SPRFG 21

Chapter 21

Koreatown of the Ilgenta Vita Empire (14)

A honeybee that had gathered pollen was caught in a spiderweb the moment it flew up. The spider blinked its four eyes and cut its prey into small pieces before putting them into its mouth. A young wild horse was caught by a lasso the moment it began its first run in life. With horseshoes driven into its hooves and a bit placed in its mouth, even if it rolled its eyes back, it could not see the open field.

That was the power of fate. If there was no such thing as fate, then there would also be no one to blame. For this moment, she almost wished that there really was some huge conspiracy controlling her life.

She wanted to curse it.

At first, she thought it was a dream. She was anxious about whether she was dreaming or whether someone was making her dream, so she crushed that thought herself.

The next assumption was that this was a story. She was only being toyed with in a world created by some cruel prank, so she decided to pretend to go along with it. And as a way to fight back against that manipulation, she decided to sharpen her life into a sharp weapon and make its edge even keener.

Before even half a day had passed, something came to challenge her. She did not want to give that something grand names like trial, hardship, trouble, or adversity. But she was too lonely, and she was completely alone in front of that challenge. There was no way she could bring another person into it.

She thought that if she shouted that she did not need a reason in a life where she could not understand anything, she would become free. She thought that if she said she would create her own path, then it would happen that way. But what actually came to her was something that seemed to laugh at her, as if telling her to prove how strong her will was and how firm her decision really was.

Hwanhee cursed with every swear word she knew.

What the hell am I supposed to do? What did I do wrong? Why do I have to go through something like this?

Everything around her was irritatingly quiet and peaceful. The smooth, glossy candleholder, the fireplace burning with a deep wooden scent, the soft and comfortable bed, and the finely embroidered dress.

It was disgusting that everything else was perfectly normal when she was going through such a difficult moment. It was even worse because if she admitted that she was having a hard time, she felt as though she alone would become abnormal inside this small, peaceful world she had barely managed to secure.

She wanted to throw the candleholder into the fireplace. She wanted to kick the bed and tear the dress to pieces. But she could not do it. When she actually tried to act, she hesitated, and then she sat down on the floor while laughing at herself. Her knees hurt.

Next, Hwanhee knelt down and begged desperately. At first, she prayed toward the sky. People said that God was there.

“Please, tell me the answer. What should I do? Please stop this test now.”

She repeated those words until she almost bit her tongue. Then she fell forward onto the floor. She lay down in the position used when bowing before a ceremonial table, but she had no strength left to get up.

There was no guarantee that God even existed. Wasn’t the chance that such a being would be in the sky even lower?

Hwanhee looked around in all directions. She did not know where she should pray.

What if that man is someone who hits women? What if he already has a lover and hates me from the beginning? What if he looks normal on the outside but is actually a broken, terrible person and a son who has no respect for his parents? What if he is so ugly that I cannot even bear to look at him?

The questions that came to her next were like that.

It was actually more comfortable to worry about things like this.

By the time she came to her senses, it was already late at night. She was sitting against the bed with her knees raised, catching her breath. Her hair was messy and covered her face, and part of her clothes had slipped down.

As she fixed her clothes, she let out a deep sigh. Her hair fell forward.

I should marry that man.

Hwanhee made her decision. She laughed foolishly because she felt it was such a waste after all the worrying she had done.

She could simply get married.

The Duke seemed reluctant to send his daughter away, but there was not really any way for him to stop it. The Duchess seemed a little disappointed, but she also seemed pleased about the marriage. Every member of the ducal family would be happy, and it was a way to obey the Emperor’s order.

There was no way they could even dream of disobeying it.

Perhaps Hwanhee had entered this novel in order to marry that Grand Duke of the North. She had never even seen him, but even people who had dated for several years could get married and still end up ruining their lives. She did not want to assume that she would be unhappy just because she was marrying someone she had never even seen.

However, blindly accepting everything was not the way to live one’s life earnestly. Even if she could not explain the reason behind everything that happened in her life, she had already decided that she would make her own decisions.

Whether she married or not, it had to be something she chose herself.

Getting married simply because someone ordered her to do so made no sense, even if that person was the Emperor.

Her reason was sounding a powerful warning alarm.

Whether she liked the man or not was not the problem. She had decided that she would take full responsibility for her own life, but simply watching things happen at the very first crossroads of her life was something her pride could not accept.

Her body felt completely exhausted, but her mind kept racing. She finally had time to think about the things she had failed to consider because she had been so focused on life and marriage.

Hwanhee realized once again that she had not even been living under an absolute monarchy for a full month yet.

She had never received an order from a monarch before. She had never known someone who could kill her simply because they disliked her, or drive her into pain and humiliation worse than death.

Of course, she had trembled in fear before her professors, but now that she had completely come to another world, professors were not even worth considering in comparison to the Emperor.

She had been born and lived her whole life in a democratic country. The imagination that allowed her to consider disobeying an Emperor’s order as an actual option came from that fact.

If she really put it into action, she would probably be killed.

She kept reminding herself of that fact again and again.

If this were the second situation in which she had to make a difficult choice, perhaps her thoughts would not have become so extreme.

For example, if the first hardship she had been given was choosing between strawberry cake and chocolate cake, she could agonize over it until sweat formed on her forehead, give up one of them, and say that she had done her best.

