CH 2

“I’m not acting…….”

“I wonder what you did to make your healthy body look like a corpse. Did the Duke of Bledel give you a weird drug? Or did you buy a black wizard to use taboo magic?”

He gently grabbed my shoulder. The man’s face didn’t seem to contain any emotion.

But the pressure from both of his hands clearly indicated that he was restraining his anger.

He spoke in a slightly irritated voice, perhaps frustrated by my continued silence.

“For an ordinary person, amnesia can happen at least once in their lifetime, but this is already your fifth time. Are you going to say your heart is feeling weird again tomorrow? You won’t be able to see in a few days?”

“Hey, what’s all this…….”

“It’s very strange. The most renowned doctors in the Empire all say you’re very healthy, but you always say you’re in pain, enough to die.”

His face grew closer. The blue pupils, combined with golden hair, were reminiscent of a dazzling sea of sunlight.

Oddly enough, the moment I met his eyes very close and head-on, I was overwhelmed by an emotion I couldn’t comprehend.

If I have to categorize it, it’s like sadness or resentment. I held my breath unconsciously because I thought my tears would burst at any moment.

“Let’s not waste our energy. Lethenia, you are no longer the daughter of a worldly duke, but the Empress of Asha. You know, our feelings don’t matter in this marriage. You and I can’t be an ordinary couple. Emotions don’t matter to us. You can do what you have to do in your respective positions.”

“…….”

“Lastly, don’t mess up the palace under the pretext of being sick. You’re a very precious daughter to the Duke of Bledel. Every time you do that, I have to explain everything to him, which is very annoying. Well, if you’re really sick, you can go to the Duchy for a while. Then….”

Tears fell from one of my eyes before he finished speaking.

It had nothing to do with my will. The man’s cold face changed subtly, like a small crack smeared on a flat glass. The man seemed somewhat perplexed.

As he paused and hesitated, tears also fell from my other eye.

I felt the man’s hand holding my shoulder relax.

“Lethenia?”

A fiery feeling seemed to devour me at any moment. The tears that began to flow did not stop.

I don’t know the reason why I’m crying right now. Why do I feel this way about someone I don’t know? However, what stuck in my ear was a familiar name.

Lethenia, Queen of Asha. Lethenia and the Duke of Bledel. It was the name of the characters in the most awful novel I’ve ever read.

Am I not awake yet? I remembered the terrible scene from my dream. My heart beat like it would explode.

The man’s big hand came to my face and soon fell down helplessly.

“……I’ll go now. Make yourself at home.”

I don’t know if it’s just my feelings, but the man’s voice seemed to have softened.

He finished talking and left the room. I was confused. Obviously, he called me Lethenia. If I were Lethenia, that man……

“Ianhart Cassell.”

Seeing his back, an inexplicable sadness welled up in my heart.

I remembered Lethenia in the novel, who was heartbroken whenever she saw the back of her husband leaving.

That man with blond hair and blue eyes. If that man, who seems to be hiding a strange hostility, is Ian Hart, whom I know, then

I possessed the body of the villain in a strange novel who had to die horribly.

I carefully laid my hand on my chest. As he disappeared from my sight, my heart, which was beating fast, slowly regained stability.

Surely this is not my feeling but the feelings of Empress Lethenia, who loves Ian Hart, the owner of this body I was in, remained intact.

I closed my eyes slowly. It felt like my heart was split in two.

To be exact, the feelings within me were divided into two main categories.

One was condensed with all the negative emotions of Lethenia and the other was really me, Kim Sejin.

When the man approached just a moment ago, Lethenia’s emotions ran wild, as if she were trying to control my body.

I should never get close to him. When I opened my closed eyes again, a deep sigh came out without me realizing it.

As soon as Kim Sejin, an icon of misfortune, died, I became the ultimate queen of misfortune, the villainess, Lethenia.

It would have been better if I just possessed her, but I was even put in a difficult situation.

I could feel the villainess’ feelings towards the male lead. I soon developed resentment towards Lethenia and towards the man who was trying to kill her, even though she had such a deep love for him. This was so unfortunate.

* * *

It was a life I never wanted to look back on.

My misfortune began after my mother passed away. Her cause of death was cancer.

At that time, I didn’t know much because I was young, but I knew it was a very difficult and painful disease.

Looking back, I think my mother was too young to leave after suffering so much.

