Yuan Peliesse stared at the tightly closed side room door while scratching at a hangnail.

Her face grew paler each time voices leaked out from behind the door.

She bit her lip until it bled, unaware of the blood, clasping her trembling hands until Count Peliesse opened the laboratory door and entered.

Only when the Count locked the laboratory door with a click and approached unsteadily, casting a shadow at her feet, did she suddenly look up at her uncle.

“Isn’t it about time you greeted guests on your own? Is it so hard to go in first, smile with that glossy face of yours, and offer a cup of tea?”

“There are too many people today…”

“How many times do I have to tell you that Peliesse runs thanks to those people?”

At the voice that fell without a moment’s hesitation, Yuan bit her bloodied lip.

Seeing her hesitant face, her uncle began to coax and cajole her as if annoyed.

“Are you the only one who’s struggling and in pain? I’m in pain too. But what can we do? This is the fate of Peliesse. You think I want to do this kind of work? Nobles don’t work, but Peliesse does. Why? Because the only reason we’ve survived in this illustrious noble society is our power. You, who were born with it, should rightfully share your abilities with people and work for the family!”

Words she’d been hearing for ten years.

She knew, but the pain was unavoidable.

Yuan headed towards the side room where her uncle was opening the door.

Her steps were slow and heavy, anticipating the pain to come.

A dark room.

Through the thick cigar smoke, high-ranking nobles in fancy attire were playing cards.

A woman chewing on a cigar and shuffling cards expressed irritation at their arrival.

“What took you so long?”

“Haha, my assistant wasn’t feeling well today-”

“Enough talk, just examine me already. Where has Peliesse’s reputation gone, making us come here in person?”

The noblewoman urged Count Peliesse without even smoothing her furrowed brow.

The Count hurriedly pulled out a stethoscope from his breast pocket and felt her nape.

Then he shot Yuan a sharp glance.

Her slender hand grasped the noblewoman’s wrist to check her pulse and absorb the pain.

“Ugh-”

A searing pain spread through Yuan’s head.

At the same time, the noblewoman’s sensitively furrowed brow smoothed out as if ironed.

“What’s this, I feel like my head has cleared for a moment. Is it just my imagination?”

“When you meet a good doctor, just an examination can drastically reduce stress. Ho ho ho ho! Assistant?”

Yuan held out a prescription with trembling hands.

Her uncle, grinning from ear to ear, pulled out several medicine bottles from his breast pocket. Then, using a dropper, he let a few drops fall into the noblewoman’s teacup.

He didn’t forget to read the symptoms written on the prescription while glancing at it.

“Your head feels like it’s being stabbed with needles, doesn’t it? Like your eyeballs might pop out. Especially on the left side.”

“…Peliesse is indeed different.”

Yuan watched the noblewoman happily receive the tea, pretending to adjust the shawl she was wearing.

Through the hand that lightly touched her shoulder, all of the noblewoman’s headache transferred to Yuan.

As if not just the pain but even the expression had transferred, Yuan’s white and smooth forehead suddenly creased.

“Goodness. No wonder Peliesse’s medicine is expensive!”

How amazing that her head cleared and the headache disappeared as if washed away!

With the noblewoman’s exclamation, commotion broke out here and there.

Those lying on makeshift beds in the corner raised a ruckus, their eyes brightening.

“Me too!”

“Examine me first! I’m more urgent!”

“Now, now. Everyone, you must keep order. And remember. You are very special people, that’s why you’re being treated in this mansion. So you must never reveal this to anyone. It would be very troublesome for me. I need to serve only precious people with precious medicines, but if this special treatment becomes known, it will be difficult to see you all! Do you understand what I mean?”

A man with his leg almost crushed in a carriage accident. An old woman on the verge of death from a long illness. A man with his shoulder nearly severed by a beast-hunting arrow.

These horribly injured and sick people smiled vaguely in the darkness.

Yuan’s spine froze coldly at the approaching terror.

“Yuan.”

“…”

“Think of this as practice for your sister.”

Her uncle whispered to Yuan, who was staring into the darkness with a pale face.

“Come, let’s go. You must fulfill your duty.”

The reason why her uncle didn’t abandon Yuan, who was left alone after her parents passed away and her sister left the mansion, was very simple.

Because Yuan was the only person in this mansion with Peliesse’s power.

***

It was Frederick, Yuan’s cousin, who picked up Yuan, who was lying on the floor of the laboratory’s side room like a dead person.

The chirpy voice of Frederick’s younger sister, Regina, immediately pierced Yuan’s ears.

“She acts like she’s the master. Does she do the research alone? She enjoys the privilege of freely entering father’s laboratory, so why is she so weak and full of complaints?”

“Don’t block the way, Regina.”

Regina immediately stepped aside and walked closely beside her brother.

“But still. Grandfather passed away and we’ve taken over the Peliesse mansion, so why do we have to take care of this crow too? At twenty, others already have fiancés. Just marry her off somewhere. Is the family business so difficult that we need to borrow the hands of this crow? Are the academy students just decorations? Are you and I decorations? It’s annoying. They don’t tell me anything.”

“Whatever it is, seeing this state, it might be better if we didn’t do it.”

Regina, who had been complaining with sleepy eyes, giggled at her brother’s words.

Yuan, who had been breathing heavily with her face buried in Frederick’s chest, was suddenly thrown into a room.

Not even onto the bed.

Yuan, thrown like a package onto the wooden floor without even a carpet, tried to get up, scratching the floor, when Frederick ostentatiously dusted off his hands.

Eyes of contempt swept over the shabby room.

