The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway Chapter 20

Chapter 20

***

Six-year-old Ines Valeztena was calmer than sixteen-year-old Ines Valeztena. She no longer had to abuse herself by slamming her shins on the corners of her furniture or poking her palms with the tip of a pen to know whether this was her dream or reality. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Because that only doubled the sense of useless reality.

Ines did not need any more sense of reality. Her sense of being alive was poisonous. She acted calmly, like a dream, like it was natural, like she was a six-year-old child, but when something suddenly hit her, she couldn't bear it.

A child who was so small. Emiliano and her baby...… Sometimes she couldn't even believe her memories, thinking that she had killed the baby with her own hands, so she would hold up her shaking little hands and look at them strangely.

The memory had stopped at the last twenty years, but the body had gone back even further and come to a halt. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] The hands of the tiny six-year-old now brought a sense of comfort rather than frustration.

It's impossible to do such a thing with such small hands. These hands were just those of a child who couldn't do anything... Yes, she was just a child. With hands like these, no one could kill. With a body like this, she couldn't be a wife or a mother.

Such things, it couldn't have happened.

Ines, instead of facing reality through self-harm, gradually denied those memories.

Perhaps it really was a dream. A very poor quality dream. A dreadful and repulsive dream... A dream so vivid that it brought tears, but one that lasted only briefly. In reality, it didn't matter on either side. Whether it was a dream briefly dreamed before dying on this side, or everything with Emiliano being just a one-night dream…

Because in any dream, her life with Emiliano no longer existed.

Ines gradually adapted. This was only possible after suffering from a fever for twenty full days and another twenty days in nausea and silence, but she was a helpless child anyway and there was nothing she could do to change it.

Reality swallowed her up even if she rejected it. Ines was really alive. She wasn't alive, just living in the past, but she eventually took her breath and spoke. She lived each day among the people she loved in the past.

At that time, when her mother, who had a good relationship with her father, considered her children as treasures. Her brief moments of happiness came to her every day, when her mother did not hate Luciano and her. Her father, who saw her as a bug at the age of twenty, still loved his daughter. And Luciano, who pointed a gun at Emiliano, was only a nine-year-old child...….

What could such a child possibly do? With those small hands, what could he accomplish? Just as she erased traces of murder from her own small hands, she pushed away the loathsome murderer from Luciano's innocent and kind face. She suppressed the desire to strangle the cheerful smiling Luciano.

They didn't seem like the same human beings at all. The nine-year-old boy who smiles mischievously when he sees his sister and the man who killed Emiliano and spat on his corpse couldn't possibly be the same.

Yes, they were entirely different people. Perhaps Luciano never killed Emilian... Because things like that couldn't have happened in the first place.

'That can't be possible.’

Ines stared at her reflection in the mirror and repeated the mantra, like brainwashing, once again today.

Now it was the early days of summer at the age of six.

Located south of Ortega, Perez's days were dreadfully long, and nights even longer, but she managed somehow. The reflection in the mirror seemed perpetually small, as if it would never grow, but even that was okay now.

The more reality Ines felt here, the more distant Emiliano's memories became.

Sometimes, it was nice to feel like those things were distant dreams. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Like faint dreams you can't remember because they happened so long ago, it was good to sense them as seemingly meaningless.

That's how she came back to life.

Like a face in a faded memory, whenever Emiliano appeared in a dream one night, crying and waking up as if mad, looking in the mirror revealed it was all just a hollow dream. That can't be possible. Those things couldn't have happened.…... If you keep quiet until the tears stop, it will be a peaceful morning.

Then everything was fine. Somewhere, Emiliano is probably facing the same morning.

Thinking about that, she was able to breathe again.

At least at this time, Emiliano was alive.

“Ines, are you ready?”

"Yes, mother.”

As long as you were alive, it was okay with me too. That alone would give this life meaning again.

She got up and followed the Duchess Valeztena. The Crown Prince was waiting for them.

***

“Perez is even more stunning in the summer. You're lucky, Ines. Having a hometown like this.……”

Oscar gazed in awe at the vast plain spread beneath the brilliant sunlight and rolling hills for a while, then spoke incessantly. While the grand gardens of Valeztena were famous for their warm winters, but summer, when the life conceived in spring begins to pulsate, shows the great vitality of the Pérez Plain, blah blah blah…….

