ICSM 06

Chapter 06

‘I could have solved this at the beginning if he had just admitted his mistake, bowed his head, and apologized.’

Who would have known that his family was just as bad, or that the man in the capital had been going around making illegitimate children? That was why I had tried to settle things peacefully, but after seeing how they behaved, I could not help but find them extremely annoying.

I had intended to leave them some room to breathe. But if he chose his own punishment, who was I to stop him so desperately?

In the end, the Sachsen family had to pay a huge settlement.

Pedro was the one who had done wrong, but since the engagement had been between me and Pedro, and between the Sachsen family and the Estarote family, it was possible to make the settlement that way.

Even if I had tried to get alimony from Pedro, who was obviously going to end up completely penniless, I would not have gotten much. So this was even better for me.

I heard that they had sold all the luxury goods they had bought with the money they had earned by leeching off my family until then, selling them at very low prices. They barely managed to preserve their territory and pay the settlement.

For them, it must have been unfair and infuriating, but for me, this was finally zero.

I had recovered everything they had gained through me and my family.

And Pedro was completely ruined.

I thought there was no way he could fall any lower, but there was.

He was expelled from his family.

“You stupid bastard! How could you let this happen just because you couldn’t even control your own body properly?!”

“Exactly! How could you, as our older brother, not know how lucky you were and still do something so stupid?!”

Even after paying the settlement to me and reaching an agreement, there was still one thing left.

The lawsuit for having sex under the false promise of marriage and fraud.

The Sachsen family, which would have had to pay even more compensation for that lawsuit if they kept Pedro, expelled him from the family.

In other words, he became a commoner.

He lost even the tiny amount of wealth he had barely managed to hold onto as compensation for the lawsuit, and was thrown out with nothing.

He could not come crawling back to me, so he tried to go to his mistress.

But why would she accept him?

She had already closed up her house in the capital, used the recommendation letter I had written for her to find a job, and disappeared. So he did not even have a chance to beg her.

In the end, Pedro went to a monastery.

There were not many places where a noble who had become a commoner could live. So even though the conditions were poor, he should have been grateful that the monastery accepted him.

After all, unless he made a certain amount of donation, even entering a monastery was difficult.

Of course, I was the one who arranged it.

It was not because I felt sorry for Pedro.

I wanted him to spend the rest of his life suffering there and thinking about everything he had lost.

‘He was only a knight in name and had no real ability. If he had at least been good with a sword, he could have made a living as a mercenary, but…….’

Pedro was only better than someone who had never learned swordsmanship. He was a useless man who had never properly experienced real combat.

If he foolishly tried to work as a mercenary and got killed by a stray sword, that would have been a good death for him.

Anyway, that was how things ended with Pedro.

I did not know whether he would endure at the monastery or run away because he could not stand it, but either way, it did not matter to me.

If he ran away, he would never be able to return to the monastery.

If he kept making the wrong choices until the very end and lost even the place where he could lay his head, what could be better than that?

In the end, I was able to get the document officially ending the engagement.

“Haha. It took a long time.”

I received the engagement cancellation document in the spring of the following year.

I had originally been planning to marry Pedro around this time, but who would have thought I would end up breaking off the engagement instead?

At least I should say I was lucky that I did not have to step into a hellish married life.

Being able to secretly see the conversations of the gods had truly been a blessing from heaven.

I visited the government office inside the Imperial Palace to complete the cancellation procedure. After watching the approval stamp come down with a loud thump on the document, I walked outside.

It was finally completely over.

“……The weather is nice.”

Unlike my unsettled heart after the end of my long unrequited love, the weather was incredibly beautiful.

Even though the day was so bright and clear, there were hardly any people around, probably because everyone was working.

I walked along the Imperial Palace corridor, where one side was open to the outside. Then I leaned against one of the pillars supporting the roof instead of a wall and looked up at the sky.

The weather really was wonderful.

“……Sob!”

I did not regret breaking off the engagement or feel sorry about it.

But the fact that I had ended things with someone who had been part of my life for almost half of it, starting when I was ten, and whom I had always thought I would spend the rest of my life with, could not help but make me emotional.

Even if it had ended badly.

Since there was no one passing by, and I thought no one could see me, my tears would not stop.

It was just when I was standing there pathetically, letting my tears fall one after another.

A person wearing a black hood pulled deeply over their head appeared in front of me.

The hood was pulled down so deeply that I could barely see the tip of his chin.

It looked like he could hardly see in front of him, but his appearance strangely helped me.

I was so surprised that my tears stopped.

One tear that had barely formed dropped down when I blinked, and the man quietly held out his hand.

I flinched at his suspicious appearance, but what he was offering was nothing special.

“……A handkerchief?”

It was a neatly folded white handkerchief.

Strangely, it was made of plain cotton without even a single piece of embroidery.

Was he not a noble?