Then she might have thought that she was already living every moment of her life with all her strength, so perhaps this one time she could compromise with reality.

The moment she decided that she would live her life here as seriously as she could, fate came to her wearing the Emperor’s name tag and ordered her to marry.

As if telling her to try resisting.

If she stepped away from her own life and simply watched what happened, she would only end up laughing at herself.

Therefore, there was only one way for her to be satisfied with herself.

If she married because she truly wanted to, then every problem would be solved.

She repeated it inside her mind.

Ah, I want to get married. Let’s get married. I’ll be really happy if I get married. I wanted to date someone from the beginning, didn’t I? I prayed for a boyfriend because I’d never had one, and now I got a husband. What an amazing stroke of luck…

But no matter how hard she repeated it, it was incredibly difficult to deceive herself.

Damn it.

She cursed, although she did not know whether she was cursing the Emperor who had ordered her to marry, fate that had played an even more wicked trick on her after she shouted that she would not be manipulated, or herself for being unable to decide what to do.

She desperately shouted inside her mind.

She called for the owner of the body.

She had believed that she could simply do what Aiolia told her and leave this body whenever she wanted, but there was no answer from the person who did not exist.

The Duke would send his reply by tomorrow, so she did not have much time.

And that letter would surely contain an acceptance.

The Emperor had hinted that he was watching them. They could not refuse.

The letter would probably begin with words about how worried the Duke was about sending his inadequate daughter to such a fine family. Then it would suggest exchanging portraits and rings through messengers and treating that as the engagement ceremony.

Even if it was only an engagement, breaking off an arranged marriage became a fatal flaw for the woman’s family.

No matter what happened, Hwanhee would go to the northern territory before this year ended.

She did not want to be hanged as the price for disobeying the Emperor’s command.

She could not stop the marriage.

Like an angry wave rushing toward a child who had built a strong sandcastle, as if challenging the child to stop it too, fate came crashing toward her with its white teeth exposed.

She gave up with a feeling that she no longer cared.

At least the man did not seem to be someone with an extremely bad personality who could not communicate with others, as the rumors said. Perhaps married life would be more interesting than she expected.

Once they became engaged, she could buy time by making excuses such as being sick or not being ready yet. During that time, she might find a clue.

She wanted to talk to someone about that decision.

Even if she could not hear someone say that she had made the right choice, she wanted at least one person to acknowledge that she had worked hard to reach such a conclusion.

There was only one person in this entire world who could do something like that.

Hwanhee looked at herself in the mirror.

She checked whether there were traces of tears on her cheeks. She looked a little thinner than usual, but otherwise she looked normal.

She headed toward Adan’s room.

She had already lost the energy to think about whether this was something Aiolia would have done or not.

She only needed to retrace the same path he had taken when he brought her to Aiolia’s room before.

Although he was suspicious, there were many things she was grateful to him for.

Why were there nail marks around his neck? Why did he collect so many guns? Why did he not seem curious about the whereabouts of his younger sibling…?

There were many things she found strange, but she thought she would gradually learn the answers.

He was the only person in this world who knew that she existed, so it was natural for her to become attached to him.

Thanks to her gratitude for recognizing her existence and his kindness in talking to her about various things, she trusted him.

Therefore, she thought that it would be all right to open her heart and talk to him a little more.

The door was open.

Hwanhee hesitated at the doorway.

It seemed that he had stepped away for a moment.

She thought it would be fine to sit and wait, so she slowly stepped into the ownerless room.

She saw the table where she had once been given snacks and milk.

She sat in the same place where she had sat back then.

Once she sat down, she felt a little more relaxed.

She stretched out her legs and quietly looked around the room.

A display cabinet filled one wall.

Inside it were guns arranged by manufacturer.

Her eyes followed the neatly arranged books on the bookshelf and moved toward the desk.

In this perfectly organized room, only the desk was a complete mess.

The lid of the ink bottle was open, so he must have gone out only for a moment.

Messy papers were scattered around with their tops and bottoms mixed together. Books were piled up in complete disorder, and waste paper stuck out from between the drawers.

Hwanhee gave a small laugh.

She had once cleaned her younger sibling’s desk, so she thought she would clean Adan’s desk too.

Then Adan would probably be happy.

She turned over the paper lying on top.

Printed letters filled about half of the page.

Above them was a drawing of a naked man and woman lying on a bed.

It was a black-and-white line drawing.

The ink had been smeared, but that seemed intentional.

The drawing had deliberately been made roughly so that the artist could not be identified by the art style.

Even though the lines looked like they had been drawn randomly, the strokes clearly showed several things.

One was the skill of the person who had drawn it.

The other was hostility toward the subjects in the picture.

An old woman was lying on the bed, making seductive gestures toward a man.

The young man had turned his face away as if trying to ignore her, but his body was walking toward her.

Behind them, an older man was watching the scene through a window.

There was even a detailed explanation written beside the picture saying that no matter how much he knocked on the window, he had no strength in his arm, so he could not break it.

And the person who had drawn the picture had added decorations resembling name tags beside the characters and written their names.

The young man was the Crown Prince.

The middle-aged woman was the Empress.

The middle-aged man was the Emperor.