Ines half-listened, half-ignored, nodding her head. Oscar looked at her meaningfully for a moment, and then suddenly his eyes filled with melancholy fell right in front of her.

“You look worried. Ines.”

“There is nothing like that, Your Majesty.”

“You know, I'm good at seeing people.”

He did have an eye for selecting the most exceptional women among those he could choose from.

Anyone with the power to choose could have done the same. However, considering her first life, which had admired him for the exact same reasons, she had nothing to say in that regard.

Oscar was once the best man she could have chosen. The man who would make her the greatest woman of the empire.

There was a time when that was enough. Because Oscar was perfect. Of course, being a bit arrogant when he was young was a flaw, but as he grew older, he even recognized that embarrassment himself and corrected it, making him an almost flawless person.

In just a few years, everything you say will be humble.

'And then one day, you'll turn into a complete piece of filth.'

”I know, Ines. What you're thinking right now.”

“…….”

Ines, with her chin in her hand, couldn't hide the wistful expression as she stared at him. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] It was reassuring to see the innocent eyes of a clueless and undoubtedly young boy.

So, what did he know? She couldn't even imagine how the saintly boy who pursued a young girl with such pure feelings would turn into a pxrverted sxxual desire in twelve years…

Yet, nausea overwhelmed her once again.

Just as her father still loves her, and dear Luciano has not yet killed Emiliano—Oscar has not yet betrayed her.

She knew it in her mind and even acknowledged the fact in her heart. He also looked like a rather lovely and harmless boy, far from the greedy face he had back then.

Even with just a resemblance to the future, hatred and resentment filled her like a habit, but that wasn't all that remarkable. If Emiliano was a distant dream to her, the ten years with Oscar were now nothing more or less than a dirty and meaningless nightmare.

He became an endlessly insignificant existence in comparison to Emiliano. It wasn't that Oscar's actions or the sordid history of prostitution were ridiculous, but rather Emiliano was so much greater in comparison.

The memories of the first life were even clearer than the second, but it was like remembering someone else's story. She knew in her mind that she had once lived by his side.

So, in a way, it was a matter of cleanliness.

"The depth filled in your heart appears like a painting.”

The moment Ines twisted her head out of his grasp, thinking that she had somehow picked up the word depth again, Oscar's other hand touched her shoulder. Ines was startled and her body trembled.

“You must have a lot to worry about… My request may have seemed too early. Becoming the Crown Prince of a country comes with such a burden.”

“…….”

"But you can handle it well. Ines Valeztena, there's no woman who suits that position better than you.”

“…….”

"The position already designated for you is the same. You just need to prepare as you are.”

These hands are clean now, but twelve years from now they will be full of all kinds of s*xually transmitted diseases. This hand will penetrate women's an*ses and grab the hair of a male pr*stitute who s*cks his bottom in a b’rothel...….

Inez twisted her head with all her might and pulled her face out of Oscar's hands. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] This was the moment when she showed her strongest will in the dozens of days since she opened her eyes at the age of six.

Ines had a hot temper inherited from her father, as well as a severe case of stubbornness inherited from her mother.

The aversion to the dirty hands of the future and the unwillingness to be touched suddenly woke up a mind that had been indifferent to everything in the world.

I must never again touch such filth. It can't go on like this.

“Ines?”

"...Don't touch me. Because it's dirty.”

As Oscar tried to grab her arm again, she pushed his arm away as if even the touch itself was impure.

He made a bewildered expression without realizing it.

"If I made any mistake...”

He will. About twelve years later, for about eight years. Until she finally can't overcome her anger and stuck the butt of her gun down her own throat.

Perhaps thinking it didn't matter at all was a misconception. A wave rose in her pitiful, sinking heart.

It wasn't all that Emiliano was alive. To begin with, she wasn't the type of person who could endure everything with such altruistic spirit. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Needless to say, her temper was extremely delicate.

Ines Valeztena at the age of six. She was at an age where she couldn't do anything she didn't like.