The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway Chapter 52

Chapter 52

***

Tw: S*xual content

She felt strong arms dragging her by the waist as she slept. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Even in her unconscious state, she felt a rebellious urge to fight back.

Inés screwed her eyes shut and wriggled her trapped body outward. Then, the arms that had been holding her with some leniency yanked her back with relentless force.

The thing that was gripping her waist felt more like the roots of an ancient tree than human arms. It was a strength that seemed almost inhuman, preventing her from moving even a single inch. …

Inés had no memory of ever experiencing such restraint or strength. She frowned even more and fought with all her might, but now she was so tightly bound that her struggles were barely even visible to the naked eye.

’Suffocating...’She seemed to mutter the word as she was pushed away. At that single word, the force that had been gripping her waist seemed to soften suddenly, but just as she was about to break free, another arm snaked up from below her waist and grabbed her just below her breasts, pulling her back.

The arm that had been wrapped around her waist alone moved down to her lower abdomen and hung there precariously. It was as if a single root had split into two. The strength between the arms had noticeably weakened, but that didn't change the fact that she couldn't possibly escape from it with her sleep-addled struggles.

Inés frowned deeply, as if she didn't like it at all, and finally gave up, letting her body go limp. The man's low chuckle tickled the crown of her head, as if he were satisfied. She frowned a little more and then soon fell back into a deep sleep.

So it was impossible for her to notice her negligee, which had been pushed up to just below her hips, or the shoulder strap that had slipped down, exposing her entire shoulder... Nor could she feel the soft lips grazing over her shoulder blade, sucking at her tender flesh and occasionally nibbling on it without causing her pain... Or the large hand fondling her thigh, or the somewhat sinister hand supporting her under her breasts and squeezing them together.…….

She was too exhausted from all the things that had happened to her recently to notice any of it... It's been a full month since she was tormented by her mother, from the wedding mass just yesterday to the early hours of the night when she couldn't sleep properly for even a moment…….

On top of that, they had set off on a fairly long journey early in the morning with no time to rest. Of course, she had spent most of her time either passed out on Cárcel's lap or suffering from mild nausea in a semi-conscious state, but it was supposedly a seven-hour journey. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] It must have been quite an ordeal for her in her current condition.

Judging by the fact that she had no memory of walking to the bed on her own two feet or of lying down somewhere…

Inés opened her eyes dully and blinked weakly a few times. Her blurry vision gradually took in the increasingly bright room. It felt as if half of her mind was still deep asleep.

She really couldn't remember. She stared at the gently swaying curtains, trying to recall her last memory.

For now, she could remember up to the point where she had sat down by the window. Cárcel's excessive attention had embarrassed and annoyed her, and since she didn't feel up to dealing with the conjugal relations that he seemed to be requesting more and more frequently than she had originally thought—she had sat down there, carefully opening the Bible, interrupting everything Cárcel said.

It wasn't because her faith was so devout that she had opened the Bible in her bedroom the very next night after the vigil. It was because she needed some kind of shield to protect her from the atmosphere that kept drifting naturally in a lascivious direction. Some kind of holy shield……

No matter how indifferently Inés acted, the evenings were when he would naturally start to pursue her once she had recovered her senses. He even did it with an indifferent expression and tone of voice, as if he were no different from her. His expression was incredibly blunt, yet the atmosphere naturally changed in that way.

He had not built up quite a reputation as a womanizer for nothing... Cárcel was a notorious womanizer, the kind of man who didn't even earn the proper resentment of women.

Although he had the face of an ascetic soldier who didn't know what lust was, the reason why he didn't have a single dirty rumor attached to his name was because he did such lascivious things with that kind of face without batting an eyelid. Perhaps that was it... Inés recalled the dangerous elements of Cárcel, forming uncertain hypotheses.

She had had similar thoughts while reading the Bible, and then she seemed to have fainted while still sitting up……. As the thought that had come to her just before she fell asleep resurfaced, she was overcome by the fatigue of the previous day that had not yet dissipated.

'...Could this be a newlywed thing...' Inés began to retrace the cause as if it were someone else's business. It was surprising how he didn't seem to be starving, and even though he couldn't possibly be feeling anything special for his plain wife, and even though his attitude was like that... Cárcel's sense of duty was suspiciously excessive. It was really suspiciously excessive, even more than she had thought. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] He was excessively energetic, promiscuous, and faithful at the same time...

