Titania's Ghost
Yeah, Brother Raymon must have misread the situation. He’s always been so straight-laced and hardly knows a thing about women, doesn’t he?—never mind that, as high society’s most coveted bachelor, Raymon had actually crossed paths with far more women than Lisianthus ever had.
Lisianthus had not been surprised when Titania agreed to see him without a fuss.
Nor was he surprised when, instead of demanding why he had come rather than Raymon, she merely sat at the table with an air of noble refinement, going through the motions of sipping her black tea.
She had to be seething inside, yet she deliberately looked away, ignoring his blatant attempts to provoke her.
And yet.
‘…If you pour water on a fire, shouldn’t it naturally go out?’
Rather than hurling the hot tea into his face, she had casually doused the burning branch with it. That had been the very first detail that felt jarringly out of place.
Just as unsettling were those green eyes staring back at him, filled with quiet skepticism as if asking what his problem was.
Raymon’s aide had made such a frantic fuss about how ‘the princess has turned strange’ that Lisianthus had snapped off a branch from that very tree she supposedly rammed her head into, just to see if there was actually anything special about it. And while he was at it, hoping to play a nasty trick on her, he had poured a bit more power into the flame than usual.
Under normal circumstances, the fire he conjured was just an ordinary flame. Anyone could have extinguished it. But when summoned with an excess of magical power, the embers would stubbornly refuse to die, smoldering for dozens of minutes even if drenched in water or buried under piles of earth.
The instant he set the branch ablaze, he had felt a flash of regret.
Now that he thought about it, flaunting one’s ‘power’ inside the Imperial Palace was reckless. Above all, while it looked like a common red fire on the surface, he had concentrated far too much energy into it. It was not a fire meant to be put out with ease.
Unless one were an ability user of comparable caliber, gauging how much power had been compressed into the flame was nearly impossible, making it the perfect trick to torment someone. But worry had suddenly crept in.
Won’t Brother give me an earful for this? Should I just snuff it out right now and pretend it was nothing?
…Yet with a single teacup’s worth of liquid splashed by the princess, the embers had vanished in the blink of an eye.
It was utterly absurd. Even if it was not the Blue Flame, it was still a fire densely packed with high-tier power. There was no way the princess could have suddenly awakened the power of light now. And even if she had, wielding it so effortlessly and casually was out of the question. How on earth had she extinguished that flame with nothing more than a cup of lukewarm tea?
Furthermore, the way she handled him—forcing polite honorifics through her teeth in a manner so transparent it was obvious she was acting—felt all the more unnatural.
Titania used to shudder with visceral hatred at the mere mention of Lisianthus. Yet now, she looked at him as though swatting away an annoying leech. The woman who once staked her very life on haughty aristocratic pride had vanished completely; she stuffed a scone into her mouth with her bare hands, then sprawled unceremoniously across the couch, paying him no mind whatsoever.
Had that been all, he might have brushed it off as a fit of pique.
Instead, the moment she inspected the contents of the envelope his father had sent, the light in Titania’s eyes sank into a terrifying, icy stillness. Wearing a deep, contemplative expression, she studied the crest on the badge and traced the objects with her fingertips. Above all, the instant she laid eyes on the coat of arms, she seemed entirely certain of what the card represented.
Lisianthus had watched her, utterly bewildered.
Even though his father had commanded him to deliver that card to Titania, Lisianthus had privately thought it was far too excessive. Would she even understand what it was? Wouldn’t she throw a tantrum over being sent bizarre junk and toss it in the trash? And if she threw away such an invaluable card like common rubbish, what if Hecate’s Tavern came knocking on their door to lodge a furious complaint?
Hecate’s Tavern commanded exorbitant fees, and its true nature was an absolute state secret. Only when the head of a high noble family that had dominated the empire for generations stepped down would they quietly disclose its existence to their heir. Unbeknownst to the world, it was an organization bound by blood to the Castrein ducal bloodline. Because of that ancient pact, they were cooperative with the Castrein Duchy, but to anyone else, they were neither friendly nor kind.
Yet when Titania received the items, she caught Lisianthus entirely off guard by pressing for granular details. She acted precisely like a seasoned client reviewing a regular transaction ledger. That was what truly unsettled him.
‘Tell him thank you.’
Her gaze had been unfathomably deep. Eyes so profoundly lost in thought that one could never imagine them belonging to that Titania—eyes weighing something impossibly distant and sorrowful.
It sent a wave of shock rippling through him, accompanied by a creeping, eerie sense of dissonance.
Who is this woman?
‘Are you… really Titania?’
The Titania he knew was selfish, foolish, devoid of common sense, obsessing over Raymon to the point of madness… Immature and childish, she was the kind of person who grated on his nerves so severely he could never keep his temper in check.
