The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway Chapter 18

Chapter 18

***

It's a dream. This is a dream. It's a very long dream... Ines asked Luciano to give her a few slaps, but only received a very friendly reply, saying, 'Aren't you going crazy because you're so excited about getting married?’

Instead of demanding more from her brother, she tried to hit her own arm with a long gun, but was stopped by a frightened Luciano, and showed off her courage by rushing into a nearby tree and hitting it with her shoulder. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Luciano was looking at her like she was crazy, but it didn't matter to her.

The pain was clear. It was too clear... It was too long to be the last flash before dying, and it seemed like a long time ago since she pulled the trigger. If that's the case, then at least this means it's not a dream.

Then, what was the twenty-six-year-old Ines? Her last year, enduring each day with thoughts of wanting to kill Oscar, was filled with all the oppression and disdain from the imperial family... It was too long and twisted to call that a dream.

Eleven years lived with Oscar. All those memories were laid out hour by hour. Distant memories are far away. Close memories are in nearby places... She obviously lived like this for another ten years. That sense of reality also cannot be denied.

How could that long, terrible experience be barely a dream?

As Ines went out to the hunting ground in Luciano's arms, she kept touching his cheek. Her brother, who was only three years older than her, was a young man of twenty-nine before she died, but it was nothing compared to the youthful freshness of his nineteen.

Nineteen. Oh my god, Luciano was a 19-year-old kid…….

"...Did you switch the medicine with mother in the morning?”

Even after returning to Duchy of Perez, her eccentricities continued. She had strange eyes as she kneaded the young faces of her nearby maids like dough. Whenever she felt confused, she kicked the unevenly carved console leg and did not stop the self-discipline of hitting the back of her hand with a heavy ink bottle.

Eventually, late at night, she was dragged by Luciano's hand and confined, rolled up in a blanket, staring at the ceiling like a corpse lying in a coffin, and called out to her brother, who was looking at her with concern.

"Luciano, come here."

"...Why?"

"Just come if I say.”

He looked at his sister suspiciously and then bent over the bed. Ines struggled to move her arm, which was trapped under the blanket, and slowly pulled one of her hands out.

"Ines Valeztena, you again."

"...So, so fresh. Luciano.”

The woman who was massaging her burly older brother's face and muttering for a long time about how fresh it was or how it was so fresh that it was extremely, did not look normal to anyone. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Luciano was horrified and pulled his face out of Ines’ grasp.

The maid, Juana, who had served her since her early childhood in the duke's residence, suddenly leaned in next to her and muttered.

"Señor, it seems like Senorita is going through this because of marriage, isn't she?”

"If there's a reason, that must be it. It felt like she might fly away at any moment.”

“Juana, you come here too.”

"You've already massaged to my face enough earlier"

"You're really pretty... Did I say that?”

“At least from this afternoon onwards, many times”

"Beautiful and young... look at this lively skin. Are you turning seventeen this year?”

"You seem like an old man infatuated with a young girl. Stop it, Ines.”

Luciano snatched Ines' hand out of the air and pushed it back into the blanket. But Inez couldn't take her eyes off Juana's face.

Like a hunting ground, everything about the Perez family froze at sixteen... In her dreams, she never set foot in the Perez mansion again until the day she died.

The maids she had cherished here, the beautiful back garden where she played with Luciano, and the highest point of the castle, the moment Oscar placed a veil over her head, they became things that could never be seen again and went away.

She didn't know how the years had passed in this place, how Juana and the maids had transformed into different women. The Perez of eleven years ago, the Valeztena people of that time…

Everything was ridiculously the same. Just like the last spring she spent here.

"...Spring, it was spring."

"What?"

"It's still spring. Spring isn't over yet.……”

"It's spring, then...”

Luciano's eyes transformed back into that look as if seeing a mad person, but she wiped her face with trembling hands.

"In four months, you're marrying the Crown Prince. And even in two weeks, you have to leave Mendoza. If you continue acting as mad there as you do here, it's-”

“I will not.”

“My mother also said this over and over again. Don't you remember? In Mendoza, before you get married, they will do everything they can to get even a speck of dust off your shoulders. Oscar is already too much for you. It's too much... So, I understand that you feel overwhelmed by the pressure, but....”

“…….”