My dad didn’t cry at my mom’s funeral.

<Sejin, call me mom now.>

Unable to understand the adult world, it was very difficult for me to accept my dad’s new wife.

Of course, it was still very difficult to understand, even after a few years, even after becoming an adult. My stepmother was my mother’s caregiver.

While Mom was battling illness, Dad was having an affair.

The kind and impressive caregiver came into my house at some point and lived there.

For me, our house has become the most awkward and uncomfortable space in the world.

Soon after, I had a baby sister. It was a girl with pretty thick double eyelids. The child’s presence made me feel lonelier. Except for me, they were a perfect family.

My stepmother hated me.

She never said that to me in person, but I felt that way.

My dad seemed to think my stepmother was an angel who married him even though he was old and had a child.

But I think it’s because of my dad’s wealth. My stepmother did not love my father. Everyone knows that, except my dad. 

<So, is there any way to get it in advance? It’s not for Sejin, it’s for my daughter. She’s like an abandoned child anyway.>

My stepmother was a foreigner who immigrated to Korea a long time ago. However, her Korean was very fluent and she spoke different languages as needed.

She always spoke in her native language on the phone at home. But I happened to hear him speak Korean that day because she thought no one was there. She seemed to be discussing inheritance issues with a Korean lawyer.

Listening to it, it turns out that she did not know by chance that my mother needed a caregiver.

As a child, I naively told my dad everything I heard that day, but he didn’t believe me. It was a natural result. As my father yelled at me, my stepmother wept with a fragile figure in front of him.

Like the common cliché in a crazy drama.

<Sejin, mom…… No, I’ll do better.>

In contrast to her tearful voice, stepmother’s eyes, which seemed devoid of emotion, were scary.

My father, who was furious at my stepmother’s appeal, gave me a slap on the wrist.

Similar things have happened frequently since then, and my mind has become ill.

It was my birthday.

Dad forgot about it. No, he didn’t seem to know. I didn’t go to school but headed to the beach, where I went to play with my mom.

Before she met my dad, my mom said she lived on an island. Maybe that’s why she missed the sea, even when she had not much time left.

And at some point, I started to miss the sea too.

Once upon a time, my dad fell in love with a young and innocent girl he happened to meet on an island he had been to.

At that time, dad, who was well over 30, had a history of divorce due to extramarital affairs, but he thoroughly hid it. His age and educational background were all lies.

For months, he worked hard to kill his hot-tempered personality and succeeded in seducing her with all kinds of sweet talk.

Then, as Dad planned, they had a child. 

As a result, they had no choice but to hold a ceremony in a hurry. My mother gave birth to me shortly after graduating from high school.

Thanks to him, she had to go through a tough marriage in the greenest days of her life.

At my dad’s third wedding, I learned the truth after I heard my aunts talking.

My mom doesn’t have family on her side to take care of her.

My maternal grandfather left home when my mom was very young. Not long after my mom got married, my maternal grandmother died in an accident.

It has been a long time since she lost contact with my uncle, who had never seen my face before. My dad and I were the only family to my mom.

Since then, the mom’s married life has not been smooth.

Dad doesn’t come home often, and when he does, he makes my mom suffer. 

My mom accepted all of my dad’s hysteria and never got angry.

To an angelic woman like her, Dad was infinitely lacking. But my mom said she was happy to have me.

As time passed by, I felt sad.

I kept thinking that my mom would have lived differently without me.

The sea breeze in the middle of winter was bitter enough to make me cry, and it made the tip of my nose even colder.

It’s time to go back. Still, one more hour, ten more minutes, a little more. I couldn’t leave because I wanted to stay.

When I came home late at night, I had to hear abusive language again. I expected it, but it was a particularly sad day.

<Why didn’t you go to school? If you’re intending to live like that, get out of my house right now, you pathetic bastard.>

It was an expected response. Dad was even more enraged by my sudden burst of laughter.

My stepmother pushed my back with a worried face and asked me to apologize to my dad. My anger flared up.

<Ma’am, don’t touch me.>

At that moment, my dad threw everything he could see at me and yelled at me to starve myself. 

Beyond the door, there was a sound of my stepmother telling my dad how he could do that to a child. I was tired of everything.

After that day, I didn’t eat at home for a while. It was more terrifying to eat with the unlucky people than to be hungry.