/
Doah was well aware of who this boy was.
The second son of Grand Duke Credel, Salvier Credel.
As I stared at his face, a memory popped into my head.
“Hey, trash.”
“Pretending to be Ophelia, just try doing it one more time.”
“You touched Ophelia’s things again? I’m going to rip you to shreds!”
As she saw him in Bunny’s memories, Salvier had the same expression as he looked at Doah now.
With eyes so infested with malice to the point that his blue irises looked black.
The scared Bunny was so overwhelmed that she knelt down immediately.
However, without even batting an eyelash, Doah responded calmly.
“I stole something, you say.”
“Ha, so you’re even stooping so low that you’re pretending to be innocent.”
Salvier laughed incredulously, then he spoke again with sarcasm.
“Who else would touch Ophelia’s brooch if not you?”
Brooch? Bunny stole a brooch?
Doah quickly traced Bunny’s memories, but she shook her head.
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Ah, sure.”
Salvier leaned his head over as he laughed, evident that he didn’t believe her.
And soon, he stopped laughing.
Raising his head again, he muttered in a low voice that sounded like a growl.
“Hey, it seems like you didn’t hear how I said I’ll rip you to shreds.”
He grabbed her collar with one hand, then the hilt of his sword with the other.
Like a beast trapping its prey little by little, he chewed out one syllable at a time as though he was holding back his breath.
“One day. Just one single day.”
“……”
“Behave and listen to me just before I brand you with the mark of a slave right here on your neck.”
Salvier let go of Doah as though throwing her away.
Then as he trampled on her shoulder before she could get up, he added.
“You know I’m capable of doing that, right?”
This was his final warning.
The blue gaze directed at her was so full of hatred and contempt.
* * *
Doah belatedly realized what Salvier was talking about.
It was a brooch that he always wore on his lapel.
‘So it seems it’s something that Ophelia gave to him herself before she left.’
Then just how precious was it?
Since it was given to him by his sister—her alter ego—she could recall him loving it.
Of course, ‘How on earth did she manage to steal something that he’s always wearing, aren’t these false charges?’ is what anyone would think here, but…
‘Actually, it’s natural to be suspected.’
Bunny’s skills in pickpocketing were no joke.
At her hometown, the garbage dump, she was praised for her devil-like talent.
‘Thought it’s not something that should be bragged about.’
She’s had some history of sneaking into Ophelia’s room by breaking into the ‘Central Palace’s secret passages that only the direct descendants knew’.
At that time, Bunny was only eight years old.
She was so young when she could already break through the security of a grand duke’s estate.
If a tail was long, it would inevitably be stepped on, so she was caught stealing things in the end as she did it while going in and out of the room several times.
‘Besides that, the only thing of Ophelia’s that Bunny could steal at the moment while she was in the tower was that brooch.’
Salvier hovered around Bunny whenever he had the time for it, acting as though he was a guard monitoring a felon.
It’s been a long time now since this was happening.
So, it could be natural to think that Bunny, whose hands were faster than the speed of light, had stolen the brooch from his lapel at some point before.
‘The real culprit… has a good grasp of Bunny and Salvier’s relationship.’
Probably, it’s one of them.
‘I’ll know exactly who it is when I see them.’
Since she was very young, Doah had already accepted that she was just a tool to be used.
Like Bunny, she did not covet the youngest daughter’s place, nor did she harbor any foolish hopes of becoming a real family with them.
She never crossed the line with the Park family and acted thoroughly according to how they wanted her to act.
Perhaps it’s because of this, but whenever she was pretending to be the young miss—except for when she was playing the role of the bad luck sponge—she did whatever she wanted to do.
It was then that she learned about the four pillars of destiny and face reading.
From Doah’s life mentor and spiritual supporter—a fortune teller grandma.
“Doah. The study of horoscope isn’t just fortune telling. It carries both statistics and historical studies. During the Joseon Dynasty, it was one of the topics in the civil service along with oriental medicine.”
“We’re not in the Joseon Dynasty anymore though.”
“This rascal… No matter how different the world has become, there are always some things that will not change, tsk tsk.”
Her grandmother¹ said that the foundation of the four pillars of destiny was the cosmos—or the universe—and the energy.
In this dimension that’s completely different from the Earth she knew, there was still spring, summer, autumn and winter.
There was still the sun, the moon, and a planet composed of the five elements.
This meant that the universe around this world circulates endlessly and expands infinitely just as it did on Earth.
Each and every person was a universe.
This was because a human being’s birth and death was the same as the universe’s circular laws of nature.
That’s what her grandmother said.
‘No matter how different the world is, even if it’s a different dimension, the laws of the universe remain the same.”
And this was also the case for face reading, or physiognomy.
The array of energy that’s engraved on the human body can be seen on one’s face, and reading this was called ‘physiognomy’.
What could be seen through fortune telling could be seen through physiognomy, and what could be seen through physiognomy could also be seen through fortune telling.
Therefore, what Doah had learned so far would not be meaningless.
Ka-chak—
Right then, as the sound of a key rattling through the lock could be heard, the doorknob turned.
‘They’re here.’
t/n:
¹ Doah and the fortune teller grandma aren’t related, she just calls her that way
² The five elements mentioned here really is five and isn’t a typo because in the context of Chinese horoscope or the Taoist philosophy, this is true. The elements Doah’s referring to are: metal, water, wood, fire and earth.