The Countess's Night (1)
Saturday morning.
The moment the carriage rolled out of the capital, the scenery changed. The stone-walled buildings fell away, and wheat fields and vineyards unfurled in their place. Even the late-summer air was different here — the smell of earth, of grapes, of grass.
Fuck. It's perfect.
Margarete sat across from me. Not her usual noblewoman's dress but something lighter — a cream blouse and a brown skirt, her hair half let down. Not the clothes of a countess. The clothes of just a woman.
All it took was 'a woman' sitting across from me, and my cock jolted harder than the carriage. …Fuck. One glimpse of half-let-down hair in a carriage heading out for work and my gut pulls tight — what a bastard. Hold it. Press it down, hard. If the advisor riding out to ease the countess's heart gets stiff above the knees before he's even arrived, he's no counselor at all — just a loser in heat.
Whether she intended it or not, the message was clear.
I'm not the Countess today. Just Margarete.
"It's not far. About an hour to go."
"You're dressed for comfort."
"If I kept up appearances even at the villa, it wouldn't be any kind of rest at all."
She laughed — a real laugh, creases at the corners of her eyes and all.
The hour in the carriage was more pleasant than I'd expected. Margarete talked about the memories tangled up in the villa: coming here with her husband in the early days of their marriage, the children running wild when they were small. But every one of those memories was told in the past tense.
"These days I come alone. Once or twice a year."
"By yourself…"
"It's peaceful. I like that. But…"
Her voice trailed off.
Peaceful enough to love. Lonely enough to hate.
I didn't need to hear the rest. Bitter as it was, this kind of emptiness had a smell to it — the smell I was best at catching.
The villa was humbler than I'd imagined. Nothing like the grandeur of the main estate — just a two-story stone building wrapped in ivy, vineyards stretching all around it, a small wood behind.
The caretaker couple came out to greet us. Apparently Margarete had sent word ahead.
"The guest room is ready in the east room upstairs, my lady."
"Thank you, Hannah. I'll make dinner myself tonight. You're free to head home."
The caretakers left, and only the two of us remained in the villa.
Total isolation.
The ground floor held a living room, a kitchen, and a small study; upstairs, three bedrooms. The layout was simple enough that from anywhere in the house, you could feel the other person's presence.
"Shall I make some tea?"
Margarete headed for the kitchen. I settled onto the living room sofa and looked around.
A family portrait hung above the fireplace: Margarete, her husband Otto, and two children. The painting looked at least ten years old — Margarete still in her late twenties.
In the picture, Otto wasn't looking at Margarete. He stared straight ahead. Only Margarete's face was turned toward her family.
One painting held the essence of the whole marriage. The one who looks, and the one who is never seen. …Fuck. It's the same everywhere. The lonely one is always the first to give her gaze away.
"Here you are."
Margarete brought the tea over. The hand offering the cup was trembling slightly.
Nerves.
Her whole body knew what this was: a thirty-eight-year-old married woman, alone at a villa with another man.
"Margarete."
"Yes?"
"Don't be nervous."
I said it plainly. With this woman, the straight road beat the roundabout one. By now, at least.
"I'm… I'm not nervous."
"Your hand is shaking."
Margarete looked down at her own hand. The teacup quivered ever so slightly.
"…"
"It's all right to shake."
"…"
"Shaking just means you're alive."
Margarete lifted her head and looked at me. Something was swirling in those green eyes.
We spent the afternoon walking the vineyard.
Strolling between the ripening grapes, we talked about this and that — the children, news from the capital, books we'd been reading lately.
But beneath the conversation, the same current ran the whole time.
Loneliness. Thirst. And tonight.
The sun began to sink.
Margarete made dinner herself. Simple bread and cheese, smoked meat, and wine brought up from the cellar beneath the villa.
"My husband bought this wine for our tenth anniversary."
Margarete said it as she opened the bottle.
"He bought it and never drank it once. I suppose he forgot about it."
Her hand no longer shook as she poured. Whether the trembling had turned to anger, or to resolve, I couldn't tell.
"Fifteen years of marriage."
Margarete raised her wine glass.
"I can't even remember the last time my husband touched my body."
She drank. Deeply.
"At first I thought it was my fault. My body changed after the births. Stretch marks across my stomach, my breasts sagging."
"Margarete."
"Listen. Tonight, I'm the one who talks."
Her eyes were wet. But she didn't cry. This woman's pride wouldn't permit tears.
"And then I found out. That my husband had been sleeping with a maid from the estate. The maid is twenty, they say. Twenty."
Her hand clenched tight around the glass.
"It was never that I'd lost my charm. That man just loves what's new."
"…"
"I started thinking, back then. Why am I the only one who has to endure? While he does whatever he pleases."
She looked at me.
"That's why I invited you, Do-hyun."
My heart pounded. This was no act. It was real.
Resolve was burning in Margarete's eyes — a decision thirty-eight years of life had forged.
"Inviting a man here, to the villa… is a first for me."
"I know."
"I thought about it for a long time."
"I know."
"Do you think I'm a strange woman?"
"No."
I stood. Rounded the table to her side. Margarete looked up at me.
