Have you already returned from the party? No way. Why?
Delphine barely managed to steady her trembling body as she moved closer to the barn.
Her father’s voice became even clearer.
“How dare you disregard me like that! If only I had the power… If only I could have more of ‘that’…!”
And then came the sound of a whip tearing through the air, followed immediately by the terrible sound of flesh being struck.
Even amidst all this, not a single groan could be heard from Ioan.
He was gritting his teeth and enduring it.
That immense pain.
Delphine bit her lower lip until it bled, barely suppressing the urge to vomit.
‘Get a hold of yourself, Delphine Pembrook.’
She recalled a memory from when she was 10 years old.
The memory of first meeting Ioan, a memory as sticky and squelching as a pool of blood.
She was no longer the same innocent 10-year-old child who had just lost her mother.
It had been a long time since she abandoned the naive belief that her father would one day return to his kind self.
‘Get a grip and think.’
If she stepped in and tried to stop him here, it would only fuel her drunk father’s anger and be of no help at all.
“You’re nothing but a tool I gave birth to!”
“You’re able to live in luxury only because you were born into the Pembrook family!”
Her father always hurled such abuse at her.
‘…Right. Father hates to be seen whipping other servants.’
It was because he still had the sense that it was shameful to whip a person like an animal, even if they were a slave.
Delphine’s red hair fluttered as she dashed towards the mansion.
It was the first time her heart burned with such rage, as if it were on fire.
She had to save him, Ioan.
The empty hall.
Upon arriving there, Delphine quickly picked up a large, heavy-looking marble statue.
It was so heavy that her small body swayed for a moment, but faced with the urgency of the situation, a superhuman strength surged from somewhere within her.
Delphine mustered all her strength to swing the statue and hurl it through the window.
Crash!
With a loud noise, servants who had been sleeping were startled awake and could be heard crying out from here and there.
“Wha- What is it! A thief?”
“No way, what are the guards and knights doing!”
Delphine quickly ran back out to the garden.
Then she secretly pressed her back against the mansion’s wall and turned her head to survey the barn.
“A thief?! Who dares to covet the property of the Pembrook family!”
Her drunk father could be seen muttering and throwing down his whip before running towards the mansion.
As soon as her father’s figure completely disappeared, Delphine hurriedly ran towards the collapsed Ioan.
Blood.
Once again, it was a pool of blood everywhere.
“Ioan!”
At Delphine’s feeble cry, Ioan, who had been lying collapsed, raised his head.
He had gritted his teeth so hard that his lower lip was tattered with blood.
But even in the midst of this, his eyes were fierce.
In the pain that would have made an ordinary person faint many times over, Ioan smiled brightly upon discovering her.
“Young lady.”
At the sight, Delphine’s heart shattered and crumbled.
Delphine knelt before him like a sinner and wept.
“Ioan, I’m sorry…”
She resented her young and weak self who could do nothing but cry, but for now, there was nothing she could do except weep.
“Because of me, because I called you out today… I’m so sorry…”
“It’s not because of you, young lady. And I’m fine.”
Shaking his head, he comforted Delphine instead.
At that, Delphine’s heart swelled with emotion, ready to burst.
Right now, who was saying they were fine to whom?
Delphine, who had been gazing at the boy beautifully shining under the moonlight despite being covered in blood, finally couldn’t hold back and cried out.
“Why do you just endure it…!”
Ioan was incomparably stronger than the average person.
Recently, he had even seriously injured a servant who had insulted his mother.
She heard that all the servants in the house had tried to stop him, but no one could stop Ioan from throwing punches.
“Just, just, don’t endure it…”
Why won’t you rebel even once…?
As she muttered while sobbing, Ioan, who had been looking at her as if her words were unexpected, answered readily.
“Well, it’s because he’s your father, young lady.”
His tone suggested that explained everything.
Wasn’t it said that a certain virgin became a divine being for giving birth to the savior?
Then there was no reason for him not to respect that trash who conceived his saint.
What should such a feeling be called?
Neither the boy nor the girl knew in that moment.
They simply gazed at each other’s beautiful faces under the dark night sky as if enchanted.
The full moon, which had been briefly obscured by dark clouds, shone brightly upon them.
Under the moonlight, Delphine sorrowfully scanned Ioan’s devastated appearance, now more clearly revealed.
Today, not knowing it would be like this, she hadn’t brought any ointment.
There was nothing to apply to his blood-soaked back.
…Even so, she had long known that such ointments were of no real help.
Perhaps all this time, she had been bringing ointment just to ease her own heart.
Delphine, who had been blankly looking up at the lusciously rising full moon, suddenly murmured.
“Do you remember the game I mentioned?”
“Yes.”
“If you mix blood over the water illuminated by the full moon, it’s an exchange of sharing pieces of each other’s souls.”
At that intimate whisper, a strange look appeared on Ioan’s face.
In an even lower voice, he recited very softly.
“…If I could have even a piece of you, young lady, I would be happy.”
They filled an old stone statue in the garden with clear water.
The full moon appeared very clearly over the mirror-like transparent water.
