Chapter 288
The Villainous Noble Who Kept Rewinding After Death: The Story Somehow Changed When I Committed Suicide
Interlude: Sixth Loop
“Cough! Cough…”
Louise woke up coughing, and after looking around to confirm that he was in his room, he buried his head in his hands.
“Back here again…”
With a burning sore throat and a nauseating feeling as if his stomach had flipped, Louise, having returned from death for the sixth time, muttered in a resigned tone.
“Haah. Was I poisoned this time? Ha ha, I can’t believe Miria betrayed me.”
Recalling the last scene he saw, he thought about the cause of his fifth death and the identity of the person who killed him.
Knock knock knock
“Lord Louise. May I come in?”
“…………”
As usual, Miria knocked and asked if she could enter, but Louise couldn’t reply right away, still brooding over the events of the fifth loop.
“Excuse me.”
Assuming Louise was still asleep due to the silence, Miria opened the door and entered.
“Oh, good morning. You’re awake, I see.”
“………… Ah.”
Seeing Miria enter, Louise flinched slightly and managed to respond while avoiding making eye contact with her.
“Is something the matter?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
“I see.”
Miria, puzzled by Louise’s reaction, opened the curtains as usual and prepared drinking water to hand to him.
“Lord Louise. If you’re not feeling well, please take some water.”
“Ugh!! No, I’m fine.”
“But…”
“I said I don’t want it!!”
Louise said as he swatted Miria’s hand away, causing the cup she was holding to fall and shatter on the floor.
“Oh, I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention…”
“No, please don’t worry about it. I’ll clean it up. Now, about today’s schedule…”
“I know, it’s the meeting with my fiancée. I’m sorry, but just tell them I can’t make it because I’m unwell.”
“Your health doesn’t seem good. Should I call a doctor?”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll get better in a bit, so just leave me alone for now.”
“Understood.”
Miria cleaned up the glass shards and then left the room, leaving Louise all alone.
“Hah… damn it. This is the worst. I know it’s not Miria’s fault, but my emotions can’t keep up.”
Having experienced returning from death multiple times, Louise could logically understand that the Miria before him was unrelated to the past Miria, yet he still unleashed his pent-up frustration as if he were in fear of being killed again.
“I can’t keep going like this. I shouldn’t… but damn it, damn it…”
The disconnect between reality and his feelings began to corrode Louise’s heart bit by bit, causing his mental state to slowly fracture.
From there, Louise found himself unable to do anything.
He had previously locked himself away during his past lives as well, but this time was worse, and he couldn’t bring himself to eat or drink anything.
The reason was simple—his fifth death was caused by poison.
The betrayal and poisoning by Miria, who had spent the longest time with him outside of his parents, left a permanent scar on Louise’s heart, plunging him into extreme distrust of others.
As a result, he could no longer eat food prepared or provided by anyone else, and within just a few months, he became so weak he could hardly walk.
At first, it was truly awful.
Just seeing food or drink would make his heart race, and the burning pain in his throat and body spasms prevented him from even touching them.
Yet, even if he forced himself to take a bite, unbearable nausea would strike, causing him to vomit everything in his stomach; if there was nothing left to throw up, he would bring up bile, and continuously forcing himself to vomit would hurt his throat until he bled.
“Louise. I made this for you. Just a little, please eat.”
“Thank you… very much.”
However, it was still his parents, unchanged from the past, who worried and stayed by his side. Elise even went so far as to cook for him, despite her lack of experience.
At first, it certainly wasn’t delicious, and compared to a professional chef, her dishes couldn’t be called beautiful. But seeing her hands, which had become injured from daily cooking, brought Louise no complaints. He endured his feelings of joy and embarrassment as he ate his meals.
“Louise. There was a beautiful rainbow outside today. I wanted you to see it.”
“That’s a shame I missed it. I would be happy if you could call me next time you see a rainbow.”
“Ah, we should invite Elise too and look at it together.”
Moreover, Edward, despite being busy with work, visited Louise’s room nearly every day to share stories about interesting happenings outside or within the mansion.
Supported by his parents’ devoted love, Louise managed to pull himself together and recovered enough to lead a normal life.
Even so, Louise’s mentality, having once fallen into distrust of others, couldn’t extend trust beyond his parents, leading him to spend all his time in the mansion until the day he enrolled in the academy.
The truth was, Louise didn’t want to attend the academy at all. However, he thought it better to go himself than lose consciousness like during his fourth loop, which forced him into attending the academy.
After that, he led a quiet school life similar to the third loop, yet he couldn’t trust Miria, who attended the academy with him, sometimes even preparing his own meals and spending most of his time alone.
Then, just as he was about to graduate from the academy, he suddenly received a call from Iris.
At that time, they were still engaged as if it were fate, but Louise couldn’t bring himself to dissolve the engagement due to his past fears.
However, upon being summoned by Iris, he fostered the faint hope that maybe he could break off the engagement with her, and so he headed into the secluded forest used for practical training within the academy.
Though there was anxiety about what might happen, the thought of potentially gaining freedom from the engagement outweighed it, and he proceeded cautiously through the forest.
Eventually, he arrived at a slightly open area where the sunset streamed in, and he found Iris standing there staring at the sunset.
“Iris… guh!!”
Just as Louise was about to call out to her, suddenly, someone from behind pushed him down violently to the ground.
“Ahaha. Good evening, Lord Louise.”
“I-Iris. What is the meaning of this?”
Louise, struggling to comprehend the situation, hoarsely asked Iris, who looked down at him with a twisted smile, her eyes narrowing.
“Oh my, you still don’t understand?”
“W-what do you mean…”
“It’s simple really. I thought I’d have Lord Louise die here. By the way, this is an assassin I hired.”
“…Huh?”
“I like the Hero, but since I’m engaged to you, I can’t go out with him. I considered breaking our engagement, but you never try to connect with me, so I couldn’t create a reason to do so. I had originally planned to become a tragic heroine abandoned by you and end up with that man, but how unfortunate.”
“What are you…”
“So, I got an idea! What if I have someone kill you, and then he comforts me while I’m grieving? Frankly, you’re just a nuisance! You’re blocking my love! Your very existence is a bother!”
After that, Louise was bombarded with cruel words from Iris, but at this point, his heart was already breaking, and Iris’s words were no longer penetrating his ears.
“So, I’m going to personally end your life! You should be thankful!”
(Huh? What was that just now…)
With a rusty dagger in her right hand and a smile, Iris brought it down, but for a brief moment, as the sunset illuminated her, Louise thought he saw her true eyes were dark and cloudy instead of blue.
“It’s almost as if someone…”
“Well then, goodbye, Lord Louise.”
As Louise pondered this dissonance, Iris swung the rusted dagger down with force into his back.
“Ugh…”
“Whoa? You didn’t die with just one stab, huh? Well, if I stab you enough times, you’ll die eventually, right? Hehe, hehehe…”
However, due to Iris’s frail female body and the fact that she stabbed him from behind, Louise couldn’t die easily.
“Hah, hah… cough…”
“Ahh, you finally died. Oh dear, my clothes and hands are stained with your blood. I can just wash it with magic, right? Ugh… even in death, you’re inconvenient. You really were a nuisance.”
(Hah. Finally, I can die… ah, hahahaha…)
As his consciousness faded, Louise couldn’t help but smile, realizing that he was finally dying, just as Iris seemed pleased by his death.
Thus, after being stabbed about eight times, Louise succumbed to excessive bleeding, ending his sixth life at the hands of Iris.