YED Chapter 136

Light and shadow alternately caressed Peon’s face as he lay shamelessly resting his head on her thigh.

‘Maybe the sunlight flickering through the leaves is bothering him?’

Kaela considered shielding it with her hand, but instead found herself gazing down at his face where light danced.

The most handsome person in the world. That was Kaela’s first assessment of her husband. Even as a three or four-year-old child, she had judged Peon first by his looks.

But no matter how much she looked around, Peon was the only one more handsome than her father. As his features matured, he developed an increasingly dangerous charm.

It was natural, given that this man with broad shoulders, not an ounce of fat on his waist and hips, and an almost threatening physique also possessed such an elegant face. He was both the most handsome man and a beautiful beauty.

Everyone, regardless of age or gender, would freeze just from his gaze. His cool yet brilliant eyes, his refined face without a single sharp edge, and his aura that shone despite being shrouded in deep shadows.

Peon, who possessed all of these qualities, loved her quite a bit now. The reason she said “quite a bit” was because that’s all she could be confident about. She could dare say this only because he had said it first.

“Don’t just look, you should touch me.”

As expected, he wasn’t actually sleeping. Kaela’s shoulders trembled slightly, feeling guilty despite only looking.

“Touch me, kiss me too.”

His cool yet delicate eyes opened slightly. Seeing no trace of sleepiness in them, he had clearly just been keeping his eyes closed.

“Is that too much?”

“You shouldn’t touch others carelessly.”

Peon sat up at those words.

“Wife.”

He called her by various names. My lady, Kaela, and now wife. Kaela only had one way to address him – Your Highness.

‘Oppa’ was simply a title she’d been using since she was three or four years old, toddling around, and now it just slipped out unconsciously.

“Am I an outsider to you?”

Kaela quietly averted her eyes. She didn’t understand why she was being scolded when she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“They say husbands are outsiders because they’re on the other side.”

“Who says that?”

Should I find them and secretly wring their necks?

“The old ladies. They say that’s what they learned from life.”

Oh dear. Peon fell silent. He couldn’t criticize the difficult marriages of those grateful old ladies who had always protected Kaela from wrong people.

“You always listen so well to those old ladies.”

Instead, he grumbled. He was even jealous of the old ladies. Wishing she would listen to him too, take his words as seriously – he dared to be jealous. Perhaps he was fundamentally flawed, unable to know his place.

“Because I found it to be true from my own experience.”

Peon, who had been hesitating briefly, suddenly sat up. Kaela liked this. She liked how he would get agitated over nothing, how his purple eyes would shake and his face would turn pale.

She liked how she could shake him so casually and mercilessly. Even the worthless and inadequate Kaela could dare to do so. It felt quite good to realize how powerful her influence was.

But it wasn’t just pleasant. At the same time, her heart ached dully. Hurting Peon meant she had to tear and rip at her own wounds too. Besides, it was true anyway.

The pleasant atmosphere froze in an instant. Like a fool, Kaela always ruins things. She breaks even the few good moments she manages to get with her own hands.

‘But.’

But she couldn’t help it.

‘What’s the point of good moments?’

She knew well how terrible the pain was when your organs dissolved from extreme starvation, how painful it was to know your husband had another woman for four years. The brief good moments with Peon were too thin and fragile to cover those memories.

Good moments made Kaela anxious. Knowing they would eventually break, she chose to break them herself. Would Peon understand this anxiety? Probably not. He’d look at her like some strange person and eventually lose interest.

“I’m reflecting on it.”

He spoke in a heavy voice, lowering his head.

“I’m always sorry.”

When sudden criticism poured out, he just apologized. It should have stopped there, but she became furiously angry.

“If you’re so sorry, why did you do it?”

One question she had resolved never to ask suddenly came out. Kaela flinched unexpectedly.

‘Why am I acting like this?’

Why am I so angry, speaking so rashly? But she wanted to speak.

“It’s so ridiculous. How can a person be so inconsistent? You weren’t originally like that.”

“What kind of person am I in your eyes?”

What kind of person? Someone with loyalty, who would love only one woman, and even if that love cooled, would keep his faith until the end.

“Someone who would treat all women except Beatrice Ravalley as objects, and especially despise me until the end.”

Stop it. This is childish. Even knowing it’s childish, the urge to scratch everything raw came first. The tiresome cycle repeated: scratch, regret, then rationalize that it was fine since everything would be ruined anyway.

“I am a ridiculous bastard, aren’t I?”

But Peon listened quietly and nodded, agreeing that was true.

He agreed calmly, without changing expression, even though he would become unhinged and even nauseated at the mention of Beatrice. Kaela waited to see if he might excuse himself and disappear, but he didn’t.

“I’m sorry.”

The apology made her even angrier. Something bubbled up inside her, and unfiltered emotions burst out. Her head felt hot.

“If you’re sorry, then…”

Huh?

Her voice cut off abruptly. She could see Peon looking puzzled as he listened to her words with a very penitent attitude, but she couldn’t continue arguing. This wasn’t like her.

She hadn’t dared to get angry, and had lost all anger since being confined in the North Tower. She could give up her emotions because she had given up everything. Being dead meant she had no expectations, and having no expectations meant she felt no anger. But now she was so angry.

Was getting angry always this easy?

“Then what?”

His slender eyes were indifferent. His casual tone was natural. While Kaela felt confused every time she spoke, everything seemed easy for Peon.

