Chapter 95
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 95
Her stockings were stripped away as he pushed impatiently between her cool thighs. Yet, the pain wasn't unbearable. Even as he drove deep inside her, he never let go of her hand. Gripping it tightly, he whispered into her ear in the pitch-black darkness.
“You are not ugly.”
She thought she had misheard.
“Look up.”
She felt as if she were losing her mind, hearing things that weren’t there. But she had already been driven to the brink of madness—in truth, she had long since crossed that line.
He pressed closer. Flesh met flesh, his heavy weight bearing down on her. As the constant emptiness in her chest was crushed beneath his body, an incomprehensible sense of peace washed over her. It felt as though the anxiety that constantly shook her very core was being ground into dust.
At some point, her hands were released. Lost in the rhythm of their bodies, Seo-ah didn’t even realize she was free.
Before she knew it, her arms were wrapped tightly around the large frame pressing down on her. She felt the body driving into her so frantically pause for a brief moment, only to push in even more fiercely.
“Ha, ah…”
She felt as if she would break. Yet, somehow, it seemed fine to be completely broken like this. No, she wanted it. She wanted everything inside her—the guilt, the debt, the self-loathing, the sorrow—to shatter into nothingness.
Seo-ah tightened her arms around him even more.
* * *
On a bright, moonlit night.
This was around the time Seo-ah had just met Oscar. Back in Yongcheon, the home she had left behind, the Han family had barely managed to weather the bloody storm that had suddenly torn through their lives.
A long flame flickering at the end of an oiled wick illuminated the quiet face of the elderly woman. On the large folding screen behind her, a shadow several times her size was cast.
“Mother.”
She did not answer her son’s call, merely sitting upright with her eyes closed.
From far away, the sound of crashing waves echoed. The son, who now led the family in Hong-heon’s stead, stared at his silent mother’s face for a long time before finally speaking, his voice strained.
“Raon… Where did that child go?”
“……”
“They say no one saw her leave. Surely you must know, Mother?”
The old woman’s eyelids twitched. She let out a deep sigh, a breath so heavy it felt as if the very ground might give way. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Her lips parted and closed several times before her shoulders slumped, as if all strength had abandoned her.
Raon.
The name weighed heavily on her heart.
“Mother.”
At her son’s urging, the old woman finally spoke.
“Yes. That day, I told her…”
“……”
“…to go to her father and bring back her grandfather.”
Lady Kim, the Senior Madam of Hoyeonjae and wife of Han Hong-heon, raised her downcast eyes. Her eldest son, the spitting image of his father, wore a reproachful expression. He opened his mouth, then asked in a choked voice:
“Did she understand what that meant?”
“…Yes. She understood.”
His shocked face, illuminated by the flickering red flame, looked as bewildered as if he had just seen a ghost.
“I am sorry.”
The child had apologized out of nowhere, then fled into the night. Had she even been wearing shoes? Lady Kim didn’t know.
“How is she supposed to find a father she has never even seen? Mother, to her, that wouldn’t have sounded like an order. It would have sounded like you were telling her to leave Yongcheon and die.”
Her eldest son’s words pierced Lady Kim’s heart like a shard of ice.
Telling her to die?
Her eyes grew misty. It must have been a harsh life for that young child, but it had been an incredibly cruel life for her as well.
She once had a daughter who was the apple of her eye. She cherished her so much that she always dressed the girl herself. Braiding her glossy black hair and tying a ribbon at the end, she used to think, When the day comes for you to put your hair up, I will be the one to pin it.
Then came the day the family servants rescued a Commoner they found drifting in the sea.
Had she known the future, she would never have allowed that man into her house. Even knowing her daughter, A-young, was curious about the Commoner, she wouldn’t have brushed it off as a passing fancy.
When that man with the long name, James Wittgenstein, stood before her and Hong-heon with their daughter, he spoke in an incomprehensible tongue. It was the first time she had ever seen her husband fly into such a terrifying rage.
Before the man could even finish speaking, Hong-heon shot up from his seat, strode over to their terrified, kneeling daughter, and yanked up her sleeves. Lady Kim’s heart sank. She had never imagined her daughter’s body would be covered in such vivid, ugly bruises.
