Chapter 309 – 309. The Collapsed Home (3)
“Forgive me! Please… Please don’t make that choice again… !”
It was so pathetic and ugly to see his father shamelessly begging for forgiveness, not knowing what he had experienced while being sold as a slave.
Desperately restraining her impulsive desire to relieve her resentment, Lily closed her eyes tightly.
As the tears running down her cheeks fell onto her clothes and was absorbed, she took a small deep breath and pulled her purse from her bosom.
She undid the string that had closed her entrance and poured the contents of her purse into the wooden box of fairy tales in front of her father.
“Lily, Lily!? This is… !?”
Lily’s father asked, eyes wide as she clattered and saw the golden coins pouring down the wooden box.
“It’s all the money I’ve accumulated since I started working.”
“Uh, why…”
“Whether you want to do something new with it, spend your whole life playing around, or gamble again, it’s up to you.”
Lily stopped calling him ‘Father’.
“I am forward… They won’t consider you family. Meantime… Thank you for raising me.”
It meant a ‘separation’ in which she herself drew the line to her own father that from now on her relationship was man-to-man.
Leaving behind her blankly staring at the small pile of gold coins in front of her, Lily quietly turned her body and took her steps.
“Oh, where are you going!”
After a while, she heard her voice calling out from behind her, but Lily ignored the voice.
On her way back to her inn, Lily, who was walking behind her, suddenly stopped her steps, and Eun-hyeon looked behind her to check her condition.
“Flaw… Ugh…”
She lowered her head and saw her shaking, a single tear trickling down her face, and pulled her into her own arms.
“Lily. Are you okay.”
“Sorry… Do. I’ll show you my ugly side…”
Lily hugged her weeping self and patted her on the back, burying her face in Eun-hyeon’s chest who was comforting her.
She was so pitiful and ugly that she had to reveal her own family situation in detail, and she was not afraid to look at Eun-hyeon’s face.
I felt like I wanted to hide right now, even in a rat hole if I could.
She couldn’t escape her embrace of Eun-hyeon, who comforted her own falling heart.
“Are you okay. I don’t think so.”
“No, that’s right. Sister. I don’t think of my sister that way either.”
Erin, who had hugged Lily tightly with her sad eyes and hugged her, also joined in comforting her heart.
“Erin.”
“Huh?”
“Take Lily and go into her room. Give me some rest.”
“Uh, yes. Okay.”
Eun-hyeon, who untied her arms of Lily who hugged her own body and entrusted her to Erin, her little sob, stared at one side of her.
“However… What are you going to do by yourself?”
“I’ve got to find out a little bit.”
“… Okay. Should I be careful?”
“Okay.”
Erin, vaguely guessing what Eunhyeon was trying to do, nodded her head slightly.
In front of the inn, Eunhyeon confirmed that the two women were entering the building and immediately took action.
[The child…]
‘Yes.’
When only the two of them were left, Belldandi spoke to Eunhyeon.
[The child is calmer than I thought.]
‘Well. I wasn’t particularly upset.’
When I watched from afar the meeting between Lily and her father.
Unlike Erin, who was unable to listen to her irresponsible yet subservient father’s apologies and requests, and had to stop trying to intrude into their conversation several times, Eun-hyeon was so quiet from the beginning to the end.
‘Maybe it’s because I expected this situation to some extent.’
The shock that comes as a reaction when you have expectations about a certain situation and are betrayed by those expectations is proportional to the size of your expectations.
Perhaps it was because she had heard from Lily about her family situation before, and this situation had been anticipated from the start.
Although he could sympathize with Lily’s broken heart and sorrow, she had no resentment towards her father.
It was because Eun-hyeon had no expectations from the beginning.
[I knew the child would get angry like Shinsoo. But that demon child is no longer the child’s woman.]
‘Because there’s no point in doing something like that.’
More than anything, Lily doesn’t want that.
Because she wanted to sort things out on her own about the problems she had with her father, she didn’t step forward with Eun-hyeon.
‘The only thing I can do for you is this.’
Eunhyeon was now taking a separate action for Lily.
[… Okay. So, what is the child trying to do now?]
‘I need to find out more about what’s going on in this manor.’
In Eunhyeon’s mind, she recalled the story of a large number of young people from the territory migrating to the Duchy of Saviros over the past two years.
[Ai thinks that what is happening in this place is related to the incident that the demon child experienced five years ago?]
‘I’m trying to determine if there’s a connection or not.’
If there is no connection, then you just have to decide whether to solve the problem that is happening in this territory or not.
However, if there is a connection, it raises the possibility that it may also be connected to the search for Lily’s mother’s whereabouts.
[So that’s what she said was a move for the demon child.]
Belldandy nodded as if he understood.
‘And there was also a story that bothered me personally.’
[What is it?]
‘Remember what the princess said when she took the princess and escaped from the Labyrinth of Archis in the past?’
[…]
Belldandi slowly recalled the conversation between Eunhyeon and Yuria from before.
– Like Yuria in ‘Marchen of Destiny’. Marry the son of the Duke of Saviros of the Kingdom of Rendir.
-Oh, Mama, you don’t know the true face of Duke Saviros. He is rumored to be a duke who is seemingly innocent and enriches his land and supports the country. Mommy doesn’t know that his true face is a horny who reveals young women, and a scumbag who buys women for money and status.
‘Because many young people are flocking to the Duchy of Sabiros. It’s an award no matter who sees it. It’s as if someone is instigating and inducing people to voluntarily come to the dukedom.’
