Triang Village (5)
Guilt and wrongdoing can be atoned for. If we simply reflect, we can find enough repentance.
Then what remains is only to seek forgiveness.
Though this is the expression of the common daily routine, it was not an unchanging truth.
At least, not for Liliana.
Could the issues caused by sin and wrongdoing simply be resolved by repentance and reflection? And would repentance come naturally as a right that followed?
Reflection does not scoop up the spilled water to collect it again.
Repentance is a grace that can only begin with the victim’s forgiveness, not the perpetrator’s right.
Liliana, who did not share Grace’s foundation of inherent goodness, had been able to experience the painful reality born from her own foolishness, so she thought this way.
Even so, Liliana had no choice but to place the words of apology on her lips.
If she poured out everything here, Grace would surely have lowered her head first, but Liliana could not bring herself to say Finn’s death aloud, and she hated even more the act of mentioning his death any further.
Therefore, Liliana explained the detailed inner workings of the situation while preserving her own sense of justice, yet she apologized in a somewhat brusque voice.
If she could not explain the reason for her anger, then her actions from just moments ago had been nothing more than simple hysteria.
“I’m sorry. Just forget about what I said just now.”
“Ah, no… I was the one who spoke out of turn. I apologize.”
Both girls placed apologies on their lips toward each other, but the actions differed.
Liliana subtly averted her gaze, while Grace gently closed her eyes and lowered her head toward the girl.
Soon, a quiet silence spread between them, but Grace’s mind was far from quiet silence—complicated beyond words.
She could not even think of continuing the conversation.
She had poured all her mental energy into pondering the girl’s statement from just moments ago.
Could it be that the other party was someone who could not be forgiven? Or… someone who would not accept the apology?
There was no possibility of that.
Who in their right mind could dare to treat the Imperial Princess of the Empire that way?
‘The Emperor of the Empire surely must have gained a power far greater than before… right?’
Grace’s shoulders twitched.
At that exact moment, one possibility flashed across Grace’s mind like lightning.
‘What if the other party is the reason the Emperor’s power has grown so strong?’
A sufficient possibility existed.
The Emperor, who had become little more than a living corpse even in neighboring Holy Kingdom, suddenly possessing such power—what could explain it?
That mysterious entity known as the Emperor’s Shadow.
Scattered countless evidence of grotesque crimes and corruption discovered from unknown sources, toppling noble families one after another that opposed the Emperor, only to end in death—the Emperor’s Shadow.
It was unclear whether the princess’s fiancé was the Emperor’s Shadow himself or someone he followed, but if he was even remotely connected to that figure, even the Imperial Princess would not have been able to treat him so lightly.
Grace began to carefully re-examine her conversation with the girl.
If Grace had possessed the ability to discern lies… the girl would undoubtedly have shown remorse.
Grace recalled one specific scenario that satisfied every condition she herself had deduced.
‘The other party… approached the Princess without revealing his true identity.’
Grace thought the first meeting between the girl and that person could not have been pleasant.
She had once heard that after the Empress lost her life, the Princess collapsed from weakness, and the Emperor, as befitted his reputation as a lover, fell into despair over losing his wife and then his daughter as well.
The Imperial royals of the Empire had reached their end.
Though such words had circulated, suddenly the Princess had risen from her seat and pressed the puppet-like Emperor, one by one the noble factions that had oppressed him declared their fall and death.
Considering the timing, the cause that restored the Princess’s strength and the reason the Emperor now held power were undoubtedly the same.
Grace’s thought was only a guess she could make precisely because she had not known the full details of the incident.
The Emperor had gathered people within the palace and made a public announcement in such a way that the boy suffered minimal harm.
The nobles, who heard it, had been too busy celebrating the Empress’s death to protest, as the Emperor’s already weak authority had weakened further due to the loss.
Another reason was that those who knew the inner workings of the incident thought the Princess’s anger had been caused by her attendant.
They could not possibly connect him to the Emperor’s Shadow.
Yet it was Grace, who neither knew the detailed inner workings nor could not read the girl’s emotions from a slightly detached distance at the time, who could make that guess.
