The World After the Bad Ending - Chapter 89

Isabel Luna.
The main heroine of The Blazing Butterfly.
She isn’t the acting president or vice president.
So, originally, there was no need for her to accompany us on the way to this meeting.

However, both the acting president and vice president were allowed to bring one assistant each.
Iris chose me, the temporary secretary, as her assistant.
Normally, Hania would’ve gone, but since this was a student council matter, she yielded the spot to me.

「Lady Iris struggles to sleep when her sleeping environment changes. Hanon is a better choice.」
Recently, Hania seemed much brighter after noticing that Iris was able to sleep peacefully.
Perhaps that’s why her trust in me had grown significantly.
Thanks to that, I ended up taking the spot next to Iris.

Then who brought Isabel along?
The answer was already obvious.
It was Sharin, who was lying on Isabel’s lap.

Isabel readily agreed to come.
When I first heard she’d be joining us, I didn’t think much of it.
Although Isabel had been a bit sulky last time when I didn’t finish a fight properly and slipped away, she wasn’t the kind of person to throw a tantrum at a gathering like this.

The only thing I didn’t anticipate was this:
Iris, dozing off in the carriage, would pull me into her arms and fall asleep.
And she did it so naturally, as if it were the most familiar thing in the world.

“……”
Silence settled between Isabel and me.
Ever since Iris had fallen asleep with me in her arms, Isabel had been staring daggers at me.

Iris’s strength was otherworldly.
Firmly restrained, I had no way to escape in the cramped space of the carriage.
As I awkwardly avoided Isabel’s piercing gaze, she finally broke the silence.

“Do you sleep like that with Lady Iris every day?”
Her tone was sharper than usual.

She had caught me once sneaking into the girls’ dormitory disguised as Hania.
Luckily, Isabel didn’t blab about it to anyone.
Still, it left me constantly on edge.

“…Isabel, there’s a reason for this.”
“Because of Lady Iris’s sleep, right?”
So, Isabel already knew.

“Everyone knows Lady Iris struggles to sleep.”
Iris suffered from chronic insomnia.
Even if she tried to hide it, living at the academy made it impossible not to notice.

“And we all know how unbearable that must be.”
Isabel herself had endured severe insomnia after Lucas’s death.
She understood that pain all too well.

“But lately, Lady Iris has been sleeping well.”
Thanks to my efforts, Iris had finally been sleeping soundly.
As a result, even someone like Isabel could see how much brighter Iris’s face had become.

“And that’s because of you, isn’t it?”
Isabel had pieced together that I was the reason behind Iris’s improvement.

“Yes, that’s right.”
When I answered honestly, Isabel let out a small sigh.

“Good job. Honestly, this scene is a bit shocking, but if it was necessary for Lady Iris to sleep well, so be it.”
Such magnanimity, befitting the main heroine.

“Of course, if it looked like you had even the slightest ulterior motive…”
But separate from her generosity, Isabel’s eyes held not a single glimmer of warmth as she smiled.

“I wonder what would’ve happened.”
“I wouldn’t dare have ulterior motives toward the Third Princess.”

“Yes, that seems certain.”
Isabel spoke with confidence.
Why does it feel like she’s reading me inside out?
Isabel was becoming increasingly intimidating.

“That’s why it’s all the more puzzling.”
Isabel slowly stroked Sharin’s hair as it rested on her lap.

“If there’s no ulterior motive, then what exactly are you doing this for?”
Her calm gaze settled on me.
It was filled with concern.

Isabel misunderstood, believing that I caused the boycott incident over the Nikita affair.
She thought my staying by Iris’s side was an extension of that.
To Isabel, it seemed as if I was staying close to Iris as part of a plan for revenge against Nikita.

She worried that the moment Iris completely let her guard down around me, I might strike in the name of vengeance for Nikita.

However, my recent actions were far from anything resembling revenge.
Iris was an exceptionally sensitive person, especially toward hostility directed at her.
Yet I remained by her side without issue.
This could only mean that I had not shown even the slightest hint of hostility toward her.

Hatred and anger are emotions that cannot be fully concealed, no matter how hard one tries.
Isabel, who had once relied on anger as her driving force, understood this better than anyone.

That’s why Isabel couldn’t help but question me.
How could someone harboring hatred toward Nikita stay so calmly by Iris’s side?

It left only two possibilities:
Either I had mastered my anger to an unimaginable degree, or I never had any hatred to begin with.

Earlier, Isabel told me I had no ulterior motives.
That included hatred and anger.
Her thoughts leaned toward the second possibility.

And from there, another question emerged:
If I didn’t harbor hatred, why did I instigate the boycott, even at the cost of being misunderstood?
What, then, was my true objective?

As these questions arose, Isabel began recalling the various suspicions surrounding me.
Things she had overlooked while blinded by anger.
The conversations we’d had, my actions up until now—everything began to connect in her mind.