Delphine slowly placed her autumn-leaf-like hand over it.
Ioan, who had never once questioned her words until now, finally seemed to realize and spoke with a slightly displeased expression.
“…Are you going to continue?”
He didn’t like the idea of drawing blood from her fingers.
“The game has gone far enough…”
Before he could even finish discouraging her, Delphine cut her soft finger with a blade of grass.
Red blood dripped, dripped, falling onto the water, splitting the yellow full moon.
Delphine watched this with a face full of strange exhilaration.
Her father treated Ioan so cruelly, yet he never laid a hand on her.
He was probably saving her to sell to the royals someday.
To think of harming such a body.
She felt a strange sense of satisfaction mixed with rebellion.
“…You won’t even need to cut your hand.”
Delphine recited sadly.
Without a word, Ioan placed his blood-stained hand over the water.
Drip-. Drip-.
Her blood and his blood mingled over the yellow full moon.
Watching this, Ioan also felt a rough sense of exhilaration that he had not expected at all.
But it was a completely different kind of exhilaration than what Delphine had felt.
Until now, to him, Delphine had been a sacred being, far out of reach.
But now, here, before his eyes.
His filthy and lowly blood was mixing with the blood of a saint.
They were beings who could mix. She and he.
The moment he realized this fact, the boy became a complete man right then and there.
I want that woman.
I want to mix with that woman even more deeply, inseparably.
If only that could happen, I would do anything…
He gazed at the woman sitting before him with the scorching eyes of a man.
“With this, we have shared pieces of each other’s souls.”
Delphine, who had no way of knowing Ioan’s dark thoughts, chuckled.
“Later on, even if by chance we become separated, we mustn’t forget this day, okay?”
How could I forget?
It is you who will forget a lowly slave like me and leave me behind to go to that imperial palace, a place far more distant and noble than this Pembrook mansion…
Ioan swallowed the deep affection he couldn’t dare express out loud.
Only the indifferent moonlight shining upon them was dazzlingly bright.
[This is the timeline separator]After that night, Ioan began to refuse Delphine’s touch when she offered to apply ointment to his back.
Even when she said she would check his wounds, he stubbornly refused to take off his blood-soaked top.
Although puzzled by the change in her only same-aged friend, Delphine continued to visit him at night, and the two chatted quietly inside the barn.
Although there was a gap between them, as insurmountable as the difference in their status, between the illiterate slave and the increasingly refined noble lady…
Still, they remained each other’s only comfort in this barren mansion.
However, that peace did not last long.
On the day Delphine’s engagement to Leonardo, a distant relative of the emperor, was announced.
What the exhausted Delphine found when she came to the barn seeking comfort was only a quiet stillness and moonlight filling the empty barn.
“…Ioan?”
And just like that, he left the Pembrook mansion.
Believing that an impossible love would make him and her unhappy.
But exactly 3 years later.
He would come back to her side under the name of Viscount Pryde, which he had not anticipated at all.
Male lead is a Destined Young Husband (Female-dominant)
One-sentence summary: Wife-master, listen to my explanation!
Li Ruantang, a young lady from a prestigious family, stumbled and fell. When she woke up, she saw a noble and beautiful young man sitting by her bedside, wiping away tears.
The young master had slightly reddened eyes, and his every move exuded charm.
The sight made Li Ruantang’s eyes hot and her heart flutter. After all, she had made a bet with the young master Meng from the neighboring family. If she couldn’t marry a husband before the end of the year, she would have to admit defeat and give up the jade she had worked so hard to obtain.
Outside the window, the flowers were in full bloom.
Rather than losing the bet, the jade, and her face, Li Ruantang calculated that it would be better to seek marriage with the young master in front of her, killing three birds with one stone.
…
Meng Jun never thought that an accident during a spring outing would lead to them rolling down a cliff and into a river, yet still survive.
Now they were trapped in an unknown village, and Meng Jun had overheard that the family who had rescued them had their own intentions.
After all, it was Li Ruantang who had lost her mind and sought marriage first. He was only trying to protect himself!
Glancing at Li Ruantang, who was listing her own merits, the young husband’s voice softened, and he blushed as he lied, “W-wife-master, Wife-master, don’t you remember me?”
The young husband’s voice was clear and handsome, coaxing Li Ruantang’s heart to be soft and sweet, and she spared no effort to protect him.
It wasn’t until they returned to the capital that Li Ruantang suddenly remembered.
When they had fallen off the cliff, in order not to implicate Wei Yunruo, whom he secretly admired, the young husband had instead pulled her, who was slightly farther away, down the cliff with him…
Short summary by Yuushi L: Initially, the male lead (ML) liked another girl, while the female lead (FL) liked the ML. Both fell off a cliff. The FL temporarily lost her memory, and the ML, fearing others might take advantage of him, claimed FL was his wife while they were staying in a village. Later, when they returned home, the FL regained her memories and remembered that the ML liked someone else, so she kept her distance from him. However, during their time living together in the countryside, the ML’s view of the FL had completely changed. From this point, his pursuit of the FL begins.
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