“I don’t want a divorce… I love you, Sheila. I don’t want to be apart. I don’t want to… I don’t want to…”
Leon clutched his head, murmuring over and over. Everyone present looked at him with open disbelief. I hadn’t expected him to break down like this either.
From the footage Asti had shown me, and from what I had seen with my own eyes, Leon looked like a man deeply in love with Chiara. The three of them looked happy together.
And me?
When I tried to recall the past three years, there was almost nothing worth remembering.
The child, too.
When I said I wanted one, when I asked him to cut back on expeditions, he told me to stop talking about things that depressed him.
“And now you say you love me?” I said quietly. “Don’t joke with me. Yes, I felt your love when we first married. But you never stopped going on expeditions, and you never worked with me to have a child.”
“I already have a child. Lilia,” Leon said quickly. “That’s it. We can raise Lilia together.”
He spoke as if he had come up with a brilliant idea.
I nearly laughed.
Lilia wasn’t being abused. Anyone could see her relationship with her parents was warm and loving. Chiara was clearly raising her properly.
Was he seriously suggesting tearing that child away from her mother?
Was this really the same man I had loved?
“Enough. I won’t separate a mother and her child. What are you even thinking?”
“I don’t care. I refuse to divorce you. I can’t stand the idea of you leaving this house!”
He sounded like a tantrum-throwing child.
The man in front of me no longer felt human. It was as if my mind was rejecting the reality of his existence.
“Leon,” Captain Daggart said sharply. “You’re a father now. You have a duty to Lilia. We talked about this before. If you truly care about her future, shouldn’t you accept what Sheila is offering?”
“I didn’t choose to become one. It just happened from one time!”
“That’s enough,” I said. “Asti, please show the footage.”
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I needed him to hear his own words.
Asti unfolded a spatial spell and drew out a mirror. As he spoke the activation phrase, a three-dimensional image bloomed in the air.
“Then I’m heading out.”
“Papa, are you coming back today?”
“Yeah. Once I’m done with the monster hunt, I’ll come back to you, Lilia.”
The moment the voices played, Leon’s body jerked violently.
I remembered that day clearly.
“Papa! I want that!”
“All right, all right.”
“Oh my, Lilia, you’re so happy Papa’s here.”
“I’m happy to see you too, Chiara.”
“I missed you, Leon.”
“Papa and Mama are lovey-dovey!”
“Hey now, Lili, don’t jump around up there. It’s dangerous.”
No matter how you looked at it, they were a close, loving family.
There was no trace of reluctance, no sense of duty forced upon him. Only affection.
At that moment, I knew.
Even if I told him about the child in my womb, his heart would never return to me.
“This is just… I mean, she was born, so raising her is my responsibility, but that’s all—”
“Ah, excuse me.”
Asti cut him off.
The image shifted to a clear sky and trees. Nothing improper was shown.
The problem was the sound.
Voices—soft, intimate, unmistakably those of lovers. Words exchanged in the aftermath, talk of wanting another child, followed by sweet murmurs.
Before it could continue, Asti dismissed the mirror.
He had deliberately activated the surveillance spell placed outside the bedroom.
I shot him a glare, but he remained impassive.
Leon, meanwhile, looked utterly hollow, like ash after a fire.
“Leon.”
He flinched and looked at me as if clinging to a lifeline.
There was nothing left of my feelings—but I had loved him once. Truly.
“You’ll sign it, won’t you?”
I pointed to the line for his signature.
He shook his head again and again, hunched over, groaning.
At last, with a trembling hand, he picked up the pen and scrawled his name weakly. Even after finishing, he didn’t let go, the ink smearing until Captain Zain took the pen from him and slid the document toward me.
“Thank you. I’ll submit it myself.”
Leon stared at his empty hand, clenched it, and began to sob, his shoulders shaking.
No pity stirred in me. This was entirely his own doing.
“Why… why did there have to be footage… If that hadn’t existed…”
He muttered on, but no one looked at him anymore. The idea that you could do anything so long as there was no proof was nothing but a delusion.
“Leon.”
Asti addressed him calmly.
Leon lifted his head slowly, eyes vacant.
“The investigation into Lilia began when she turned three. I was the assigned investigator. There were three possible fathers. But Chiara was not the type of woman who would bring men into that house.”
“…What?”
“I placed surveillance spells on all three. The other two were quickly ruled out.
“But you remained under surveillance. For about half a year.”
It wasn’t just me who was stunned. Ameri and Karl looked equally shocked. Maintaining surveillance magic for six months straight was unheard of.
Asti’s gaze toward Leon was icy.
“The more I investigated you, the less I understood how you could cheat while having someone like Sheila. You will regret this someday.”
I almost laughed. Surely that wouldn’t happen.
Yet no one else looked doubtful.
For a brief moment, the thought crossed my mind that maybe—just maybe—it would.
But I dismissed it just as quickly.
He would forget.
Men like him always do.
