The Contract Wife Tries to Leave - Chapter 31
After that, Johanna also got a job at a magazine that covered upper-class society gossip. It was to see him more often.
She no longer denied the reason for chasing his orbit so persistently. She was past the stage of pretending to ignore it. She had to admit it. This was a one-sided love.
She had feelings for him.
“Good evening, Marquis Neubitz. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce my daughter. She turned twenty this year and is a dominant omega.”
Standing on the sidelines of high-society parties, she often saw people approaching him. Half of them were omegas.
Omegas invariably had pretty faces and delicate, fragile auras like tender flowers. When they stood next to the hyper-dominant alpha Leonid, they looked like a perfect picture.
Johanna was grateful to be a beta, but sometimes she envied those with omega traits. This was a feeling she experienced for the first time after falling in love with Leonid.
Alphas and omegas. It’s said that these two traits naturally attract each other through pheromones. It was a world betas could never understand. Especially the concept of ‘fated mates’… It felt like a fairy tale, lacking any sense of reality.
‘A destined partner, does such a thing really exist in this world?’
Now, Leonid Neubitz was dismissing the omegas who showed interest in him with an irritable demeanor. His bored expression and cold eyes revealed his sensitive and fastidious nature.
In recent days, she had delved into learning more about him and found out a few things, one of which was how difficult it was to cater to his tastes and moods.
She suddenly wondered what kind of omega would irresistibly attract Leonid Neubitz.
To meet the tastes of a man with mysophobia and an aversion to omegas, it would take more than just an ordinary beauty. Perhaps it would have to be someone as stunning as the legendary beauties who brought down entire kingdoms.
Johanna watched him leave the party with a frustrated look, feeling a pang of disappointment. There were more omegas approaching him today, which might have been why he left earlier than usual.
Time carried Johanna to her seventeenth birthday. She would never forget the memories of that day. Despite their poor circumstances, her mother had prepared a large cake and even gave her a present—a lovely silver pendant in the shape of a clover.
Daniel gifted her a handwritten letter and a small bouquet, and when Johanna read the letter right there, she burst out laughing.
That day, everything was perfect. The warm and cozy atmosphere filled the house. Although she didn’t receive congratulations from her father, who was likely at the gambling house, she didn’t care since she hadn’t expected it.
Before blowing out the candles on the cake, Johanna wished for her mother and Daniel to be healthy and happy. Forever, just like this…
She had no grand desires or ambitions. All she wanted was this simple life. The sound of her mother and Daniel’s laughter, the warm words exchanged, the shared cake, the loving gazes.
That was Johanna’s world.
A world she mistakenly thought would last forever…
The end came so abruptly.
“…At present, there is no cure. All we can do is manage the pain to make her as comfortable as possible and try to extend her life as much as we can…”
Her mother’s terminal diagnosis.
Already in poor health, her mother became completely bedridden from that point on. Johanna had to take on the role of the family breadwinner, replacing her ailing mother and incapable father, bearing all the responsibilities alone.
She quit the low-paying gossip magazine job and increased her work illustrating for serialized novels in newspapers. Observing her unrequited love became impossible.
The realization that her mother might die someday, the cost of her mother’s treatment, her brother’s tuition, living expenses… Johanna had to bear all of it alone. The burden and hopelessness were beyond description.
In March, as the first signs of spring began to emerge, the cold snap was still in full force. The world outside and Johanna’s heart both felt the biting chill.
On her way back from the newspaper office, Johanna suddenly stopped and looked up at the pale sky. Slow-falling ice crystals, appearing gray, were descending. The temperature had dropped below freezing, and now snow was falling.
She closed her eyes. The cold snowflakes landed on her face. The abrupt nature made her feel a sudden sadness. No, why is this so…
‘It’s over.’
Only then did she realize that her carefree days had come to an end. It was the finale of her childhood. The sense that she had become an adult, or had to become one, was chilling. The weight of that responsibility felt crushing.
