133. Pelliese, Pelliese!

2024.02.10.

Letters that had not reached her for over a year.

Was this all of them?

Should she have searched the Pelliese mansion more thoroughly, scouring every corner for any letters possibly hidden away?

Now, such regrets were utterly meaningless.

After briefly staring at them, Yuan reached out without hesitation.

The more bundled the letters were, the more stories they likely contained—and thus, the richer the information.

Yuan took the top bundle, unfolded it, and sprinkled water over it, rubbing gently.

The randomly chosen bundle of papers finally began to speak.

[Now that I think about it, I’ve never properly told you my story.] [Being alone in a strange place made me think of one person.] [The only one who comforted me in the southern islands of Torca, where I left home for recovery—the sea, and my dear Uncle Enoch.] [Without my uncle’s comfort and support during my childhood in the south, and those ten years together with you in the Pelliese estate, I don’t think I could have stood back up.] [If my uncle were right beside me now… I could have overcome this confusion much sooner.]

Yuan read through the message, breathing heavily as she forced every piece of information into her mind.

Louise and Yuan had never properly met, having spent ten years apart.

Now, Louise—who had traveled to the warm south for her fragile health—was revealing to Yuan who she had spent those ten years with.

Perhaps it was extraneous information.

Right now, what Yuan urgently needed wasn’t a nostalgic tale of Louise’s distant childhood.

Yet her instincts screamed that without understanding this, she could not move forward.

“An uncle.”

Not that damned Gerret Pelliese—but an uncle whom her sister deeply relied on and longed for?

‘Confusion.’

What was this ‘confusion’ Louise spoke of?

Yuan didn’t know whether this letter was written before or after Louise met Bollonico.

If it was before, then it described the shock of sensing within her husband—an unconscious man nearly dead from drug overdose—an energy identical to her own.

If it was after, then it referred to the unsettling emotions Louise felt toward whatever Bollonico had commanded her to do—something so strange it left her deeply disoriented.

Yuan gripped the bundle of letters she had scraped together from Regina’s box.

The first paper she examined was of the same texture and color as the one previously taken from Regina.

But the other letters differed ever so slightly in material and hue.

Instinctively, Yuan concluded that Louise’s ‘confusion’ stemmed from the moment before she met Bollonico—when she first recognized Clade’s ability.

Louise was not foolish.

While sending so many letters to the Pelliese estate, receiving no reply from Yuan, she must have sensed something had gone terribly wrong.

Perhaps she regretted revealing her power on paper that could be decoded by anyone with water and a finger.

The very papers before her eyes—requiring such obscure methods for Yuan to read—were proof of that.

Only then did Louise consider the possibility that her letters might reach someone other than Yuan.

She must have devised more complex methods to make the messages harder to decipher.

But weren’t these measures meaningless if Yuan never read them?

What if it had been Yuan?

When there was something vital to say.

When there were so many things she wanted to express.

Would Yuan really have chosen such a difficult, obscure method to convey her message?

The answer was clear.

“Enoch Pelliese.”

She had to find him—someone she had never even laid eyes on.

The only two people Louise had ever been truly close to in her life:

Enoch Pelliese and Yuan Pelliese.

If it wasn’t a method shared with Yuan Pelliese, then it must have been one shared with Enoch Pelliese.

Therefore, he would be someone capable of reading these letters.

Rather than being anxious and regretting the earlier letters she had sent to Yuan, Louise would have tried to use this knowledge.

‘You remembered the name Enoch Pelliese you wrote in those earlier letters, didn’t you, Louise?’

She admitted her mistake and sent new letters with enhanced security.

A powerful message—urging her to find Enoch Pelliese—was masked beneath ordinary greetings.

It was a gamble, bordering on recklessness.

But Louise had known.

“That you were desperately waiting to hear from me…”

She believed, somehow, that these letters would reach her.

She believed that no matter how angry Yuan was, she would never fail to reply.

And she believed Yuan would surely notice the signal and respond.

“You trusted me.”

At first, Yuan’s head throbbed with pain, wondering if she’d have to read through countless books to create a chemical solution to spray on each letter.

But now, having seen Louise’s intent, her trust, and her intelligence with her own eyes, Yuan grew unexpectedly calm.