Right then, Titania lifted her head and locked eyes with him.
They were strange eyes. Damp and cold, like moss clinging to a long-forgotten gravestone.
Until now, Lisianthus had acknowledged that Titania was stunningly beautiful, but he had dismissed her beauty as worthless. No matter how pretty a doll preened, it remained nothing more than an empty doll. Yet the woman before him now seemed like an entirely different being. She carried an alien weight, as though she were a sacred statue consecrated in an ancient temple. Hair as pale as frost dusted across a harvested wheat field swayed around her shoulders like a mourning veil. Green eyes, cold and transparent as an olive suspended in a poisoned chalice, gleamed with crystalline clarity.
‘No. Titania is dead.’
Then she smiled faintly, as though letting him in on a harmless joke.
‘Which means the one you’re dealing with right now is Titania’s ghost.’
In that exact instant, a bizarre hallucination tore across Lisianthus’s vision.
Blood was everywhere.
Ignoring the blistering sting of searing heat across his skin, ‘he’ readjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword. The air was slick, burning, and suffocatingly humid. Drawing a single breath felt like inhaling molten lead.
“I—I didn’t! I really didn’t!”
Right before his eyes… a woman was sobbing hysterically.
One side of her once-long hair had been hacked off unevenly, and vivid, ragged gashes covered her thrashing limbs. Soaked in crimson, her trembling frame crawled across the stone floor, desperately trying to scramble away.
Grit. Watching her pathetic struggle, he heard himself grind his teeth and spit out a vitriolic curse.
“I-It’s the truth! I didn’t know it was poison! I only…!”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
His arm, which had been swinging the blade without a shred of hesitation toward a defenseless target, suddenly froze. He had gripped the hilt so viciously that thick veins bulged along his taut forearm.
“You didn’t know it was poison? You stupid bitch.”
“……”
“You wouldn’t have cared even if it were poison. No, did you even possess the sanity to consider that? You just want everything Brother Raymon loves in this world erased, don’t you? In your twisted mind, no one else is permitted to exist except you and him!”
“N-No… That’s not what… That isn’t…”
“Stop your bullshit.”
Killing her would be far too merciful. Merely continuing to cling to life in this place was an existence far lower than that of vermin. Realizing that cruel reality, he drove the final nail into her coffin.
“You’re rotten to the core. Even if you die and are reborn, no matter what happens, you will never—”
Her hollow green eyes stretched wide. Her face, ruined by tears, soot, and gore, froze in place as though she had been turned to stone.
“—you will never earn Brother Raymon’s love.”
He had thought it was pathetic.
She was someone who had already lost everything. She possessed nothing left in this world. Screaming at her like this was nothing more than venting useless rage. The true mastermind was standing safely behind the curtains, laughing at the spectacle. She was so hopelessly stupid that she never realized she had been used as a pawn, driving herself straight into utter ruin.
He loathed her with every fiber of his being, yet seeing her crumble so pathetically at the single name ‘Raymon,’ even after descending into this living hell…
It left a sickening, foul taste in his mouth.
How could a human being possibly be this unimaginably foolish?
Something hot and bitter boiled in the pit of his chest, impossible to extinguish no matter what he did.
“If a wretched creature like you had never existed in the first place, Brother would have been so much better off!”
Click.
A sharp sound echoed, like iron gears locking into place.
“Why are you staring into space like that, Young Lord Lisianthus?”
“…….”
Lisianthus blinked his dazed eyes rapidly.
What had he just seen? What in the world was…
The vision of that blood-soaked woman screaming in agony overlapped eerily with the young girl looking back at him with puzzled eyes.
Undeniably, their features were identical. The ruined, soiled woman weeping on the verge of death had also possessed pale, shimmering blonde hair and jade-green eyes, faint as the memory was. Yet he could not fathom them being the same person. It was as though every speck of light in the entire world had been brutally torn away from the woman in that vision.
As Lisianthus remained paralyzed by the bizarre sensation, struggling to pull his thoughts together, Titania pressed him with another question.
“Did Duke Castrein leave any other message?”
“…No.”
“Then you truly just came to hand over transaction goods?”
Just when he thought she had changed, could she have been throwing a silent tantrum because she wanted Raymon to come in person after all? The sudden suspicion shattered his lingering daze, and irritation flared up in Lisianthus’s chest. He parted his lips sharply.
“Then what on earth were you hoping for, other than—”
“In that case, before you go, why don’t you play the mad dog for a bit?”
“…What?”
Titania beamed brightly, looking like a mischievous child plotting a wicked prank. Lisianthus could swear he had never seen her face look so genuinely, radiantly delighted.
“Let’s wreck this place, so no one ever forgets what happens when we cross paths.”