"Damn, maybe we should've called a doctor? Juana, look at her eyes. It feels like she can't hear me.”

“...More importantly, you should be careful. Senor..."

"Who is being too much to whom!”

Ines screamed and kicked off the blanket, rushing towards her brother. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Luciano, lying on the bed with his throat choked, couldn't say anything and, with bulging eyes, silently screamed as he received blows from his sister.

"Who! To whom!"

"I-nes!”

"Too much!”

Say it again! Look into my eyes and say it again! She screamed like a maniac, holding Luciano's throat with her hand and shouting. With his throat compressed, Luciano couldn't respond, and for not answering his sister, he received even more violent blows.

The sensation of living and hitting someone... It's indeed reality. This sensation can't be false. She suddenly smiled meaningfully and stepped down from Luciano's stomach.

Her appearance was so bizarre that Luciano, who had been planning to sternly curse at Ines, forgot what he was going to say for a moment and just stared at her.

“… Are you really out of your mind? Tell me, Ines. As expected, you took mother's medicine instead...”

The feeling of beating Luciano was like a twin to the feeling of beating up Oscar.

As if the weight of the rifle she had reversed before dying remained just as heavy, even after opening her eyes in the hunting ground.

It was all real. The despairing life at twenty-six, the foolish life spent daydreaming of becoming Oscar's wife at sixteen – none of it was a dream. Ines had confirmed this through countless experiments.

It was the spring of sixteen, four months before the marriage with Oscar.

She was back. Just before all the miseries of life were about to hit.

This was an opportunity and a blessing. The price of goodness, swallowing one's own hatred without harming anyone. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] The value of patience. A chance to properly conclude her life before going to heaven, a fate bestowed by God... At that time, she believed it was just like that.

When she had only experienced death once.

***

There were still four months until the marriage with Oscar, but she had only two weeks left before heading to the Mendoza.

The words 'I want to break off the engagement to the Crown Prince' were dismissed as nothing more than a whim commonly used by Ortega's youth who were about to get married, and it was clear that even if she sent a letter to her father, who was inspecting the mines on the border, he would only hear the answer in Mendoza.

Their mother, the Duchess Valeztena, had become so nervous around this time that she found it annoying to even look at her children's faces. Uttering something displeasing to her would result in objects being thrown.

As a result, after being hit about a dozen times with objects in the Duchess' bedroom, Ines began an unofficial plan.

They had already been officially engaged for ten years, and after a long wait, they were now only four months away from getting married, so it was natural for people to not listen to their serious intentions. How dare you, especially if you are marrying the imperial family... If her brother Luciano had done that, she would have just ignored it.

Twenty-year-old Oscar was not yet a great lecher, unfortunately. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] The only person who would not be dusted off from that terrible imperial court would be Oscar around this time.

She vividly remembered all the malice, animosity, hatred, disgust, and contempt she felt towards Oscar. It was as if it happened yesterday... Well, it did happen yesterday. Regardless, inflicting any damage on the current Oscar, even if she poured all the darkest emotions from that world, would be close to impossible.

She has to wait two more years before he opens his eyes to brøthels, ørgies, and sødomy. Currently, the Crown Prince has the uprightness of a saint, a cool-headed intellect, and is celibate with the solemn thought of spending every night with his bride, but who would believe the prophecy that in two years' time he would become a perverted sxxual aspirant who collects all the world's sxxually transmitted diseases in one body.

Of course, after two years, some people behind the scenes might remember her prophecy and be horrified, but the world did not know about Oscar's ugly tendencies until the moment she died at the age of twenty-six.

There was no need to waste this precious opportunity in such a lonely struggle. A crime of insulting the royalty would lead to imprisonment in the tower and the loss of the position in the Grande de Ortega of Valeztena.

Threatening to cut off someone else's finger when you're willing to cut your own throat holds no meaning. She, in a fit of anger, had already blown her own head off once.

"...I can’t suffer death twice just because of Oscar.”

Yet, marrying again was even more out of the question.

She would probably try to strangle the innocent, innocent 20-year-old Oscar again as soon as she saw him, or she would be so disgusted at the sight of his nxked body in the middle of the night that she would not be able to stop vomiting.

Then one day, she will castrate him while he sleeps and head to the guillotine... Ines imagined all the worst case scenarios.

And she decided to become even more cunning.