YED Chapter 100

Why couldn’t she be more stupid? Kaela thought she was stupid enough, but apparently not.

Even when she didn’t want to see it, it was crystal clear. The Emperor’s ‘usual tactics’ – Kaela had experienced them, and Peon had experienced them even more.

Just as Kaela was made to deliver poison, Peon was punished by having to deliver a loaded gun before the regression. He couldn’t avoid it either.

When he received the sudden order to bring the gun, he must have realized his mistake upon seeing Duke Ostein there. But like Kaela, he had no choice but to return.

Just as Kaela’s punishment was completed by watching her husband stumble out coughing blood, Peon’s punishment at the time was completed by marrying the deceased Duke Ostein’s daughter.

Kaela felt wronged, knowing that Peon must have returned along that terrible path, equally shocked and helpless. She felt so wronged.

“I don’t care about your circumstances, Oppa. I don’t want to know – you did the same to me!”

So she never asked him anything in return. She never asked how he regressed, or what happened when her father died. Like the cold and heartless Peon, she too showed absolutely no interest.

“You said you married me because I was a dangerous spy to keep close! You said you never trusted me! You said I was disgusting! So I didn’t want to trust you either, that’s why I never asked!”

Looking back, Peon had been different from the first day after the regression. He carefully looked after her in every way, and after their marriage, when he legally gained the right to care for her, he devoted himself entirely.

Every day, affection poured out like water, to the point where she began to take it for granted no matter how much she tried to stay alert.

Particularly his extreme sensitivity about food and serving her meals personally was a well-known fact among all the employees at Lusenford Castle.

When Kaela refused to eat, Peon would use every means possible to make her eat even just one bite.

So to avoid getting used to that outpouring of affection, Kaela tried until she bled. She closed her heart and refused to answer whenever Peon asked about the regression. If she answered what she knew, Peon would tell her what he knew.

Her curiosity would definitely become interested in those answers, and the conversation would inevitably continue. If there were inconsistencies, they would end up explaining themselves. And then she would end up believing those explanations.

So she had to avoid any conversation at all, not even a single word. That’s how Kaela maintained her silence.

[I never ordered them to kill you like that. I’m sorry for being incompetent. I’m truly, sincerely sorry. But I really didn’t give such an order.]

Ah, so it wasn’t an order to starve me to death. Like a fool, she immediately believed the words she got after thoroughly scratching, shaking, and sharply attacking Peon. Even though she shouldn’t have believed such words, she unconsciously did.

It was pathetic. Why should she believe Peon when he never believed her until the end? It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair at all to Kaela, who died of starvation in the cold without having committed any crime, with no one believing her.

“I didn’t say anything and I didn’t want to hear anything! I know! I know everything! I know I shouldn’t believe Beatrice’s words! Because only a fool would believe the mocking words she whispered when I was dying!”

Beatrice wasn’t someone who would tell the truth even to a dying person. She knows. Whether before or after the regression, she shouldn’t believe the suspicious Beatrice’s words. She shouldn’t believe Peon either, who apologizes after the regression.

“But you were still the one who did wrong.”

Tears poured from her eyes. The flowing tears blurred her vision, making it hard to see Peon clearly.

“You wronged me… If you did wrong, you should just keep doing wrong until the end!”

Everything should have been clearly divided between victims and perpetrators. The crime should be clear, and the consequences should be certain. There shouldn’t be any contradictions like being both perpetrator and victim.

Especially not any solidarity in being victims of the Emperor’s actions – that absolutely shouldn’t exist.

“Why aren’t you an accomplice…”

Kaela gasped as she tried to say the horrific words asking why he wasn’t an accomplice, why he hadn’t joined in killing her father.

“Why…”

Why were the reasons to hate, ignore, and resent Peon for life gradually disappearing? Why was she slowly understanding him as she got to know him? Why were her heart and head working separately?

She hated it. She hated it so much. She didn’t want to feel any sense of kinship with Peon. She had wanted to eternally neglect him without feeling any emotion, just as he had done to her.

“I am your perpetrator, Kaela. Nothing changes that.”

Large hands caught and pulled her before she could collapse onto the carriage floor. His heavy voice spoke slowly.

“I’m nothing but a sinner to you. What I did won’t disappear or change. The past is clear. Four years is too long to forget.”

Even now, he was committing an unforgivable sin. Peon gently wiped his sobbing wife’s eyes repeatedly. The man who desperately wanted to erase and change the past was quietly consoling her.

