The Viscount Kompani, who had been examining Yuan’s pale face, urged her to leave.

Instead of answering, Yuan turned her head very slowly towards her aunt.

Her red-painted lips twitched as if in disbelief.

“Viscount? How could you be so rude!”

“It would have been better if you hadn’t lied from the beginning.”

Viscount Kompani replied coldly with a smile.

Unlike his torn mouth aimed at his hairy ears, his eyes didn’t curve at all.

“Requesting. Receiving permission. Wasn’t all that finished a year ago?”

“But, but like this…”

“If it were true that the late Count and Countess Peliesse had only one daughter, we could have just held the funeral and left. But the situation is different, isn’t it?”

“You can’t take that child!”

A shout like a burst of sound mixed between Viscount Kompani and Countess Peliesse.

Count Peliesse had finally come out of the room.

As he came down the stairs supported by two servants, Viscount Kompani’s gaze gradually sharpened.

Finally, panting as he set foot on the first floor, her uncle shouted.

The shout was directed at the Viscount, but his gaze, like shooting fire arrows, clearly reached Yuan.

“That child is my niece! The bloodline of my elder brother! She’s as good as my life!”

“Darling!”

As the Count, who had grown as fat as a pig, staggered greatly, the Countess supported him.

The skinny woman was immediately buried in her husband’s body.

“His Highness is very angry, Count.”

“I offered my niece who is like my lifeline! Didn’t His Highness want ‘the daughter of the late Count Peliesse’? It’s not like I sent some distant relative’s child! Which part exactly angered him?”

“Wasn’t there only one daughter between the late Count and Countess Peliesse? Moreover, that precious person…”

Viscount Kompani looked up and down at the pig-like fat Count Peliesse, then stepped back, spreading his arms as if introducing Louise’s coffin.

“Died so soon like this. Even when a dog dies soon after being brought home, people go to the farm to complain. Let alone…”

The Viscount was about to shout loudly but looked around and firmly closed his mouth.

However, he approached Count Peliesse, who was on the verge of collapse, and whispered in a very low voice.

“You seem to be mistaken. The one I said was angry is not His Highness the Former Crown Prince Clard.”

Count Peliesse’s complexion, which had been flushed red with anger, turned ashen.

“His Highness the First Prince Boloniko is very, very angry.”

At the mention of the First Prince, the mansion fell into a distant silence.

Viscount Kompani smiled gently again at the terrified Count and Countess.

It was a smile that anyone could see was forced.

“His Highness the First Prince is very sensitive right now. He’s struggling to carry out the task entrusted by the Emperor without a single error, and a subject dares to try to leave a blemish? When ordered to bring out Peliesse’s treasure, you send not a treasure but a troublesome invalid?”

“Vi-Viscount Kompani. I, I…”

“How fortunate. Since I found out, we just need to correct this mistake.”

Count Peliesse looked up at Viscount Kompani like a person facing the God of Death.

The earlier spirit was gone, and as soon as he heard about the First Prince, he wiped his damp hands on his wife’s clothes and caught his breath.

But as he couldn’t let Yuan be taken away like this, he gathered his last courage and shouted.

“I’ll ask the child. She’s not just some common girl, is she? I’m not such a cruel uncle as to force my niece into a marriage she doesn’t want!”

“How gentlemanly.”

Viscount Kompani sneered mockingly.

The gaze of everyone gathered on the first floor turned to Yuan.

“Your Highness the Former Crown Princess, what will you do?”

Ignoring the Viscount’s voice, Yuan looked up at her aunt, avoiding her uncle’s gaze.

As soon as their eyes met, her aunt raised her thickly painted eyebrows and shook her head.

Yet her voice was very soft and affectionate.

“Yuan. Yuan, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to go. Don’t you want to live here with your aunt and cousins like now?”

This time, she saw her cousins hiding their ominous aura behind her aunt.

They looked like they wanted to grab Yuan’s hair as soon as the people causing the commotion left the house.

Since childhood, Yuan Peliesse had only one wish.

A beautiful mansion and a complete family.

And over the past 10 years, her wish gradually reduced its expectations and volume, leaving only the essence.

Home. Family.

This mansion, which was no different from a living hell, was Yuan’s only home, and those rude people were her only family.

So she thought if she just did well, the situation would improve.

She did her best to help her uncle’s research to maintain Peliesse’s reputation.

She didn’t mind serving her aunt and cousins who became family on paper.