When Isabel no longer saw me through the lens of anger but instead overlapped me with Lucas, the questions she had ignored started becoming clearer.

‘…This is dangerous.’
As I mentioned earlier, Isabel was beginning to see me as overlapping with Lucas.
This was a rebound from her unwillingness to let go of Lucas.

The wound etched in her heart had yet to fully heal.
Thus, she projected Lucas onto me, leaning on me to dispel her lingering anxiety.

Her recent obsession with me stemmed from this.
Love and hate.
The affection she felt for me as someone she saw as Lucas, and the hatred she harbored because of my earlier remarks that insulted Lucas.

Having relied on anger to pull herself out of despair, Isabel couldn’t easily let go of it.
She feared that abandoning her anger might lead her back into the clutches of despair.

Thus, her feelings toward me were a mix of love and hate.
But because of that, Isabel paid closer attention to me, and it seemed she was beginning to vaguely realize that I had intentionally become the target of her anger.

‘This is troublesome.’
I couldn’t predict how Isabel would feel once she confirmed this realization.
Human emotions are unpredictable, and they can explode in unexpected directions.

If she felt gratitude, that would be a blessing.
But if she felt betrayed, there was no telling what might happen.

Isabel quietly continued to look at me.

Her gaze showed no intention of leaving me.
“Isabel…”
Just as I was about to speak to cut off the trail of her suspicions—

“Because he’s family.”
It was Iris who spoke first.

At some point, she’d woken up and rested her chin lightly on the top of my head.
When Isabel looked at Iris in shock, Iris tightened her embrace around me.
It was as if she were silently declaring that she would never let me be taken from her.
The soft warmth pressing against my back grew even stronger.
I wondered if this was really okay.

“There are secrets that others simply can’t know.”
Iris smiled enigmatically as she looked at Isabel.
That smile left Isabel wide-eyed in surprise.
She had never imagined Iris would openly defend me.

Isabel didn’t know the full story behind my relationship with Iris.
Thus, the many questions she harbored couldn’t be resolved by Iris’s defense of me—they only deepened.

I looked up at Iris, and she closed her eyes with a faint smile on her lips.
It was as if she were saying, ‘You helped me with my insomnia, so I’m helping you a little in return’.
What else would you expect from the Third Princess?
Her intuition was razor-sharp.

“And…”
At that moment, Iris hugged me even tighter.

“Hanon is my little brother, and I have no intention of giving him to just anyone.”
“…What?”
Isabel blinked, her face blank with disbelief.

Iris had already noticed the possessiveness and obsession Isabel secretly harbored toward me.
Even if it stemmed from her seeing me as Lucas’s reflection, it was directed at me nonetheless.

I had been staying by Iris’s side for quite some time.
It wasn’t something Iris could have failed to notice.
And now, she was asserting her claim over me.

Her words carried a clear meaning: ‘I’m not handing over my emotional support to anyone’.

But Isabel, who already bore mixed feelings of love and hate toward me, had been shaken once before by Hania pretending to be my girlfriend.
Iris’s statement was like pouring fuel on the fire.

Isabel’s eyes narrowed slowly, her gaze turning sharp—an expression far from that of the main heroine.

“Iris, isn’t it improper to talk about your little brother like he’s a possession?”

“It’s fine. I’m a princess.”
For a moment, Isabel was rendered speechless.
She hadn’t expected Iris to play the rank card so blatantly.

“…Precisely because you’re a princess, shouldn’t you set an example?”
But Isabel wasn’t one to back down so easily.

“Taking care of family is exemplary enough.”

“When care crosses the line, it becomes a burden. Allowing everything just because it’s family is no different from domestic violence.”

A strange tension surged between Isabel and Iris.
It almost felt like sparks were flying between their gazes.

Caught in the middle, I sat there with a resigned expression.
With Iris already holding me tightly, there wasn’t much I could do.

At that moment, I happened to make eye contact with Sharin, who had quietly woken up.
Sensing the atmosphere in the carriage, she moved her lips silently.

“A lover’s quarrel.”

Sharin was clearly finding this situation amusing.
It was her first time seeing Isabel go head-to-head with Iris like this, so her interest was understandable.

Reading her lips, I closed my eyes.
If it were truly a lover’s quarrel, I might feel a bit better.
Imagine beautiful women fighting over me—it might even boost my self-esteem.

But this was different.
One was someone who saw me as an object of mixed affection and hatred.
The other treated me like an emotional support doll.
Neither had anything to do with love.

Their claims of ownership over me didn’t reflect my wishes at all.
So I couldn’t even step in to stop them.

Was this my karmic punishment?
All I wanted was to turn a bad ending into a happy one.

‘Lucas.’
I miss him, especially today.