Dirty, smelly, and cold. A room not even a maid would use. A room befitting Peliesse’s crow.

“Brother. Let’s go quickly. You promised to look at my debutante shoe designs together.”

Regina’s voice, tinged with laughter, and Frederick’s footsteps, full of discontent, faded away beyond the wooden door that slammed shut.

Only then did Yuan release the pain she had been holding inside.

The pain she had absorbed and suppressed all day burst out as the tension eased.

Yuan’s limbs, which had momentarily stiffened as if struck hard in the solar plexus, began to tremble.

Regina covered her ears at the pain-filled screams leaking into the corridor.

“That crazy X. She’s at it again.”

“Unlucky crow.”

“Taking in a girl who should be thrown into Saint Yolona in this beautiful mansion, even giving her work. Father and Mother are too soft, I tell you.”

On the silent third floor where everyone had disappeared.

Only Yuan’s desperate screams echoed like an echo.

***

One year ago.

Yuan’s sister, Louise Peliesse, suddenly packed her bags and bid farewell.

“Can’t you not go? Where are you going? Did Uncle give you another task?”

“Wait for me for just one year. I’ll call for you within a year, no matter what. I’ll come to get you.”

“What about now? Can’t I go with you now? Don’t leave me here alone…”

“Yuan.”

Louise put down the two bags she was holding and carefully cupped Yuan’s face.

Her slender fingertips moved as if caressing every bit of peach fuzz.

Louise’s black eyes were moist.

“This is the best way.”

Louise’s voice was firm.

At the tip of her delicate chin, only a firm resolve was set instead of tears.

Yuan could only gape at that strange determination, unable to give any answer.

“I’ll be back soon. Maybe we’ll spend next winter in a warm place.”

That’s how her sister left.

On a small hired carriage.

Without anyone from the family seeing her off.

Without any explanation.

With a mustachioed man she had never seen before, wearing a tall hat pointed towards the sky.

That was already a year ago.

***

Louise got married.

No one told Yuan who her sister had married, or where the wedding was held.

Even now, as winter has come again after four seasons have passed since Louise left in winter.

Yuan only inferred from the chatter of the laundry maids and a brief news item found among old newspapers in the incinerator behind the mansion.

It wasn’t even proper marriage news.

Among the names of numerous women who had passed through ex-Prince Clard Yufris.

She only guessed from a single line of news at the very end that said ‘Count Peliesse’s daughter, who is said to have married recently’.

Clard Yufris.

Even Yuan, who had never even seen high society, knew that man’s name clearly.

A monster with a hideously scarred face.

A womanizer who changed wives several times due to his lust for women.

If you look him straight in the eyes for too long, you’ll be cursed, your body will rot, and your hands and feet will wither… Yuan traced the news of the ex-prince, who didn’t even have a portrait in the newspaper, and her sister with trembling hands.

Ex-prince.

No matter how dark the outside news was, she knew what that title meant.

So Louise had become the bride of this monster ex-prince.

In other words, she had become the ex-princess consort.

***

The sound of horse hooves clattering outside the large window came several times.

It was the sound of many people moving.

The Peliesse mansion was in a very remote area on the outskirts of the capital, Cielo, so visitors were rare unless they were secret patients.

Yuan’s eyes, which had been enduring the pain all night while ruminating on the day she parted with Louise, were painfully raised at the unusual signs of activity.

“Louise?”

Her heart raced.

It was the same as that day.

The snowy morning when Louise left.

The busy sound of horse hooves and the unsettled atmosphere.

“Louise. It must be Louise.”

Yuan barely crawled to the door.

It took a long time just to grab the doorknob and open the door, but she had a strange certainty.

It’s Louise.

Because Louise always keeps her promises. Because it hasn’t been a year since she promised yet.

Yuan gritted her teeth and stood up, feeling her way along the wall as she went down to the first floor.

Her whole body ached as if it would break, but she didn’t fall.

As if answering her expectations, everyone in the family except her uncle was gathered on the first floor.

Frederick, who noticed her first, widened his eyes in surprise.

“How did you…? You’re still…”

“Quickly remove that dirty child!”

Her aunt’s fuss passed by Yuan like a sharp arrow.

Yuan, overwhelmed by anxiety, unconsciously pushed away her aunt’s arm as she approached with glaring eyes.

Her aunt’s eyes grew round.

On the first floor of the mansion.

On the marble floor, faded but still clean.

There was a dark wooden coffin.

Inside the open coffin…

“Louise?”

Her sister.

Louise Peliesse was there.

In a form still beautiful enough to tear Yuan’s heart into ten thousand pieces.

The sister who said she would come back for her if she just waited a year had returned.

“Lou… ise.”

As a cold corpse.

The strength in her legs, which she had forcibly maintained, suddenly gave out and she collapsed.

Louise, who had walked out firmly on her own two feet even when it hurt.

Yuan’s gaze passed over her aunt, who was only nervously biting her nails, worried about being scolded by guests for Yuan’s shabby appearance, and turned to the man who had first taken her sister away.

A mustache spread stylishly on both sides.

Tall and skinny, but very fashionable.

She remembered clearly, even though she had only seen him from afar through the window a year ago.

Even the smooth texture of the tall hat he was wearing.

The man’s eyes gleamed as soon as they met Yuan’s.

“So the real one is here.”

Leaving behind the frightened aunt, the man stood in front of Yuan, who had collapsed in front of the coffin.

The man’s long shadow completely covered her body.

“I pay my respects to the next Ex-Princess Consort.”

Her sister had kept her promise.

The promise to come and get Yuan herself.

In such a miserable way.

In such a disgusting method.