I stared blankly at the handkerchief without even a simple initial embroidered on it. Then his hand moved slightly, as if urging me to take it.

He probably wanted me to use it to wipe my tears.

I had my own handkerchief, but…… somehow, I did not want to ignore the man’s kindness.

Even though I did not know who he was.

As I carefully took it, the tips of my fingers brushed against his.

It was nothing more than a small touch, but for some reason, the man suddenly pulled his hand back as if he had been startled by some kind of improper touch.

“Uh……?”

I was surprised and made a sound without realizing it.

The man seemed confused and fidgeted before hurriedly running away.

I stood there blankly, holding the handkerchief and staring in the direction he had disappeared. Then I found the situation so ridiculous that I let out a small laugh.

“Haha…… What a strange person.”

He was clearly a kind person, since he could not simply ignore a stranger crying and had even given me his handkerchief.

But it was funny how he looked suspicious overall, became shy, and ran away.

His behavior stayed in my mind, and I smiled softly as I wiped my face with the handkerchief.

‘Hmm…….’

I did not know what the scent was, but it had a fresh smell.

The coolness at the end made it smell a little like mint.

Without thinking, I sniffed it a few times before my face turned red.

Sniffing the scent of a stranger so openly was rude, after all.

“I should return this to him…….”

Who was he?

Would I be able to meet him again?

Even if I ran into him, I did not know if I would recognize him.

The clothes he wore under the hood were also plain and ordinary, so I could not even tell what social class he belonged to.

I heard that as many as ten thousand people came and went through this huge Imperial Palace every day. Finding one person among them would be difficult.

Since the handkerchief was made of plain material without any pattern, perhaps he had not even expected me to return it.

‘……If we are meant to meet again, we will.’

I shook off the last bit of lingering attachment in my heart and walked along the corridor.

[Golden Family Kim Siblings Crazy Fan]

Wow, so the mysterious medicine that cured the disease three years ago was seaweed.

No wonder the Emperor was so frustrated.

The Empire controls half the continent’s sea, lol. If she had been Korean, she wouldn’t have died, lol.

The whole country would have already been mixing that seaweed with rice, making soup with it, and grilling it with oil, lol.

└ [Please Look at the Unemployed Bastardㅠ]

As a Korean, I ate rice wrapped in seaweed today too.

Tomorrow, I will eat seaweed soup.

A rice thief worthy of 200 years in prison♡

└ [Regretful Obsession Is the Most Perfect Genre]

No, but lol, even if I were Korean, I think it would be hard for me to eat that……

Seaweed that looks like purple veins? Unless there was nothing else to eat, I would hesitate……

They say the texture is also slimy and not very good ㅠㅠ

└ [VS Death’s Easy Two-Choice Villain]

What if the male lead you love locked you up but served only that seaweed as a side dish for every meal?

Endure it and stay imprisoned vs. Run away.

└ [Regretful Obsession Is the Most Perfect Genre]

Are you crazy?

A year had passed since I broke off my engagement.

After the prophecy had saved my life, it had not appeared again, so I had started to wonder if the miracle was over.

Then, suddenly, another window containing the future appeared in front of my eyes.

“Gods…….”

It was an epidemic.

Shocked by those terrifying words, I covered my mouth, quickly took out some paper, and wrote down the contents as notes.

Thankfully, since the gods could see the future, this had not happened yet in the time I was living in.

‘But there’s not much time. It’s next year, isn’t it?’

I looked at the information I had summarized in my notes and stood up.

I had been staying shut away in my family’s territory since breaking off the engagement, so everyone looked surprised when I suddenly announced that I wanted to travel.

“Yeah…… A year is enough time to recover from heartbreak.”

They probably thought I had locked myself away because I was suffering from being rejected.

It would be a lie to say my heart had not hurt at all, but I had suffered for about a month and gotten over it long ago.

I did not really have any friends, and because I had completely destroyed Pedro, news of my broken engagement had probably spread everywhere.

I had only stayed in the territory because I did not want to attend social events and hear people gossiping about me……

I was feeling awkward and wondering how I should explain it when my parents spoke to me.

“If you do not want to, you do not have to marry. You can live with us for the rest of your life, so do not worry too much.”

“That’s right. If I inherit the family someday in the distant future, I will take care of you for the rest of your life. So don’t worry.”

My eldest brother, Sincere, the heir to the family, said the same thing to me.

Hearing them tell me to use the wealth they would leave me to live however I wanted for the rest of my life, I gathered my courage.

“I want to start a business.”

“A business? What kind of business?”

“Just…… anything.”

My parents offered to give me a position in the family’s merchant company, but I shook my head.

If the young lady of the family suddenly parachuted into the company and said she wanted to buy and sell some strange-looking seaweed that no one had even known existed, who would be happy about that?

If I wanted to act freely, it would be better to use money that I could spend however I wanted.