“I told you to resent me thoroughly. Don’t cry. I’m not worth your tears.”

He spoke coldly as always, but his voice trembled slightly. Too many tears were flowing.

Exhaling hot breath, her small chest, burning with fever, heaved violently as if about to break. No matter how sad, people don’t cry this much. They don’t sob as if dying, twisting their entire body.

“It was me. I took everything from you, even your death.”

He confessed his sins in detail as if in confession, his face twisted in pain. The pale Peon continuously wiped his wife’s face. No matter how much he wiped, the tears kept flowing.

“I won’t grant any of your wishes. I’ll keep you by my side and possess everything until your last breath.”

That was the sin he would continue to commit. He listed his sins as if giving reasons why Kaela shouldn’t cry. Even so, the dense intensity of emotion in his words was suffocating.

“So don’t cry. It’s nothing.”

Her sobs began to hiccup like she was losing her mind from lack of breath. Peon slowly consoled his wife who seemed ready to release years of pent-up tears.

“Kaela, please, don’t cry.”

But Kaela cried as if dying, as if she couldn’t hear anything.

When the carriage arrived at the Grand Duke of Lusenford’s townhouse, the Grand Duke carried out his unconscious wife, who had fainted from exhaustion after crying.

****

Her entire body felt like a waterlogged blanket, endlessly being pulled downward. It felt like being completely buried.

That’s why Kaela deliberately avoided tears. While others said they felt refreshed after crying, she only felt dizzy and tired. It was just a useless and exhausting bodily byproduct. It was also a symbol of weakness, so she thought she could control herself to not cry.

Kaela barely lifted her heavy eyelids. Her limp body was wrapped in a comfortable warmth, neither hot nor cold.

It wasn’t hard to find the small light in the dark room. A warm light was dimly lit so as not to disturb her eyes.

And at the end of that light, with his back to the window and next to the extinguished fireplace, sat Peon, watching the bed.

Their eyes met but he said nothing, and Kaela actually had no strength to speak. Her throat was swollen from crying too much.

She stared blankly at her husband. His hair, which had been short when they married, was slightly longer now, making him look both relaxed and decadent.

He had loosely undone his usually neat clothing, rolled up his sleeves, and unbuttoned his shirt to his chest.

The visible veins on his forearms, his sturdy neck and collarbone, and the chest muscles below – yes, he didn’t just look decadent, he was decadent.

“Let’s drink some water first.”

After waiting a while to gauge whether Kaela had truly awakened or would fall back asleep, he finally decided she was awake and stood up. The low light cast a deep, enormous shadow.

Being quite bulky and tall, his shadow was large. Yet he moved silently, never once waking Kaela with noise.

His purple eyes were dark as he approached. While he wasn’t well-versed in the latest fashionable Craine etiquette, he possessed a certain elegant and refined dignity.

That dignity neither broke nor faded even when he fought with a sword against monsters and foreign tribes in the rough north.

He used the most traditional classic etiquette, and when he respected and valued old-fashioned virtues that others considered outdated, they instantly shed their age and were revived.

People despised Peon’s birth, yet when he appeared, they envied everything about him. He was that kind of man.

“Just drink a little.”

Strong arms gently lifted her with familiar ease and brought water to her lips. She couldn’t refuse. Her throat was too dry. Though Peon used the habitual soothing phrase “just a little,” he actually hoped she would drink more, and Kaela drank much more than he had expected. Thank goodness.

“Would you like more?”

His voice was incredibly gentle. Kaela shook her head. He didn’t press further and laid her back down. His touch was delicate as he carefully tucked the thin blanket up to her neck. He certainly wasn’t the type to provide such attentive care.

“Leave.”

“Don’t push me away again, Kaela.”

At her habitual dismissal, Peon immediately furrowed his brow. The elegant man appeared like a calm, deep lake on the surface, but that lake was dyed pitch black, its depths invisible. An abyss stirred within.

“What do you think I’ve been doing sitting in that chair all this time?”

She didn’t know. He had always been unknowable, making her miserable. She had wanted to catch his eye even a little, but those lofty eyes never held her. He was too high up to even look down at her. So she didn’t know. Couldn’t know.

“I listened to your breathing and counted your pulse. There was nothing else I could do.”

He checked and rechecked if she was alive, if her breathing hadn’t stopped, if her pulse was regular. He had already spent many nights like this.

