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The treatment he received made that painfully clear.
He was scorned openly, whispered about behind closed doors, and dismissed without hesitation. Servants treated him with shallow courtesy at best. Nobles regarded him as an eyesore that should never have existed.
Then came the turning point.
His mother died when he was ten.
After that, whatever little warmth his life possessed vanished entirely.
No one looked after him.
Not his father.
Not his family.
Especially not his stepmother.
The Marchioness Chevalier was the embodiment of cruelty. After his mother's death, the physical abuse he endured at her hands became frequent and merciless. Bruises were the least of it—there were things even worse, memories he refused to relive.
His half-siblings might as well not have existed.
They ignored him completely, treating him as invisible air—something insignificant enough not to acknowledge.
Years of maltreatment carved deep wounds into his psyche.
Battered both inside and out, he withdrew from the world, erecting walls so high that no one could reach him. Any hand extended toward him was met with suspicion, any kindness viewed as mockery.
And then—
He met her.
She appeared in his life quietly, unassumingly.
A new student at the academy.
The first commoner ever admitted into a school exclusively reserved for nobility.
The reason for this was because, she holds the rarest bloodline power that was stated that only came by for a millennium and this kind of bloodline power isn't somewhat inherited through family members within the households, unlike others.
Her name is LORRAINE FOWLER.
From the moment he met her, he never once received any scorn or mockery from her—unlike everyone else, who viewed him as nothing more than a worthless piece of trash that tarnished his family's name.
She was the one who encouraged him not to give up, to keep moving forward, and to strive for what he believed in instead of obsessing over the acknowledgment of others who would never truly accept him.
At that time, he used to mock her because of her commoner status. Yet, deep inside, he also felt a lingering sense of guilt, knowing that his biological mother came from the same background as Lorraine. But what else could he do? In the end, he was only protecting himself from people who constantly looked for flaws in him, ready to tear him down at any given moment.
However, one clear difference stood between them.
Lorraine quickly gained the admiration of many students within the academy because of her pure and gentle nature. On top of that, she possessed a rare bloodline power—something that drew the attention of the noble circles around her, making her a figure that could not simply be ignored.
Unlike him.
Aside from being an illegitimate child born from a common mother, he was also incapable of manifesting the Chevalier bloodline. Because of that, he was nothing more than a wastrel—a disgrace to the household.
Although most people came to accept Lorraine because of her rare bloodline ability, there were still factions that weren't pleased with her presence. Most likely, those were noble children from high-ranking households who were unwilling to accept someone of her status standing among them.
For him, however, things were different.
Aside from his birth mother, Lorraine was the only person who saw himas he truly was—not as a Chevalier, not as the Third Young Master, but simply as a person.
At first, he was wary.
He couldn't understand how she approached him so naturally, without fear or hesitation. Others would either walk on eggshells around him or completely ignore him while speaking ill of him behind his back.
Because of the environment he grew up in, he had long learned to be cautious—always on guard whenever someone approached him. He believed that every action carried hidden intentions, that every smile concealed something beneath.
And as the Third Young Master of the Chevalier household, he had always assumed that people only approached him because of his family name, never because of who he truly was.
However…
That was not the case with Lorraine.
She always wore a gentle smile whenever she saw him around the academy. Without fail, she would greet him and strike up a conversation—sometimes when he was alone, sometimes even when others were nearby.
There were times she would talk about her hometown, simple stories filled with warmth and life—things he had only ever heard of but never experienced himself.
And she kept doing it.
Consistently.
Without hesitation.
Because of that, something within him slowly began to change.
To him, Lorraine became like sunlight—piercing through the darkness that had enveloped his life for so long. Without realizing it, he gradually lowered the walls he had built around himself.
Little by little.
Until, before he even noticed it—
He had fallen in love with her.
With her innocence.
With her kindness.
With the way she treated him without prejudice.
Yet at the same time, those feelings twisted into something darker.
Because of everything he had endured—his family's neglect, the constant rejection from others—something inside him had already become distorted.
There were moments when he felt the urge to cage Lorraine for himself.
To keep her close.
To ensure that she would only look at him—and no one else.
It was a selfish, suffocating desire.
And the more he acknowledged it, the deeper it grew.
His obsession became even more evident when he noticed that others had also taken an interest in her—particularly those noble children who held far higher status than he did.
They had everything he lacked.
And that alone made him feel threatened.
That was why he began to scheme.
Quietly.
Carefully.
He tried to harm those who approached her in any way he could manage.
But all of his attempts failed.
No matter what he did, no matter how he tried to execute his plans, it always ended the same way.
Nothing worked.
It was as if an invisible force was preventing him from succeeding.
A mysterious interference that he could neither see nor understand.
It felt as though the world itself was rejecting his intentions—refusing to allow him to harm those who saw Lorraine as something to possess, like a prized object on display.
And then…
Everything came crashing down.
Without warning, he was suddenly accused of crimes he had never committed.
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