The Countess's Invitation
Elena's voice echoed through the library of the Royal Palace.
"Kang Do-hyun."
Fuck. Perfect.
I kept my eyes on my book.
"Marga von Steinfeld."
Only then did I raise my head. Elena stood at the window, gazing down over the garden, the backlight carving out her profile. It was enough to make me think a queen's majesty could be completed by light alone.
Violet eyes. Golden hair spilling loose down her back. That one silhouette, backlit, was enough to make the air in the room feel heavier.
"Steinfeld... the Countess?"
"The very same. I want her turned to my side."
Elena turned from the window. Her violet eyes took aim at me, dead center.
"Why do you need her?"
"The tax reform bill. The House of Nobles votes on it next month."
She spread a sheet of parchment across the table. A seating chart for the House of Nobles—more than half of it stained red. The opposition.
"Count Steinfeld is the anchor of the neutral faction. If he turns to the ayes, the remaining three or four neutrals will follow. And the vote passes."
"Then why not go after the Count himself?"
"Because the Count is immovable. Not an inch."
Elena pressed a fingertip to a single point on the chart.
"But his wife, Marga... she is another matter."
Marga von Steinfeld.
Age thirty-eight. The lawful wife of Count Steinfeld, mother of two.
I turned over the intelligence dossier Elena had handed me, reading through her profile at an unhurried pace.
Name:Marga von Steinfeld — Age 38
Position: Lawful wife of Count Steinfeld; mother of two
Marriage: Fifteen years
Notes: Her husband, Otto von Steinfeld, has kept an open affair with a maid on the family estate for the past five years. An open secret in society. Marga herself knows—and pretends not to, for the sake of appearances.
"A textbook case."
A sigh slipped out of me.
An indifferent husband. A lonely wife. The mask of high society.
It brought back the women who'd sat across from me in my counseling room in my past life. Late thirties, most of them—women who knew their husbands were unfaithful and still couldn't leave. Because of the children. Because of money. Or simply... because the world outside frightened them.
This world was no different. Identical to a fucking T. Cross into another dimension all you like—the reason a lonely woman is lonely still lands in the same place.
"Will [Mind Interference] at level 3 be enough?"
"For a woman like Marga, more than enough."
Elena tilted her teacup.
"She is hosting a salon at her own estate this weekend. I will slip an invitation into your hands."
"You don't think the Queen's man showing up at a countess's party will draw eyes?"
"You are not the Queen's man. You are the 'Royal Advisor.'"
Right. I did have an official title. Royal Advisor of Mental Therapy.
The cover identity Elena had built for me. On the surface, a scholar in royal service. Underneath, the Queen's blade.
"Noblewomen collect scholars and artists for their salons—it is their favorite pastime. With that title of yours, you will fit right in."
"Understood."
I folded the papers and tucked them inside my coat.
"One thing."
"What is it?"
"When you say you want Marga 'on your side'... how far does that go?"
Elena smiled. Only the corners of her mouth moved—a queen's smile.
"That is for you to work out. Bring me results."
...In other words, get your hands dirty again. Fuck. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but every time, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Saturday afternoon, the carriage rolled to a stop before the Steinfeld estate.
Red brick, ivy, a meticulously kept garden—and from beyond it, the music of a salon drifting out. In the hall, fifteen or so nobles and artists had gathered.
And at the center of it all stood Marga von Steinfeld.
Thirty-eight. Brown hair pinned up; green eyes and emerald earrings set off by a deep green dress. I could see both at once in her—the unshakable poise and the quiet fatigue of a woman who had borne two children and held her ground in society ever since.
"The Royal Advisor, I presume?"
Marga came to me first, smiling.
"Thank you for the invitation, Lady Steinfeld."
"Here in the salon, just Marga, please. You are a scholar, after all?"
"Psychiatry. The discipline that tends to the human mind, you could say."
"The mind..."
Her green eyes wavered, just for a breath.
That one word had landed squarely on her loneliness.
The salon was looser than I'd expected.
Wine and canapés, talk of art and philosophy. I kept away from the center of the room on purpose, sipping from a glass in a corner and observing.
I read Marga's patterns of behavior.
