#10
“…It was… my… affair…”
However, as soon as the words were uttered, the ending faded away, enveloped in regret. They had collided with the wall of customs etched into the bones. Until then, I had never been so angry with Johannes, nor should I have been, so the regret was almost instinctual. The grip of our clasped hands tightened.
“Don’t… take back… your words… Answer me.”
I requested, barely, truly barely managing to suppress my tone.
“…I’ve already apologized twice. Don’t make me explain in detail.”
The response that came a beat late was sharp as a knife. However, I couldn’t end the conversation like this.
“Who’s asking for an explanation?”
“Let’s stop, Isolde. I don’t want to explain. This kind of conversation is not welcome.”
Johannes shook his head slightly as if shuddering.
“Just tell me how much you remember.”
“……”
“It’s not that difficult, is it?”
“Wait.”
Johannes’s expression crumbled for a moment. Oh no. I shut my mouth tightly. Johannes, who had been standing for a while with a completely dumbfounded look, took a step towards me.
“Not difficult, you say.”
“……”
“Is that what you should be saying?”
“…I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know.”
“……”
“You, you know. You’re not ignorant.”
He took another step closer. I took a step back.
“No…. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m telling you I don’t know. Am I you? How could I, by what means could I know something I never had the chance to know anyway.”
“Chance? Did you ‘need’ something like a chance?”
“…What do you mean.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. More than anyone among us, you…. You most of all.”
Johannes, who had been visibly agitated, couldn’t easily continue his words. His furrowed brow looked less angry and more frustrated and confused to the point of madness. I shook my head vigorously.
“I don’t want to.”
“You were the first.”
“Stop it!”
“……”
“I don’t want… to hear it…. I don’t understand what you’re saying….”
“……”
My gaze bored into the floor. I was beside myself. I struggled to swallow back the blackness rising from my chest. Though I didn’t know exactly what this blackness was, I seemed to understand enough that Johannes was trying to touch ‘something’ inside me after I had blurted out whatever came to mind out of embarrassment. Therefore, Johannes might have felt denied by me at that moment.
But I didn’t want to acknowledge anything. The feeling of past memories creeping up was too nauseating.
After a short time passed like walking on needles. Johannes spoke first.
“…The closest blood relative to me…. The person who knows me better than anyone… Isolde, it’s you.”
As if he had swallowed all his words, there was even a sense of resignation in his voice that made my anger surge.
“What right do you have to blame me when you haven’t done anything right? Don’t say things that are past their time. We’ve already grown apart three years ago, and you’re the heir. I’m just a widowed lady in the inner quarters, so I don’t understand your feelings, just answer me.”
“Ha. Three years. You, just yesterday and today…!”
Johannes, unable to contain himself, raised his voice abruptly. But he seemed to have seen me flinch in surprise. Johannes, whose eyes met mine for a moment, suddenly closed his mouth. Looking quite flustered, he swallowed once in the awkward silence between us.
“…Why, are you doing this.”
His voice, squeezed out, was barely audible. As I was still trying to calm my startled heart and catching my breath, Johannes sat back down on the desk. He looked quite tired as he rubbed his bare face with both hands. Shaking his head and letting out long sighs several times.
“…Right. As you say, our situations are different. So stop trying to cross the line. Both that ‘incident’ on the eve and being interrogated like this now is quite… humiliating. And you should be able to understand this kind of feeling…”
That incident.
“What is this ‘incident’ you’re talking about?”
I didn’t miss the chance to ask. But Johannes just bowed his head and said nothing.
“That’s what I’m asking now. What exactly is that incident?”
“……”
“Do you remember me coming down?”
“……”
“What about after I went back? And after that?”
“Please.”
“How much do you remember?”
“Isolde….”
“When did you fall asleep?”
“The line…”
“Line!”
“……”
“Line!”
I couldn’t hold back anymore. I spat out as if coughing up blood.
“What line? Is it the line between the lord and his wife you’re talking about? Or the line between siblings? Or is it the line that should be kept as human decency? Tell me! It’s that line that’s the problem right now!”
The sorrow I had been holding in all along, the anger and fear that I had temporarily set aside due to being swept up in a strange feeling, all suddenly welled up and poured out of my lips.
Johannes’s face, who was staring at me with his eyes wide open without being able to speak, was clearly bewildered. I remember the helplessness that clouded his eyelids, as if he had suddenly been uprooted. He muttered abruptly.
