Chapter 6
***
She ran away from the spot in unbearable embarrassment.
‘I must be crazy!’
Her cheeks were burning.
She was just going to ask Karpel to help her. She didn’t mean to act in that way.
Eventually, when she had calmed down, it reminded her of the scar that she saw on his back.
The wound that finally healed and changed into a scar.
It was terribly big. It stretched from his right shoulder to the left region of his waist, which made it seem as though a parasite was stuck on him.
It was also mentioned somewhere in the novel how it came to be.
However, reading it in a novel and perceiving it, in reality, were completely different.
The scar was made by the emperor.
On the same day, his father, the former Emperor, was killed. At that time, he was just 4 years old.
It was the 9-year-old Crown Prince who stopped the current emperor from stabbing little Karpel in the heart to get rid of a child struggling with pain and crawling on the floor.
The emperor, who even killed his own brother, spared the son of the former Emperor at the request of the Crown Prince. Karpel was the only one who escaped the emperor’s play.
The Crown Prince thought his father left him to be his rival, who could be his own plaything.
That’s what the novel had said, but in reality, there were more people who wanted him for their different strategies.
She was told that the Empress and his mother had spent quite a lot of their effort into saving Karpel.
A wound that Karpel had received at only the age of 4.
The fact that such scars remain in a world of magical priests meant that they had not been treated properly.
It was no use in treating it now.
No matter how sacred he was, he couldn’t get rid of the wounds that were more than a decade old.
The scars that were left on his small mind and heart were much bigger. And they were even more difficult to treat.
To stop Karpel’s rebellion, she would have to do something.
‘How can he, who was so wounded, be entrusted to Krenberia who would behave in his own way and push his greed?’
Even if she loved him, she had always ignored his opinion, pushed her own opinion, and summoned her father if it didn’t go on her way.
It was when she was 1-year-old that Karpel was entrusted to the Krenberian family.
In those days, she used to feel the same as him who had just lost her mother, and thus, he always used to stick to her side.
But unlike him, she had a loving father.
Perhaps, it was when he was 5 that he realized it and began to distance himself from her.
So, she purposely created situations where Karpel had no choice but to stay with her.
As he was a guest in Krenberia, she was bound to be his escort.
Karpel always had to follow her every time to avoid tarnishing the name of Krenberia.
The problem was that he was almost treated as a ghost in the society.
The nobles avoided themselves getting entangled with him for they feared the emperor’s wrath and hate towards Karpel. So, they avoided meeting his eyes, let alone talk to him.
The only person with whom he could talk was Inaila.
So, she always used to stand within the crowd selfishly, feeling satisfied with the situation in which he could only talk to her. It was as if she owned him.
‘For that reason, how deep is his hatred for me now? How crazy I must have been!’
She only used to choose the situations that were very disrespectful to him.
But today, she blew the opportunity to make it up for him.
She bumped her head on her desk as she thought of Karpel’s bewildered face.
‘No, there’s nothing to be scared of. I shouldn’t be afraid. I will help him.’
Jumping up from her seat, she looked upon her reflection in her mirror. Her face, full of confidence.
The image of an innocent looking girl, with holy silver hair and blue eyes like her father’s.
So different from Karpel’s sad face.
The face was so beautiful that she wondered if it had caused her to lose all of her luck since her birth and her family to die soon.
It was the face of a small girl who seemed like she didn’t even lose her baby fat. Even her first menstruation only began last fall.
Vividly, she remembered begging her father to allow her to be engaged since she had become a woman. It was the day when her dad had fainted, but when he woke up, he held her crying peacefully. He was furious to the point that he could kill Karpel.
‘Sigh…it was a mess.’
Meanwhile, Karpel had stayed silent, looking down at the scene coldly.
She had thought the silence was implicit in the same cause and that he wanted to be engaged to me.
“…..Should I break the engagement?”
‘Wouldn’t he be happier then?’
‘I don’t know what the result will be, but at least if that’s what he wants, would he start talking to me again?’
If she pushed him away, he’d be free from her.
‘Then would he be my friend again?’
Karpel was only 16.
God had given her no concept when she was born but gave her a beautiful appearance, so she might be able to appease.