She moved briskly from guest to guest—smiling, conversing, steering the mood of the whole room. The perfect hostess. And yet in the gaps between, there were moments when she was utterly alone. Staring blankly out the window. Turning her wineglass in her fingers with no purpose at all.
She's lonely.
The kind of solitude that grows sharper the more people cluster around you. A pattern I'd seen countless times in my counselor days.
"And what is it you're observing here, Advisor?"
Marga had come over, two glasses of wine in hand.
"Observing? I was simply enjoying the atmosphere."
"Liar. A scholar's eyes can't hide themselves."
She sat down beside me and held out one of the glasses. Up close, she was even clearer—the intelligence carried in those green eyes, and the exhaustion lying underneath it.
"Honestly, you surprised me a little."
"In what way?"
"Scholars who come to salons like this are usually too busy talking about themselves. But you only ever listened."
"Listening happens to be my profession."
"You said psychiatry? What it is, exactly... could you tell me a little more?"
She took the bait.
...Yes. Ask away. A woman who asks makes the job easy. Whether that made me pity her or glad, I could no longer tell the difference.
I took a slow sip of wine.
"Put simply, it's the discipline of mending people whose hearts are in pain."
"Hearts in pain..."
"Yes. When the body aches, you see a physician. But when the heart aches, most people have no idea where to go."
Marga's glass went still—just short of her lips.
"Are there... many people like that?"
"A great many. Especially the ones who look perfectly fine on the outside."
Silence. Three seconds.
Marga drank. Not a sip—a long, deep swallow.
"What a fascinating field."
Her voice had dropped lower than before.
Hooked.
Fuck. Perfect.
As the party wore on, I lengthened our time together as naturally as breathing. She would converse with other guests, and sooner or later drift back to me all the same.
Deliberate, or unconscious?Probably both.
"Are you married, Advisor?"
"No."
"I see..."
Her gaze drifted for a moment into empty air.
"And marriage... what does it look like to you? From the outside, I mean."
A textbook question. The oblique confession I'd heard dozens of times across a counselor's desk.
What does my marriage look like to you?
She just couldn't ask it outright.
"I think the marriage you see from outside and the marriage you live inside are two different things."
"..."
"A house with a beautiful garden isn't necessarily a warm one."
Marga looked at me. Her eyes were wet. From the wine, or not, I couldn't say.
"You're a strange man."
"I hear that often."
"A scholar, and yet something of a poet."
"When you handle hearts for a living, you come to need metaphors."
She laughed. Not the social smile this time—a real laugh, one that properly creased the corners of her eyes. And that, strangely, was beautiful too.
A woman laughing with a mother's face.
And underneath, someone desperate to laugh as a woman—not a mother.
...And the bastard using that laughter as bait was me. What a fucked-up profession. Truly.
Partway through the party, I quietly activated [Mind Interference]. Level 1... emotion reading.
Marga's emotional spectrum unfolded before me.
Loneliness dominated it, overwhelming everything else. And it was old loneliness—not yesterday's feeling, but solitude stacked up over years like sediment.
Her guard existed, but it sat low. The party itself was easing her defenses down without her noticing, and she had filed me away as a 'scholar'—harmless, nonthreatening.
What was telling was the expectation living in her, faint as a sliver. Expectation toward someone new. A good sign.
...A good sign. For whom, exactly?I sneered inwardly, but my hands were already computing the next move.
"Lady Marga."
"Yes?"
"Might I take a look at your garden? I have a weakness for plants myself."
"Oh—of course. Allow me to show you."
Out in the garden a cool wind met us, and the murmur of the salon fell away until only birdsong and rustling leaves remained.
A space for two.
The garden was vast. We walked beneath an arch of roses while Marga explained the flowers one by one. A garden she had cultivated alone, all those years her husband never spared it a glance.
"Did you graft this rose yourself?"
"Oh my—how could you tell?"
"The color. It's unusual—hard to get from natural pollination."
So this is where old-world knowledge earns its keep. Marga's eyes lit up.
"You're right! It took me three whole years. Not that my husband cared in the least..."
Her voice trailed off at the end. There it was again—the husband, surfacing unbidden, without her even noticing she'd mentioned him.