“…What on earth….”
That was the end of it. An expression utterly unlike Johannes. He seemed hurt. I thought that just as his coldness had been difficult for me, my anger must have caused him similar pain.
Johannes, who had bitten his lip slightly, asked me.
“…Are you doing this on purpose?”
His head dropped down. I could see the tension entering his already firm shoulders. He looked so stiff that his sitting posture seemed uncomfortable. Johannes, slowly catching his breath, began to speak as if reciting.
“…Isolde. Just to say one thing… Even when I’m furious to the point of exploding, I try not to show it. Especially in the barracks. Do you know why? Because we’re twins. I’m afraid I’ll make exactly the face you’re making now. That’s why. You always get angry with a sad face. Even when you seem determined to hurt someone.”
Johannes looked straight at me.
“When I see that face of yours, I can’t bring myself to fight back. You’re always the one who’s unreasonable first, but all the guilt falls on me. You, why do you always look so sad whenever you get angry? Do you really not know? Damn… We’ve been together for quite a while, but I still can’t understand what’s inside you…. You ask if I remember the eve? Of course. I remember everything. From the moment the seizure started to the moment I was forcibly put to bed in front of all the household members while being treated like a beast. The words the knights muttered, the sounds outside the door. And.”
He took a breath for a moment, and finally poured out his sincere feelings that must have stung to the core.
“Even your chilling gaze… everything.”
His eyes were gloomy. I was greatly taken aback by his inner thoughts that I had never imagined.
“Is this answer enough?”
“…Is that, all?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“As if I would lie.”
When I unknowingly stammered and asked again, Johannes answered as if with a sigh.
“…When did I fall asleep?”
“Right after you went up. I was completely exhausted…. They were discussing among themselves whether to put nooses on my arms and legs, and I fell asleep contemplating whether to kill them all. As you said, I might have gone a bit mad. And after you left. As you know, once, more. …I had another seizure and fell asleep.”
“……”
“Yes. I had two yesterday. I’ll admit it. I completely disgraced myself. As a knight, it wasn’t a sight Valdemar should show. How did I look to you then? Was it disgusting and ugly? Were you ashamed that your twin brother showed such a sight again without improving? Well, that’s why you ran away after coming down out of concern. Ah, of course you should run away at such times, what else could you do….”
“……”
“Why are you surprised. Isn’t this the answer you wanted?”
“……”
“…Isolde?”
I let Johannes’s last question, tinged with sarcasm, go in one ear and out the other. No, I almost didn’t hear it. I couldn’t bear to listen to his self-deprecation any longer. Because from the middle, I was already facing my own catastrophe alone.
The feeling of a cramped cage of solitude crashing down on my head. The feeling of falling alone on a cliff at the far end of a distant continent where no one else was.
It wasn’t because I didn’t believe Johannes’s words that he ‘remembered everything’. Rather, the fear that I alone would have to live with the memory of that day hanging around my neck, because Johannes truly ‘knew nothing’, seized my limbs.
The fact that I couldn’t even know who it was that day, that overwhelming sense of guilt was relentlessly driving me. No. No. I’m going to be punished alone again…!
The bridge of my nose stung and the back of my head throbbed as if suffering from a severe headache. I alone was sinking into a rotten mound of earth. It was nauseating. My stench, as if every hair would rot away at the slightest touch. The stench of being utterly alone.
How could this be…. A life that was lonely, is lonely, and will be lonely in the future, a life that won’t be so short even till the very end, how can it be ruined like this every time. Can it be ruined this badly even when it’s ruined? Before I knew it, I seemed to be shedding tears in streams.
“Damn it. Isolde.”
The sensation of Johannes, who had jumped up and approached me, urgently wiping my eyes and cheeks pierced my heart. Ah, ah! You don’t know, do you? That you wiped my tears like this that night too, you don’t know at all?
“…don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t touch me!”
I violently pushed away Johannes’s hand and stumbled backwards until my back hit the wall with a thud.
“…Ah…. Humiliation!”
And I threw a fit of rage.
“Yes. How could I not know that feeling…. How shameful it must have been to have such a severe seizure in front of so many eyes? It must have been humiliating. It must be unbearably irritating even now! If it were me, I’d rather die than show such a sight. You must be sick of seeing me now, right? It must be so annoying to be pestered with questions when even recalling the seizure is too much!”
