A blood-red sunset spread out behind him. The sun, barely hanging over the mountains, slowly sank, casting dark shadows everywhere.
The Grand Duke’s face was also shrouded in shadow. Just as a fleeting human emotion seemed to rise on his hardened expression—
“Your Highness, we must depart now.”
Someone spoke from behind. Instantly, a cold expression was again laid over his face.
The Grand Duke grasped my hand, which was holding onto his collar, and let it fall.
“Return to the castle.”
“But…”
“This is not a matter for a child like you to interfere in.”
The Grand Duke brushed past me. Following him, other knights boarded the ship. Lastly, Jas lightly patted my shoulder before getting on the boat.
The ship they boarded slowly left the wharf. Their figures heading toward the sunset looked as if they were walking into a blazing fire.
Before long, tears streamed down my cheeks. They were tears born from the despair of being unable to do anything anymore.
In the end, everything would unfold as the story goes. My father would fail to kill his friend, and the Duke of Acanthus would learn everything.
Soon, the Duke would lead the kingdom’s army to the north. There, my mother would be hit by an arrow while trying to save my father…
“hick…”
Tears burst forth uncontrollably. I had tried to do something, but it seemed that I was no match for the circumstances. I was just a child, after all.
Then, I swallowed my sobs and looked ahead. I thought that crying like this wouldn’t change anything.
Is this really my limit and the end? When I look back on today in the distant future, can I confidently say I have no regrets?
Have I truly done my best? Perhaps I am simply letting slip an opportunity that will never come again.
And soon I realized. There was still one last method I could try.
Yes, I would stake my life on believing in a 1% chance.
I walked toward the end of the wharf without hesitation.
Splash!
And I jumped straight into the cold water.
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
The water was painfully cold. I didn’t know how to swim at all, and I soon sank into the deep water, flailing helplessly.
With the suffocating pain, my consciousness began to fade. The moment I felt death drawing near, countless fragmented scenes flashed through my mind.
“——-!”
A man was crying out as he looked at me. He was not from this place. The clothes he wore were clearly from the Ram Empire.
Before I could process this, the scene shifted again.
In a body like this, I was chasing someone, bursting into laughter. Two people watched me from a distance. But they were definitely not my mother and father.
What were these images I was seeing? Were they visions before death? It felt too strange to be scenes from a novel. It seemed real, yet not quite real.
No, if I think about it, it was equally strange that I accepted the world of the book as reality without hesitation. I was living this life more fiercely than the one I had in my past life.
So what is real and what is fake? Where exactly is Zhuangzi’s butterfly flying…?**
“Ar!”
At that moment, a loud shout echoed. A strong pressure was weighing down on my chest. My stomach churned. Ultimately, I vomited a lot of water.
“Cough…”
As I coughed out the water, the hand that had been pressing down on my chest finally released.
Perhaps it was because I had forcibly vomited the water that had entered my body, but my nose and throat stung and burned. More than anything, my mind was a mess as the visions I had seen underwater and reality overlapped.
While I was still disoriented, suddenly, my arm was grabbed.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?!”
The Grand Duke shouted, shaking my drenched body.
“Jumping into the water to die, how could you do such a thing!”
He was angrier than I had ever seen him before.
I realized that my gamble had succeeded. He had not ignored me when I jumped into the water; he had ultimately saved me.
I lifted the corners of my mouth.
I won. You’ll never be able to abandon me now.
“…It’s okay if you don’t love me…”
At my words, which came out with great difficulty, his body immediately froze. Only cold droplets fell from his wet hair.
“I’ll love you instead…more than anyone in the world, more than my own mother.”
I reached out with both hands and embraced his neck.
“So, can you stay by my side?”
With that, my consciousness began to fade again. In the flickering of awareness, hot liquid dripped down onto my face.
I held him tightly, and as I heard him sobbing, I lost consciousness again.
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
I had no memories after that. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a room inside the castle.
And I suffered from a severe cold for several days. Although I was barely conscious the whole time, I could tell that the Grand Duke Iskas was taking care of me. The hand that touched my forehead was very different from my mother’s—large and hard, with many calluses.
“You can let go now; I’m not going anywhere.”
He would occasionally sigh and say that. It seemed I had unconsciously held onto him, worried that he might go assassinate the duke again.
When my health had somewhat recovered, the three of us had our first meal together as a family.
I felt like a happy child from a fairy tale. My father served me the foods I liked, and my mother wiped the food from the corners of my mouth with a napkin.
I was so happy it brought me to tears. If this were a dream, I never wanted to wake up.
As the meal was nearing its end, he spoke.
“I’m going to Rosen tomorrow.”
Rosen. That was the name of the kingdom’s capital.
My mother and I looked at him with questioning eyes at the mention of going to the capital instead of the Grand Duchy.
“I will formally request permission for marriage from His Majesty.”
Clang!
At those words, my mother dropped the fork she was holding. Her eyes trembled slightly.
“Your Highness, what you just said…”
“I’m going to formally marry you. You will become the Grand Duchess.”
My mother shook her head hurriedly.
“But my status… His Majesty will never allow it.”
My father was a noble of the highest rank with succession rights to the throne, while my mother was a commoner. It was not seen as desirable for someone of my father’s status to marry a commoner from the perspective of the royal family and high nobility.
So, the king would not easily permit this marriage. Above all, it was entirely up to my father to plead with the king. He would have to offer something significant in exchange for the marriage to be approved.
“I intend to renounce my claim to the throne. Then the king will likely accept this proposal.”
At his following words, I looked at him with a slightly dazed expression. To renounce the claim to the throne meant he was willingly giving up his right to become king.
My father turned his gaze to me.
“From now on, I plan to live for something else.”
As I remained in a daze, he seemed to smile a little and lightly tap my forehead with his finger.
“Ouch!”
I rubbed my forehead and glared at him in dissatisfaction. Why was he suddenly hitting me when I was just sitting still?
“Get your head straight, Arcadia. I’m planning to ask the king for one more thing this time.”
I tilted my head slightly. What else could he be asking for besides permission to marry?
“What are you going to ask for?”
“Your succession to the Grand Duke title.”
“What?!”
I was so surprised that I shot up from my seat.
Succession to the Grand Duke title? He was telling me to inherit the Grand Duke title?
“What do you mean? Why would I inherit the Grand Duke title?”
It was customary here for titles to be passed down only to males. If there was no legitimate male heir in the family, they would either adopt a son-in-law or, if that wasn’t suitable, the title would go to a relative.
Yet now my father was saying he would pass the Grand Duke title to me.
“Why?”
I couldn’t understand. Why create a precedent to give me the Grand Duke title? They were still young; they could just have my brother and pass the title down to him.
“Why not just have another child and pass the title to him?”
“I’m no longer planning to have any more children.”
“But it’s not the father who gives birth to children; it’s the mother.”
He shot me a sharp glare. I wasn’t wrong, was I?
TL/N: The phrase reflects philosophical pondering, particularly inspired by the ideas of Zhuangzi (장자), a Chinese philosopher. It questions the nature of reality and illusion. The reference to “Zhuangzi’s butterfly” recalls his famous dream where he could not distinguish whether he was a man dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man.
