I Just Wanted to Avoid Death - Chapter 90
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When she later saw him dining with someone else, she stormed over in tears, furious and shouting.
“How could you toy with someone’s feelings?”
To Adelio, it had been utterly ridiculous.
All he’d done was share a single meal with that foreign princess. At most, he’d thrown out a polite promise to show her around the Medesia Empire sometime if he had the chance.
It was just an empty courtesy, and so he hadn’t contacted her again. He hadn’t been interested. He never actually intended to take her anywhere.
But what Adelio hadn’t anticipated was the princess’s heart.
She had taken his words as truth and harbored sincere feelings for him on her own. She’d waited for days, believing he would reach out—and in the end, fell into a deep sense of betrayal.
“…So what did you tell her?”
“I told her I never loved her. That she was deluding herself and asked why she was throwing a tantrum for nothing.”
That only enraged the princess further. Overcome with shame and heartbreak, she returned to her country cursing Adelio’s name.
“…A curse?”
“Yeah. She even said she could never marry someone like me.”
Adelio gave a bitter laugh as if it were still unbelievable.
She’d fallen for him on her own, assigned some deluded meaning to it all, and then had the nerve to curse him when it didn’t go her way.
“That curse… it actually worked?”
When Yeshion asked the question, half in disbelief, Adelio nodded.
“Not right away. Maybe half a year later.”
“Half a year…?”
He nodded again.
The symptoms were more torturous than he’d expected. It started with a burning heat in his body, and then… overwhelming lust, so intense that it was unbearable.
His lower half felt like it was burning, like he’d been drugged.
He tried to take care of it on his own, using his hands until his skin was raw—but no matter how much he tried, the heat wouldn’t subside. It only got worse.
“I kept trying to deal with it myself… but I couldn’t.”
Adelio’s gaze dropped, his expression heavy.
And the curse didn’t just hit once—it returned like clockwork with every new season. Every time it struck, he was forced into unwanted intimacy.
And the people he spent those nights with, they disappeared the next morning, without a trace.
“Disappeared…”
“I looked into it. Turns out the Empress had them removed. Said it was to protect the honor and safety of the imperial family, just in case they saw something beastly.”
He’d never once wanted to touch someone just for the sake of lust.
Anyone who knew the current Adelio would probably laugh hearing that. But he’d always believed intimacy was something to share only with someone who knew real love.
He truly believed he’d live that way.
But after the curse, those ideals and feelings became luxuries he could no longer afford.
“After a year, then two… eventually, I just gave up.”
He’d tried to endure.
He’d felt guilt for the ones who’d vanished.
But all of it—little by little—wore down and faded.
After that, Adelio started seeking out people who desperately needed money.
In exchange for a night with him, instead of letting them die, he paid them.
He thought maybe that way, the guilt eating at him would lessen.
‘So that’s why the rumors…’
Only now did Yeshion start to understand why Adelio was surrounded by gossip as bad as Edward’s. But even so, there were things he still didn’t understand.
If the curse really did come from the princess… why did it take half a year to take hold?
‘Was it even her curse at all?’
No matter how he turned it over in his head, it didn’t seem right.
But there was no way to learn more at the moment, so Yeshion could only offer comfort.
“Don’t pity me. I tried to take advantage of you too, remember?”
“…But you didn’t. In the end.”
“That’s only because you didn’t let me. Anyway, that’s how the treatment started.”
Just when he’d grown tired of enduring the curse every time, he happened to visit the temple—and saw the Saintess healing someone.
“I thought… maybe the Saintess could cure me. Maybe her divine power could break the curse.”
But it turned out to be harder than he thought.
It seemed divine power was needed to undo it—but both Rosaline and Eldis had concluded they weren’t strong enough.
“Still, receiving divine power helps ease the symptoms. If I can hold out for a month without touching anyone, I come back to my senses.”
“Then… when we met in the underground prison, was it near the end of the cycle?”
“No. It had just started.”
At that, Yeshion’s eyes widened. He remembered how quickly Adelio had snapped out of it after biting him. That didn’t match up at all.
“That’s why I wanted to sleep with you. I felt like… something might be different.”
“Ah…”
As that soft sound slipped out, Adelio rubbed his face against Yeshion’s hand again.
“But don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything you hate.”