“Besides wondering when you would wake up, and if you could wake up at all, I couldn’t think of anything else. Don’t push me away after making me like this.”

Every time she woke from a long sleep, he was right there. Kaela bluntly spoke to the man who had developed a habit of checking her pulse whenever he held her hand.

“You’re shameless.”

“I’m hurt you’re only realizing this now. Are you that uninterested in me?”

The ruler of the North had changed considerably. His personality had become much more glib.

“Why have you changed so much?”

“Changed? I was always like this.”

Kaela stared at him blankly. Since when? Liar.

“…I found my original personality after the regression.”

Peon corrected himself under her steady gaze.

“Thanks to you, I found it faster.”

What exactly had she done? Pure nonsense.

“Right, you’re innocent. It’s my fault for being swayed by you.”

Swayed? Kaela’s eyes widened at this completely new statement.

“Why do you look so clueless? You know how I beg like a dog, trembling before you.”

Those who have experienced unrequited love recognize their own kind. The gaze that never leaves, circling around constantly, that terrible affliction where a single smile or momentary glance sends your heart soaring to the heavens before plunging it into the ground.

Peon scraped together memories of Kaela, who had suffered just as he did with this love that tortured his mind and carved out his heart, this love he couldn’t look away from.

The man who was desperately clinging to memories of being loved despite his cruel indifference was now looking at her with the same eyes she once had for him.

“You even made my revenge inconvenient and bothersome. No, not just revenge – everything of mine was pushed back in priority because of you.”

There are many methods of revenge. Whatever the method, achieving the goal is what matters. It’s enough if the target suffers satisfactorily. A dragon’s way is easy, simple, and can be executed immediately.

But the human way is troublesome, annoying, and takes a long time. Peon chose an extremely human method. The decision was made in the audience chamber.

He had seen the future and knew that revenge in the dragon’s way would only end up hurting Kaela more.

But the human way had many disadvantages. He had to show the unseemly sight of drinking poison in front of Kaela. His small, young wife must have been greatly shocked.

He could tell just by seeing that proud lady crouching and trembling at the entrance to the monster’s garden. Still a worthless husband. To show such a sight.

“I find myself ridiculous, so I can only imagine how absurd this must seem to you.”

“D-don’t say such strange things.”

Kaela found his self-deprecating mumbles strange to her ears. That sound was odd. It couldn’t be. Peon had always been someone she had only watched one-sidedly from beginning to end. There was no way they could have faced each other. She wasn’t foolish enough to still dream futile dreams.

“What happened today, you just let it happen. You did it deliberately in front of me.”

“I could have stopped it.”

He admitted readily.

“But I left it alone because you would have disliked it if I did. You feel more at ease when I pretend to be human.”

“…How long have you known?”

“Since you entered the garden entrance. I’m always aware of your presence.”

She hesitated about her husband who answered so readily, and after hesitating, asked:

“You didn’t know my father was in the monster’s garden?”

She finally asked about what happened when he passed away.

“I didn’t.”

He answered plainly but didn’t add anything extra. He only answered exactly what was asked.

“What happened?”

“At that time, I requested a private audience to present gifts and ask for help supporting Lusenford, but they refused. They basically said since you’re an illegitimate child, just show your face during a brief free moment and leave. I said I understood. Who was with the emperor, I only found out when I got there.”

“…How convenient. How nice.”

A weak voice mumbled in the darkness. It was such a thin voice that it was worryingly close to completely giving out.

“I didn’t even get a chance to say such things, but you get a chance to explain. How convenient.”

She hadn’t wanted him to believe her, but she had wished he’d at least given her the right to speak. The man who hadn’t listened to her at all from beginning to end knew well what he had done wrong, even if it was due to the mind control from the taboo.

“Why did you let me know?”

After going round and round, back to that question.

“You could have tried your hardest to keep me from knowing.”

“How do you know whether my words are lies or not? Don’t believe me, Kaela. Question everything.”

“The fact that you made me question things itself bothers me.”

Peon laughed. He laughed softly alone in the darkness.

“I’m glad you feel that way.”

Kaela couldn’t hold back and shot up. But perhaps because she had just barely woken up after collapsing from dehydration, she felt dizzy. Peon gently caught her as she stumbled.

“Kaela. Question things, and think about them. About what to do.”

He whispered as he very carefully laid down her weakened, useless body.

“That will keep you alive and moving, even if just for a while.”

That alone was enough.