"I think you're a brave woman."
I held out my hand. Margarete took it.
Not took — seized.
Core Suggestion: "This is not betrayal. It is reclaiming."
The last wall in Margarete came down. I could feel something shifting gently into place inside her mind. Guilt, into entitlement. Hesitation, into thirst. …Sickeningly smooth. My own handiwork, and even I'm scared of it.
We faced each other, she standing now. The height difference: me at 185 centimeters, her around 168. Her upturned green eyes glittered in the firelight.
So her eyes well up in the firelight, and my cock lifts its head without asking. …Fuck, that's hot. Who was it that tore down this woman's last wall — and the same guy can't even keep his own dick leashed? Clamp your thighs and press it down, you pitiful loser — looking down at her over the height difference while getting hard all on your own down there.
"Do-hyun…"
"Yes."
"I… I don't really know anymore. It's been so long. How to do… this."
Five years. Five years since this woman had let anyone hold her.
Something clenched in my chest. Genuinely. Before I was a hypnotist, I had been — in my other life — a counselor.
"Then I'll lead."
I lifted her chin with one hand. Margarete's lips parted slightly. Her breathing grew rough.
And then…
Margarete kissed me first.
Not me. Her.
It was Margarete who rose onto her toes and brought her lips to mine — a thirty-eight-year-old married woman, making the first move.
Lightly, at first. Barely a brush of lips. She was trembling. All over.
She pulled away.
"…"
Her green eyes wavered. The face of someone who couldn't quite believe what she had just done.
"Margarete."
I dropped the formal address. Called only her name.
"Do-hyun…"
We kissed again. This time, I led — one hand at her waist, one at the back of her head. Deep.
"Mm…"
A moan slipped out of Margarete. Five years of everything she'd held down was packed into that one sound.
The moment my tongue touched hers, her whole body shuddered — violently, as though she were coming apart in my arms.
"Ah… nnh…"
"Are you all right?"
"Just from a kiss… I didn't know it could…"
The rims of her eyes had flushed red. Shame, arousal, or being moved —
All of it.
Moving from the sofa to the bedroom felt natural.
Margarete took my hand and led me. The west room upstairs — the master bedroom.
The moment the door closed, moonlight spilled through the window. The curtains hadn't been drawn. Whether she'd left them open on purpose, or simply forgotten.
"Should I light a lamp?"
"No. Like this is fine."
Margarete, in the moonlight.
She began unbuttoning her blouse. Her hands were shaking. The first button, the second, the third…
"Wait."
I caught her hands.
"Let me."
Margarete drew in a breath. Nodded.
I undid the buttons one at a time. Slowly.
One.
Cream-pale collarbones came into view.
Two.
The top of her cleavage. The lace of her undergarment showed through.
Three.
Her full breasts swelled taut between the parted fabric.
Four.
Five.
The blouse fell open.
Thirty-eight years old. Two childbirths. Nursing. The years.
A body that had come through all of it stood there in the moonlight.
Her breasts were full. Not like a young girl's — they had weight to them. A curve that yielded just slightly to gravity, and somehow that softness made them all the more natural, all the more sensual. Wide areolae. Deep in color. The traces of nursing. Why did that make everything feel so much more obscene?
"Don't look… I'm not what I used to be…"
Margarete moved to cover her chest with her arms.
"What is there to hide?"
I took her arms and drew them down.
"You're beautiful."
"You're lying…"
"You're beautiful."
I said it once more, looking into her eyes.
A tear fell from Margarete's eyes. Just one.
"For five years… no one has ever said…"
I wiped it away with my thumb.
Then I kissed her — the corner of her eye.
It tasted of salt.
I slid her skirt down.
The line from waist to hip was broad — the pelvis particular to a woman who had borne children. Wide, soft, its firmness a little worn, but warm in its place.
There were stretch marks on her belly. Old traces, long since faded to silver.
Margarete moved to cover them again.
"Are you going to call these beautiful too?"
A self-mocking smile.
"For these, I'll say something other than beautiful."
I bent down and pressed my lips against the marks.
"Nnh…!"
Margarete's body trembled.
"These are the marks of a life you made."
"…"
"Any man who hates this isn't a man."
Margarete's tears flowed harder. Without a sound.
I laid her down. The bed gave softly beneath her.
Margarete, seen from above. Brown hair spread across the white sheets. Green eyes gleaming wet. Her body, down to its last layer of undergarments, shimmered silver in the moonlight.
The beauty of thirty-eight.
Back in my old world, this body would've been brushed off with the word ajumma — married, middle-aged, done. But for this one moment at least, that word was far too light to hold her.
Because this wasn't just a category out of some dirty picture.
This was the body of a woman who had lived through a five-year drought.
I pulled off my shirt.
Margarete's eyes locked onto my bare torso. Not excessive muscle, but a solid build.
"Oh my…"
Her gaze slid lower. Even through my trousers, the outline showed.
Felt fucking incredible.
I pulled off my bottoms.
At the shape pressing against my underwear, Margarete's eyes went wide.
Then the underwear came off too.
