A Good Dream
Yes.
That face.
If you’d known I was Erincia, that was the face you should have made—one carved with screams and bitter regret.
You should have broken into a cold sweat the way I once did, as if hellfire itself waited right in front of you.
If you had, I never would have slapped you.
It’s all your fault.
“I-I’m so sorry… Grand Duchess.”
“For someone apologizing, those knees look awfully stiff, don’t they, Young Master Elden?”
Thud!
Yes. You should have dropped to both knees until they shattered against the floor of the grand hall.
“I beg you like this. Please forgive me.”
“Hohoho. There we go. Now it finally looks like you’ve sunk to the place you belong.”
“The place a piece of trash like me deserves.”
This. Exactly this.
How wonderful.
Self-reflection?
That wasn’t something you were supposed to do alone. You should have done it right in front of me.
Like a sinner giving confession to a priest—right in front of me.
“Yes. But don’t debase yourself too much.”
“Pardon? What… do you mean?”
“Compared to the other trash, your stench is milder.”
And the weighing of your sins, the decision of mercy—that should have been mine alone to make.
I was the one who had been the victim of the violence and the mockery. I should have been the one to do it.
Not you. Me.
“You mean…?”
“That’s right. If you want mercy, you’ll receive it far lighter and faster than the rest of the garbage.”
If the weight of the crime is light, then of course the atonement should be light as well.
That was my intention.
The reek from the other trash was so foul you couldn’t even approach without pinching your nose.
Just as the fouler the stench, the harder it is to scrub away—yours would have washed out far more easily than theirs.
But you… you wanted to run away without even enduring that light cleansing, didn’t you?
“Well? Do you want my mercy?”
“I will strive for it. To earn forgiveness from Lady Erincia of the past, I will endure and accept whatever you command.”
Hohoho.
Yes. That is how you should have answered.
Isn’t it lovely to look at?
Isn’t it a heartwarming sight?
The true image of a perpetrator pleading for mercy from his victim.
And at the end of it, his earnest wish to become my husband.
The scream of a frog in a well who has finally realized there is no eternal strong one.
The enlightenment that the karma of evil deeds will one day close around one’s own throat.
I had waited so desperately for this moment.
“You’ll do anything?”
“Yes. I will gladly accept any punishment.”
“Pfft. Then… how about rolling on the floor like a dog, the way I once had to?”
“Yes.”
Roll, roll, roll.
Pfft.
He really is rolling just like a dog.
Hilarious.
“This time, bark like a dog.”
“Woof woof!”
“Heh. The sound’s fine, but did you forget dogs walk on all fours?”
Elden bent his legs, stretched his arms, and planted his hands on the floor, barking like a dog.
“Woof woof! Arf arf arf!”
The sight was so ridiculous and pathetic that, for a moment, it stung and ached to think this must have been how Deron and the others had looked at me.
Even so, I was happy.
It had been worth the agonizing wait—because the image of the villain Elden Raphelion atoning was more moving, more profound, than I had ever expected.
“I like that resolve of yours—atoning without hesitation. Shall we see just how far that resolve goes?”
“If I can receive Erincia’s forgiveness and form a betrothal with Grand Duchess Lumiang, I would not even fear death.”
Hohoho.
Truly an admirable mindset.
Honestly, it exceeds what I had hoped for.
If you can hold onto that mindset until the end, what you desire might actually come to pass.
“Then I prepared a monster dish—the very thing you used to loathe so much. Care to eat it with relish? I made it myself, with great care.”
“…”
“What? Was your resolve not quite enough to overcome that disgust?”
“Ah—no. I will gratefully eat every bite.”
Elden eats the monster cuisine.
Almost at once his face flushes scarlet and he starts dry-heaving.
I overheard you all talking about it at the Academy.
You said monster cooking was nothing but a filthy, disgusting lump of filth.
You said you couldn’t understand the barbarians who would turn something so hideous into food and actually eat it.
You said, Elden, that just looking at it nearly made you vomit.
So I prepared this banquet with all my heart.
Which means you should have forced it down while gagging and struggling.
Not eating it with the relish of a gourmet—but choking it down with vomit, the way the rest of the trash would have.
Exactly like this.
Isn’t it beautiful to watch?
“Urgh… I-I’ve eaten it all… deliciously…”
“Oh? So you’ve proven that resolve wasn’t just bluster. If we marry, you might have to eat this for the rest of your life. Are you all right with that?”
“If I can atone at Your Grace’s side, nothing else matters.”
Yes.
That’s how it should be.
Elden Raphelion, that is how you should have been.
If you truly meant to atone, then of course it would be at my side.