I stopped walking and studied the rose.
"Three years is... a length of time that's impossible without love."
"..."
"This garden is like your heart, Lady Marga."
She stopped.
"A place that aches for someone to come see it—and where no one ever does."
The wind stirred Marga's brown hair. She turned her head. Her eyes were wet this time beyond any doubt.
"Advisor..."
"You're welcome to call me Do-hyun."
"Do-hyun..."
Every condition for driving [Common Sense Alteration] in was now assembled. An emotionally open state. The first threads of trust. An isolated space for just the two of us.
But I wasn't going to use it. Not yet.
Rushing would ruin everything. A woman like Marga—proud, refined, practiced at pressing her own feelings flat—had to feel that she was the one closing the distance.
Today, I would plant only the seed.
...Sometimes it struck me as hilarious that even dirtying your hands demanded patience.
"Might we... perhaps meet regularly?"
Marga said it first, on the walk back toward the salon.
"In what sense?"
"Just... since you love the garden. A cup of tea, and talk of plants."
The wrapping was garden and tea. The contents: I'm lonely, and I want to see you again.
"I'd be delighted. What day suits you?"
"Wednesday afternoons, perhaps? My husband is... away at the estate those days, so it's quiet."
She was picking the days her husband would be gone.
The unconscious mind is honest.
"Perfect."
"Then..."
Marga extended her hand. I reached to take what I took for a handshake, and she caught my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Two seconds. Long for a handshake—too short, of course, to mean anything at all.
But the pressure of those two seconds spoke plainly enough.
Don't go.
When she let go, her face had gone red, and she slipped back into the salon ahead of me. A married woman of thirty-eight, looking bashful.
...The seed was in the ground.
Wednesday. As promised, I visited the Steinfeld estate again.
This time it was no party but a private call. The butler led me past the second-floor drawing room and into a private sitting room on the ground floor. The formality had dropped a whole storey.
Marga poured the tea herself.
"You're not leaving it to the maids?"
"Today I... simply wanted it to feel at ease."
She was different from the party. Lighter makeup, hair half let down, a dress one step more casual. But the line of her chest still found my eyes... no—if anything, the casualness drew them harder.
...Fuck. I was losing my mind.
Over tea, the conversation began. The garden, at first—which flowers she loved best, which herbs she was coaxing along. Then, little by little, it sank deeper.
"You said you treat people's hearts, Do-hyun."
"I did."
"How can you tell... when a heart is hurting?"
"There are many ways. The surest is when the person admits it to themselves."
"Admits it..."
Marga set down her teacup.
"Suppose... just suppose."
"Yes."
"If a married woman found herself drawn to someone—someone other than her husband—would that count as a heart in pain?"
My heart slammed once. Not a figure of speech. Literally.
This woman is fast.
One meeting, and she was already throwing out questions like this.
The speed itself told me how long, and how deep, her thirst had run.
"It isn't pain."
I said it firmly.
"It's thirst."
"Thirst..."
"Looking for water in a desert isn't a question of morality. It's a question of survival."
Marga's green eyes trembled. Her pupils dilated, just barely.
Now.
Core suggestion: "Emotional thirst must be quenched."
Marga's expression went slack for an instant, hazy, then returned. Three-tenths of a second of give. A level of subtlety no outside eye could ever catch.
"Survival..."
"Yes. Being drawn to someone is no sin. It's a perfectly natural response, if anything."
"But a married woman..."
"Marriage is a contract. Not a prison for the heart."
I laid the second suggestion on top, smooth as anything.
"A contract..."
Marga chewed the word over. And over again.
Marriage is a contract. The heart is not a cage.
The formula had begun seeping into her unconscious.
Watching a sentence of my own manufacture become another person's truth—the more efficiently it took root, the more it turned my stomach.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
"Next Wednesday... will you come again?"
"Of course."
The next Wednesday. The Wednesday after that. And the Wednesday after that one.
Every Wednesday became Marga's time and mine.
Tea turned to wine; the parlor gave way to the garden, and the garden to the study. The spaces kept sliding somewhere more private.
[Common Sense Alteration] sank deeper every week. Each suggestion I planted peeled another layer off Marga's behavior.