If she appealed her charm in impossibly innocent and seductive ways,
‘There’s no way I’d be able to do that.’
She looked at herself blushing. She was pouting as she was thinking about it.
She blinked.
‘I do look cute.’
She winked.
‘Oh my! It might actually work!’
She slowly approached the mirror, clinging to it.
“Oh, I’m so pretty.”
She swept down the back of her hand along the mirror. As she gazed at the mirror again, she saw a maid standing behind her.
She was surprised, her heart beating at a fast pace.
She put her hand on her chest.
‘Thank god, it wasn’t Karpel.’
She knew that he would have killed her if she had gotten this worse in front of him.
***
Karpel skipped his dinner because he wasn’t feeling well. The Duke seemed to be in a good mood.
“Well then, let’s start, sweetheart. The rice would taste much better today.”
‘Huh? Karpel wouldn’t be eating? Was that so shocking that he had to avoid me?’
“Taste it with the herb salt, my dear.”
She dipped the lamb stick with black olives in sour cream and put it in her mouth.
‘It’s good….Shall I try some rice then?’
“How did you find such a marvelous way of eating steamed monkfish, my star?”
The Duke kept copying her methods as if he liked it. Feeling unpleasant, she dipped it in the herb salt.
‘Ah, it would’ve been better if I tasted it with soybean paste, garlic, and pepper.’
But she had no appetite. She was craving spicy food.
Besides that, the most common beverage in her country was ginger tea.
It always caused her mind to get electrified whenever she drank it.
Immersed in her thoughts, she forgot to reply back to his question. Her father put the fork down and spoke in a serious manner.
“Ina, do you like him so much?”
“Huh?”
Only after her name was called did she hear him.
“Mattise, bring Lord Karpel here.”
He ordered his butler.
‘Why are you calling him when he said he wouldn’t have dinner today? What if he thinks I called for him?’
She looked back at her father to realize that he meant it.
“No, Mattise, wait! Papa, it’s not like that. I was just thinking about a dish that I could eat!”
She hurriedly blurted out as Mattise stepped forward.
Her father’s eyes widened at her words.
“Dear, why didn’t you just tell me sooner? So, what is it that you want to eat?”
“Capsaicin….”
[TL/N: Capsaicin = The substance in chilies that gives them their hot taste.]
The Duke’s eyes turned to look at the butler. Of course, the butler wasn’t familiar with it.
“I’ll see to it, my Lord.”
“Where have you tried it, my bubbles? Was it delicious?”
She smiled shyly. She couldn’t just tell him about her previous life.
And every time she heard the word “bubbles”, it felt like she was being confirmed of the source of her origin.
It reminded her of those days when she roamed around, completely clueless.
‘Rotten. I’m a rotten child.’
She held her hands tightly and said eagerly as she thought she might get a mental breakdown if she kept listening to that word.
“Papa, can you just call me Ina?”
“What’s wrong, pumpkin? You don’t want me to call you?”
‘The same goes for “pumpkin” as well.’
Yes, she knew that it was his way of showing his love for her.
“I like the name that Papa gave me…..”
The Duke groaned, grabbing his chest as if he was having a heart attack.
‘You’re overreacting.’
She thought cynically, but when he continued shaking for more than a minute, she jumped up in surprise.
‘What is the average lifespan in this world? Does he have a vascular disease because he always eats meat?’
As she approached him, he embraced her into a hug.
“Ina! Do you really like the name your papa gave you?”
‘Ah, you tricked me!’
“And yes, yes, papa loves calling you Ina too!”
‘Don’t say that.’
She tried to get out of his arms when he was rubbing his cheeks along her forehead, but he didn’t budge.
As her father tried to kiss on her cheek, she got startled and covered his mouth. His blue eyes were starting to fill with sorrow again.
‘You! Why are you trying to kiss your grown-up daughter? Am I still an infant?’
She lowered her hands instead of throwing a fit. She looked up at him and stared at him with starry eyes, pretending to act cutely.
“Papa, it’s embarrassing…….”
As the Duke smiled and nodded, she slipped out of his arms.
‘Stay calm, father.’
She left her father, who seemed satisfied, and went to find her fiancée who had skipped dinner.
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