Extra: Yandere Milfs Obsessed with me!-Chapter 182: Frankly… Randal should slap her more often~
Kaiser inclined his head slightly in return, in a gesture that could pass for respect.
"I’m afraid not, Your Highness, being in the company of Princess Olivia during the events. My renewed condolences, to you personally."
Adrian nodded. Then cast a glance toward his brother Julius.
"This must really affect you, brother. Enough to make them pay!?"
Kaiser, preferring to stay on the margins of their conflict, slipped away without waiting.
After all, he knew what was going to happen.
’This conflict that had just begun would escalate afterward. Because the Holy Cathedral did not want war, which Julius obeyed without saying anything unlike Adrian who wanted violent reprisals.’
He crossed the room, went to lean back at a respectable distance from the agitation, and turned his attention toward Dyana. She had slumped into an armchair, her gaze vacant, lost in her thoughts.
A few minutes passed. Suddenly, Dyana stood up. She murmured something to a servant beside her, then left the room through a side door. Her gait was slow.
Randal followed her silhouette with his eyes, his expression impassive. After a moment of hesitation, he set down his glass and left in turn, without a word to anyone.
Kaiser waited a moment. Then he slipped away as well, taking the same corridor. He advanced silently, descended a narrow service staircase. Muffled voices reached him from below.
He stopped, leaned against the wall...
Dyana, who had slipped away from the room, stood in the dimness of a small interior garden. She who had just lost her daughter felt alone amid all these people who were having fun.
Suddenly Randal appeared, his face hardened. Since the tragedy, he had not spoken a direct word to his wife.
"Can you tell me why you left the guests to come to a place like this?" he asked in a hard voice.
Dyana did not look at him right away. "I wanted to get away from all this noise, simply. To think better," she replied in a low voice.
Randal kept silent, his gaze fixed on her.
"How could this have happened?" he finally let out.
Dyana finally raised her eyes, surprised by these words. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her face fell apart, regret written all over it.
"You are a professor at the Academy; you should know about this mission," Randal continued, his tone turning icy, analytical. "How could you let Isabella get killed?"
"I..." Dyana tried, desperately searching for words.
*Splash*
A swift movement interrupted her stammering. The slap landed on her right cheek, a sharp crack that echoed in the garden’s silence. Kaiser, hidden in the shadows, distinctly perceived the impact and was quite surprised by the unfolding.
’Wow, now I see where Kris gets his impulsiveness from.’
"Just... shut up! Shut up, Dyana!" Randal growled, his voice laden with long-contained rage. "No excuse, no explanation can justify your inability to protect our children. None."
With those words, he turned on his heel in a brusque movement and walked away, leaving her alone, trembling.
"Incapaable mother..."
Several minutes passed, during which Dyana remained motionless, tears flowing endlessly.
’It’s my tiiiiime.’
Then, the light sound of footsteps on the stone made her raise her head.
She saw Kaiser advance calmly, and a glint of surprise crossed her gaze before she lowered her eyes again, as if ashamed.
When he was near her, he stopped, hands buried in his pockets. His expression was unreadable.
"You surely heard what he just said," she murmured without looking at him, one hand gripping her opposite forearm, head tilted to the side. "You must find me pathetic, don’t you?"
"That’s true," he replied without inflection. "Right now, you really do look pathetic."
The words struck Dyana straight in the heart, even more brutally than the slap. She had, despite everything, hoped for a word of comfort, however faint. But what had she expected from the one she herself had kept at a distance? This bitter thought made her bite her lip with such force that a trickle of blood immediately pearled.
"But you know?" Kaiser resumed after a silence. He then approached, reducing the space between them. With his thumb, he brushed the corner of her lip, wiping the scarlet drop, then gently lifted her chin to force her to look at him. "I refuse to see you like this. No one has the right to reduce you to that, not even you." His hand moved up to caress her bruised cheek with tenderness. "It must be terrible to bear, doesn’t it?"
"B-But..." she stammered, before regaining herself. Her voice was barely a breath. "I let Isabella get killed. It’s true that it’s my fault... I..."
"It’s normal to feel guilty when everyone, including you, points at you as such," Kaiser said, his gaze never leaving hers.
"But the Dyana I fell in love with wouldn’t let herself be destroyed by remorse. I know that if you could have traded places with her, you would have done it without a second’s hesitation."
Then, the tears Dyana had been holding back began to flow down her pale face. Without a word, Kaiser drew even closer until their bodies brushed. He parted a strand of hair stuck to her damp temple and tucked it behind her ear, then wiped the tears with the tips of his fingers.
"Even if our relationship must remain distant, as you wanted, I hate seeing you cry," he murmured, his voice unusually soft.
Dyana raised toward him eyes drowned in tears, searching for an answer in his gaze. Then she rose slightly on tiptoe, her face approaching his. But Kaiser turned his head at the last moment, avoiding the contact of their lips.
"I don’t think that would be appropriate," he said.
A glint of disappointment crossed Dyana’s gaze. Then she nestled against him, clutching the folds of his coat, and buried her face against his shoulder.
"I just want... to feel someone’s warmth," she murmured, her voice muffled by the fabric.
Internally, Kaiser, without scruples and with his perfidious Machiavellian mentality, was jubilating.
’Frankly... Randal should slap her more often~.’
