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Chapter 16
In the suffocating silence, Ivnia cautiously raised her hand.
“Can this be undone?”
“Kids these days don’t even understand the concept of a vow,” Seven clicked his tongue as if listening to nonsense.
He looked annoyed, took out his long pipe, put the mouthpiece to his lips, and lit the end. After taking a long drag and exhaling the smoke, he continued speaking.
“A vow is literally a promise. Once it’s completed, it becomes an unbreakable pledge. A marriage by vow means you must stay together ‘until death separates us.’ If you don’t want that, you can just go to a church and sign a marriage contract for fun.”
“But we didn’t even really get married… This was just a scam.”
“From the start, the vow that Ram exchanged with your family was that the two of you would marry. That fish-head guy completed it by cheating. The matching rings, the bride and groom, the ceremony shaped like a banquet with guests and toasts… My god, it was the most perfect small wedding ever.”
Seven shrugged as if he were genuinely impressed.
Only then did Ivnia snap back to reality and look at Ram’s left hand.
Could the wedding ring he had been wearing the whole time be the matching pair of the one she received from Guillermo?
Ivnia grabbed her ring finger in stunned disbelief.
The ring that she had thought fit perfectly earlier was now so tight it was impossible to remove, squeezing her finger painfully.
At that moment, only one thought filled Ivnia’s mind:
I shouldn’t have trusted someone who uses people like ignition devices.
She shouldn’t have believed that someone who acted kind on the outside would be good inside too.
She hadn’t been completely unaware that her opponent was dangerous.
Hannah, Seven, and even Ram had all warned her without hiding anything: Guillermo was not someone you could reason with, and he had a record of doing terrible things in the past.
“Is there no way to undo it? No matter what?”
Ivnia asked again with a pale face. She wasn’t really expecting another solution—she was more like someone refusing to accept a reality she didn’t want to believe.
Just as everyone remained silent, Ram returned to his seat behind Levi. He waved his hand and splashed cold water onto Seven’s pipe.
“No, you can break it.”
Seven, having just lost his precious tobacco, stood up and accused Ram with a spiteful tone.
“Getting divorced right after getting married. Wow, you’re trash…”
“No divorce! Caw! Absolutely not! Caw!”
“Poor Ivnia. How sad. A new bride getting slapped by her groom on the wedding day…”
“Since it’s already like this, why not just live well?”
“Shut up, Guillermo!”
Ram ignored Levi and Hannah’s interruptions, but he couldn’t ignore Guillermo. His voice rose sharply.
He looked as if he wanted to smoke again as much as when Ivnia first came to the castle, but instead of looking for a cigarette, he bit his own lip in frustration.
With a troubled expression, he said:
“‘Until death separates us.’ That means if we die, we can separate.”
“Are you seriously asking me to die?” Guillermo’s eyes sparkled as he countered.
He had planned this whole thing hoping his master would let him go. The freedom gained through the owner’s death seemed like a decent alternative for Guillermo.
Ram couldn’t have missed the fact that Ivnia had read his thoughts.
Ram, now even more angry, ground his teeth and said:
“If you temporarily make yourself appear dead, your soul will be free from the vow’s binding. Then you can break the vow.”
“You crazy bastard. That sounds easy, but you could really cross over to the afterlife. Just live with her for a bit! After all, Nina would need a few hundred years to reincarnate again, right?”
Seven stood up in a rage and protested against his friend’s suicide suggestion.
Ram’s confidence didn’t mean the plan was guaranteed.
Considering the real risk of dying, Seven’s argument made sense: waiting for time to pass would be the rational choice.
If Ivnia, a normal human, died first, the marriage would naturally end.
But there was one problem with that perfect plan: Ram could meet his real wife not in a few hundred years, but right now, anytime.
Ram didn’t have the time to wait for Ivnia’s death.
If this was a matter of choice, then as always…
“I… I can die,” Ivnia said, looking around nervously.
Everyone stopped moving.
Ivnia realized that she had skipped too much logic and spoken the conclusion first.
In her mind, it was a reasonable conclusion, but to people who didn’t know her sister was alive, it must have sounded absurd.
Feeling everyone’s sharp stares, Ivnia hurriedly added:
“Not right away. But if—just if—Nina might reincarnate sooner than expected. If that happens…”
“So you want us to clap and thank you for dying in your place?” Ram cut her off coldly.
He didn’t need applause, but if they were happy about it, then that would be enough.
She wasn’t important anyway, and not much time had passed since she had once already been ready to give up her life.
She had already once given up her life for people who treated her like nothing.
Ivnia felt she could truly sacrifice herself for Ram.
She answered calmly, with a steadiness that surprised her.
“I got a ring I wasn’t supposed to receive. That’s why this happened.”
“No one here thinks it’s your fault.”
“Then by that logic, Ram, you aren’t at fault either.”
“Oh, I’m more than at fault. According to you, I’m a hopeless bastard who pushed a child into a life-or-death situation and felt relieved about it.”
Ivnia tried to explain that she didn’t mean it that way, but he stopped her with a cold look.
Perhaps because she had only ever seen his warm side, she was surprised that his eyes could look so bitter.
Ram didn’t show his anger in a violent way.
Instead of scolding her, he passed her coldly and stopped in front of Guillermo.
Without hesitation, he stretched out his arm toward his opponent and said:
“Guillermo, you need to sincerely reflect on this.”
“Wait—!”
Guillermo flinched and tried to stop his master, but his body trembled and he covered his mouth.
It was as if something was blocking his words from coming out.
He coughed painfully, again and again.
After a few fits of dry retching, he began to spit something out.
…Fish?
Ivnia couldn’t believe her eyes.
Guillermo was vomiting out a living fish.
A strange fish with turquoise scales was crawling out of his mouth as if it were being forced out.
Even stranger, the more the creature appeared, the more Guillermo’s body shrank.
It looked as if he was being swallowed by the creature emerging from his own mouth.
Finally, the fish fell to the floor with a slap.
Ram glanced at it wriggling on Guillermo’s clothes, then disappeared without a trace.
