Chapter 91
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 91
Chapter Title: Are You Kidding Me Right Now? (4)
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Lee Eun-hee had arrived at the mansion a few days before me, thanks to an introduction from Count Lirent.
I didn't bother asking how she knew where my room was.
We spoke in hushed tones, hidden in a corner of the vast garden where one could easily get lost.
The moment Lee Eun-hee saw me, her face flushed red and she started cursing.
It was obvious who she was cursing.
I tried to calm the agitated Lee Eun-hee.
“Still, that kind of language is a bit...”
“What?”
Seeing her glare at me, radiating killing intent, I lost all confidence that I could stop her.
Instead, I changed my approach slightly.
“I'm not saying you can't be angry, but at least tell me what happened. I need to understand the situation to either stop you or get mad with you.”
“Well...”
Lee Eun-hee calmed herself down, letting out a series of deep sighs.
She seemed unsure of where to begin.
“That bitch... Have you met her yet? The woman, Lady Lize?”
“Not in person, no.”
“She's beautiful.”
“Wait, are you into...?”
“It's not like that! I'm saying even as a woman, I think she's beautiful!”
In the photograph, she just looked like a typical girl from a wealthy family.
Lee Eun-hee said as she ate a snack she'd been saving in her item window.
“When I first saw her, I thought she was a different person. She's so beautiful it's hard to understand how anyone could take such a bad photo of her.”
“Alright, I get it. What does her being beautiful have to do with her being a bad person?”
By my standards, Lee Eun-hee's personality was far from easygoing.
She wasn't overbearing, but she was... resilient. A survivor.
In a different way from Choi Soo-hyun, she seemed like she could survive even if you dropped her in the middle of Siberia.
For someone like her, who seemed hardened to most things, to be cursing like this, Lady Lize had to be truly something else.
After finishing her snack, Lee Eun-hee held up three fingers.
“That woman has a bad personality, she's selfish, moody, and has a nasty habit of lashing out. I don't know about the rest, but the last one is the biggest problem. Yesterday, there was an incident where her earrings were switched.”
It was a trivial matter that might warrant some annoyance, something that could be fixed by simply fetching the right pair.
“She cut off the maid's ear, right then and there.”
What creeped Lee Eun-hee out even more was the reaction of the other servants.
Not a single person thought the insane situation was strange.
Not even the servant whose ear had been cut off.
It meant Lize's atrocities were not a rare occurrence.
Lee Eun-hee glanced at me, gauging my reaction.
The other tales of Lize's cruelty she shared were just as shocking.
According to another maid, there was rarely a day when screams weren't heard.
“Anyway, yeah. She's a selfish, rude, self-centered princess who knows nothing about the real world.”
“Well... even if you tell me all this, I haven't seen her myself, so it doesn't feel real.”
I wasn't saying she was lying or exaggerating.
I just didn't want to jump to conclusions before seeing and judging for myself.
“Oh, is that so?”
“What now? What's the problem?”
“Forget it.”
Lee Eun-hee crossed her arms and turned away from me.
Her personality was different from Eun-young's, which made her somewhat difficult to deal with.
“I hate this world.”
“Well, what can you do?”
“How can you accept it so calmly?”
Lee Eun-hee frowned, unable to understand.
A strict class society based on the presence of magic and power—to Lee Eun-hee, who had experienced modern society, this world was brutally cruel.
“All people are equal.”
“They're not.”
“What are you, a defector?”
“Of course not.”
I was an ordinary high school student from the Republic of Korea.
Well, at least until I crossed over to another world.
In any case, I was basically your model student A, the kind you'd find in any school.
“Then how can you say something like that?”
“What's wrong with calling something unequal for what it is?”
“Lize was born in a small village in the Phellia domain. The only reason she became a duke's daughter is because she's a Müel with a lot of magic. That doesn't give her the right to treat others however she wants.”
“Why not?”
“If she wasn't a Müel...”
“She would have grown up ordinary, lived an ordinary life, and died. Or she would have become a servant to some other noble and suffered the same fate. So what? What you're talking about is a hypothetical. In reality, she is the daughter of the Phellia ducal house. She has every right.”
“Just because she's a Müel chosen by Duke Phellia?”
“That's more than enough.”
Lee Eun-hee's fists trembled as she bit her lip.
It wasn't that I didn't understand how she felt.
“This world is just like that.”
“Is that so wrong? Everyone is different.”
“I know.”
“You can't discriminate against others just because you're exceptional in some way.”
“That's just your idealism. You know that, don't you?”
My gaze turned cold.
There was only one reason I liked Park Si-woo.
Park Si-woo and I carried similar burdens. And he was the type to fully commit to his convictions.
And Lee Eun-hee?
She was neither here nor there.
“What can you do?”
“What?”
“I asked what you can do. Should I be blunt? You can't interfere with anything in this world. Not because you're an outsider. You don't have the ability or the power.”
“So you think you're so much better?”
“Is that how I look to you?”
“That's...”
Lee Eun-hee fell silent, at a loss for words.
The moonlight from above shone down on us.
I looked at her and gave a bitter smile.
“I don't think so.”
“Even if someone other than Lady Lize were in her position, nothing would change.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“Why are you asking me?”
