“All the misfortune began with this ring.”
When she first heard the words, Christine didn’t quite understand.
Pristin stared at Christine, and soon began to talk with a long sigh.
“This ring was left as a keepsake by Her Majesty the Empress of the previous generation.”
“…What?”
“Yes.”
Pristin nodded.
“The Jerald you knew is His Majesty now.”
“…That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ll explain everything now. Listen.”
Pristin began to explain in detail how she had been taken to the capital with their parents, and what torture they had endured there. And what they faced when they were released.
“The news of your disappearance was devastating for us.”
Pristin kept the news as indirect as possible, worried about how it would hurt Christine. But Christine seemed to have already guessed.
How their mother, whom she thought was dead, had ended her life, and how her family had fallen apart in turn.
Pristin didn’t stop and told how she found Christine. The story of meeting Claret for the first time in the process. How her rescue of the princess had brought her to the attention of the emperor, and how she had learned that he was Jerald, whom she had known only as a servant of the Perk Empire.
And that’s how things ended up where they are now.
It was a long story, and when Pristin had told it all, she let out a deep breath. She looked both relieved and exhausted, like someone who had just gotten everything off her chest.
“…This is all I have to tell you, Christine.”
She looked her straight in the face, frozen.
“Everything I said is true; there is no lie.”
“…That’s impossible.”
“I…”
Pristin spoke quietly.
“I’ve been through all that nonsense for two years.”
“…”
“Do you have any more questions?”
“…No.”
Christine barely managed to get the words out, and she buried her face into the table in a heap. Pristin looked at her with a pitying gaze. Christine buried her hands in her face and muttered in an agonized voice,
“I feel so cursed right now.”
“What do you mean, Christine?”
She expected it, but it was still painful to hear.
Pristin retorted, biting her lip hard,
“It’s not your fault, don’t think like that.”
“Our parents died because of me.”
“I know why you’re saying that, but it’s not true.”
“Why not…”
“Because I’m the one who caused all of this, I killed them,”
Pristin said, her voice desolate.
“I’m the one who put them through all that, so in a way, I’m responsible.”
“Don’t say that!”
Christine, who had buried her head on the table, scrambled to her feet and faced Pristin, who looked like she was about to cry. Pristin smiled sadly, looking fondly at her sister.
“Yes.”
But it was like a crying woman’s forced smile.
“Do you understand now?”
“…”
“It’s not your fault, Christine. It’s not your fault. Everything…”
“Do you think it’s all your fault?”
Christine interrupted, unable to contain herself.
Pristin stared at Christine.
“Did you live like that for two years?”
“…”
“Did you believe that you brought all this tragedy?”
“After I reunited with His Majesty and learned the full extent of the situation,”
Pristin calmly affirmed,
“I did believe that.”
“…Sister.”
“Not now, of course.”
A wistful smile tugged at the corners of Pristin’s mouth.
“But I can’t completely abandon it now.”
“Sister, this…!”
“I know. It was too much of a coincidence, a joke of fate beyond my power.”
Pristin concluded firmly,
“By the same reasoning, it’s not His Majesty’s fault either.”
“…Yes, that’s true. It’s no one’s fault,”
Christine said, her voice filled with tears.
“It’s just that fate was too harsh on us.”
“…I guess so.”
Pristin stared at her sister in front of her and opened her mouth.
“You accept that so easily and quickly.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Right now, you are standing before me.”
Pristin wondered if things would have turned out differently if she had been in Christine’s shoes.
Perhaps her guilt would have lessened.
At least she’s alive.
“I couldn’t then, because… It was a time when you weren’t there, and it hadn’t been long since I laughed like I do now.”
“…”
“After the loss of our parents and the fall of our family, I devoted all my money to finding you. I wanted to leave this cursed empire of Limburg, but I held on because I firmly believed that you would one day return to your homeland.”
After saying that, Pristin smiled coldly, as if she thought it was funny.
“Yes. To be honest, I actually thought from the beginning that you might be dead.”
“…”
“But I couldn’t admit it. If I admitted it, I felt like I would die that day.”
It was actually a hope that was nothing short of a ghost who lived forcibly. She’ll come back one day, she’ll come back, she’ll come back… She spent a year clinging to that slim possibility.