'For now, I guess it's just because we're newlyweds.' She tried again to convince herself of something she didn't believe. People tend to want to do things well when they're first starting out.

Just as Inés had recalled countless new plans to destroy this marriage ever since the chaotic wedding mass, he was also trying to somehow smooth over this unpleasant marriage.

She didn't know how long he would be able to betray his true self, which was always searching for new women... But in any case, just as the beginning and end of something can't be the same, the beginning and middle can't be the same either. Even love fades, so what about a sense of duty or passion that wasn't even there in the first place? Things like this were only temporary.

Ines turned her gaze out the window, feeling something hard poking her butt, but she felt rather embarrassed and composed, and didn't want to give it any special meaning since it's a man's physiological reaction that always happens whether or not there's a woman next to him, or even if he's not fully conscious.

There was nothing new except for the discomfort of that physiological reaction that was being transmitted straight to her butt. Cárcel Escalante was at an age when his desires were strong, and men usually play with their lower body separately or play with it at the same time as their head…She glanced over the large hand that slid up her thigh as if to climb to her lower abdomen from under the blanket.

‘To call this a sleeping habit’……..

She felt the negligee she was wearing that was barely covering her underwear climbing up her stomach along with that hand. Her butt, which had nothing to cover it but the underwear, moved closer as if his thing was about to dig into it at any moment with a threatening look.

He was full of simple desire that was either a vulgar habit or he was just used to doing it. She could still hear Cárcel’s steady breathing from behind her head.

He must be really asleep so she didn’t have any choice. The overpowering strength that she couldn’t get away from remained the same.

‘…It’s still early so no need to wake him up.’

Along with a soft sigh, she stared out the window again.

The sunlight that had risen higher in the sky was streaming like a painting over the dark green open window. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] The slightly cool air and refreshing breeze that were characteristic of the morning, the curtains fluttering in the sky, and the sound of the waves hitting the cliffs……

Ines suddenly recalled Seville’s painting. Seville…… It was a beautiful place, although she had only been there for three days. She blankly thought about the scenery in the painting one by one. The small fishing boats that rocked on the waves and the old fishermen, the middle-aged women taking fish from the harbor…And them within that. Emiliano smiling at her, and the baby in his arms.

That was the place that had dominated Inés like a nightmare when she was six, and that had made her hate the sight of Luciano as he turned into a young man for years, and that she had been unable to get out of her memory for a single day from the age of sixteen, when she had first met Emiliano, until his death at twenty. It was also a place she could not escape from.

It was rather a blessing that Cárcel, who was seventeen at the time, found their marriage tedious and left to join the military academy. During that time, she certainly would not have been able to carry out any of her plans properly.

It was funny, since until just yesterday she hadn't even known the name of the place. Inés, during those days, had been as trapped in that port as someone waiting in a prearranged meeting place where no one ever showed up.

Ever since the day Emiliano died, she had been living that way, locked up in that moment, in that atmosphere, from that morning until the following night, unable to escape to any other place or time. When she opened her eyes, it was the morning of that day, and when she closed them, instead of sleep, the night of that day came to her.

The night Emiliano's cold, lifeless body slipped out of her grasp, the night her child was taken from her.

The nights came to her like nightmares, receding only when dawn arrived. Even though she could barely breathe, the mornings of that day continued to repeat themselves. Mornings that knew terrible nights would come. Mornings that knew Emiliano would die again that night... In this way, Inés spent her four years with Emiliano, quietly allowing them to be ruined once more. Memories that she had pushed away as unreal when she was young came back to torment her with excruciating reality. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] She was afraid that if she even grazed Emiliano's fingertips, she would truly cause him to die again…….

And so it was that now, she could listen to the sound of the waves without trembling in the slightest.

With the sea before her eyes, she no longer dreamt of Seville or of Emiliano. She would simply wake up and think of him. In the arms of another man, not Emiliano... A strange sense of guilt washed over her with regard to Emiliano, but in the end, there she was, observing herself with indifference, as if none of it were truly her own life.

Inés recalled, with an expressionless face, the palm-sized drawings that Emiliano would sometimes make for her with cheap charcoal.

She felt as though she was finally waking up from her sleep as she remembered a few nice ones. After all, they were things that had never existed in this life.

She looked out the window for a little while longer, then turned around in Cárcel's arms.

"Cárcel."

"…..."

"Wake up, it's morning.”