I Decided to Kidnap the Male Lead

Episode 25: A Good Friend (X)

Hermia, too, was just an ordinary lady, so she could not have possibly led a normal life after seeing the man she once loved die in front of her eyes.

One day in the past, when she saw her fiancé, she fell in love at first sight, but it wasn’t as eternal as a fairy tale.

Her love for him easily cooled down in the face of his indulgence towards gambling, which caused him to ignore and not care about her.

And her disappointment towards her fiancé and her thirst for love were washed away by another love.

“What… What have I done!”

“She… She said all we have to do is keep quiet…”

“I didn’t mean to do this!”

That day, her fiancé died without even closing his eyes, and those cold eyes were still chasing her to this very moment.

Hermia shook her head again.

‘No. It’s not my fault. I mean, I didn’t mean to.’

Raisa’s low voice echoed in Hermia’s ear.

“Lady, if you don’t want your affair to be discovered and for your engagement to be broken and to be imprisoned in a monastery, you’ll have to do what I say.”

She rubbed her ear and stuttered out another piece.

“Just be quiet … to be quiet, I’ve, I’ve been threatened to stay silent!”

It was a sharp confession that scratched the ears, akin to rubbing a glass plate with an iron file.

Ophelia, who had reflexively furrowed her brows, opened her eyes wide at the contents of Hermia’s scream that followed.

“The lady, the lady of Neir, told me… to deal with him! Otherwise, s-she will expose everything!”

To be precise, all Raisa wanted was to raise the debt.

However, Hermia, bearing such a weakness, inflated and twisted the words in such a way that she had to deal with her fiancée.

Ophelia’s eyelashes fluttered quickly.

Not the Marchioness of Neir, but the lady? This was an unexpected development.

‘I thought it wasn’t normal, but…’

“Neir?”

The count, who had been keeping silent so far, spoke for the first time.

“Did you just say ‘Neir’?”

“I… I’m so-sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t think he was going to die. That… It was an accident! P-Please…”

The count approached Hermia in stride.

He grabbed her by the shoulder roughly and asked, one word at a time, like he was chewing and spitting it out.

“You said that the lady of the Marquisate of Neir ordered it?”

“Yes, yes. It’s not my fault. I-I just did what I was told…”

Hermia was answering the count, but her eyes were looking somewhere far away.

Perhaps she was looking into the eyes of her fiancée who had become a cold corpse before her eyes.

And Iris… she stared at such a Hermia. She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t say anything.

Affair, murder, and even threats.

‘Hermia… my dear friend.’

‘You who were crying for help… you did such a terrible thing.’

If she had confessed everything truthfully from the beginning, it wouldn’t have gotten to this point.

All the doubts, surprises, betrayal and disappointment came all at once, and her throat was choked.

Retreating from Hermia, the count appeared half insane, covering his miserable face with both hands.

The next moment, the eyes of Hermia and Iris, whose focus was shaking, met.

“Why?”

It was a word that came out without realization

“Why did you do that? No, why did you lie…”

Before Iris could finish speaking, Hermia raised her eyes.

“Then what should I say!”

She approached Iris at once, at a speed that was as if she was charging.

“Iris Fillite! What should I say to you, you who is righteous and superior? I’m having an affair, and I’m caught and threatened, so I have to deal with my fiancé. Please help me? Should I have said that?”

“Her… Mia.”

Iris reached out a hand towards Hermia, but she could not even touch her, and it fell helplessly.

Hermia, lowering her fiercely raised eyes, uttered in a weak and pathetic voice that Iris had always heard.

“You… you don’t know. Because you are strong.”

Iris was suffocating at the words of her close friend who trembled and cried exaggeratedly, but she did not express it.

She couldn’t express herself.

As her friend said, Iris had to be strong.

She had lived that way, and she would live that way.

It didn’t come from anyone else’s coercion or for the gaze of others.

It was something of her own choosing, her decision to dedicate her life to serve Richard as her lord.

“You don’t get hurt. How do you know when you don’t even know pain!”

This time, Hermia reached out towards Iris.

Her claw-like hand grabbed her Iris’ arm.

“I asked you for help. Please close the case quickly. If you had just said something, I wouldn’t have become like this…”

Ophelia’s eyes widened as she watched Hermia clinging to Iris and whining.

‘It’s between friends, so don’t interfere. It’s not a matter for you to step in.’

There were already three deep valleys in Ophelia’s forehead as she clutched onto that thought.

Then, a cry of pain erupted from Hermia.

“You can’t look at me like that! You didn’t even actively tell me to break up with him!”

