Is the Friend of a Friend a Stranger? - Chapter 42.2

All that was heard for a long time was the sound of the pages being turned.

As Sylvia turned the pages quickly, she came across important information and shouted excitedly.

“Look here. It says that mana sharing is not naturally explicable. I guess it’s unusual for one’s vision to be shared. Luckily, it seems like it’ll be over in two or three days. It says that some people completely shared their daily lives. But they were couples, so I guess that’s why it was worse.”

“Yeah.”

“Hearing is more often shared than that. Ah, it must have been blocked because I took medicine to control my excitement. But then, there must be side effects. Could it be that we’ve become like this because of the medicine we took back then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you really reading?”

Sylvia couldn’t help but ask, as he reacted in a disinterested tone no matter what he said. Owen put the book down and spoke.

“All that’s written here is about what those people did.”

“Of course. When something is theoretically inexplicable, through accumulated experience…”

“So, what I mean is, people’s experiences are all different and they say things that contradict each other, so do we really need to read it? Besides, we’re going through a situation like this ourselves, so we just have to do it.”

“Do what? If you’re trying to trouble me by making your lower part stand up again, I won’t let it go.”

Truly, there should never be another experience like that in her life. Her eyebrows rose like she was really angry, and Owen opened his mouth with a look of remorse.

“I’m sorry about that. I’m usually arrogant at first.”

That was true. Since Owen seemed to apologize sincerely, Sylvia waved her hand to stop talking about that.

“What do you want to do? You’re also involved in this, so I’ll do as you say. Besides, I owe you a lot.”

“If you’re talking about me getting hurt, I don’t blame you in the slightest. Don’t be so uncompromising as to even try to take responsibility for useless things like that.”

He didn’t need to tell her that he didn’t care much about it for her to know. She didn’t get much emotion from him, after all.

The only time Sylvia felt Owen’s emotions was when she made a fuss as she realized that Heston would be terribly worried about her disappearance, when the two of them were separated from the group.

He didn’t seem to be clear about what he liked or not. But how could she not care about that? Feeling sorry for what happened is being uncompromising and trying to take responsibility for something useless?

“Don’t be ridiculous. At this point, I’m genuinely curious about what upsets you.”

“A lot of things.”

“Yeah, like what?”

She crossed her arms and raised her head, telling him to go on. Owen spoke right away, as if it wasn’t something difficult.

“Drinks that aren’t cold, a hypocritical attitude, the selfish attitude of someone who knows nothing but themselves. I’m the same as everyone else.”

“Don’t lie. When your nephew, Count Bronowitz, beat you, you kept your mouth shut and stayed still.”

“He’s a victim. He deserved to be angry.”

His mouth opened with leniency.

As far as Sylvia knew, he wasn’t an enthusiastic fan of his uncle. He didn’t give him any treatment even though he was overflowing with money, and even cast magic on him to make it look as if he wasn’t hurt.

Would it have been better if he hadn’t cast magic? It felt so dirty to have even done such a thing, that Sylvia, who never gave it much thought at first—no, she definitely liked him. Every time they met in public, he kept his dignity, even though he was someone inflexible—instantly hated Bronowitz.

“Why is he a victim? Yeah, that could have been the case. If it were me, I would also be embarrassed to have an uncle who was my son’s age. But isn’t beating you another matter?”

“It would be a lie to say that selfishness wasn’t mixed in, but it wasn’t his fault that I was beaten. It was my fault. I didn’t lay low like he told me to.”

“You really are ridiculous. Are you doing this on purpose?”

Acting like a brainwashed child with every word he uttered really made her angry. Come to think of it, Owen said so then. That it was because he grew up without being loved. That he wasn’t good at doing things that went against other people’s expectations. He really was determined to bewitch women. Even as she muttered that, Sylvia couldn’t stop herself from feeling attracted to him.

If someone said that Sylvia wanted to be loved by men because of her low self-esteem and her inclination to want to be recognized by her family, it was clear that she would put a knife to their stomach, no matter what.

“Owen. Listen to me. Maybe you’re right. This world is made up of a great cause-and-effect relationship, and if you think about it, there is nothing people can’t understand. Even I am often like that. I struggle to forgive my father for being mean to me. But the important thing is that you don’t have to put yourself down while doing so.”

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