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Chapter 2: “My Ex-Boyfriend Had My Child? What Does That Mean?”
Only after I kicked Pascal in the butt and sent him away did I finally come to my senses.
This isn’t a dream!
When I left the living room, I saw the familiar hallway and staircase.
It was a place I knew very well, yet it also felt strange.
This mansion in the capital had belonged to the Otreha Baron family for generations. But after I got married, my mother sold it when she married her third husband.
After that, I no longer had a real family home.
After looking around the house for a while, I finally woke up completely when I looked into the mirror in my old bedroom.
A simple brown dress.
Light brown hair that still had a healthy shine.
Smooth skin.
And most importantly, olive-colored eyes that still had their light in them.
It was me.
It was the version of me from the time when I still had dreams and hopes, a version I had thought I had lost forever.
I raised both arms and spun around in place.
I could walk without a cane.
I could see clearly.
I could breathe easily.
Tears suddenly ran down both my cheeks.
I probably look ridiculous right now.
But who cared?
I had returned to the time before everything went wrong!
I immediately threw myself onto the bed.
As I stared at the ceiling I had only seen in my memories, I began organizing my thoughts.
I need to deal with the debt first.
If I didn’t solve the debt my older brother had created through his obsession with business investments, I would eventually be married off to some man, even if it wasn’t Pascal.
First, I need to make money.
But what could I do?
Irina Otreha.
Twenty years old.
She wasn’t incredibly beautiful.
She hadn’t become a great mage.
She wasn’t an elegant woman who was talented in art, music, or literature.
The greatest thing she had achieved in life was dating the heir of Duke Voltane for one year.
That was all.
She was an ordinary and rather unremarkable woman.
And that was who I was right now.
Even if I used all the knowledge I had from my previous life to start a business, I would need starting capital.
And I didn’t have any.
Ha. I went back ten years into the past, only to worry about money again.
Just as I was thinking hard through my tears, my bedroom door suddenly slammed open without even a knock.
“Irina Otreha! What on earth did you do?”
Pascal must have complained to her already.
My mother glared at me and shouted.
“He’s handsome! He’s polite! Other than his social status, there’s nothing wrong with him! What could you possibly dislike about him? Go apologize to him right now! Married couples fight sometimes. You’ll get over it!”
“So he’s such a wonderful husband that he got another woman pregnant and still wants to marry me?”
“…Another woman? And he has an illegitimate child?”
“The eldest daughter of the Bestin Trading Company. Lea Bestin.”
My mother’s face became pale for a moment, but she quickly recovered and raised her voice.
“Listen. She’s only the daughter of a merchant family. What’s wrong with a man having a mistress? And the child… well, anything could happen. The important thing is that you are the only woman he has sworn before God to marry.”
For reference, my mother’s lifelong belief was:
“A woman needs a husband.”
“I can live without getting married.”
Lea Bestin had also lived perfectly well in my previous life despite everyone calling her an old maid.
Although she had secretly been raising my man’s child.
When she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind, Mother immediately changed tactics.
“Then what? Are you going to be happy if your brother loses his title and your mother ends up living on the street? If the Oker family turns their backs on us, there won’t even be enough left for this family to survive tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be happy then?”
Her blunt question left me speechless.
In the end, she was saying that I had to be sold off in marriage to pay the debt my brother had created.
“You shouldn’t have gone to the Magic Tower! You wasted the most beautiful years of your life there. That’s why Pascal is the only decent marriage prospect you have!”
That was something I couldn’t let go.
“Mother, the money I earned as a mage is actually more than the money my brother made from his investments!”
“You never even became a high-ranking mage!”
At that moment, someone entered the room with heavy footsteps.
The strong smell of alcohol reached me first.
“Irina! Have you gone crazy?”
My older brother, Schle Otreha, was completely drunk.
He immediately reached out, grabbed my hair, and shoved me.
“Hey! What if you hurt her? She’s supposed to get married!”
“Mother, is that really what you’re worried about right now?”
Then Schle turned toward me.
“You… you stupid… What exactly did you say to Pascal Oker? Why did he suddenly decide to break off the engagement?”
His hands were trembling.
“Just wait a little longer! If this investment succeeds, I can recover everything! But you… you ruined everything!”
I sat on the cold floor and looked up at the two of them as they continued shouting.
Oh my God.
Past me, how did you live in a family like this?
If I were really the old Irina, I would have been hurt.
I might have fallen into despair and simply done whatever Schle and Mother told me.
