Roxana
Chapter 52
Chapter 52
The Way to Protect the Female Lead’s
Oppa
Chapter 52
- Season of Destruction and Revival
“…What?”
Sylvia asked blankly, unable to believe what she had just heard.
“What did you just say? My oppa… what happened to him here?”
Her complexion was deathly pale.
Yet Jeremy, seemingly oblivious to how white Sylvia’s face had turned, answered casually.
“I told you already. He’s dead, your oppa. It’s already been years since my father brought him here. Within half a year of arriving, he was dead—not even a speck of bone dust left. So stop looking for your oppa now.”
“My oppa… how did he die here?”
The truth that spilled from Jeremy Agriche’s mouth was truly gruesome.
As she listened to his words, her vision spun and her stomach churned so violently she could barely bear it.
What the people of Agriche had done to her oppa was not something anyone wearing human skin could do.
From the moment she resolved to search for her missing oppa herself, she knew that at the end of this path, a truth she would never want to accept might be waiting for her.
So in a corner of her heart, she had even prepared herself to face his death.
But not like this. Nowhere in her imagination had anything like this existed.
That her oppa’s final moments would be something like this…
“Now that I’ve told you, you can’t meet with those other bastards like you promised! Especially that red-haired bastard, he pisses me off so much. Besides, if it’s not about your oppa, you have no reason to meet those guys anyway.”
Jeremy whined as he grabbed Sylvia’s hand, throwing a tantrum.
His face was bright and clear, like that of an untainted, innocent child.
At that moment, a pitch-black emotion she had never known existed inside her sprouted to life.
In an instant, it took root, grew, and bloomed into a flower steeped in venom.
“…Shut.”
“What?”
Slap!
Sylvia coldly shoved Jeremy’s hand away.
Jeremy froze on the spot at the venomous, fierce glare in Sylvia’s eyes—a look he had never seen before in his life.
“Shut up. Shut up…! Shut your mouth this instant…!”
Sylvia was baring a terrifying rage at him.
Flustered and restless, Jeremy soon seemed to realize why she was so furious and hastily apologized.
“S-Sorry, Sylvia. If I’d known he was your oppa, I wouldn’t have done that back then. Really! But I didn’t know back then. So don’t be mad. Okay?”
Yet in truth, Jeremy didn’t genuinely understand Sylvia’s fury.
To him, siblings were merely rivals to be crushed and brought down, never beings whose deaths warranted grief.
Thus, Jeremy had never once understood why Sylvia spent years wandering in search of her missing oppa.
So his apology to Sylvia now was not sincere; it was nothing more than a sly attempt to avoid upsetting her further.
Then, as if something had just crossed his mind, his face brightened and he looked at Sylvia.
“Ah, right! There’s a sibling named Roxana who collects eyeballs for a hobby, and she might have your oppa’s eyes. She took quite a liking to them back then. Last time, I think I saw gold eyes similar to yours in her collection room. It’s definitely those. If you want, should I bring you those at least?”
“Haha…”
Sylvia let out a dry, hollow laugh, finding the absurdity of it all utterly grotesque.
Relieved by her laughter, Jeremy curled his lips into a smile along with her.
The sight of that face was so nauseatingly disgusting she could not bear it.
Sylvia murmured coldly as she watched Jeremy reach his hand out toward her once more.
“I will kill you, Jeremy Agriche.”
At that moment, Jeremy’s hand froze in midair.
Sylvia continued, staring at Jeremy whose expression was slowly beginning to change.
“You, your siblings…”
It felt as though dark, festering fluid were oozing from her ruthlessly trampled, charred heart.
Jeremy’s pale, frightened face looked sickeningly innocent and pathetic.
Sylvia wanted to spit in that face.
These sinners had brutally butchered her precious person, yet not one of them felt a shred of remorse.
“Every single human in this Agriche who killed my oppa.”
So Sylvia, too, had no intention of ever forgiving them.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and blood for blood, death for death.
Thus, she would grant these beasts worse than animals an end befitting them.
“I will kill every last one of you with my own two hands, without fail.”
On that day, the white ember that had glowed faintly within her, never extinguished by any hardship, finally went out completely.
『From The Flower of Hell』
It was midwinter, and the entire world was blanketed in pure white.
“Damn it.”
The man who had just closed the door and stepped out into the hallway spat out a curse through gritted teeth.
He appeared to be around his mid-twenties.
The young man with black hair and gray eyes was Fontaine, the eldest son of Agriche.
Having just exited the room of his father, Lant Agriche, Fontaine was in an utterly foul mood.
The reason for his displeasure was that all the credit for the joint mission they had recently carried out had gone entirely to Deon.
Of course, it was true that Deon had played a major role during the drug smuggling operation.
If he hadn’t caught the scent of the sewer rats sneaking in, they might have suffered a disastrous setback halfway through.
But Fontaine was the one who had brokered the deal in the first place.
Yet to give Deon all the credit merely for wiping out a pack of rats was grossly unfair.
He knew his father, Lant Agriche, favored Deon to an almost brazen degree, but his temper flared every time it happened.
Crash!
Fontaine shattered an ornament in the hallway with an iron fist.
Wishing all the while that it were Deon’s skull.
As if accustomed to it, the servants cleaned up the debris left in Fontaine’s wake.
Fontaine did not head to his room, heading outside the manor instead.
He planned to slaughter some demonic beasts to blow off steam.
Dragging out the slaves from the manor’s dungeon to play with them might have done, but today this filthy mood wouldn’t dissipate without seeing proper blood.
“Young Master Fontaine, if you are going out, an attendant should—”
“It’s all a pain in the ass, so get lost. Only follow if you want to get sliced up instead of the beasts.”
At that, the presence trailing behind him vanished.
Knowing Fontaine’s nature well enough that he would carry out that threat without a second thought, no one dared follow him.
Fontaine left Agriche immediately and headed for the boundary.
Whoooosh.
Outside, a bitter winter wind was raging.
The blizzard sweeping through the forest carried the gloomy aura of the north.
The place Fontaine arrived at was the northwestern boundary.
Reaching the habitat of the demonic beasts, he drew the greatsword slung across his back.
“You’d better not go that way.”
But just as Fontaine was about to take a step forward, a slender, melodious voice carried on the drifting snow brushed past his ear.
Though it wasn’t particularly loud, he had no choice but to turn around.
Such was the bizarre power woven into that voice.
“I already took care of everything, so there isn’t even a shard of bone left.”
Belatedly, Fontaine noticed a sweet fragrance subtly mingled in the frozen air of the forest.
In the next moment, what entered his view was a woman clad in a white fur cloak.
Golden hair spilling out fluttered amidst the dancing snowflakes, sparkling like dust of light.
As her hands moved to lower her hood, a face as pure white as a snowscape was revealed.
Half-concealed in the forest shadows, the woman was breathtakingly beautiful.
Fontaine involuntarily froze for a moment.
“Roxana. What are you doing here?”
The one emerging from the forest was Fontaine’s half-sister, Roxana.