Rather than recklessly pouring any substance and damaging the letters, Yuan chose to follow her instinct.

Louise’s genuine feelings—her growing anxiety each day spent under the grasp of Roxenhardt or Bollonico—had been fully conveyed.

Yuan cradled the leather pouch containing the letters as if she had finally been reunited with Louise herself.

Grrrk! Grrrk!

Suddenly, the doorknob of the locked door jerked violently up and down.

Yuan stiffened, then swiftly shoved the leather pouch into her bag.

She quickly returned everything to its original place and opened the locked door.

Tasha Kimfri burst in, her face drenched in tears, rushing past Yuan and collapsing onto her bed, pulling the blanket over her head.

Standing at the doorway after Tasha’s entrance was Eugene Kimfri.

He stared down at Yuan with a ghostly, chilling expression.

“This wasn’t what I asked of you.”

It was an accusation aimed at Yuan, who had been alone in the room, door locked, instead of following his request to go after Tasha.

Yuan looked straight up at Eugene Kimfri’s darkened face.

Unfazed by her slightly defiant gaze, he whispered softly—

a voice so faint it wouldn’t reach Tasha, whose sobs made the blanket tremble.

“Suspicious solitary actions. I clearly advised you to be cautious.”

Yuan’s eyebrows immediately twisted.

Just as she had resolved before, she no longer had any intention of easily complying with Eugene Kimfri’s surveillance.

She had just confirmed her sister’s letter, and her blurred goal was now crystal clear.

The person she needed to find was fatefully close to this southern region.

Someone who must examine and uproot every irritation in their path, for they face endless days ahead—such a person can never be defeated by one who stands before death yet places someone else behind them to protect.

“So what?”

Yuan clenched her fists tightly. Having come to the sea, she would fight against the crashing waves.

“This is where your indulgence ends, Lord Kimfri.”

Her jet-black eyes gleamed, having finally seized the hope she had relentlessly searched for.

If she backed down now, this man would appear wherever she went in search of Enoch Pelliese, stirring suspicion and interference.

If she backed down now, she could not protect Clade.

Someone who had been Louise’s family during the years she and Yuan were apart.

And now, having glimpsed the hope that perhaps, while unable to contact Yuan, Louise had still communicated with Enoch—she could no longer hesitate, nor bury herself in books.

Did she have the luxury to care about means and methods?

“I am not your subordinate. I have no reason to obey you.”

Her firm resolve caused one of the sealed pains within her to burst open on its own.

Without hesitation, Yuan vomited a stream of red blood onto Eugene Kimfri’s solid chest and abdomen.

Hearing Yuan’s resolute voice, Tasha peeked out from under the blanket and shrieked, rushing toward them.

“Call the doctor immediately—!”

Ignoring Tasha’s hysterics, as if Yuan were the one on the verge of death, Yuan glared at Eugene Kimfri.

From the start, there was never an option where she would survive.

Yuan Pelliese would certainly die.

But it would not happen before Clade Euphris’s eyes.

Anyone who wished to stop that would have to be ready to kill not just Eugene Kimfri—but the old Count Kimfri himself.

Yuan Pelliese.

Like the woman who had thrown herself into enemy territory for the one she loved.

Or Louise Pelliese.

Like the woman who had sacrificed herself for the one she loved.

The task Bolonico would command Yuan to do when the time came.

The one thing only Yuan could do.

The very order he once gave to Louise—and which ultimately drove her to her death.

The knowledge to foresee that command existed only beyond this mansion.

‘Enoch Pelliese.’

The unfamiliar uncle’s name was alive, breathing somewhere in the south.

Pelliese. Pelliese!

The name that clung to her heels until the very end.

But now, it truly didn’t matter.

‘Now, Pelliese belongs to me.’

She was the de facto head of the Pelliese household.

Even if she were a disgraced imperial consort, she had not a speck of reason to bow her head before Eugene Kimfri out of fear for her family’s future.

“If you thought I was a fool incapable of distinguishing a warning from advice, you were gravely mistaken.”

Behind the puffy, tear-streaked face of Tasha and the doctors rushing in—

Eugene Kimfri, suddenly struck by Yuan, stood frozen, staring intently at her face.

On his face—sharp as if carved from iron—fine cracks had begun to form.