has your guest finally left? I missed you so much all day that it was agonizing, Duke.”
I spoke to him in a voice filled with utter ecstasy, as if I had been desperately waiting for the man I truly loved and was so happy to finally see him.
However, when he continued to just stare at me without responding to my words, I lowered my gaze and glanced at the object in Kane’s hand.
It was the bottle I had left under the bed earlier.
Since things had proceeded as expected, there was no agitation at all about being caught so quickly.
“What… is this?”
A voice tinged with a rare trace of anger came from him.
“Ah, uh… that… you caught me?”
I deliberately dragged out my words, but I answered with an expression that suggested being caught was no big deal at all.
Then, as if even more angered by my attitude, Kane gripped his hand tightly and crushed the bottle.
“Duke…!”
Faced with a situation more extreme and violent than expected, I rolled my eyes quickly for a moment, unsure of how to act.
Then, after quickly assessing the situation, I jumped up from my seat and approached him rapidly.
However, as I approached, he stepped back a pace or two with an expression of loathing, as if even that was repulsive to him.
“I believe, I believe I told you.”
He spat out the words through clenched teeth.
He was not hiding his emotions, to the extent that one could guess the level of Kane’s current rage.
“Duke, you must treat your hand immediately!”
In truth, I didn’t care at all about the injury to his hand, but right now, I was a woman in love with the man before me.
I reached out to touch his hand, which had been mangled by glass, with a touch full of pity, but he jerked his hand away before mine could even reach it.
“Lady Hates.”
Then he stared at me with icy eyes.
“That is not the problem right now—.”
“Lady!”
He raised his voice and called out to me. Only then did I stop what I was doing, lift my head, and respond.
“I believe I told you never to do such a thing again.”
“I know. I know. But…”
I whimpered, making an expression that looked as if I were being as unfair as possible, as pitiful as possible, and as if there was a reason for it.
“Since you won’t look at me at all, Duke, I had no choice but to do anything!”
I let out words that seemed to blame him, saying that the only reason I acted this way was because of him.
At my words, a weary sigh escaped Kane’s mouth.
“I can no longer overlook these atrocities of yours. No, I do not want to see them.”
“It was, it was a joke!”
“A joke?”
“Yes, yes! You know better than anyone, Duke, that such things have no effect at all, don’t you?”
“Did you just say it was a joke?”
“Yes, I just did it with the feeling of clutching at straws—.”
Whether the word “joke” provoked his anger further, Kane looked at me with eyes full of contempt before staring into space for a moment.
At that moment, even I felt a bit frightened.
However, when he met my eyes again, the anger had been completely erased in that brief moment, and he had returned to his original cold face.
“Let us break the engagement.”
