You... Want My Body?
That night, after we returned to the castle, Esran’s quarters buzzed with voices for the first time in ages. The young noblewomen who had grown up sharing the same meals and sleeping under the same roof since childhood were sprawled across the bed, cushions, and every available surface. Their clothes were simple, as befitted ladies from an impoverished kingdom, but their tongues were anything but.
“Princess! Is it true? The Northern Duke really bought our entire textile output—”
“Five gold coins per bolt! Five! Does that even make sense?” Lina spread her fingers wide, voice pitching higher with every word.
Beside her, Betty slapped the hand down. “Ugh, pipe down, you’re spraying spit everywhere. …Still, how much debt did our country have again? That sum might clear more than half of it—”
“Hey, who cares about the money right now?” The quickest tongue in the room, Mia, scooted right up to Esran, eyes sparkling. “That’s not the important part. Princess, be honest. The Northern Duke… he’s got feelings for you, doesn’t he? Right?”
“F-feelings? That’s ridiculous.”
“Then why would someone that terrifying come all the way to our nothing-on-the-map country and just fling a fortune at us? If that’s not love, what is?!” Mia pressed a hand to her chest and closed her eyes with dramatic flair. “Ahh— ‘I shall claim your kingdom as my own.’ Kyaa. That’s practically begging to be turned into a bard’s song.”
“She’s lost it! That’s straight out of a romance novel hero’s dialogue!”
“Should I tip off a minstrel? This is going to become oral legend at this rate.” Lina hugged a pillow and let out a muffled scream. Even Betty muttered, “That line… was kind of cool.”
Esran’s face flushed crimson. “I-it’s not like that! You all know what kind of person he is—”
“Aww, the princess is dodging again.” Mia poked Esran in the side. “We’re not blind, you know. You two spent days alone together in that carriage. Just look at you—blushing so hard! You’re bright red!”
“I said it’s not like that!”
The room dissolved into bright, ringing laughter. But Esran—couldn’t laugh with them.
Surrounded by her excited friends, her expression gradually darkened. Something felt terribly wrong.
“…No.”
Soft. Yet utterly resolute.
The laughter died instantly.
“Princess…?” Mia blinked.
Esran hugged her knees to her chest. The thought that had been crushing her ever since the carriage finally slipped out.
“No matter how I think about it, there’s no reason for him to show us kindness. That terrifying man… doesn’t do anything for free.”
“T-then why—”
“…It’s a pretext.” Her voice trembled. “He’s using this as leverage to demand something later. He’s saddling us with a debt we can never repay… so he can swallow the entire country.”
The room fell deathly silent in an instant. Lina, who had been squealing over a pillow moments ago, Betty, who had been calculating debts—both shut their mouths. When they actually thought about it, that explanation made the most sense. A monster like him wouldn’t offer charity.
The color drained from every noblewoman’s face.
The next day, I pulled my hood low over my face and left the castle alone. My stated reason was “to get some fresh air.” When a servant panicked and tried to follow, one sharp word sent him scurrying back. We were only staying a few days anyway. I needed to see exactly how this country operated. Buying their textiles wasn’t going to be the end of it.
But the moment I began circling the area outside the castle walls, the situation proved far more serious than I’d imagined.
The fields were parched and barren. Abandoned plots with no sign of recent tilling stretched on endlessly. At the mouth of an alley, a child sat hunched over, an empty bowl beside him, staring blankly down the road. When he noticed me in my hood, he asked without a trace of fear.
“…Mister, are you moving away too?”
“…Moving?”
“Everyone who passes through here is moving. The house next door left. And the one after that.”
The boy spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. In this neighborhood, leaving was simply part of daily life.
A little farther on, I saw a cart piled high with belongings. A young man was tying down worn-out household goods.
“…You’re leaving, then.”
“Yes. We can’t hold on here any longer.” The man didn’t stop working as he answered. His tone suggested there was no point hiding anything from a passing stranger in a hood. “The land is dead. You plant seeds and nothing sprouts. What else can we do? All the young people are heading to the capital… only the old remain. In ten years, there won’t be a single soul left in this country.”
He spat the words, then tossed the last bundle onto the cart. Empty houses. Departing carts. A child sitting in the road. I had assumed the nation was simply poor because its textiles weren’t selling. I was wrong. The entire place was drying up and dying from the roots.
Then, by the river, I met an old man. He sat on the cracked riverbed, dangling an empty fishing rod over a channel with not a single drop of water.
“…This used to be a river?”
The old man looked up at me with cloudy eyes. Since he couldn’t see my face beneath the hood, he must have taken me for an ordinary traveler.
“It was. Ten years ago it was full to the brim. We caught fish, drew water for the fields.”
“What happened?”
“A dam upstream collapsed. That was the beginning. The water changed course, and all the downstream fields dried out and died. No one to fix it, no money to fix it… so everyone just leaves like this.”
The old man laughed hollowly, still casting his line into a waterless river. “But I was born and raised here. Where would I even go?”
