The Original Work Got Ruined After I Quit Being the Sub Male 78

It was a day when the weather wasn’t particularly good.

The sky was gloomy, making it as dark as midnight even though it was still early evening.

I was taking a break from piano practice when I witnessed the situation outside the window and saw him entering through the front door.

“……”

Cedric must be downstairs by now. Soon Redward would come find me to inform me of his visit.

Sure enough, Redward came up to the piano room shortly after and said to me.

“Young master. Young Master Cedric is here…”

“Yeah. Tell him to come to my room.”

I got up from the piano chair.

While Redward went back downstairs with my message, I returned to my room.

Under normal circumstances, we would have met in the salon or reception room, but if he had come to find me again to confess the reasons he couldn’t fully explain that day, we needed a place to talk privately.

I arrived at my room and sat on the edge of the bed, and not long after, I sensed Cedric’s presence beyond the open door.

When I looked up, Cedric met my eyes and hesitated, stopping near the entrance. His face, which I hadn’t seen in a while, looked dejected, making me feel concerned, but I deliberately looked away, pretending not to care.

“Close the door and come in first.”

Cedric quietly closed the door and entered as I told him to. A heavy silence settled in the space where only the two of us remained, with the noise from outside the room blocked out.

Soon, the sound of tapping against the window began. When I glanced back, the sky was pouring rain.

Somehow my mood became gloomy too, so I swallowed a sigh.

“…So? Why did you come?”

“……”

“You came to talk about what you couldn’t say back then, didn’t you?”

I prompted him for an answer first, as Cedric just stood there silently. While doing so, I observed him.

“If that’s not it, I think I’ll be disappointed again.”

When I muttered, including my disappointment toward him for not opening his mouth easily, Cedric’s expression rippled with anxiety.

Like an uneasy person, he kept clenching and unclenching his fists, then took a trembling breath and inhaled deeply.

“I’ll tell you everything. But I just… I hope you won’t hate me.”

“As long as you don’t hide everything you’re hiding from me and don’t lie, I won’t have any reason to hate you.”

“…Can you promise that?”

“I can promise that much.”

“……”

“So tell me. Everything, without hiding anything.”

Cedric lowered his eyes and remained silent for a moment, then seemed to gather his resolve and stared straight at me. He calmly opened his mouth.

“What I said about having a one-sided crush on you for a long time is true. Not once has my heart changed, and I’ve never looked at anyone other than you.”

“……”

“But you weren’t even conscious of me like that. You only kept liking Ret. Moreover, I was actually hated by you.”

There were no words to refute what he said with a slightly whining tone. It was true that I had avoided him for various complex reasons at that time.

“I also knew that you didn’t consider the same sex as romantic interests. There was no hope for me.”

“……”

“Still, I wanted to make you look back at me somehow. If I confessed recklessly, it would be hopeless, so I thought I needed to find a gap to slip into first.”

“……”

What would I have reacted if Cedric had confessed to me before the regression? The answer to that comes more easily than expected.

I would have been flustered and awkwardly rejected his confession, or thought he was joking and gotten angry. Either way, it was hard to imagine the option of accepting him.

Back then, I had no intention of giving up on Riette. I might have felt slightly superior or thought that an obstacle had disappeared, so I could have been a bit kinder to him…

“So you were trying to make me give up on Ret first. I asked Ret, who already knew my feelings, to pretend to date me until you gave up on Ret. Then, after we created some appropriate issue and broke up, I thought I might have a chance then.”

“…So that was all acting.”

“…I’m sorry.”

It was ridiculous. On one hand, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand his choice, so my feelings were complex and subtle.

“I absolutely didn’t intend to toy with you. Really. If I had known you would throw away your life because of Ret, I would have…”

“No, that wasn’t because I lost Ret.”

I sighed and rubbed my face once.

“I just felt disillusioned with life…”

Of course, I had been quite broken by the deep sense of defeat, but the biggest reason was the poor treatment and isolation in noble society that I had created through my own actions.

“Anyway. Is that why you couldn’t tell me?”

“…Yeah. I was afraid you’d be disgusted if you knew I had gone that far to separate you from Ret. I was scared you’d be disappointed and hate me for being selfish, so I hesitated to confess.”

“……”

“I regretted it a lot. I just wanted you to be alive… Right after the regression, I even tried to give up on you. In the end, I couldn’t.”

After my birthday, I finally understood Cedric’s actions of acting like he knew all my feelings and urging me to be with Riette.

“Then why did you kiss Ret?”

“…What? Me and her? That never happened.”

He furrows his brow as if truly wronged about that alone. I rolled my eyes around and carefully observed Cedric’s expression.

“Really?”

“I really swear. Why would I do something like that with her?”

“I saw you two close together at the banquet hall.”

When I grumbled and spoke, Cedric seemed to be trying to recall the memory and fell into thought. Soon he shook his head.

“I’m not sure which time you’re talking about. But when I was close to her, we were usually in the middle of an argument. We were just close because it would be troublesome if others heard.”

“…You were usually holding hands and hugging.”

“That was all for show.”

Somehow annoying.

Still, in the end, all of that was because he liked me, because he was thirsty for my attention, so on one hand, my feelings are strange. It’s not exactly good, but it’s not bad either…

It’s like watching a child who plays mean pranks to get the attention of someone they like.

“You really have a bad personality.”

But he also said he regretted it, and considering the situation at that time, it was an understandable choice, so I don’t intend to blame him further.

Cedric said he was worried I would be disappointed by his selfish actions, but I was actually relieved to know the whole truth in detail.

The important conclusion is that his liking me is true. For me, gaining certainty about his feelings was the most important thing.

From the beginning, I generally knew that his personality wasn’t that upright. That he acts like a tail-wagging puppy toward me but not toward others, that he acts infinitely gentle but also shows quite shameless aspects.

I liked him knowing all of that.

“Eddie. Please… don’t abandon me.”

Cedric’s voice trembled with tears at the end. He seemed to have greatly misunderstood my muttering in a bad way. He trembled like a puppy about to be abandoned by its owner, then approached me and sat down.

“I did everything wrong. I absolutely won’t disappoint you anymore, so can’t you overlook my foolish actions just once?”

Then he appealed to me, putting his forehead against my knee as if acting cute. I watched him silently, then put my hand in his fine hair and gently stroked it.

When I cupped his cheek with the hand that had swept through his hair, Cedric naturally leaned into it and rubbed his cheek against my palm.

That sight looked just like a cat purring contentedly, making the corners of my mouth rise without me realizing it.

“You won’t disappoint me anymore, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then make one promise with me. That you’ll take responsibility for what you obtained so desperately… for life. That you’ll never abandon it.”

“…Can I take responsibility for you for life?”

“Yeah. Well, before that, I’ll have to pray that my constitution changes safely.”

It’s essentially another expression of a marriage proposal. I was feeling awkward for no reason and rolling my eyes to the side when Cedric suddenly wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me. His sniffling sound was buried in my clothes.

“You don’t hate me?”

“I never hated you.”

I played with his hair, which felt fluffier than my thin, fine hair, combing it with my fingers before patting him gently. Just like a fluffy puppy.

“Hey, Cedy.”

“Mmm.”

“Why do you like me?”

Cedric lifted his head and stared at me. His blue eyes, wet with moisture, sparkled like sapphires reflecting light, and I thought they were beautiful.

“What’s the reason you like me so much? Actually, I’m not sure if I’m that kind of existence to you.”

“……”

At that, Cedric silently leaned his head against my abdomen again. Then, after a while, he slowly opened his mouth.

“You probably don’t remember… but we had already met before we met through Ret’s introduction.”

He began a story from very long ago.