140.
The princess whispered softly. Johannes, who had been momentarily lost in thought, hastily composed his expression. After hesitating helplessly, he barely managed to take a step forward.
“Come closer.”
Even though there was no more space to get closer, that was the demand. Johannes, who had been awkwardly hesitating, moved in until there was no gap at all. Now, between him and the princess, there was barely space left for their gazes to meet as they looked down and up at each other.
The princess was silent for a while with an expressionless face. Her gaze, fixed straight ahead, flicked left and right. She seemed to be secretly checking the guard’s movements. Her eyes fell back down, fixing on Johannes. Her lips, painted red but unable to hide their dry, cracked texture, moved faintly.
“You…”
Softly.
“Cruel monster…”
Even softer.
“Pretending to be innocent, you mock me.”
…Why.
Johannes was at a loss for words, unable to respond. He was stunned that even today, fifteen days after the incident, he was still being treated as a monster without fail. The hideous nails that had scratched the princess’s wrist flashed through his mind, but hadn’t that all been a hallucination?
So… don’t do this, mother. Johannes swallowed the earnest plea he had almost blurted out, biting his lips tightly. Even if my sin is great, I am still the son you bore with such pain. However, the princess’s lips showed no sign of taking back her harsh words.
“You are… the black wolf herding the sheep, aren’t you…”
The princess whispered softly.
“You’re the one who wove the chain-link path leading to the cliff’s edge. You’re the one who drove us to this state along that path. So you know better than anyone… that I have no other choice.”
“……”
“How could a mere woman imprison the heir to the fortress…”
Gradually, the princess’s lips began to tremble finely.
“Get rid of that abominable face… My son. You had better not show yourself here again.”
Pressing her trembling lips with her slender fingertips and chewing out curses, the princess emphasized “son” and then looked at the guard again. And then she turned back to Johannes. The princess’s piercing blue gaze burst through the narrow gap. Johannes swallowed. He felt a strange nausea swirling, making him queasy. Now a filthy habit-like retching was rising, but it was absolutely not the time. He just swallowed his saliva, somehow soothing his stomach. Then, with the most penitent posture possible, he lowered his eyes.
“I was foolish and rash… Wait, m-mother?”
No sooner had he begun his apology than the princess suddenly tried to close the door. She seemed to mutter that she didn’t want to hear it. Johannes, startled, reflexively stuck his hand in. Driven by the anxiety that if this door closed now, it might be the end forever, he instinctively thrust his hand in. Not content with that, he even grabbed the doorframe firmly with his other hand.
“I was wrong! It was me, mother. I failed to consider the detailed circumstances.”
Without time to compose himself from the rising nausea or to understand the meaning of his mother’s words, Johannes sought forgiveness recklessly. The princess’s eyes, blocked from movement, were now frosted with intense coldness. Biting her lips tightly, she tried to close the door as it was. The white back of the hand stuck between the doors was randomly pressed against the heavy wood grain. Ah. Johannes pleaded, almost begging, while suppressing a scream.
“Mother. Actually, I… understand…. If it’s difficult for you to accept me. At least my sister. Please. Lift the confinement order. Mother. Moth-er. Please believe me. From now on, such things will never happen again. I. Never again…. So. Mother. Please. Please. Lift the confinement…”
“Lift?”
The pressure on the back of his hand suddenly eased. Johannes, who had been desperately trying to wedge into the gap with all his might, nearly fell forward, but the princess held the door to block him. With a thud that made a sound, Johannes bumped his shoulder against the entrance and barely stepped back, clutching his reddened hand.
He quickly straightened his posture while gasping for breath. Then he unconsciously furrowed his brows. The princess, lowering her gaze slowly over the gap in the door….
Suddenly had a kind expression.
Like a mother explaining the ways of the world to her child. With eyes gently curved just like his sister’s, Johannes was deeply perplexed by this unexpected turn. What else is she going to say….
“You desire it this much?”
After staring at Johannes’s hand for a moment, the princess opened her lips in a smile. With her skirts rustling, she crouched down to meet Johannes’s eye level. Johannes’s widened eyes were drawn down, following the princess.
“You know, Johannes.”
“……”
“Your eyes, worried about my daughter right now, look just like the real thing…”
“……”
“That makes it even more disgusting.”
“……”
That whisper. It was soft and delicate to the point of cruelty. The princess naturally added another layer of smile. That expression seemed about to exude a floral scent. The princess’s head tilted slightly.
“Child.”
“……”
“How do you find living pretending to be human?”
“……”
“Are you enjoying the neat human skin you’ve copied from my child and the noble status you’ve gained because of it, with no wealth you can’t obtain now?”
“……”
“Meanwhile, there’s just one person you can’t have or even hope for, and it bothers you?”
“……”
“So you’ve made up your mind to dare to put on that shameless and proud outer shell and try to seduce my innocent child? Is that why you’re now pretending to be concerned about that child?”
Seduce? At his mother’s sensational curse, his face felt not just hot, but about to freeze.
On top of that, the bronze-colored claws that flashed through his mind caused a slight tremor to spread through Johannes’s young body. Ah, what have I been ruminating on repeatedly since earlier? That hand was surely an illusion. An illusion… it was. Due to losing consciousness several times, it was a hallucination only visible to my eyes.