“I wanted to live, with you… So I held on to that one percent chance… and here we are.”
“Oh…!”
Christine couldn’t bear it any longer when she heard it. She jumped out of her seat and hugged Pristin tightly.
Christine’s hands shook as she embraced Pristin. She couldn’t imagine what her sister had been through, how she lived, how she’d survived all that pain, how she’d made it this far.
“Thank you for being alive.”
Thank you for not dying, thank you so much. For letting me see you alive and breathing
“Thank you for not giving up on me, for not giving up on you.”
“…”
“I don’t want you to blame yourself.”
“I’ve let go of that more or less now that I’ve found you safely.”
It was true. If she hadn’t found Christine, the words would have been almost a lie, but now they were more or less true.
“But before that, it was so painful, because I… I kept all my secrets to myself.”
A terrible secret that she couldn’t tell anyone and had to hold on to by herself. Pristin felt her breath catch in her throat as she thought back to when she first entered the palace.
“His Majesty wanted to start over with me, but the guilt of wiping out my family made it impossible for me to accept his feelings, because I didn’t think I… deserved to be happy with him.”
Pristin considered it to be a terrible deed toward her tragically departed parents, thinking that she would become the worst kind of child. Although every parent hopes that their children would forget their old wounds and find happiness, Pristin lived in constant fear. She thought that her late parents, knowing all the facts in heaven, would blame her.
She thought that if her sister, dead or alive, saw her smiling happily, she would feel betrayed. The thought felt unbearable.
So she tried to distance herself even further from Jerald, as if she had to stay unhappy forever, as part of her penance.
“It felt like a sin for me to laugh alongside him. My family were all dead and missing because of me, and I thought it was ridiculous for me to be the only one to enjoy this kind of happiness. I was such a shameless, abominable, disgraceful human being.”
“Sister…!”
“Yes.”
Pristin recited in a distressing voice,
“I was in so much pain.”
“…”
“I’ve been tormented because I couldn’t rejoice when I met someone I loved and couldn’t get over; I’ve been tormented because I couldn’t accept someone I loved, even though I knew they felt the same way as me; I’ve been tormented because I couldn’t start our old relationship again; but most of all, I’ve been tormented because I couldn’t….”
Pristin couldn’t speak immediately, and at that moment she shuddered.
“It was the image of His Majesty smiling innocently, knowing nothing in front of me. I couldn’t bear to blame him, but rather he chose to show kindness and declare his love for me. Yet, I failed to return his affections, leaving him heartbroken…”
When she thought about it, she still felt bad. She felt like her stomach was going to burn at any moment, and the corners of her eyes felt hot, like she was about to burst into tears.
“But I loved him so much, I couldn’t tell him even a fraction of what I had been through.”
“So His Majesty doesn’t know anything yet?”
“I thought I’d rather leave him than let His Majesty know.”
She could never tell him the truth. His suffering was unnecessary.
There is no need to increase the number of people who suffer. Moreover, if that is the person she truly loves.
And most of all, Pristin was worried about Jerald’s personality, which was staunch.
“He would be unbearably distressed to know that he had caused me such tragedy, whether intentionally or unintentionally.”
He was that kind of person. Pristin knew it, and she could never tell him.
“I can’t see that even if I die…”
The problem was that, at some point, she couldn’t bear to turn away from him anymore. Pristin closed her eyes tightly just thinking about it as if it was terrible.
“But if I turned away from him more, I would really… I felt like I would die before I could meet you again.”
“Sister…”
“So… I still haven’t gotten rid of all the guilt, but I’ve fallen in love with him again.”
“…That’s good,”
Christine whispered softly, hugging Pristin a little tighter.
“Even if I had been with you then, I would have told you to start over with His Majesty.”
She would have felt more at ease then. But it didn’t matter.
“It’s okay. There’s no need to dwell on the past.”
Christine was in front of her now, and that was enough for her. She couldn’t ask for more.
Pristin looked at her with tear-filled eyes, and tears formed in Christine’s eyes as well. She spoke through trembling lips.
“I can’t imagine how painful it must be to have to bear that unspeakable anguish all by yourself, sister…”
No one will ever know, not even me.
Unable to get the rest of the words out of her mouth, Christine eventually pulled Pristin into a tight hug without saying another word.
That was the end of the tangled tale of their past.