That easiness made Kaela angry again. While her head was burning hot and making her dizzy, those purple eyes that had always abandoned her so easily remained clear.

“Am I amusing to you?”

That must be it. That had to be it. Her hands trembled violently.

“You just apologize with words, and prevent me from dying! Since I can’t do anything, pretending to care a little bit is enough to resolve your guilt, right?!”

Some version of Kaela shouted loudly on the empty beach, while another Kaela crouched down and muttered quietly.

‘This is just like me.’

Although she had resolved to only receive what Peon gave, it was impossible since she had never received anything before. Beatrice would have received it gracefully. No, even comparing herself to Beatrice was tiresome now.

“Even if you say Beatrice wasn’t the reason, does coming to me and saying sorry like flipping your palm make all those years disappear?”

“No.”

Peon quietly answered and placed a cup of water near her hand that was gripping the seat. Her breathing was heavy.

“Since it doesn’t, speak a little slower.”

Tears suddenly welled up. This was too strange. She got angry easily, and tears fell easily. Her mind was confused and everything was jumbled up.

Actually, she knew. She understood that Peon had no choice. But first she would lash out, then recall that fact, and then feel pathetically sorry. It hurt so much, but she felt sorry for hitting back at him who had hit her.

“This isn’t right.”

Kaela wiped her eyes with her arm.

“This is strange. This isn’t right.”

She shook her head while crying.

“Oppa, this isn’t right. We, we aren’t right.”

Kaela kept shaking her head, not noticing that the dry but hot air had become cooler.

“I’m too broken.”

Ah, that’s it. Kaela realized as she spoke. She was completely broken. She had gradually worn down and eroded at Lusenford, finally losing many parts of herself while dying. She could never be restored.

Even when the harsh environment changed and things improved a little, she couldn’t endure it and tried to return herself to the desolate North Tower. She could only get angry and cry, unable to respond normally like a regular person.

“I’ll resent you for the rest of my life.”

Peon suddenly realized that familiar title wasn’t friendly, but rather defined their relationship only up to that point. A married couple isn’t just oppa and dongsaeng, are they? (TL: younger sister/brother)

If Peon and Kaela hadn’t married, they would have remained just an acquainted oppa and dongsaeng even when they turned fifty or sixty. Kaela seemed to call him exactly as such a person. Not as a husband.

“I’ll never forget what I suffered and endured, I’ll spew it out wildly, and then turn around and feel sorry.”

Because she hated feeling sorry, she wanted Peon to just be a bad person. Peon quietly spoke to those broken blue eyes.

“You understand me.”

She did understand. She empathized. She understood all the humiliation, shame, anger, and frustration of having his mother taken hostage and being terribly abused by the emperor. She even understood his hatred toward Beatrice.

“I understand.”

Kaela answered through gritted teeth, as if spitting out the words. Strange tears dripped from under her chin.

Why was she crying when she shouldn’t? She was used to speaking calmly and articulately with logic, but now her emotions were tangled and she was just shouting. It was pathetic.

“I hate that I understand. Do you understand me?”

“I understand.”

Being fellow victims, they shared the same sense of kinship.

“I’m sorry because I understand.”

“See? I hate that I understand, and you’re just sorry that you understand. But you know what? People can’t keep being sorry. At some point, they’ll think they’ve apologized enough and wonder what more I want. But I’m broken and will hurt forever!”

That’s why she couldn’t even receive. She would hurt while receiving, get angry about hurting, and push away the person giving – just like now.

“You should have just let me die.”

As she muttered weakly, Peon’s face hardened terribly. Kaela laughed while crying. She would end up just resenting him.

“We can only be like this. Don’t you understand yet?”

“I don’t understand.”

His stiff face as he answered somehow looked out of place. Deep shadows and light broke and wavered over it. While their surroundings were beautiful, they were not beautiful at all.

“We can empathize with each other but can’t comfort each other by licking each other’s wounds.”

“Why?”

His gleaming eyes questioned back. They twisted strangely, as if he didn’t understand at all and had no intention of understanding.

At times like this, Kaela instinctively realized that Peon wasn’t human. Normal people didn’t know, but she was more sensitive because she was the weakest, having been trampled to the bottom.

“Because I hate you. Because I keep resenting you.”

Because she kept chewing over wounds that she could never forget no matter how much she got angry and cried.

“So we should just end here. We’ll just keep eating away at each other and hating each other.”

Kaela sobbed, gasping for breath.

“Let’s divorce. Let’s divorce and never see each other again.”

And then a black silence fell. Some unknown, heavy and enormous force was pressing down on the entire atmosphere.

Kaela suddenly realized that the regular sound of waves had stopped. She was too scared to turn her eyes toward the sea. Somehow, she felt she shouldn’t see how the sea was silencing itself.

The broad leaves that had been rustling with a whoosh no longer made sounds as they collided with each other. The humid sea breeze that had been frantically combing through her hair also stopped. Everything froze.

Kaela raised her eyes. Her vision cleared as tears fell drop by drop. On Peon’s face where shadows and light had been playfully dancing, light was no longer visible.

His darkly lowered purple eyes were watching her without even blinking. His pupils had somehow condensed vertically, and his cool lips curved up.

“Hahaha!”

Peon suddenly burst into laughter. Kaela gasped in surprise. After laughing heartily, he looked genuinely delighted.

“Kaela.”

His voice, elated with joy, trembled over the silence created by the suppressed earth and sea.

“You’ve found the will to live again.”