Again, was it someone else’s fault?

Affair, murder, and even cover-up.

All of that was ultimately Hermia’s own choice.

She said she had been threatened, but such intimidation would not have mattered if she had taken responsibility for the wrong choices she had made, whether it was breaking up or going to a monastery.

There was nothing to say about breaking up the marriage.

That’s not far-fetched…

‘Yes, this isn’t a friendship issue, it’s just the nonsense of a human with a lack of character.’

Ophelia’s reason was there.

“You always say the right thing, but why didn’t you say anything until I got to this point…”

“Did you hear something?”

Hermia’s criticism of Iris was cut off by Ophelia’s cheerful voice.

“Strange, I think my ears are wrong.”

Ophelia blinked and patted her ear.

“I think a dog is barking somewhere, but that’s a shameless and naughty dog pretending to be the victim.”

With a bright smile that somehow chilled the backs of the viewers, she took one step closer to Hermia.

The radiant smile on Ophelia’s lips as she ripped Hermia’s fingers one by one by hand, which was holding Iris’s arm, grew wider and deeper.

“I’ve heard so much barking that it’s hard to point out all of them as bullshit, so I’m only asking one thing.”

Ophelia naturally pulled Iris towards her and placed her behind her back.

“Tell me. If you’re strong, will you never be hurt?”

“What… what?”

“You said that to Iris. That she’s strong, so she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t feel pain.”

Towards Hermia, whose mouth was twitching, Ophelia poured out what she had been dying to say without hesitation.

“Diamonds are also damaged when scratched with the same diamond. Being ‘strong’ and ‘not hurting’ are not the same thing. I can’t believe I have to tell you this.”

Ophelia licked her lips blatantly as if she had seen something terrible.

Giving up on her pathetic act, Hermia set her nails up and ran towards Ophelia, contorting her face like a demon.

“No…!”

The moment Iris, who was behind Ophelia, was startled and tried to grab her by the shoulder.

Ophelia lightly tilted her head to the left, and kicked Hermia in the pit of the stomach.

Iris’ eyes were widened to the point that it could not be widened further, but the reality of Hermia falling to the floor while holding her stomach like a skinny scarecrow did not change.

Ophelia could break the back of the heads of highly trained assassins secretly hiding in the Imperial Palace.

Although it was supported by evil, the chance of being beaten by an ordinary lady, Hermia, was infinitely close to zero.

Iris did not know this, but Richard, as well as Ophelia herself, knew.

But from the moment Hermia ran towards Ophelia, Richard’s face became terribly hardened.

As the blood slowly rose from his feet, he grabbed the fallen Hermia’s collar. She groaned, but no one stepped forward.

They couldn’t.

“How dare you.”

It was because the cold air that seemed to freeze to the bone was pressing down on the entire room.

How much time has passed whereby a second felt like a minute?

Richard ordered with a face as dry as a desert.

“Take her away.”

After a while, the count, gazing with indescribable eyes at the open door where Hermia, unable to speak, was dragged out, wiped his pale face with one hand.

And at the story that came out of his mouth, Richard and Ophelia blinked at each other.

“I was also threatened by Marchioness Neir, or rather, the lady.”

She said she would write off the debts, but only on the terms she offered.

So from the beginning, there was no choice.

The count went on in a hoarse voice.

“My son told me he was in debt before he died. And that debt… put the family in jeopardy.”

The count seemed to be completely exhausted, so he slumped down on the sofa helplessly.

“Just before coming here, as she suggested, I handed over all of the festival’s liquor licenses and was relieved of the debt.”

Ophelia swallowed her breath, stunned.

‘Ah, this is how it connects? Come to think of it, from among the pieces Hermia had laid out, there was a threat to ‘handle’ the debt of her fiancée, the Count’s son.’

In the end, all of this was done to loot the privilege of the festival.

If the people involved in the case had not been gathered together like this, and if it had not been for Crown Prince Richard.

All these shady conspiracies, intertwined with someone’s private secrets and one family’s faults, would not have all been exploded all at once in this way.

‘…It’s not about plotting, it’s about bringing it out…’

‘If it rots, it’s still the same.’

Indeed, Richard was Richard. It bothered Ophelia like she was chasing an annoying fly buzzing in front of her eyes.

At the same time as Ophelia turned to Richard and spoke, and right when Iris called for her.

“Your Highness, I also…”

“Ophel…”

At this exact moment, the entire palace shook violently.

To be precise, the ground supporting the Imperial Palace shook violently like waves crashing.