Yuan curled her chilled fingertips into a fist.

There were many eyes watching.

Regina always said such hurtful things, and today was no exception.

“But seeing it today, I understand a bit. From the outside it looked desolate, but entering the mansion, there are quite a lot of valuable things. I can see why you betrayed your family and sold yourself.”

“Shall we step outside to talk for a moment?”

As Sophia, whose face had turned even paler than Yuan’s, didn’t know what to do, Yuan finally stood up from her seat.

In a corner of the spacious annex hall.

Yuan brought Regina to a spot far from the Peliesse people.

“You look well-off. Wearing clothes that don’t suit you.”

Regina said between twisted lips as she looked Yuan up and down.

“Is that what you get to wear when you sell yourself to a monster? You’re quite resourceful. Just like how you stole our father from my home.”

“I never stole your father.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

Regina sneered.

Yuan stared at Regina, who was acting exactly as she had at Peliesse, and replied.

“Shouldn’t you be happy that I’m not at Peliesse anymore?”

Regina blinked rapidly, unable to accept that Yuan, who had always been so timid, had dared to utter even a word of rebuttal.

“What?”

“That’s right. If you’re going to make such a fuss to humiliate me in front of everyone, it seems you hate and care about me more than I thought. Wouldn’t it be better for you if I just disappeared?”

“You… You who used to beg for food like a parasite in my house, how dare you!”

“And it was you and your family who stole. Your mother took over my mother’s bedroom, and you took my bedroom. You took every single thing in there, didn’t you?”

Regina’s large green eyes widened in shock, as if she had been slapped across the cheek.

Yuan continued steadily, even under Regina’s piercing gaze.

“I never begged. Your father used me because he needed me. I was useful enough to be allowed to live there. If I had been useless, your parents wouldn’t have glared at me like that. If I had just been a freeloader, they would have praised me for leaving.”

“Needed? What use could someone like you be? What’s so difficult about just writing down the prescriptions father gives, or pouring tea that the maids have already brewed into cups for guests? What great thing did you do to be so arrogant? You crow.”

You really don’t know anything.

Yuan refused to continue the conversation, looking at Regina who still didn’t understand anything about Peliesse’s power. Only those who know that power can understand this exploitation.

“Tell me, huh? Let’s hear it. What exactly was that great assistant work of yours?”

Assistant?

Yuan laughed bitterly at the absurdity.

Assistant, she says.

It was her uncle who was always busy writing down Yuan’s research.

It was her uncle who took the prescriptions Yuan wrote and presented them to the nobles as his own.

It was he who chose the path of a medicine peddler rather than a medical scholar, boasting of drugs containing Yuan’s abilities.

It was he who reduced the proud family business of Peliesse, built up by her parents, to a mere money-making scheme.

“If you don’t know that, then I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Stop causing a commotion. His Majesty the Emperor is here too.”

Regina shook her head for a long time with her mouth open.

She couldn’t believe the reality that the girl who always walked with her eyes cast down in fear, looking only at the ground, was acting so arrogantly just because she no longer lived with them.

But upon seeing Yuan’s pale face and slightly trembling hands, she soon regained her composure and calmed her anger.

“You dare to lecture me?”

A crow is a crow. Even in fine clothes in a spacious house.

“We stole? Ha, there’s a limit to delusions.”

Regina crossed her arms leisurely and looked down at Yuan sideways, raising her chin.

“You’ve always run away and hidden like this. You selfish girl.”

Regina spoke as if pouring out words to Yuan, who was standing still and listening.

“You’ve always lived thinking you’re the only unhappy one in the whole world, haven’t you?”

Regina recalled Yuan, who always lived with her eyes cast down like a maid, wearing a pitiful expression, and mocked her.

“You never accepted the gutter-like reality. Not knowing your place. If we had thrown you and your sick sister into an orphanage back then, no one would have blamed us, you know? Even if we had married you off to an old man like selling you, people would have applauded us for finding a good match for a parentless girl like you.”

Regina glanced at her family watching her and Yuan from afar, and pressed Yuan further.

Seeing Yuan’s smooth, glowing face and the jewelry and clothes she could never have dreamed of before, her spite doubled.

