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Chapter 2
You’re saying he didn’t know I liked him? That couldn’t be. Why else would I have tormented Giselle? It was because I liked him and he liked Giselle.
Besides, I’d thrown tantrums at him more than once. After going through all that, if he still didn’t know I liked him, that would be absurd.
“…If you didn’t know, that’s a pity. Anyway, I’ll be off now.”
But now it didn’t really matter. Whether he knew or not, there was no way he would come to love me.
“Goodbye, Kiril.”
“…….”
I stood up and left the coffee house before him. It was the first time I’d left before he did.
It was always Kiril who left first, not me. That was before I openly started hating Giselle.
Luckily I didn’t cry. If anything, I felt relieved.
Falling for him hadn’t been my choice, but quitting was. That alone made me feel somewhat better.
It was a refreshing night, being dumped by the person I’d loved for ten years. From now on, the original story’s future was no longer mine. As of today I was, in effect, liberated from that future.
‘Of course I can’t be totally sure yet.’
The most certain way was to leave Erdona. To stop existing as Giselle Erdona’s foil, there was no better method.
Lying on my stomach in bed, I opened the booklet Jessi, my maid, had brought.
It was a catalog of properties — manor houses for sale in small towns far from the capital. Usually nobles used it for investments, but that wasn’t my plan. I intended to live in one myself. To leave everything behind.
Leaving Erdona wasn’t that hard. There was nothing here I felt attached to. Even if there were, when lives were at stake, my stubborn feelings couldn’t be an obstacle.
“The booklet will wear out, milady.”
I’d been staring at the booklet for a while when my lovely maid Jessi came in carrying laundry. I beckoned to her.
“How about this one? Too countryside?”
“…Hmm, it seems quiet. But it’s so remote going back and forth would cost more.”
“Right? Too bad. The house is pretty.”
I nodded in agreement. It wasn’t easy to find a manor I truly liked. Thinking of it as the house I’d live in for the rest of my life made me picky.
“Did you go out today?”
“…….”
Jessi’s question made my hand freeze.
“Yes. I did. I settled everything.”
“…Are you alright?”
Jessi assumed I’d simply ended a long crush.
If she knew that by that confession I’d escaped the future where I was murdered, she wouldn’t look so sad.
“I’m okay, more than I thought. Maybe I didn’t love him that much after all.”
Jessi nodded as if she understood.
She was my sole ally in this Erdona house. The servants who knew I was adopted didn’t want to wait on me. The many servants and the butler Gotman existed solely for Giselle.
‘The world itself seems made for Giselle; I’m not surprised.’
I’d endured their contempt with my whole body. That was when I found Jessi stealing my money on the street.
I’d had a childhood similar to hers. Maybe that’s why I felt a strong pull toward her as soon as I saw her.
Jessi became my maid. Of course it wasn’t easy for her either. Butler Gotman didn’t want to accept a maid who wasn’t chosen by him.
She stayed by my side because of Giselle’s sneers. Someone had mocked that two people in similar situations would understand each other, and that mockery kept Jessi here.
Jessi had a little brother and a grandmother to feed. Being a maid was much better than pickpocketing on the street. She clung to me, struggling to survive. Eventually we became most precious to each other.
I planned to take Jessi away with me — of course, her brother and grandmother as well.
She was the only person I had in this hellish place.
“Then why did you come back so late? You left in the morning.”
“Ah… I had some things to do.”
I avoided answering her sharp question directly.
My going out today hadn’t been just to confess to Kiril and shake off lingering feelings.
I wish running away had only required that one confession. Unfortunately, I had a few other problems to solve.
The trickiest among them was breaking my engagement with Redik Vangeger.
I had already handled that problem, however. Confessing to Kiril had required methods so extreme that they felt like child’s play compared to what I’d done….
For Jessi’s kind heart and her love for me, I chose to keep quiet. If Jessi found out she might faint in shock.
The next day in the early morning, the newspaper arrived at the Erdona residence. I had been sleeping deeply for the first time in a while when the commotion woke me.
“Milady! What—what is this!” Jessi burst into my bedchamber. I already knew what it was, so I took the paper from her casually.
The front page screamed:
‘Scandalous private life of the Red Erdona! Exclusive: Secret tryst with a lover!’
Beneath the huge headline was a photo that clearly looked like me kissing an unknown man.
The quality was better than I expected. It was worth the money spent.
“Hmph, I guess I’ll have to annul the engagement then. Right?”
“Milady!”
Even with Jessi’s fussing, I felt amused.
A few hours after the article about my infidelity ran, my fiancé, Redik Vangeger, the viscount, was surprisingly calm. He should have caused an uproar the moment he saw the article, but he was oddly silent.
I didn’t know when he’d come by, but I needed to hurry to the guild to pay the remaining balance.
“Ow.”
While settling the final payment at the guild, I cut my hand on the paper. A bright red line appeared. A tiny cut the length of a fingernail stung quite a bit.
‘Maybe my luck’s about to change for the worse.’
I didn’t say it out loud for fear of jinxing things, but misfortune had already arrived at my doorstep.
“Are you crazy?”
Not exactly a pleasant greeting.
Still half-asleep and wrapped in a robe, Giselle appeared before me. Even so, she looked every bit the pure, white Erdona.
People called us the White Erdona and the Red Erdona. The name for my side was always used mockingly. It referred to our hair color.
Giselle resembled the former Marchioness Erdona with her silver hair and blue eyes — like a lily in bloom.
I, by contrast, had reddish hair and vague green eyes.
“No.”
“Who does something like this unless they’re insane? You cheated?”
“Then don’t have me engaged to such a man in the first place.”
My conversations with Giselle always went like this. She treated me as if I had no right to anything, and I brazenly answered back.
‘Now that I think about it, you might have been right.’
She’d been right. In this world I had no claim to anything. Everything belonged to Giselle. Only Giselle.
“Go and explain immediately. Kneel before the viscount if you have to and apologize!”
She grabbed my wrist and forced me up, and the small pouch I’d been holding fell to the floor.
“I’m going to annul the engagement.”
“You’ve lost your mind. I won’t let the name of the Erdona be sullied because of you! Go apologize at once!”
Giselle huffed at me. Usually I was the one who shouted when angry, not Giselle — which made the household staff stare strangely when she did lose her temper but not step in.
“If you get annulled you’ll never be engaged again. Do you want to be sold to some old lecher?”
“Is that what you want, to get rid of me?”
“…This is unreal!”
I had always been jealous of Giselle.
I couldn’t accept that everything favored her. Every time I realized that something so easy for Giselle was impossible for me no matter how much I begged, I ground my teeth.
But giving up would be easier, or so they said. Now I wanted nothing. At least in Erdona. Even repeating that fact to myself didn’t anger me as much as before.
“There’s a limit to how much I’ll tolerate. If you don’t want to be thrown out of this house….”
“I was going to leave on my own anyway.”
“…What?”
Giselle gave a hollow laugh at my words and then sneered. Her laughter carried the certainty that I’d never be able to live outside this house.
“Let’s stop wasting energy on this tedious fight, please.”
I shook off her hand and passed by her.
