TINOT 7

Chapter: 7

After handing Lillian over to the butler, Joel lifted the teapot as if thirsty, only to discover it was empty. He set it back down without a word.

Just as Joel reached for the bell to summon a servant, Lisithea covered it with her palm and stopped him.

A beast that didn’t even know who held its leash needed to learn how to endure thirst.

“Send her away.”

The purpose and intent were obvious. There was no need to waste time or emotional energy with long explanations.

Lisithea said only that and waited for Joel’s reply.

“Lisithea, don’t misunderstand. I really have nothing going on with Lady Rose.”

“Nothing at all?”

“She saved my life. I couldn’t just pretend nothing happened. And what you saw—Lady Rose was about to fall, so I caught her.”

Lisithea almost felt pity for Joel’s stupidity.

Was it really a coincidence that she nearly fell in a spot clearly visible from the drawing room where Lisithea stood?

From the perfectly timed fall into Joel’s arms to her blatant intrusion into the drawing room, it was obvious that everything had been calculated by Lillian Rose.

She couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed such a transparent ploy.

No—she needed to revise her earlier thought.

The male lead of this world wasn’t just a little dense. He was very dense.

“Joel Spencer, does this sound like a request to you?”

“Haah… Lisithea. Please.”

Joel let out a heavy sigh, irritation seeping into his voice.

From that familiar tone, Lisithea clearly read reproach and exhaustion directed at her.

Passing the blame—how laughable.

Who was it that had turned the situation into this mess?

“Can’t you try to understand me this time? I have my own circumstances too.”

“I don’t care to know. Whatever your reasons are, my demand is simple. Send Lillian Rose out of this house by the end of the week.”

When Lisithea’s attitude didn’t soften at all, Joel looked at her with a fed-up expression.

After going this far, shouldn’t she at least pretend to listen?

He really hadn’t wanted to say this—but she left him no choice.

“Don’t you think you’re mistaken about something? You don’t have the right to interfere in what happens in the Spencer household. You’re my fiancée, not my wife.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? If I weren’t your fiancée, I would’ve dragged Lillian Rose out of this house with my own hands.”

“You really… do you know how suffocating you are? Every time you’re like this, I can’t breathe. It feels like I’m a dog chained by the neck.”

Not once did he ever give in.

Lisithea never allowed even the slightest deviation from the standards and rules she had set.

There was a reason no one stayed by his side despite that face of his.

“Joel Spencer. Are you sick of me? Feel trapped? Suffocated?”

“Anyone would. Who could put up with someone like you?”

As if she’d been waiting for those words, the woman before him broke into a radiant smile.

It was so bright that for a moment he forgot they were even arguing.

“Then break off the engagement. I don’t need a dog that can’t even recognize its owner.”

Joel was momentarily captivated by her expression, slow to grasp the meaning of her words.

At first, he bristled at being called a dog—but then the word engagement annulment finally registered, and his eyes narrowed.

Annul the engagement?
Lisithea Aster wanted to annul their engagement?

Ridiculous.

“…No matter how angry you are, there are things you can say and things you can’t.”

It wasn’t that the thought had never crossed his mind.

But he had never once said it out loud in front of Lisithea.

“You seem too emotional today. Let’s talk later.”

“Sit.”

Seeing no chance of a productive conversation, Joel tried to leave—but Lisithea didn’t budge.

“Lisithea, go home now.”

“Sit.”

She was immovable, like a thousand-year-old rock.

Whenever she was like this, Joel felt like he might burst from sheer frustration.

“You—no, forget it.”

Scoffing with a weary expression, he nonetheless sat back down obediently, exactly as she ordered.

Seriously, that fiery temper of hers…

Creeeak—
The chair let out a shrill scream as it tilted sharply to one side.

Joel flailed his arms and barely avoided tumbling to the floor.

“Joel Spencer. I didn’t tell you to act shamelessly toward the person who saved your life. Whether with money, Spencer power, connections—use whatever you have and pay your debt properly.”

“……”

“But this? This isn’t it. You bring Lillian Rose into this house and turn me into this?”

As Lisithea enumerated each point clearly, Joel already felt his stomach shrinking.

Still, it wasn’t as though he had nothing to say.