James claimed it was love, but it was anything but. The dark blue marks on her daughter’s wrists and body remained etched in her memory. Using their one night together as leverage, James Wittgenstein had the audacity to demand their daughter’s hand in marriage. Hong-heon dragged him outside, threw him into the courtyard, and roared at the servants.
“Throw this bastard back into the sea you pulled him from!”
The man was beaten to within an inch of his life and cast back into the waves. She thought he had vanished for good. She hoped his shadow would fade from her daughter’s life, just as bruises heal with time. That was why, when she discovered her daughter was pregnant, she wished her own daughter were dead instead.
It was a granddaughter.
But on the day the child was born, Lady Kim did not see a granddaughter. She saw a seed of evil, a curse destined to ruin her daughter. Holding the newborn, she went out to the sea. Standing at the bow of a boat, she held the infant precariously over the dark water.
I am sorry, but go to where your father went.
Only if you disappear can my daughter live.
“Wife! No, you mustn’t!”
If Hong-heon had not arrived at that moment, the child would have died. He boarded the boat, snatched the baby from her arms, and checked that the infant was unharmed. He then sat beside his wailing wife for a long time, looking down at the baby who was blinking silently, and said:
“What fault does this innocent child have?”
He was right. Who in this world is born because they wished to be? Who can choose their own parents? What fault could that young child possibly have? It wasn't that she didn’t know this.
But what the mind knows and what the heart feels are two different things.
Hong-heon registered his granddaughter under his own family name.
He named her Raon and gave her the childhood name Seo-ah. Lady Kim knew exactly why he had chosen that name. It was a plea to the grandmother who had tried to kill her at birth—a plea to pity her, to forgive her, and to love her.
Yet, unlike Hong-heon, she could never bring herself to love the child. It became even harder after her daughter, who had been wasting away for years, finally departed from this world.
It was as if she had resolved to hate her granddaughter, surviving by using that hatred as fuel. But after the child disappeared, she had been unable to rise from her bed.
“Disappeared? Raon?”
Even though she was the one who had sent her away so cruelly, the news of the child’s disappearance made the ground crumble beneath her feet.
“Yes, Senior Madam. The Youngest Miss is nowhere to be found. What should we do?”
“I have made sure the matter of Father's remains has not leaked outside of Yongcheon. He once mentioned the man came from a place called Luxen. We should send people there to search for Raon as well.”
Her son’s voice was mere background noise. Lady Kim was lost in her own thoughts.
What had she been trying to do with that child? Had she been seeing both her daughter and her enemy in that small girl’s face?
The heavy silence between mother and son was broken.
“Senior Madam.”
A servant opened the door and entered, announcing an unexpected visitor.
“A Commoner has come looking for you…”
“A Commoner?”
When both mother and son raised their voices, the servant glanced between them and quickly added:
“Well, it seems to be a family member of the teacher who used to tutor the Youngest Miss.”
* * *
There were several rules Reinhardt intelligence agents had to follow, and one of them was regular reporting. Even if they didn’t submit formal reports, they had to consistently check in through established channels, no matter their rank. The upper echelon understood that an agent's work was unpredictable and allowed for more flexibility than other teams, but even that had its limits.
The agent known as the wolf, who had been active mainly in Rioher and communicating with Theresia, could no longer wait. Contact had been cut off for over three years. He set out to find her himself. If something had happened to Theresia, he might have to bear the full responsibility.
Finding her was no easy task. Tracking her footsteps from the small ports of Rioher where they used to meet, the wolf's journey eventually led him to a small country called Danguk.
Gritting his teeth as he searched, the wolf had resolved that once he found Theresia, he would give her a piece of his mind, senior colleague or not. That was why, when he finally found her in a place like this, and in such a state, he was left utterly speechless.
“It is here.”
The wolf stared blankly at the low burial mound marked by a small tombstone, then muttered as if to himself.
“…She’s dead?”
The son of Hong-heon, the current head of the Han family, nodded grimly.
“I am sorry.”
“Could you describe her appearance to me again?” the wolf asked, his voice flat.
“She was a tall woman with red hair and green eyes.”
“Do you have any photographs or drawings of her?”
At that, the man, who had been quietly observing the wolf, gestured to the person standing beside him.