“An orphan without parents. A noble without a title. A woman without a penny to her name… You knew too well what kind of ending awaited you, so you clung to our house, didn’t you?”

Yuan was quietly staring at Regina.

Those annoying black eyes.

“You’ve always been like that.”

Regina’s lips curled even more.

“Even after choosing the best option available to you, you were never satisfied and kept clawing your way up.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You pretend to have lost everything, act pitiful, but in the end, you’ve always lived by replacing everything, haven’t you?”

As Yuan’s black eyes finally began to ripple slightly, Regina’s momentum increased.

“Do you think you’re the only orphan without parents? Do you think you’re the only one living without a single room to call your own? You clung to my house because you were about to lose the mansion you lived in with your parents. You relied on Louise instead of your parents. How cunning. How well you find ways to survive. Sucking up to our father and sneaking into the lab. Leaning on Louise when you felt lonely and miserable. What exactly were you lacking?”

Regina took a step towards Yuan, who was pressing her lips tightly shut. Their faces were very close.

“Your sister died. Now that you’ve lost your place to go, didn’t you want to replace everything?”

“No. That’s not it.”

“A husband instead of your sister. This black mansion instead of the Peliesse mansion. You want to settle down, don’t you?”

Yuan’s eyes quickly became bloodshot.

The smile on Regina’s lips grew deeper.

“That’s your nature. A rotten beggar’s nature. You’re a cunning bat. I don’t know what you stole, but why don’t you just give it back quickly instead of clinging on so pathetically? Because of you, our father is enduring every day, making sick noises and unpleasant sounds.”

“…”

“You don’t care because you can replace everything, right? We torment you and you leave the mansion? No! You just want to settle down somewhere else now. Selling yourself to a man who might have killed Louise!”

“!”

A man who might have killed Louise.

That one sentence darkly stained Yuan’s heart.

Regina wouldn’t miss that reaction.

“It feels good, doesn’t it? Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

Regina, facing Yuan’s lowered eyes directly, pushed her face, full of anger, even closer.

“What does it matter that Louise died? You, Yuan Peliesse, didn’t shed a single tear when Louise died either, did you?”

Regina approached until their noses almost touched, and upon discovering the guilt rising beneath those black eyes, she finally opened her mouth.

“In the end, you only care about your own comfort, Yuan Peliesse. It doesn’t matter what happens to your family, whether it’s us who took you in or Louise!”

Finally, Regina smoothly withdrew from Yuan, who stood frozen, and opened her fan with a flourish to cover her face.

Behind the fan, her bright green eyes turned towards Clard Yufris, the former crown prince, standing at a distance.

“A half-breed met another half-breed. How well they match.”

Yuan clenched her fists at the sight of Clard beyond Regina’s deep red hair.

Regina’s shoulders shook mockingly behind her fan.

“You’re hiding a dark inner self behind that pretend-kind face too, aren’t you? Your husband is the same. What’s the use of just looking decent? Everyone knows there’s a disgusting, ugly side behind that mask. Besides, he’s a deposed crown prince without succession rights, trapped here like that, spending his life as a spectacle for people.”

Even if she wasn’t a great noble, the man Regina would have in the future was much better than the man Yuan had.

At least Drake Trelloni would come to marriage with some estate or title to inherit.

At least his face wouldn’t be so damaged that he’d have to wear a mask to parties.

“You’re such a well-matched pair. Keep it up. I don’t care whether you sell your body to that monster or not. But.”

Snap-!

Regina, who had been fluttering her fan, closed it in one motion like clapping her hands, and leaned towards Yuan, who was enduring the insults with her whole body tense.

“Let me warn you. You’d better reply to father’s letter soon. If my family suffers any more because of you, I won’t stand by quietly either. Even the nickname ‘crow’ is too good for you now. You bat-like wench.”

With that, Regina hit Yuan’s shoulder hard and returned to her family’s seats as if nothing had happened.

Yuan, clutching her shoulder where the pain remained, stared at the piercing gaze she felt.

Her uncle’s face was flushed.

It was a face full of expectation that his daughter might have accomplished something.

Yuan frowned deeply at that disgusting face for a moment.