A dam. I paused for a moment. I recalled how, in the original story, this country eventually revived itself—and what the first step had been.
Just restoring the water flow would bring these dead fields back to life. The people who left would return, and fish would bite on that empty rod again.
In the original it happened much later, after someone else took action, but—
…There’s no rule saying it has to wait that long, is there?
It was in my interest anyway. If the country recovered, the textile production I had contracted would continue steadily. I began mentally calculating the manpower and materials I could pull from the North.
The old man simply stared at me, puzzled. He had no way of knowing why a hooded stranger would look so deeply absorbed by talk of a broken dam.
That evening, the dinner the kingdom prepared was modest. The hall was so shabby it felt embarrassing to even call it a banquet hall. A few candlesticks flickered at wide intervals along the walls, leaving the corners untouched by light, swallowed in darkness.
On the long table sat a single bowl of thin soup and a few coarse pieces of bread. It seemed that was everything this country could offer a “distinguished guest.”
Perhaps ashamed of the meager spread, the servants stood against the wall with their heads bowed. And at opposite ends of that long table sat the Northern Duke and Esran.
What filled the space between them was not food, but silence.
Esran couldn’t even touch her meal. The soup was going cold, yet she couldn’t bring herself to lift her spoon. She had no idea when the man at the far end would bring up his “pretext.”
The noblewomen beside her desperately tried to warm the frozen atmosphere. The same girls who had been rolling on the bed and shrieking with laughter earlier now sat ramrod straight, fingertips trembling.
Mia was the first to speak, as usual. “Y-Your Highness! O-our country’s soup is… actually rather famous in the border regions. Does it… suit your palate…?”
Her voice cracked thinly at the end. It was hard to believe this was the same mouth that had cackled about bards writing songs earlier.
Betty tugged at the hem of Mia’s dress beneath the table—a clear “stop it.” Lina kept her head down, staring fixedly at her own lap.
The Duke gave no answer. He simply lifted his spoon with one hand and took a sip of the soup.
Every eye in the hall clung to the tip of that spoon.
Slowly. Truly slowly, he spoke.
“…It’s passable.”
A single short phrase. Yet those two words dropped the temperature of the entire hall.
Mia’s face turned deathly pale. Lina froze mid-breath, and even Betty stiffened, hand clenched around her utensils.
Passable. Did that mean he disliked it? Or was he mocking this pathetic meal, this pathetic country, in its entirety?
A chill ran down Esran’s spine.
As expected. This isn’t kindness. Every move is part of his plan to seize control of us.
A candle flame flickered once. After that, silence descended on the table again. The sound of spoons touching bowls rang unnaturally loud.
The noblewomen could no longer open their mouths. Esran, too busy watching the man at the far end, couldn’t swallow a single bite.
How long did that suffocating time stretch on?
Suddenly, the Duke spoke again.
“…About that river.”
His voice was low and heavy. The words instantly pulled the table taut once more.
“I noticed it was completely dried up on the way here.”
His ash-gray eyes turned toward some point outside the window. Whatever he had seen earlier now carried an unreadable weight in that gaze.
“I examined the area… rather closely.”
His final words drifted away softly. In that instant, Esran’s spine turned to ice.
The river.
That terrifying man had been staring at our river. Closely.
The noblewomen beside her also went white as sheets. Mia muttered involuntarily, lips quivering.
“W-water flow——”
Before she could finish, she clapped both hands over her mouth. Betty whispered beside her, face bloodless.
“…If even the water is cut off, we’re truly finished.”
Just as Esran was picturing the worst possible outcome, the Duke abruptly rose from his seat. The chair scraped back violently, the sound slicing through the shabby hall.
Everyone at the table froze solid.
And then he said, quietly:
“If the North were to step in.”
His ash-gray eyes slowly swept across the table. “We could probably… bring that river back to life.”
Bring it back to life.
At those words the entire hall turned to ice. Esran felt as if her heart had stopped.
He’ll… revive it? The North will?
Our river. The single lifeline this poor country still clung to—he was saying he would “revive” it with his own hands.
The Duke slowly lifted his gaze from the soup. Across the long table, those ash-gray eyes locked directly onto Esran. He looked as though he were choosing his next words carefully.
But to Esran, they looked like eyes calculating a price.
The locked gazes refused to break. Mia gripped Betty’s hand tightly, holding her breath. Any word at all and that gaze might swing toward them.
Unable to look away, Esran realized.
He’s weighing the cost. And deciding what he’ll take as payment.
Esran’s back stiffened. The only thing a destitute country could possibly offer was one thing.
The final card sent to the Gyeol-eon Festival.
Surely not…
Esran slowly lowered her eyes to her own body. Her delicately trembling fingertips, the worn ceremonial robes draped over her. The one thing this terrifying man could claim as payment for reviving the river—the only remaining asset this country possessed.
…It might be me.
Slowly, Esran raised her head again. And met them.
Those ash-gray eyes that were once more fixed on her.
Her heart plummeted to her feet with a thud. Those eyes said nothing aloud.
Yet to Esran, they looked as if every decision had already been made.