At my retort, Lee Eun-hee's shoulders slumped.
“Everyone has to find their own answer.”
There are no wrong answers in the world.
What you thought was wrong might one day become right.
The answer I found couldn't be the answer for everyone else.
So it's best for everyone to find their own path.
“You're a strange one.”
“Look who's talking. So? Anything else I should know?”
“Lady Lize is beautiful.”
“I said, besides your personal taste!”
I didn't understand why she kept repeating that she was beautiful.
“It's not my taste! What I mean is, they say Lady Lize wasn't this beautiful a few years ago. There aren't many people who've worked at the mansion for long, so it's hard to hear detailed rumors, but.”
“Wasn't beautiful? What do you mean?”
“It's not like there are childhood photos lying around, so I don't know what she looked like exactly. I told you about the photo, right? She's much more beautiful in person.”
“So what?”
Isn't it common for people to look better in person than in photos?
Lee Eun-hee clutched her chest in frustration.
“That's not it! What if it's not that she's prettier than her photo, but that she *became* beautiful? Like, you know, plastic surgery.”
“There's no way plastic surgery exists in this world.”
“I'm saying it feels like that. I don't know when the photo we saw was taken, but there's a disconnect between the Lize in the photo and the real Lize. Oh, and.”
The moonlight was hidden by clouds, and darkness swept in.
Half-shrouded in darkness, Lee Eun-hee scratched the back of her neck and said.
“I don't know if it's just me, but...”
“What is it?”
“She smells of blood.”
“...”
“A much stronger smell of blood than what lingers in the mansion. The scent that actually comes from her is perfume, but... how should I put it? Metaphorically, yes.”
She watched my face, worried she might have sounded too abstract.
I glanced at the brightly lit windows of the mansion.
“I know.”
I had felt something similar since entering the mansion.
This mansion had the lingering, stale scent of old blood that wouldn't wash away.
“Really? That's a relief. That's all I have to tell you.”
“Anything about Duke Phellia?”
To be honest, it wasn't Lady Lize I was concerned about, but Duke Phellia.
“Nothing special yet.”
“Yet?”
“Yeah, I'm assigned to Lady Lize, so I don't know much about the Duke. Oh, about his hobby. It seems that was real?”
“Ugh. Anything else?”
“A normal father who loves his daughter. It's hard to understand, honestly. But that's about it.”
Both of Duke Phellia's daughters were adopted.
Not being related by blood didn't mean they weren't his children, but in aristocratic society, the family name was more important than blood ties, the foundation of a family.
As I stood there, lost in thought, Lee Eun-hee pointed at my eyes.
“By the way, I've been meaning to ask. What's with your eyes? You couldn't have gotten hurt in that short time.”
“What do you think?”
“Ah. You must really hate it.”
“Would you like it?”
The mere thought of being told that the face of a nearly hundred-year-old duke was my type was horrifying.
Lee Eun-hee nodded in understanding.
***
After changing into the provided clothes, I looked in the mirror.
“It's been a while since I've worn clothes like this.”
The attire brought back some very old memories.
I sensed someone on the other side of the door.
I straightened my tie, and as I turned my head, there was a knock on the door.
I opened the door from the inside.
“Hey.”
A man in a similar uniform gave a small wave.
He was a handsome young man with green hair.
The woman behind him was staring at the floor, her head bowed.
I closed the door and stepped naturally into the hallway.
People were visible in the corridors and every corner of the mansion.
The atmosphere was completely different from what I'd seen at night.
“I'm Cotclain Heath. Just call me Heath. You're Ruin, right?”
“That's right.”
“I heard about your eyes from the head butler.”
“Head butler?”
“Izeff. The sly old man.”
“Ah, that guy.”
“I'm not a big fan of him. Ah, if you were in the city guard, you probably haven't served any other nobles, have you?”
“This is my first time.”
At my answer, Heath's expression stiffened slightly.
He hesitated for a long moment before finally speaking.
His carefully chosen words were simple.
“It gets easier once you get used to it.”
I had a rough idea of what 'getting used to it' meant from what Lee Eun-hee told me last night.
Even without her explanation, my mental fortitude wasn't so weak that I'd bat an eye at something like that.
Heath and I arrived at the largest room in the center of the mansion.
As we stood before the ornate door, a servant standing there gave a slight bow and knocked.
“Enter.”
At the sound of the soft, beautiful voice, the door was opened from within.
A huge sofa sat in a part of the room where the sunlight streamed in.
“Greetings, Lady Lize. Good morning... though I suppose I can't really say that.”
Heath's gaze fell upon the servant kneeling before Lize.
Lize held her head high and looked at Heath and me.
‘So it's true.’
The moment I saw Lady Lize's face, I understood why Lee Eun-hee had made such a fuss about her beauty.
Who the hell took that picture!
The real Lady Lize was incredibly beautiful.
So much so that the word 'beautiful' hardly seemed adequate to describe her.
She was beautiful enough that it wouldn't be strange to march up to God, grab him by the collar, and demand to know why he created such a woman.
Lize placed a hand on her cheek and let out a short sigh.
“I know, right? I was in such a good mood, too, hearing that a new guard was coming today.”
Lize leaned forward, picked up a teacup, and tilted it over the kneeling servant's hands.