You knew that, didn’t you?
You noticed the feelings even I hadn’t realized, didn’t you?
You saw the chance to become a man of the Winterfell Grand Duchy through a light atonement, didn’t you?
Then I’m truly glad.
Glad you made the right decision.
“Hohoho. If only you’d done this from the start.”
“It was my failing. If it will ease Your Grace’s anger, I will roll even through the pits of hellfire.”
“Even if my side is that pit of hellfire?”
“I will gladly endure it.”
Hohoho.
Yes.
You were always that kind of man.
A man who always stood and fought.
A man who never refused a fight that came walking toward him.
So of course you wouldn’t back down from the fight I started either.
Right?
Hahahaha.
“Ah, my lady? Are you awake?”
Hahaha.
“…Why… why are you laughing?”
Haha.
“Ah, my lady…? Did you have a good dream?”
Ha.
Another dream about Elden.
……….
…….
…
Yes.
For once.
It really was a good dream.
“What kind of dream did you have that made you laugh in your sleep?”
Marien asked as she sat on the edge of the bed.
Unlike that other day when nightmares had left her whole body drenched, her lady’s face was simply pale—exactly as it had been before she fell asleep.
Whether that paleness was fortune or misfortune, Marien no longer knew.
“….”
Lumiang wordlessly stroked her left hand.
The hand that had struck Elden’s cheek—the hand that had drawn its own blood—was wrapped in bandages.
She had told Marien she cut it on a broken plate.
Her palm throbbed.
Whether the throbbing was pain or some strange new pulse, she could not tell.
A faint smirk lifted one corner of her mouth. Lumiang parted her cracked lips.
“Yes. It was a good dream. For once.”
“…That’s… good, isn’t it?”
Lumiang smiled again at Marien’s question.
The smile looked so lonely and bitter that Marien had to swallow a sigh.
Yesterday she had been terrified.
When her lady stepped out of the grand hall with blood on her hand, Marien had even screamed.
“What good is it now?”
“…Is your hand all right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad… Please, have a little of this at least.”
Marien held out a cup of winter-flower tea.
It was the tea her lady always reached for when she needed calm of body and mind, or when the old pain throbbed again.
But the lady who took it never raised it to her lips.
“You’re… not drinking? Even a little?”
“It’s fine.”
In the end she set the cup down.
She had never done this before.
It was the tea she always sought when she needed peace and rest.
Could it be… that she no longer needed those things?
Marien studied her lady’s face with worry.
The pupils that once held the blue of a clear coast now held the dark blue of an abyssal sea.
The light she had believed would return after a good night’s sleep was exactly the same as yesterday.
“My lady…? Wouldn’t it be better… to stop now?”
Marien asked carefully.
At the question, Lumiang looked toward the window where brilliant sunlight was pouring in.
Sunlight that seemed especially dazzling today.
She pressed the bandaged palm of her left hand with her right and answered.
Smiling once more.
“How could I stop?”
“…Pardon?”
Instead of an answer came a question that made no sense, and the words that followed let Marien finally understand the sunken dark-blue of her lady’s eyes.
“I haven’t even begun yet.”
The only one who could restore the brilliant light to those dark-blue eyes was Young Master Elden Raphelion of the baronial house.
And the official approval of his withdrawal, together with the appearance of a treaty that meant a full pardon, only darkened her lady’s gaze further.
Moreover, Marien had been unable to stop her lady when she stormed out at the news.
Bang!
Crash!
The door to the Central Aide’s office was flung open so violently it threatened to tear from its hinges.
Lumiang stormed straight into Gelwood’s office and called his name in a voice thick with fury.
It was the first time she had ever released such a vicious, spiteful tone.
“Gelwood—!!”
Gelwood, who had already foreseen the arrival of the fracture, met her with a grim expression.
He who had made the decision of a lifetime to stop the collapse that fracture was trying to bring about now faced the very fracture that was bringing it.
“You have come, Grand Duchess.”
“Have you lost your mind?! Who do you think you are to grant Elden a pardon? I never forgave him—what right do you have to forgive him—!!”
“Please compose yourself. Before His Grace the Grand Duke departed for the capital, he entrusted every decision to me.”
“What?”
“I did not forgive him. I merely allowed the ending that was already destined to arrive. I heard the entire story from Young Master Elden. Please—stop, even now. I beg you.”
They kept telling her to stop when she had not even begun.
Lumiang, who no longer understood what she was supposed to stop, was left to fight alone inside a catastrophe whose beginning she could not even name.
A fight aimed at empty air.
A fight aimed at the void that never answered.