"…"
Margarete's mouth hung open. A face beyond words.
Twenty-six centimeters.
And that without even being fully hard yet.
"Th-that's…"
"It's big, right?"
I said it straight. No need for false modesty here.
"'Big' doesn't quite… compared to my husband…"
The comparison had begun.
"Don't compare."
"I can't not compare. My husband… my husband's is…"
Margarete showed the rough length with her hands. Less than half of mine.
"There's no comparing it to my husband's at all."
A taste of the forbidden laced that one line — the moment a married woman weighed her husband's cock against another man's.
A comparison that came not with guilt, but with pleasure.
The echo of [Common Sense Alteration] was still at work: this is not betrayal — it is reclaiming.
"May I… touch it?"
Margarete's hand came closer. Carefully — like someone touching an unfamiliar animal for the very first time.
Her fingers made contact.
"It's hot…"
She wrapped her hand around it. One hand didn't go all the way around.
"Can something this size… even fit…"
A voice braided from anxiety and anticipation in equal measure.
"We'll take it slow."
"Slowly…"
Margarete's hand began to move. Clumsily — every motion carrying the weight of five empty years.
But that clumsiness, if anything—
Thud. Thud. My heart slammed.
Why was it that an unpracticed hand stirred me more than any practiced one ever had?
Margarete took my hand and led me to the bedroom upstairs.
Even with the door closed, her hands kept trembling. She reached for my collar and stopped, over and over.
"Wait."
At my word, Margarete went rigid.
"Coming this far doesn't oblige you to see it through. You can still turn back now."
"Are you saying that because you think I'll regret it?"
"I'm saying it because I want to be sure that whatever you choose, you're choosing it with a clear head."
She went to the window and looked down at the vineyard for a long while. Her husband's infidelity, five years of indifference, the words I had fed her over these past weeks — all of it was mixed into the choice before her. Including the [Common Sense Alteration] I had quietly planted there. Asking after her choice while hiding that fact — my posture was still a coward's.
Margarete turned and met my eyes.
"I didn't come here only to get back at my husband. I wanted to know whether someone still saw me as a person."
"You don't need to test that. Margarete is worth exactly as much as she has always been."
"I know. Even so, tonight I want it to be me who chooses."
She held out her hand first.
The two of us settled the ground rules before anything else: a signal to stop, contraception, and the principle that everything decided tonight would be confirmed again tomorrow morning, in clear minds. A talent for working minds couldn't tell me the state of her body or whether she might conceive. Margarete was ashamed of how her figure had changed since childbirth — but it was not a flaw that owed anyone a verdict.
"If I don't want something, I'll say so."
"The moment you say it, I stop."
It was awkward at first. Because of the five-year gap, Margarete had to catch her breath again and again, asking me to slow down. Every time, I stopped and checked that she was all right. And when enough time had passed for the tension to melt, it was she who first called my name.
By the time night had deepened, the two of us lay side by side. Tears and laughter were tangled together in Margarete's voice.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
"About what?"
"I got through five years without knowing. Without knowing I could talk to someone this honestly."
Out of habit I nearly reached for the promise that I would be the one to fill that gap — and swallowed it back. It would have sounded like comfort, but it fit far too neatly with my plan to make her unable to live without me.
"Let's decide again tomorrow morning. Once tonight's feelings have settled."
"How very like you, Do-hyun."
Margarete pressed her forehead against my chest.
"But there's one thing I want to settle right now. I won't wake up tomorrow and lie that I regretted tonight."
After resting a while, it was Margarete again who said she wanted to be close once more. What followed was less about exaggerated counts or comparisons, and closer to the two of us confirming one thing over and over: that we could stop, any time either of us needed to.
An owl called from somewhere past the vineyard. Until the night ran out, Margarete voiced her choice in words again and again — and each time, I listened to her answer.
Dawn.
Once Margarete had fallen asleep, I stared at the ceiling and put my thoughts in order.
[Common Sense Alteration] now stood at the very threshold of its final stage. Her loneliness, and the relief she had felt tonight, were real — but so was the fact that I had quietly rewritten the standard by which she felt guilt. The naturalness of a feeling did not make the manipulation behind it justified.
What Elena wanted was Count Steinfeld, brought into the fold through his wife. The next objective was to use [Memory Reading] to confirm the count's weaknesses and the shape of the voting landscape. But with Margarete asleep, there was no way to ask her leave.
I knew better than anyone that the borderland between sleep and waking was where consciousness was softest. Which was exactly why I didn't touch it. Sleep-talk is not consent, and a claim staked on a sleeping person could never stand as proof of her choice.
Margarete murmured my name, small and faint.
"Do-hyun…"
Hearing it, apology and satisfaction rose in me at the same time. However many times I repeated the word survival like a shield, what I had done did not disappear.
A little later, Margarete's fingers began tracing a square on the mattress.
"The study… under the carpet… the safe…"
My eyes snapped open.
If it was nothing but sleep-talk, it could be pure coincidence. But I couldn't ignore the word safe surfacing at the exact moment I needed leverage over the count. Come morning, once Margarete woke, I would have to see it with my own eyes.