It was what they wanted as her new family, and by doing so, she could stay in the mansion.

Some days, she was in so much pain that she wanted to ask, “Uncle, are we really family?”

Swallowing the words that rose to the tip of her tongue along with the pain, Yuan always waited.

It seemed like all this suffering would end if she could cure her sister’s illness while helping with her uncle’s research.

She thought she could be recognized as family in this mansion and be happy as a real family.

But…

“Yuan. This uncle will surely resolve this. You just tell us your feelings.”

Louise is absent from this strange and frightening conversation.

Erasing Yuan’s existence and sending Louise out of the mansion.

Now, even though she has returned dead, no one asks about Louise, nor does anyone grieve her death.

Relatives, Louise, and Yuan.

The price of deceiving herself that they were the most perfect form of family under the name Peliesse was devastating.

“Family is something that no one can separate, right?”

Neither her uncle, nor her aunt, nor her cousins.

They were never Yuan’s family, not even once.

The thought that they were still family, no matter what, was Yuan’s alone.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to Elroid’s dress shop? That desolate ‘Rockenhart’… Why would you want to go there? How could you, who lived so luxuriously here, serve him in that place where even the imperial support has been cut off?”

Her aunt’s voice buzzed in her ears, and her head turned stark white.

Thoughts were cut off, and no voice came out.

‘Family? Our home?’

The words she had tattooed on her heart because she wanted them so badly were all erased.

Only the fact that she could leave this beautiful and terrible mansion with just one word remained, heating up her mind.

There was no need to endure all the moments she had sacrificed to help her uncle, to find a way to save Louise, to avoid being thrown out of this house.

All the time she had been crushed since her parents passed away, not just the entire year without Louise, when she couldn’t belong to or escape from this mansion, enduring the pain, passed by indifferently in the silence.

She felt as if the pain of complete strangers brought just yesterday still remained in her heart.

That terrible pain had already passed, leaving only the memory of the pain, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

“Yuan, you don’t want to be separated from your family yet, do you?”

She no longer wanted to be in pain for her uncle, for Peliesse.

Usually, she would have gladly accepted even the fake warmth mixed in that voice, but not now.

A corner of her mind flickered as if detecting a danger signal, but more than that, her whole body refused to stay in this mansion any longer.

She had a place to go.

A place her uncle couldn’t dare reach.

An opportunity that would never come again.

‘I’ll come to get you.’

Louise’s voice gripped her mind tightly, constantly leading her outside.

The white teeth that had been biting her lower lip until it was about to bleed parted, and finally, a thin voice flowed from Yuan’s mouth.

“I’ll… go.”

“Yu-Yuan?”

A house without parents or Louise.

People who consider my pain as natural and lie without feeling a single moment of guilt…

The trembling of her lips stopped, and Yuan, with bloodshot eyes, raised her voice.

“I want to go.”

It wasn’t a difficult phrase.

It took so long to utter that one phrase.

The anger that had been burning her head subsided for a moment.

Whether it was because she could leave this house without any lingering attachment.

Or because of her uncle’s stupid face as if someone had hit him on the back of the head.

“You’ve made a good decision.”

Viscount Kompani smoothed his furrowed brow and nodded to the servants.

The somewhat disorderly surroundings were quickly tidied up.

It was when Yuan was about to stand up, receiving Viscount Kompani’s escort, that her uncle finally opened his mouth.

“This can’t be!”

Her uncle’s face was burning like an iron lump just taken out of a furnace.

As if he didn’t even remember being supported, her uncle quickly waddled over and grabbed Yuan’s wrist tightly.

Snatching Yuan away from Viscount Kompani, her uncle breathed hot air into Yuan’s ear.

“You, how dare you!”

Reading the fear seeping into her eyes, her uncle twisted his lips and whispered strongly.

“What do you think you can do there? You think being the Former Crown Princess’s wife makes you a princess? Do you think you’ll be treated well there? I didn’t send you to a place where such a monster lives, and this is how you repay that kindness? You could die if you go there. No, you will definitely die! You can only live if you stay here!”

Yuan’s eyes, which had been avoiding her uncle, slowly moved to him.

Count Peliesse hesitated for a moment.

“I want to go.”

Yuan’s eyes, which had always been turned downward in fear and obedience, were quite different from usual, bloodshot.

As if daring to resent him.

“I don’t want to live or die here anymore.”

For the first time, eyes filled with hollow anger met her uncle’s gaze directly.