I just couldn’t stop. Everything poured out like tears, like blood, in just a few minutes.
“Ah! Did I speak too lightly? Saying you had a seizure? Even so! Even so…! Even if… you were so displeased…. Why… What’s wrong… Couldn’t you have shown some kindness and checked on me…? We haven’t had a proper conversation in years… Were you so busy protecting your precious pride that you didn’t have even a sliver of such a thought?”
On the surface, it was 14 years of loneliness. A day’s worth of pent-up, helpless sorrow. Inside, it was the struggle of a groundless being and the terrible anxiety of a sinner who had betrayed human ethics.
“I guess a person destined to be a ruler must be so lofty as to ignore even the desperate questions of their own sibling. Right? Come to think of it, I’m sorry. I understood your position well enough, but I didn’t realize your pettiness. Yes, yes! I’m really sorry, I was wrong! Yesterday, I! I…!”
The more I spewed out my insides, the more my body bent. Bending and bending forward, forward and stiffening. In the end, I was almost bent as if hugging my own stomach. The floor was dirty.
It was dirty to think that even the tears that had fallen from my cheeks and chin, pooling like dregs between the stones, were ultimately excreted by this body. That night. Weren’t we both equally filthy? Why do I alone have to endure this state? Why, do I alone have to suffer? Why always, always just me….
Ex-husband Wants Reconciliation
One-line summary: Chasing the wife to the crematorium (making an effort to attract someone who has become indifferent), the female lead doesn’t look back, the second male lead takes the position.
Intro:
To repay the kindness of the older generation, Su Mu crossed into a female-dominated world and became a live-in daughter-in-law of the Yan family, single-handedly saving the Yan family from fire and water.
But her husband, Yan Jiyue, the eldest son of the Yan family, treated her with sarcasm and never showed her a good face.
It wasn’t until after Su Mu’s death that this pampered and arrogant young master shed a few fake tears and pretended to want to die for love.
This life’s kindness was enough. If there was a next life, she would definitely kick Yan Jiyue away.
Who knew that the heavens would be so kind as to allow her to be reborn, returning to the time when she had just married into the Yan family.
Su Mu glanced at the Yan eldest son, who still spoke coldly to her, and threw a divorce letter in front of him.
“Let’s divorce!”
***
Yan Jiyue never imagined that he would be reborn. He happily went to find Su Mu, wanting to make up for the mistakes he had made in his ignorant youth.
Wasn’t the reason the heavens allowed him to be reborn to let him reconcile with Su Mu?
But when he pushed open the door to Su Mu’s room, the person lying on the bed was another man.
Su Mu’s personal attendant, Xie Yi.
Yan Jiyue hated him so much that his teeth itched. In front of Su Mu, Xie Yi was a gentle and considerate whisperer of sweet nothings, but in reality, he was vicious-hearted and deliberately sabotaged their husband and wife relationship.
In the previous life, it was he who secretly hid in Su Mu’s coffin and committed suicide, stealing a step ahead of him to be buried with Su Mu.
Yan Jiyue’s eyes were filled with hatred as he cursed, “What kind of thing are you? Your background is lowly, what right do you have to occupy Su Mu?”
Xie Yi looked at the sleeping Su Mu and no longer pretended to be a whisperer of sweet nothings.
He proudly stuck out his belly, “I have the right because my belly is capable of giving the Wife-master a daughter.”
***
Yan Jiyue was consumed with jealousy. He spread rumors that Xie Yi had once been branded with the mark of a “harlot” on his chest.
But on the night Xie Yi cut off the flesh bearing that mark, Su Mu suddenly realized something was amiss.
“How did you know the exact moment I was poisoned? And why did you show up a month early?”
Xie Yi remained silent, blood from his wound soaking through his robes. His sapphire eyes brimmed with anguish – or was it just a flawless act?
Between a once-arrogant husband now seeking redemption, and a gentle soul willing to die for her – who truly held the darkest secrets? And could it be that Su Mu and Yan Jiyue weren’t the only ones given a second chance at life…?
[Reading Guide]
1. True divorce, chasing the wife to the crematorium, the female lead doesn’t look back, the male lead is Xie Yi.
2. The ex-husband did not cheat, he just realized too late and didn’t realize that he liked the female lead.
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