The woman who had once perched on the edge of her chair began, session by session, to sit closer.
Contact that had once been no more than the backs of our hands drifting together traveled to elbows, then shoulders.
Her makeup grew heavier for a while—until one day she appeared with none at all. A signal she didn't know she was sending: look at me as I actually am.
And then came the third Wednesday.
"Do-hyun."
Marga set down her wineglass. Her cheeks were flushed rose-pink.
"Do I... seem like a strange woman to you?"
"Why would you think that?"
"A married woman, waiting for another man. Every single week."
"Waiting is nothing strange."
"Then what is it?"
"Honesty."
Marga laughed—the loose laugh of someone a little drunk. But there was more than wine in her eyes.
"May I be honest, then?"
"Of course."
"There is... something I've never received from my husband."
"I know."
Marga's eyes flew open. Wide.
"How could you..."
"It's my profession. Reading hearts."
Half lie, half truth. I could have read her without [Mind Interference] at all—her loneliness glowed like a lamp left burning in the dark.
"My husband hasn't touched me in five years."
Her voice had sunk low.
"Fifteen years married. Five years, and not once."
"..."
"At first I wondered if I'd lost my charm. My body changed after the children, after all. And then I learned about the maid at his estate..."
Her fist clenched. Then unclenched.
"Infuriating, isn't it?"
"...Yes."
"That fury is justified."
Core suggestion: "Not revenge—a right."
"A right..."
Marga swallowed the word down along with her wine.
Revenge. No—a right.
He climbs into another woman's bed—so why am I the only one who has to endure?
The thought had begun to grow in her head all on its own. The seed I'd planted was sprouting.
...The word 'justified' was never for her sake. It was absolution—the pass I issued myself so I could devour her. I knew that perfectly well, and still the consolation poured out of my mouth, smooth as syrup. Fuck. What a piece of work I am.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
Marga rose from her seat. Smoothing her skirt, she looked out the window.
"This weekend... I mean to go to our country villa."
"Villa?"
"Two hours from the Capital by carriage. There's an old vineyard there."
She turned to face me.
"Will you come with me?"
Her green eyes held mine straight on. There was a tremble in them. But no retreat.
An invitation from a married woman of thirty-eight, offered with her eyes wide open.
"Gladly."
At my answer, relief, excitement, and fear crossed Marga's face all in the same instant.
In the carriage back to the Royal Palace, I took stock.
Marga von Steinfeld.
[Common Sense Alteration] was nearly ripe. The sentence not revenge, but a right was already growing by itself inside her head. All that remained was the finishing act at the villa.
Make her cross the line herself. Not me shoving her over—her stepping across. That difference was everything. Only when the weight of guilt tipped toward her side of the scale could I remain merely 'the one who accepted.'
...I know it's a coward's design. Which is exactly why it works so well.
There was a report owed to Elena.
"The Countess. Proceeding as planned."
I wrote the short note and tied it to a messenger pigeon's leg.
Beyond the carriage window, the sunset was bleeding red across the sky. Red.
The same red that had pooled at the bottom of Marga's wineglass.
...A villa, huh.
A country villa with an old vineyard, and a married woman—just the two of us.
There are moments when reality moves faster than the plan.
The carriage arrived at the Royal Palace.
That night, in my bedroom, I opened the system before sleep.
The moment I closed my eyes, the senses of level-3 [Mind Interference] spread out, already awake. The resonance and the touchless suggestion I had stabilized back in Chapter 57 carried through this operation without a single tremor. No level had risen this time.
Memory retrieval and emotion manipulation had grown smoother than before, too—but every one of them acted on the human mind and nothing else.
And at the summit sat the names I called only in my head. The craft of braiding several techniques into a single weave, I called brainwashing; the destination it finally reached—planting a brand-new truth in another person's skull—I called [Common Sense Alteration]. Not names anyone had given me. Names I'd coined myself, hands filthy to the wrist.
...Marga is next. At the villa, I drive in one more layer of [Common Sense Alteration].
One more name would join the list.
Marga von Steinfeld.
...Wait for me, Countess.
Your loneliness—I'll be the one to fill it.
...My past self never knew the words 'I'll fill you' could rot into something this filthy.