Everything repeats itself.

Bake pleads, and I shake my head. He makes excuses, but clumsy excuses only make the situation worse. Conversations mixed with irritation and tears swiftly pass, and the conversation ends in a mess.

I stared straight into my husband’s flushed eyes, decreed a ban on guests, and my husband attempted yet again to bring up a failed excuse, eventually leading me to raise my voice.

That was the end.

Enough!

The emotional outcry was not properly collected and was mixed with nonsense. The pitch was unstable and sounded rough, mixed with roughly expelled breaths.

But it was that effective.

From the moment I screamed ‘back’, my husband’s face turned pale.

Raising one’s voice in an unsightly manner was something the Duchess of Creighton would never do. We all knew this fact all too well.

Also, it is because of this that one can know. I was very angry.

Silence fell.

My husband extended his foot towards me with a nervous expression, and I covered my mouth with my hand and retreated. My husband calls me, but I do not answer.

When the same thing happened several times, something got caught on the heel of the shoe.

It was the threshold separating the room and the balcony.

If I retreat a little more, I will enter the balcony. And if I move my feet a little more, I will eventually reach it.

The iron railing pressing gently on my waist would be very firm and cold.

Thinking about that, memories of the past come to mind. And I’m not the only one who remembers that.

Tick

The sound of the heel of the shoe catching on the threshold breaks the silence. The husband, who couldn’t be paler, cannot come any closer. The memory of that day was left too strongly.

And so, my husband fled the room, and I was left behind.

Our relationship crumbled once again.

This is why one can know. People do not change. Bake is not trustworthy. He will disappoint me many times.

I stared silently at the open balcony window.

The wind laden with the night air was chilly, but it was rather better for waking up the mind.

Acting was not difficult. Laughing was also easy. Even while yelling at Bake, I thought about how I looked to him. No, I calculated.

To inflict the most terrible pain on my daughter’s enemies.

Sadly, the Duchess, who was nothing but a bluff, was powerless. That’s why I had to be more delicate. Errors were not acceptable. Everything had to be done thoroughly according to the plan.

That’s how I came up with the plan, thinking of all kinds of possibilities and eliminating variables.

Like playing chess.

Fortunately, I was talented in chess.

I loved chess. The game of moving pieces on a small square board was intoxicating with a sense of victory even without seeing blood. How thrilling it was every time I calculated the moves for the win and realized them. It felt like I had my own little world.

Of course, that was an old story.

I don’t play chess now. Because there’s no opponent.

My father, who taught me chess, and my brother, who used to sit in front of me, calling it an oldfashioned hobby, are not here.

As soon as I married Bake, I got rid of the chessboard. I couldn’t just leave the chessboard with broken ears. No, it wasn’t just the chessboard. I threw everything away and replaced it.

I pulled out the old tree left with only the stump after being cut down and put a fountain on top of it. I dug up the broken floor and laid marble. I didn’t leave a torn curtain, a broken light, anything. I didn’t keep anything in the mansion if it was a little flawed.

And so, Creighton Mansion returned to its old glory, and I cried every night while renovating the mansion.

Even trampled and messed up, Creighton Mansion was my home.

I still remember. There were traces on the pillars of my father’s study room where we recorded our siblings’ height every year.

Behind my brother’s bookshelf, there was a candy jar for me. Everything about the moment I was born and raised was left in the mansion. And it was destroyed under my direction.

The people I loved left, but Creighton remained. Those who cursed my family as traitors could no longer speak.

With the beautiful mansion, the glory of Creighton returned.

But even at that moment of praise, I regretted it.

I should have learned the sword, not chess. Instead of crying pitifully and wasting time, I should have gone to find my brother directly. I should have spoken more strongly about my father’s death.

The reason I could stop regretting was thanks to Muriel.

“Decide, Your Grace the Duke of Creighton. A lot will change by your decision.”

Is it because of my wrong choice. Meriel was born very weak. So small, even her heart that should have been pounding away seemed to barely throb. I had to check every day whether that tiny child was really alive before I could sleep.

Everyone thought so. It was a miracle she was born, but she wouldn’t last long.

But Meriel survived.