Chapter 76

Episode 76: Mother

Meanwhile, the owner got pregnant, and the marquis’ wandering was over. The marquis… Maybe he was looking forward to it. If she had a child, the owner would change. The marquis faithfully cared for the owner. Even Her Majesty would not have enjoyed such luxury.

The owner had some morning sickness, and didn’t eat raw vegetables.…. The chef had a hard time because she barely touched the meat and put only a little fish and fruit in her mouth. I went to the market every morning and tried to buy all the fresh fish. Fish was also precious because the capital was inland.

The young lady (Eris) who came out after the last month of pregnancy was safely completed…… She was really pretty. I had never seen such a pretty baby again in my life.

But the owner was expressionless even after seeing the lady. It was like she was checking what she had been carrying for 10 months.

She breastfed, but she did it just because her breasts were pumping, and she didn’t feel like ‘feeding her child’ at all.

The owner……The owner said that she had fulfilled her duty because she had a child. At the time, I was a little over half my height now, but I still remember the owner’s expression and way of speaking vividly. Everyone around her tried, but nothing caught her interest.

(Note: Emma’s grown up now, perspective shifts from her mother to her.)

When she heard that, my mother cried like a child. The marquis also made a wish. He prayed, he got angry, he cried, he went crazy. The marquis tried hard, but…… love didn’t come in return. The owner’s last will was to preserve herself permanently.

No one knew why the owner left such a will.… The marquis was very distressed. However, soon after, according to the owner’s will, magic engineers were called in to preserve the body and store it in a coffin. And he drove all the things that reminded him of the owner behind his study.

He locked everything in there.

Now I understand why the marquis said. ‘You will be happy if you sit in the best seat.’ I wondered where that belief came from, he might have become obsessed because it was the only thing he couldn’t do for Quies Misérian.

The same was true for believing that it was postpartum depression. From beginning to end, he didn’t want to believe that she wasn’t interested in him at all. Anyway, why did she ask to preserve herself permanently? Was there a secret hidden in that body?

It was a night full of thoughts.

* * *

It was the beginning of spring. In the Imperial Palace, the marriage of the crown prince and Helena was officially announced.

The reason for the marriage, not engagement, was that they were not young, and this time, they showed their desire to thoroughly prevent an unexpected ‘accident’.

Of course, it was not that there was no backlash. In particular, the nobles, who had still remained, stood up on the grounds that Helena had learned nothing to become empress. But the rumors that I was crazy were almost certain, and there was no substitute for me so it was dismissed.

The imperial family seemed to be introducing Helena by inviting the nobles every day to break through such suspicions.

I taught her for a while, and now the backlash gradually subsided because a professional teacher was really sticking to her and educating her.

The marquis began to stir me up as soon as the marriage was announced, but I was ignoring it because there was a proper time for everything. The marquis couldn’t even enter the palace, so he would have no choice but to wait for me whether he liked it or not.

There was also a request from the empress to help with the wedding. Of course, that may not be the real purpose, but I was dumbfounded and just ignored it.

She had no shame. Why would you want me to help you with that? If the slang for hair growing on your conscience was true, her conscience would have been full.

(PR/N: ‘양심에 털났다’ means ‘what you’re doing is very shameless’ as in iIf you don’t have a conscience, you can’t feel shame’.)

However, I thought I wanted to see Helena get married. It must be beautiful.

That’s how it was described in the novel.

I had certainly believed Helena would love Alecto. But now that their marriage was getting closer, I kept thinking about what Helena told me.

If I had asked her back then if she loved Alecto, and if she were frustrated and said she didn’t like that question, would something have changed?

……It wouldn’t have changed. I would have said she still had to get married though. That was the planned narrative. Only then… I could go back.

I took out the hidden knife and smoothed it. I had to stab her. But… could I really stab her? It was so painful even after killing the crown prince. Kill her, and I……. could I live as if nothing had happened even if I went back to my world?

No! I pulled my hair out.

No. That would be running away. Knowing that Helena would be revived by Hubris, I dared to weigh that once I died, it would be the price for her life. I had decided to die anyway, but it was abominable.

I think I wouldn’t be able to endure it.

It was clear that killing the innocent would really drive me crazy. I was going to have nightmares about her and cry for the rest of my life.…. The sin would never be washed away.

Let’s run away.

One morning, I suddenly thought of that. Helena shouldn’t die. Even though she had no reason to die, I couldn’t use her as a tool only for my death.

I only thought it wouldn’t matter if she died when I didn’t know Helena. Because she was just the main character from the book to me.

However, after I met Helena and talked to her, I couldn’t get rid of the idea that she wasn’t that type of person.

– Learning is really fun, right? I never learned it, so I didn’t know.

– It would have been nice if I knew this earlier.….

Unlike the options in the game, the child gave different answers to the same question. It changed moment by moment and grew day by day. The more I met her, the more lovely Helena felt. In the end, I became attached to her.

And…… in fact, it was more terrifying than anything else. I was afraid to die. Until now, I had no problem with dying thanks to the blind belief that this would be a ‘dream’.

I thought that if I died without any reason, I would be able to return to ‘me’. Death here was never death…….  Because in all the stories I had read, that was usually the case.

However, as I spent more time here, my anxiety grew.

What if that was not it? What if the witch lied to me? I killed Helena and was executed…… What if I couldn’t wake up again? I couldn’t breathe.

I had no regrets about dying because I knew I would wake up again. The swamp of self-contradiction dragged me down from time to time.

I knew it was cowardly. I also knew that I was reversing the commitment to Anakin, no, to myself, saying not to escape. But I couldn’t stand it.

My family passed by in front of my eyes. Everything I left in my world was asking me. Are you sure you don’t have to come back? Can you live someone else’s life with someone else’s face? Are you confident that you won’t regret it if you don’t see it again?

Ah, I remembered my mom’s face. I also heard my mother’s voice being disappointed, asking how I never contacted her.

I wanted to scream. No, I didn’t know if maybe I had buried my face in a pillow and screamed. Because I was half out of my mind and rolling on the bed tearing my hair off.

Mom, look at me. Mom, your daughter is trying like this. I am so tired. I miss my mom…… I really miss you!

It was too far to go home……. I couldn’t go any further because it was so far away.

I gasped for a long time. My curled body gradually stretched out. Anakin. When I called his name, he came up to me. I didn’t say anything, but he covered my eyes without saying anything.

I could cry for a moment under his hard hands. When I finally stopped crying, I quietly ordered him.

“Pack up, Anakin.”

Anakin silently packed my luggage at my words without even asking the common question of where he was going. He shoved any clothes into my luggage and collected gold at random. Anakin jumped out of the window first and then caught me falling.

The magic train was stopped after being suspected of stability, so I had to ride a horse or carriage. Anakin secretly bought a horseman through Cynthia.

“Are you Anakin?” I’ve been waiting.”

The horseman guided us straight behind the carriage without asking anything. There were so many large boxes, among them, I hid myself in an empty box. It was reasonable for me to enter. I was smaller in size, but more noticeable in appearance than Anakin.

“Please bear with me even if it’s a little uncomfortable. I’ll open it for you when I pass the watergate.”

“What are the rest of the boxes? It smells bad.”

“It’s trash.…… The capital is so dense that there is no landfill. That’s why we regularly send trash and dirt to areas outside the capital.”

Everywhere, the water supply was expensive. I went into the box without saying a word. Although the inside of the box was uncomfortable and smelled bad, humans were adaptable creatures, so their noses were paralyzed and bearable.

The rattling wagon stopped for a moment as if it stood at a gate. The guard asked formal questions to the horseman as usual.

“What’s inside?”