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Chapter 08
The sky, once streaked with red and gold, was gradually being dyed in the deep hues of night.
Vivian, who had drawn back the curtains, gauged the passage of time by the changing sky.
By now, things should be settling down, right?
The window of time given to her lasted only until the chaos died down and the imperial troops returned. With even the governor away from his seat, this chance to ransack the governor’s office would never come again.
Vivian’s hands trembled violently as she searched the office without discrimination.
She checked the documents laid out on the governor’s desk first, then opened the drawers attached to it. But she couldn’t find even a trace of the original documents she had seen at the orphanage—nor any records of people who had crossed the border since the war.
Did I overlook them because I was in such a hurry?
Vivian spread every piece of paper she could find across the desk. Stamping her feet in place, she tried to calm herself and examine each word carefully.
Since the documents were written in the imperial common tongue, she reread them several times in case she had missed something—but there was nothing.
Letting out a hollow breath, Vivian approached the bookshelf that filled one wall of the governor’s office. The thought of having to search a bookshelf taller than herself made her head spin. As her blood raced, her fingertips kept tingling.
Can I do this?
She had to. If she wanted to find Noah.
“You’ve got some nerve.”
It was just as Vivian reached out to pull a file binder from the shelf. A calm voice sounded from behind her.
Frozen stiff, Vivian dropped the binder. As it hit the floor, torn pages fluttered out and gently settled on the white marble tiles. Her hands began to shake uncontrollably.
In that brief moment, countless thoughts flashed through her mind, and she reached a conclusion. This voice belonged to someone who was not supposed to be here.
Please—no. Clinging to that hope, Vivian turned toward where the voice had come from.
A man with hair as dark as the deepened night sky, with features so finely sculpted they looked almost artificial. It was him.
The governor twisted his lips into a crooked smile.
He sensed something was wrong the moment he opened the door to his office.
The space—furnished with several chairs and a long table for meetings—was slightly disordered. A single sheet of paper lay off to one side, a ballpoint pen on the floor.
Did a servant cleaning up make a mistake?
Tilting his head slightly, Hemel picked up the fallen pen. Then, looking through the gap between the floor and the freestanding partition, he spotted a pair of worn-out shoes.
He returned the pen to its original place and pulled back the partition. Until that moment, the brazen intruder had failed to realize that the owner of this office had returned.
The woman rummaging through the darkness with a single candle lit on the desk, absurdly enough, had hair like spun gold. She was the woman who had escaped his gaze from the podium earlier.
I wondered where she was in such a hurry to go.
“Here.”
Instead of the woman, who had gone completely rigid, Hemel kindly picked up the dropped binder and scattered pages. When he grasped her violently trembling hand, he felt a weak resistance as she tried to pull away.
“If you’re going to rummage through someone else’s room, you should at least clean up afterward.”
He forced the papers he’d picked up into her hand.
“What—can’t you do it?”
With a mocking smile, he looked down at her.
Moisture slowly welled up in her large, golden eyes. Candlelight and moonlight mingled within them. Watching her body tremble like an aspen leaf, a sudden sadistic urge rose within him.
“But you still have to.”
Even though he held both her hand and the thick binder at once, his grip was still more than enough. As he courteously returned the binder to its original place, she parted her lips as if searching for words, but couldn’t bring herself to say anything. The shaky breaths that slipped out brushed against Hemel.
Silence and tension mingled together. Like a predator sizing up its prey, Hemel quietly examined the small woman who didn’t even reach his shoulder.
What should I do?
That thought had just crossed his mind when—
“…!”
Seizing the moment when the pressure on her wrist loosened, she desperately wrenched herself free from the hand restraining her and hurled her body straight toward the window beside the governor’s desk.
Crash!
She was fast—but the governor, who had already predicted her escape route and vaulted over the long desk, was faster.
“Ugh!”
He seized Vivian’s wrist as she tried to open the window. She struggled with all her strength to break free again, but unless he let his guard down twice, it was impossible for her to overcome the physical difference between them. And besides, he was a soldier.
With a simple kick at her feet, the governor knocked her down.
Straddling the fallen Vivian, he pressed her mouth shut so she couldn’t even cry out. He pressed down so hard that she couldn’t even bite her tongue. Pain flared sharply from the leg she had twisted when kicked and from the wrist he held.
“You’re insane.”
The low voice that slipped out was heavy with intimidation. A shiver ran down her back where it met the cold marble floor.
Knock, knock.
As if he’d even brought guards with him, the sound of knocking seeped into the silence.