But things were different now.
I wasn’t the young twenty-year-old Irina anymore.
It felt like I was watching someone else’s misfortune from a distance.
I slowly stood up.
I didn’t even bother fixing my messy hair or wrinkled skirt.
One thought filled my mind.
I couldn’t live the way I had before.
In my previous life, I had already learned that this family would never protect me.
Depending on them had only been an illusion.
My future was entirely my own responsibility.
“If the Otreha family’s title and honor can only survive if I marry Pascal Oker, then consider them already gone!”
“Irina! Are you really going to be this selfish?”
“Yes! Yes, I am! I’m a selfish person who grew up however I wanted. So think of me that way and give up everything!”
I suddenly turned toward Schle Otreha, who was standing beside Mother with his fists trembling.
“Did you ever think about what would happen to this family if you invested all our money and lost it?”
Then I turned toward the Otreha Baroness, who was Schle’s mother but had never really felt like my mother.
“And Mother, when you bought jewelry and dresses every season, did you ever worry that our family might go bankrupt? Maybe if you sold all the jewelry you’ve bought over the years, you wouldn’t have to sell your daughter. Did you ever think about that?”
Silence filled the room.
Then Schle pushed Mother aside.
“You’ve completely lost your mind!”
He raised his hand.
I tightly closed my eyes, expecting to be hit.
But then I heard hurried footsteps.
Mother, who cared deeply about appearances, barely managed to stop my brother.
Someone peeked into the room through the open door.
“M-Madam! Master!”
It was Rita.
She was the only personal maid still working in our household.
Rita was responsible for taking care of Mother’s and my clothes. Because she had a relatively high position among the maids, she normally didn’t do small tasks like delivering messages unless something serious had happened.
Mother knew this too, so she lifted her chin slightly and urged Rita to speak.
“Don’t shout so carelessly. Just tell me what happened.”
“The butler said an important person has arrived…”
“Really?”
Mother’s face immediately brightened.
She quickly dragged the still-angry Schle out of the room.
“Rita, you never know what might happen, so make Irina presentable! Ugh, just looking at that girl makes me feel suffocated.”
An important person coming to this house?
Who could that possibly be?
But Mother and Schle seemed to have another idea.
Perhaps they thought Pascal Oker had changed his mind.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
Pascal Oker was probably busy meeting his beloved Lea Bestin right now.
There would be plenty for those two to talk about.
Once Mother and Schle were gone, Rita hurried over to me.
“Oh, no… Miss…”
Poor Rita looked so worried that tears were even gathering in her eyes.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“I’m fine.”
As Rita combed through my messy hair and fixed my dress, her hands trembled.
Sensing that something serious had happened, I asked her,
“Rita, what’s going on?”
“The butler said a very important person has arrived.”
“Why?”
“The butler is worried that someone might have come to collect a debt. Miss, what should we do if that’s really the case?”
Rita looked completely discouraged.
If our family went bankrupt, she would lose her home too.
They could probably give her a recommendation letter, but a recommendation from a ruined noble family wouldn’t be worth much.
I thought about what had happened at this point in my previous life.
Originally, I had believed Pascal’s explanation and apologized for “misunderstanding the relationship between Lea and Pascal.”
It had been my first humiliating defeat.
And it had been the wrong decision that determined the rest of my life.
Once I apologized for my “misunderstanding,” Pascal became kind to me again.
Our marriage proceeded smoothly according to the planned arrangements.
Had anyone come to collect the family’s debts during that time?
No.
I didn’t think so.
“Miss, I’m finished. You look completely fine now.”
While Rita was carefully smoothing out the wrinkles in my dress, Mother suddenly came back upstairs.
She looked unusually desperate.
“Rita! Rita! What are you doing just standing there? Is that really how you fixed her hair? Braid the sides in the fashionable style and tuck them behind her ears! That hairstyle suits Irina.”
Mother clasped her hands together as if she were praying and nervously walked around my room.
“My goodness! Why did your brother have to get drunk at a time like this? I wonder if he’s properly entertaining our guest…”
“What exactly is happening?”
Mother looked at me with a bright smile.
It was the seductive smile that had charmed countless men throughout her life.
“Irina, Irina! Your suffering is finally over. Your happiness is about to begin!”
“What?”
I had a bad feeling about this.
Those were exactly the same words Mother had used when she sold me off to Pascal.
“The young Duke Voltane has come to see you!”
I gasped without meaning to.
That had never happened in my previous life.