“You never cared about what other people thought in the first place.”

What did public opinion matter?

To Lisithea, the only thing that mattered was the standard she set for herself.

“Right. I don’t care what people gossip about. But if you’d thought about me even a little, you wouldn’t have pulled a stunt like this.”

“What did I do that was so wrong…?”

“Did you really not know what it means to bring a mana channeler into your home?”

That hit the mark precisely.

Joel, who’d been talking endlessly just moments ago, shut his mouth.

Magic in this land was essentially a miracle borrowed from the stars—but the fuel that activated it was human mana.

The scale of magic depended on the amount and purity of mana offered.

To wield special, powerful magic, more mana was required.

But just as one’s blessing from the stars was determined at birth, so too was the amount of mana a person possessed.

That was why mages were obsessed with collecting substitutes for mana.

Yet greedy stars accepted nothing indiscriminately.

High-purity gemstones.
A mage’s body parts or memories.
Or a mage’s very life.

The sole hope of mages—who never knew when their guardian star might claim their lives—was the mana channeler.

A mana channeler’s magic consisted of lending their own mana to other mages.

The reason Lillian Rose had been able to save Joel Spencer in the Black Forest was precisely because she was a mana channeler.

Romances between mages and mana channelers were a staple of popular fiction—but there was one story more famous than all the rest.

Emma Dawson, daughter of a fallen baron, who fell in love with Lisithea’s biological father.

She was the mana channeler who had appeared once every sixty years.

A fallen baron’s daughter and a promising high noble.
A man wounded by an unwanted political marriage and the daughter of his deceased mentor.
A young mage and a beautiful mana channeler appearing once in sixty years.

Their love was hailed as the romance of the century—and the daughter left behind by the first wife was nothing more than an obstacle.

The reason their names had resurfaced after being forgotten was the emergence of a new mana channeler: Lillian Rose.

From being a rare mana channeler to being the daughter of a fallen baron, Lillian Rose bore many similarities to Emma Dawson.

To those who remembered the love story of Marquis Aster and Emma, the meeting of Lillian and Joel felt like time looping back on itself.

Even the obstacle between them was the same—Lisithea Aster.

Lisithea felt sick of this fate-like repetition.

How lazy was this world?

What made their love so special?

Why did misfortune always have to belong to her alone?

“I didn’t know you cared about things like that. You never talked about your parents in front of me…”

Lisithea wished she could.

She wished she could live as someone completely unrelated to her parents.

But there was no escaping a tragedy known to the entire world.

All she could do was endure, wearing a noble mask as if nothing hurt.

“I’ll say it again. Send Lillian Rose out of this house. Or we end our engagement here. That’s all I have to say.”

Lisithea stood up.

Joel rose hurriedly and grabbed her arm.

“Lisithea, let’s talk this through. If you leave like this—”

“Why? Afraid of an annulment? Worried your grandfather will be angry?”

Perhaps because they hadn’t known each other long—

Their love didn’t seem that deep.

If Joel truly wanted to maintain his engagement with her, that was proof enough.

“I told you. I don’t need a dog that doesn’t know who its owner is. You should’ve known who held the leash before you barked.”

Lisithea Aster—owner of the Cullinan Mine and the wealthiest unmarried woman in the Empire.

It was Joel and the Spencers who had pushed for the engagement because they needed that.

The Spencer family were mage-artificers who revered the Star of the Blacksmith.

They amassed wealth and power by producing and selling magical items.

But recently, a series of costly magical tools had failed, plunging them into financial trouble.

The engagement between Joel Spencer and Lisithea Aster had been their solution.

“…Dog—ha, fine. I didn’t think deeply enough. I get why you’d be upset, but… let’s not take this too far. Calm down.”

Having been called a dog twice in one day, Joel chose not to argue and instead decided to placate his sulking fiancée.

Lisithea had never been particularly easygoing, but today she was especially sharp.

Almost as if she were someone who had already been told the day of her death.

He expected her to be upset about Lillian—but not this furious.

Then again, Lisithea had always been unusually possessive of him.

“It’s not like you’d really break off our engagement anyway. I know you didn’t mean it.”

At Joel’s softened, soothing tone, Lisithea let out a short laugh.