The Fourth Life She Guarded Me Chapter 08
He always loved looking in the mirror. Afterward, he would glance at me, his face a mask of regret.
I wasn’t especially beautiful.
And I didn’t spend much effort on my appearance.
Locke and I argued about it many times.
He said I lowered his standards.
He wanted me to dress like him every day, sparkling from head to toe.
But he never stopped to think—every one of his outfits was wildly expensive.
That money had to be spent on more important things first.
I had already spent a fortune on clothes for him, simply because he was my guardian.
Raising guardians was expensive to begin with.
If it had to be spent, then fine. At least he was happy.
It wasn’t as if I couldn’t tolerate that much.
But he also wanted me to wear the most expensive clothes and stand extravagantly dressed beside him.
That, I couldn’t do.
So he left, too.
Because Lani was the girl in the family who knew best how to dress herself.
She wore new clothes every month.
She knew exactly how to make herself look beautiful.
Locke liked people like that.
—
Kieran’s problem was something else entirely.
He wanted a master worthy of him.
I had always thought there was something wrong with that way of thinking.
If a master was already stronger than their guardian, what was the point of raising a guardian in the first place?
We raised guardians to borrow their power.
Members of our family were much weaker without them.
But Kieran insisted I should be as strong as he was, preferably strong enough to surpass him.
It made no sense.
I had explained it to him seriously.
He wouldn’t listen.
He kept saying Lani had a natural talent for it, so if she could do it, why couldn’t I?
He almost made me laugh.
I hadn’t even pointed out that in his match against Lani, he hadn’t fought seriously at all.
He had obviously held back.
And yet I still suffered a disgraceful loss while wielding what should have been a powerful guardian.
In the end, he used that result to blame me, saying I wasn’t strong enough.
Then he left, too.
Why were they all like this?Â