In such a situation, the other party had approached the Princess while hiding his identity, and the Princess had rejected him.
‘Perhaps… he did not want to create the impression that he accepted a favor from someone he did not like.’
It was a thought only someone with a foundation of goodness could have.
The Princess had been kind enough to assist the Imperial royals without demanding any compensation in return, which meant she had simply cared for the girl.
Yet the Princess, who did not know this, had vented her hysteria born from the grief of losing her mother on the innocent party.
At some later point she had learned the other party’s true identity, but after that she could no longer forgive him—or rather, he would no longer accept her forgiveness.
In other words, the man had simply hidden his feelings in the face of the Princess’s exhausted hysteria.
But the Princess herself had not forgotten the one who had left her side, had declared her engagement to him, and was still grieving and missing him… that was Grace’s guess.
Grace’s eyes, lost in thought, now shone with renewed vitality.
For Grace, this was the most plausible story.
Even now, the fiancé’s identity remained widely undisclosed.
Some claimed the Emperor, famous as the doting-to-his-daughter emperor, did not want to marry his beloved daughter elsewhere.
Others muttered that the Princess herself, having grown tired of the nobles’ villainous deeds, had fabricated the engagement as an excuse to take the Empress’s throne alone.
Yet no one dared voice disagreement now that the Emperor’s power was incomparable to what it had been before.
No one had considered the possibility that the unnamed other party was connected to the Emperor’s Shadow, as it contradicted everything.
At first glance, an individual with such informational and military prowess could not be.
So it must be a group, yet no such group existed within the Empire.
If it had, they would have acted before the incident had occurred, and a hastily formed group meant to protect a collapsing royal house would have possessed far too much information.
It could not be movements from another country attempting to ingratiate themselves.
Someone with that much power would have openly helped for the sake of future relations.
And it was too much to assume the hidden foreign organization possessed such information.
Setting aside the finer details of the identity, the intention itself could not even be guessed.
The Emperor’s Shadow had vanished from sight the moment the Emperor gained his tremendous power.
It was not plausible for an individual, and far too fanatical for a group.
The common people had spoken as one.
Every time the Emperor’s Shadow punished the wicked nobles, he had written the word “Divine Retribution” in his reports.
Humans, after all, tended to label actions beyond their own understanding as “Heaven’s Wrath.”
The nobles of the Empire who had shown inhuman behavior were simply receiving Heaven’s Wrath, the common people had unanimously concluded.
It was only reasonable to think that way.
If they had poked the beehive to discover who the Emperor’s Shadow truly was, they might have received the same fate as those whose heads had been cut off.
Therefore, most people had gradually set aside their initial questions over time,
and since no madman dared question the current Emperor, there must have been some unspoken reason… that had become the majority view.
And this was a thought only those who did not understand the Princess’s true feelings… and only those who had not been present at the time—Grace and the others—could have.
Grace stepped forward toward a direction slightly off from the truth.
One step ahead of everyone else.
She believed the foundation of humanity lay in goodness, so she thought love alone could provide enough reason to help the girl.
Unlike those who could not possibly think that the one who had suffered such cruelty from the Princess would be connected to the Emperor’s Shadow through an individual who had never received any swordsmanship training.
Grace, who did not know this fact,
had deduced the slightly off reality that the Princess, who had learned everything after the Emperor’s Shadow vanished, had announced her engagement while mourning him.
Because of the facts only Grace knew and the facts Grace did not know,
‘Then… is the Princess right now… engaged in an unfulfilled love?’
Grace raised her head and looked into the girl’s eyes, brimming with sorrow that could not be contained.
“…”
Grace simply lost her words and stared in a daze.
She had witnessed the agonizing reality of a Princess pursuing a love that could never be fulfilled, and a boy whose love could never be returned.
Therefore, from this day forward,
Grace’s path, which had slowly twisted, would head in a completely opposite direction from the original story Kim Bin had known.
Not a girl desperately fighting to protect her wounded home from malice,
but a girl who watched the play that began with tragedy and prayed for happiness at the end.
In this way, Grace had encountered an fate almost too fortunate to be real.