It’s Time to Stop Clinging to the Fake Guide - Chapter 33

At those words, the man’s eyes widened in surprise.
“……”
The silence dragged on, suffocating.

He had revealed his heart. Whether it was an illusion or confusion, he had confessed that he liked Lynette.
And yet, the woman’s answer was to say, “Please love someone else.”

‘This is the worst.’
A bitter laugh nearly slipped out, but he quickly pressed his lips tightly together.

Euphen’s face was harder than ever before. Judging by the tension in his jaw, it seemed like he was clenching his teeth.
“Say that again.”
“Please love Miss Eshar.”

They say the first time is always the hardest. Once she let it out once, saying it a second time was easier.
Lynette quietly looked into his blue eyes. His gaze trembled violently.

“Eshar…”
As though trying to recall who that was, Euphen muttered in a low voice with a frown.
“The woman from the Lera Merchant Guild I met not long ago?”
“Yes.”

She lowered her head, unable to look at him any longer.

She felt ridiculous. That faint joy she felt because he didn’t immediately say yes.
Even while desperately rejecting this man’s love, a small corner of her heart still longed for his feelings, and she despised herself for it.

Would it have been easier if she had simply hated Euphen?
‘As if I could ever hate him.’

He was someone she had cherished, even in unbearable pain. The only man she remembered as she died. The one she desperately wished to see just once more, even if only for a moment.

When she died in his arms, she had been honestly happy. Just the fact that Euphen had come for her. She knew that, for him, it was grief and suffering… but for her, the joy of forgetting it all for a fleeting moment was overwhelming.

Why couldn’t human hearts ever be divided neatly into black and white?

Lynette quietly waited for his answer. His breathing had grown slightly rough.
“That’s your answer?”
“……”
“To ask me to love someone else?”

Her lips trembled.
“Miss Eshar is a good person.”

She didn’t even want to imagine what the man before her was feeling, so she stubbornly avoided his persistent gaze. If she recognized the emotions overflowing in his blue eyes, she wouldn’t be able to summon the courage to say another word.

“She’s kind, intelligent…”
She fumbled, forcing out as many compliments as she could. After a few words, nothing else came to mind, and she awkwardly closed her mouth.

“Did that woman ask you to say this?”
“No!”

Lynette shook her head sharply.
It was she who had asked Eshar, to please love Prince Euphen. She hoped the two of them could love each other.

“Then why suddenly tell me to love her?”
His tone was one of complete incomprehension.

“Because she is the one most suited to Your Highness.”
“Hah.”

With a short, incredulous sigh, he ran a hand roughly through his hair.
“That’s not something you get to decide.”
“I know I’m speaking out of turn.”
“If this is your way of refusing me, you’d better find another way.”
“I’m grateful for Your Highness’s feelings, but I cannot accept them. I’m only a fake, and also…”
“Have you already forgotten that I said I didn’t care if you were fake?”

His large hand seized Lynette. The sharp pain of his touch made her fingertips flinch.

This was why it could never be. Even if their hearts connected, the end was far too obvious.
In the end, she would make Euphen grieve again. Make him cry… just like that time.

“It matters to me. Besides, I’m just a maid. I’m not like Miss Eshar, daughter of a great merchant guild. I’m a woman who was sold for a few coins, with nothing to her name.”

She forcefully shook off his hand.

Never once had she rejected his touch… not before her regression, nor now. At least not for the sake of Guiding. But if she didn’t do this, her true feelings would never be conveyed.

Euphen froze, as though deeply shocked at being rejected for the first time.

“If I weren’t Your Highness’s fake Guide, would you have ever looked at me even once? Would you have even known a woman named Lynette existed? If I had been nothing at all…!”
“But you already appeared before me.”

His voice rose slightly.
“What good is it to think of what might have been? Sure, if we hadn’t met, nothing would have happened. But we did meet, and you became my Guide. Isn’t that enough?”

His brow furrowed in anger, and Lynette instinctively stepped back.

She had never seen him like this. In all the years they had been together, Euphen had never once raised his voice at her.
Even when she told him she loved another man and left, he hadn’t gotten angry. He had only held back tears with a sorrowful face, as if believing he had no right to stop her if she loved someone else.

“What’s done is done. There’s no point in dwelling on ‘what if.’”

Realizing he had lost his temper, his voice dropped again, calm but low.

Lynette parted her lips. Neither of them intended to back down, and so they kept repeating only their own stance.

‘Why… Why is this happening? Why is it, again..’

Even in another life, why did this man still hold her so deeply in his heart?
Could traces of his emotions from before her regression still remain? Otherwise, how could she understand this intense reaction?

Back then, when she had truly met Euphen for the first time, he had been kind, but he hadn’t harbored such strong emotions so quickly.

Of course, that time, she had never rejected him either. She had been completely swept away by the sweet dream of first love, intoxicated by his feelings.

Perhaps even then, Euphen had held such fierce emotions. They had simply never had the chance to surface.