Johannes struggled desperately to reassure himself. The problem that needed to be solved immediately was not such a phantom-like thing.
“I don’t… understand the intention of your words.”
The voice that came from his constricted throat was completely hoarse, sounding like some excuse even to his own ears. However, Johannes couldn’t correct himself. His breath was so short he could barely speak….
Johannes gritted his molars, recalling his sister’s desperate voice. Anxious thoughts were unnecessary now. Lifting the confinement order was absolutely the top priority. Barely parting his reluctant lips, he pleaded with the princess, as if squeezing the words out from his chest.
“Giovinetta… isn’t foolish enough not to learn what’s right, as you well know, mother.”
“……”
“Through this experience, not only I but she too must have fully realized that there are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, especially between siblings. As you said, mother, I… I won’t do anything like that first. If you wish, I can even swear an oath.”
“……”
“No. Even if I were to feel some impulse, Giovinetta wouldn’t accept it between us who share the same blood…”
“Shh.”
The princess, who had been listening without reply, raised one finger and made a gesture of covering her lips. Johannes closed his lips for a moment as if his own had been blocked by that finger.
“Siblings.”
“……”
“Same blood.”
The princess, who had been sinking like a swamp, suddenly repeated a few words from Johannes’s statement. Then her forehead tilted forward. Almost imperceptibly.
She’s laughing silently.
She’s laughing. His mother. With her elegantly curved face gently lowered. Covering her mouth with both hands like a young girl not yet grown. Like a wildflower yielding to a gentle breeze. The princess was laughing. At that indescribable sight, Johannes was greatly confused in a different sense than before, even while feeling pain.
Not only could he not fathom the cause of the laughter, but he realized that the origin of his sister’s occasionally dazzling gestures lay there. The princess was proving the unbreakable blood tie between mother and daughter with that single laugh.
Johannes stared at the princess, suddenly at a loss. He hadn’t known until now that the two of them looked so alike, as he had rarely had the chance to see his mother closely. Perhaps his sister would look like this when she grew up. And when his thoughts reached that point, somehow….
It gave him goosebumps.
The image of his sister’s back view, graceful like a mature reed, every strand of her brilliant hair seeming to vanish in the gentle wind, was spreading through his mind. His sister leaves him behind, fading into a rapturous landscape. For a moment, he felt almost mad at the beauty of that poignant scene that would come someday.
At the same time, he felt chilled to his core by the futile scene of his sister’s scattered ashes floating like flower seeds. Ah, his stomach was churning indescribably. Thinking that he really didn’t know the cause of this increasingly frequent nausea lately, Johannes swallowed dry saliva.
He had to struggle mightily to shake off the image of his sister that had occupied his mind. He desperately waited for the princess, no, for himself to calm down. In the end, only the princess’s low laughter rolled like beads down the corridor as he kept his mouth shut.
At some point, even the princess’s laughter subsided, and just as Johannes was losing his composure, unable to settle his feelings. Fortunately, the princess’s gaze rose again. Though silent, the laughter lines gently creasing the corners of her eyes still resembled those of his grown sister. Unsettlingly beautiful. Isolde. Johannes was on the verge of going mad.
“Child. Tell me the truth,” the princess asked in a subtle voice.
“Surely you don’t really not know?”
“……”
“You, don’t you know everything?”
“What… do you mean?”
Johannes, who had been unable to answer for a moment due to the complicated situation, met the princess’s gaze with eyes that couldn’t erase his inner turmoil. His heels felt like they would fall off any second. He wanted to stop the idle talk immediately and just carry out his sister who should be inside. The princess’s smile deepened even more slowly, as if trying to gauge his intentions to comfort her.
“What you are…”
“……”
“What the fate you were born with is, I mean.”
“……”
“You don’t know?”
“……”
“You don’t know?”
The princess’s gaze, which had looked quite innocent, flowed downward. It was as if the central axis in her pupils had collapsed. Her forehead tilted forward slightly, leaving everything below in shadow.
“I… realized it immediately on the day I witnessed your filthy act?”
Johannes couldn’t see the princess’s expression. But that voice. It was like ice.
How, to this extent.
Somehow, he felt completely drained. The lump that had been forming near Johannes’s heart, swelling unbearably until then, seemed to have reached its limit.
It finally burst. Johannes’s noisy mind settled to the point of dejection, and as his heated breathing stabilized, the nausea also subsided somewhat. He no longer wanted to deny the princess’s curses. At last, he gave up even trying to persuade himself.
It was because he realized that truth and falsehood were no longer important in this situation. Mother seems to have no intention of lifting my sister’s confinement, let alone withdrawing her unrealistic insistence, out of anger towards me. Already overwhelmed just thinking about his sister. He was fed up with the princess.
In the face of such persistent stubbornness, it was clear that his excuses would lose their power even if they were true. Further persuasion and explanation were futile. Thinking that he should find some other means to free his sister somehow, he lowered his head with a pained expression.
If the princess hadn’t urged him, he would have turned back then.
“So you…”
Suddenly, the princess stood up unsteadily.
“Yes. You, come with me for a moment. I have something to show you…”
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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