“May I enter, Your Excellency?”
Vivian squeezed her eyes shut.
She was the linchpin of the Roté Society. Absolutely not. For the liberation and reconstruction of the kingdom, the last remaining royal of Rosetheia must never be allowed to die.
If she were the original Vivian—who knew better than anyone the value of her own life—she would never have done something this reckless. Under normal circumstances, she would have kept her eyes on the window facing the main gate and fled the moment she saw vehicles arriving.
But she had been blinded. She hadn’t heard anyone enter. No—if it hadn’t been about Noah, she wouldn’t have been caught so foolishly in the first place.
When she slowly opened her eyes, she saw the governor staring at her. Her cheeks throbbed where his hand held them. This time, unlike when he had grabbed her wrist, there was no restraint in his grip—as if he had no intention of letting her go.
A hollow laugh nearly escaped her. Even if time were turned back, Vivian would repeat everything exactly the same.
The moment she heard the troops would be leaving the governor’s residence, she would come here again. She would fail to watch the window again. She would become consumed with searching for Noah again. And even knowing it would end with her being caught like this, she would still do the same.
Even so, her only remaining blood relative—her only brother, the only person who had shared her childhood—was someone Vivian could never give up.
Crushed beneath the massive governor, in a situation where she might soon die, Vivian neither berated herself nor felt regret. She simply waited calmly for her fate.
“Your Excellency. I’m coming in.”
With a clatter, the door opened. The soldier tilted his head, failing to notice the two people barely concealed behind the partition.
“No.”
A low voice came from the governor, who was pinning Vivian down so she couldn’t move.
Startled by the unexpected answer, Vivian slowly raised her eyes. The governor’s hair, which she had thought was simply black, reflected the moonlight with a bluish sheen.
“It’s nothing. Stay outside.”
He added the last words while looking at Vivian, whose eyes were wide with shock.
I thought I heard a loud noise inside… But hearing the governor’s usual calm voice, the soldier decided the crashing sound must have been his imagination and went back outside.
The doorknob turned, and the door locked.
She had thought she could humbly accept even this death—but as the door fully closed, Vivian gasped for breath through the slight gap in his loosened grip.
For a moment, she even forgot the pain surging through her body. Blinking her wide eyes, she tried to steady her breathing. When the regular sound of marching boots faded away, the governor finally removed his hand.
Even after the weight pressing her down and the hand covering her mouth were gone, Vivian remained lying on the marble floor of the office. She tried to move, but her body, stiff with tension, refused to cooperate.
Then—click. The cylinder rotated. A loaded revolver was aimed squarely at Vivian’s forehead.
“It’s live ammunition.”
A few strands of hair, disheveled from the sudden struggle, had fallen across his forehead.
“Answer my questions honestly, and I’ll let you live.”
“……”
“Why did you dare pull something like this?”
The cold winter moonlight carried a faint blue glow. His eyes, reflecting that light, were like a finely honed blade.
Vivian bit her lower lip. As she did, the muzzle of the revolver gently pressed against her forehead. The chilling sensation made her lower the gaze she had lifted toward him.
“…I came to look for my younger sibling.”
After long hesitation, the words finally broke free in a fractured voice.
The fact that he was attempting a conversation instead of an immediate execution meant that she truly had a chance to live, even though she’d been caught red-handed ransacking the governor’s office.
“A sibling?”
“I have a younger sibling. …One I was separated from when we were very young.”
A lie crafted by cleverly mixing in truth was difficult to distinguish. Filled with desperation, Vivian continued in halting words. A cold wind slipped in through the slightly open window, stirring the curtains before passing on.
“I heard my sibling was adopted into the Trahaput Empire, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I thought there would be documents here—records of people who crossed the border after the war.”
Her nose stung, and her vision blurred. She couldn’t clearly see what expression the governor wore.
“…I just want to see my sibling once. Even if only from afar—just once… I wanted to see them.”
Golden tears traced down her temples and fell onto the marble floor. The governor, who had listened in silence, set the revolver down on the desk.
Did it work?
“Outside!”
He shouted as he pulled back the partition. The soldier who rushed in at the governor’s call froze at the scene before him—so different from before. Before his eyes was a woman sprawled messily on the floor, crying, and the governor who appeared to have subdued her.
“You called for—who is this?”
“An intruder.”
“An intruder?”
The governor’s gaze flicked briefly over Vivian before returning to the soldier.
“Take her away. And gather people at the execution grounds tomorrow.”
The order fell without a hint of hesitation.
At those words, Vivian’s face drained completely of color.