Besides, if you’re playing tricks on these small estates, it’s not hard to guess that a similar situation is happening in other estates as well.
‘Furthermore… Again.’
[… I see.]
Again, something is happening around Eunhyeon.
Was it that he was led to this place in a situation that was already happening, or was this incident happening because he was scheduled to come here?
A strong suspicion that someone’s interference might be involved in the path of one’s destiny that he had felt before.
Eunhyeon thought it was worth investigating.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Whoa…”
As the sun went down, dark shadows began to cast on the inside of the mansion.
It was the moment when an aristocrat from a small estate in the province was about to stand up after finishing his work in his office.
The aristocratic lord was startled and tried to scream at the coercive act of grabbing his shoulder in an instant and forcing him to sit in a chair.
“Keugh!? What… Breath!?”
I was so startled that I suppressed his voice by forcing something hard and huge into his mouth where he was about to scream.
“Don’t move.”
“… !”
The aristocratic lord hardened his face as he felt goosebumps as if the hairs on his body were standing up at the man’s bleak voice with thick flesh.
“A female lord. Rare to see But it is not at all.”
“Ugh… Ugh!”
It felt like the bones in his shoulders would be crushed by the force of the colossal grip on his shoulders from the back of his chair.
As time passed, fear slowly rose in the heart of the aristocratic lord, weighed down by the cruel murder that seemed to stab him from behind.
His heart pounded violently, racing faster and faster, and with his mouth shut, he inhaled and exhaled through his nose over and over again.
“I see. In exchange for the price of 50 gold coins per person, you turned a blind eye to the young people leaving the territory. Even for women, up to 80 coins per person.”
“Town!? Ugh!”
The question of how she knew that was quickly revealed in her face and eyes, but the man standing behind her, anchored in a chair, had no intention of answering her question.
“You understand. I can’t stand the feeling of being despised in other territories and judged as incompetent just because of the difference in gender.”
“…”
The man’s words, which accurately described the feelings he felt in the past, were terrifying, as if he had peeked into his own memories.
Even as she felt the crushing pain of a grip on her shoulder, something in her own mouth, a round rubbery ball, did not allow the lord to let out her screams.
Even though she was a woman with no combat experience, it was not difficult to realize that her current mood was unusual.
She knew in her instincts and body that ‘if she screams, she dies’.
The man continued his speech.
“It wasn’t that they forced the young people to leave, it was because they were going to leave on their own feet in such a rural area with no future and no possibility of development. I wouldn’t have felt any remorse. They even said that they would give money equal to the number of villagers who closed their eyes like that, but they must have just closed their eyes to the immediate profits in the short term.”
“…”
“You have a son.”
“Town!? Ugh!”
At the mention of her son’s existence, the woman lord cried out with strong resistance from the horror that made her spine ache.
At a glance, it means ‘Please don’t touch my son.’
“Don’t worry. Don’t kill your son Besides, I won’t kill you either. Because you don’t seem to know what they’re doing by gathering so many people together.”
“Heh, heh…”
I couldn’t imagine that the words came from a man’s voice, which was spewing bloody killings, as if he were going to kill him right now.
“But just because you didn’t know, that doesn’t mean your guilt for cooperating will go away. No, rather, the attitude of closing your eyes and pretending not to know what is going on is even worse. And because I couldn’t handle the incident five years ago properly, my person suffered a lifelong wound that never healed.”
Wooddeuk
“Ugh… Whoops!”
As the man’s hand, which was holding his shoulder tightly, began to gain strength, the female lord’s shoulder blades were crushed at once.
“Actually, I saw this a lot. Because with that one judgment of yours, many families collapsed. If you had cut off their ramblings in time and responded properly, my person might not have had that experience. It is the price you pay for your incompetence in not doing so.”
“Ugh… Ugh.”
“The reason I don’t kill you right now is because if I kill you here, the people in this territory will face even greater confusion. Killing one of you won’t solve this shitty situation. Because my person who went through such hardships because of you probably doesn’t even want your death.”
It means that even if you kill yourself, there is no benefit to be gained, and the situation will not be solved.
However, the words of the end also meant that if the victim of the incident at that time wanted his own death, he could come back to kill himself without hesitation.
“I’ll give you a chance. First, it doesn’t track me. I mean If I change my mind anytime, anywhere, I can quietly come into your mansion like this and kill you.”
“Flaw… Ugh!”
“Second, strengthen the security right now. Shouldn’t we stop the people from escaping to the outside? Oh, if you care about retaliation from those who do backdoor dealings with you, don’t worry.”
A strong feeling of anger passed from the hand of the man who crushed one of his shoulders to the female lord.
“I will handle it. Those bastards who ruined my human life.”
The strength of his hand, which had been tightly gripping his crushed shoulder, loosened, and the man gradually stepped back and distanced himself from the female lord.
Perfect
The man snapped his fingers, and the rubbery orb that had been stuck in the lord’s mouth disappeared.
“Haha…”
“If you get treatment right away, sooner or later you can use your shoulder again. If you don’t keep the two conditions I said…”
“Ugh… Black!”
In an instant, the man approached him and grabbed the female lord’s neck with one hand.
The man hiding his face under his silvery-white hair with a ridiculous clown mask warned again.
“Next time I will crush your neck, not your shoulder. Be mindful.”
“Egg… I guess… Uh…”
As she was strangled, the consciousness gradually faded, and the woman lord struggled to spit out her words before she lost consciousness.
