Chapter 58
Chapter 58. Our Abyss, Forever Buried
Though being hated might seem impossible to get used to at first glance, when you experience it repeatedly, you eventually become accustomed to it—even to the point of boredom.
Now that I had separated Vante from my uncle and diverted my uncle’s attention to Eurene Castallo, I thought I could finally catch my breath. But inevitably, another trial, like a divine prank, befell me.
Why was this day so long? It felt like being trapped in an endless stretch of time.
Vinea stared with an utterly expressionless face at the half-naked couple entangled before her.
“We… we… we are honored by the Imperial Glory!”
“P-Princess Vinea…!”
The first greeting came from a noble of Tessibania, while the voice that followed belonged to a noblewoman from the Veshnu delegation.
Princess. It had been a while since I’d heard that title. After countless regressions—so many that it was difficult to calculate the exact number—I had lived as the Empress of Tessibania for dozens of times longer than the mere month I had spent as the Princess of Veshnu.
“Seeing you two, it seems we needn’t discuss the unity of our two empires further. You’re demonstrating it quite personally.”
I couldn’t simply ignore them and walk away, given the location.
This wasn’t the main palace where the banquet was being held, but the Empress’s palace far away—specifically, in the center of the former Baloua Garden, which Tatar had personally renovated for me in this regression.
Vinea’s cold gaze turned to the noblewoman who was hastily pulling up her partially removed dress.
“Lady Margaret. Setting aside the fact that this is the Empress’s palace, this is the Tessibanian Empire. It’s not a land where you can freely indulge your carnal desires. Your private affairs should have remained within Veshnu’s borders.”
The words simply wouldn’t come out pleasantly. Nor was this the situation for it. With my mental exhaustion already at its peak, I felt no need to play the role of the ‘good empress’ for these two caught in the act of coupling in the Empress’s garden.
Even if one had no children, would they want to roll around like beasts with someone young enough to be their child, leaving their spouse at the banquet?
I had heard whispers in Veshnu that Lady Margaret’s bedroom partners were numerous and varied in age, but I never expected to witness it firsthand.
Undisguised contempt seeped into Vinea’s voice and gaze as she spoke.
Unlike the noblewoman who hung her head in shame, the young noble, for whom she had apparently been the first partner, seemed to have his sturdy pride wounded.
The noble, his shirt still untucked and his appearance disheveled, raised his face, flushed from drinking heavily.
Given how red Lady Margaret’s skin was—and she was known for her high alcohol tolerance—it was clear how intoxicated this young noble must be without even asking.
Staggering as he tried to stand upright, he screwed up his face.
“I am a rightful citizen of the Tessibanian Empire! The eldest son of House Aksimund, one of the ten pillars supporting this Imperial family!”
“And?”
Interpreting the noblewoman’s action of desperately grabbing his waistband in some way, he grasped her hand tightly and spoke with a resolute expression, like a knight heading into battle.
“Today is the day when the palace is open to nobles attending the banquet. There was no one blocking entry to the Empress’s garden, and since it’s Empire Foundation Day, surely there’s no problem with a legitimate Tessibanian noble using the Imperial spaces?”
“A legitimate Tessibanian noble? I wasn’t aware such a position existed in the Empire.”
“You may not know about House Aksimund, which has existed since the founding. After all, Your Majesty the Empress is not Tessibanian.”
Lady Margaret, who had now stopped trying to properly arrange her clothes, shook her arm with all her might to free her hand from the young noble’s grip. The sight of her large breasts shaking with her frantic movements was so ridiculous that I let out a short, derisive laugh. At this, the young noble shouted with a reddened face.
“As a noble, shouldn’t I do my part in the difficult task of unifying the two empires, which even Your Majesty the Empress finds challenging?”
“Good heavens!”
At last, Lady Margaret cried out with a face turned pale blue. However, the intoxicated young noble seemed not to hear her shock, as he continued to wag his loose tongue.
“Even if the world calls Your Majesty a blessing or radiance, I know! It’s all a fabrication to deceive the naive imperial citizens, isn’t it? I heard everything from my father!”
Vinea curled her lips into a smile, languidly narrowing her eyes. A captivating smile bloomed brilliantly, like a rose hiding its thorns, flaunting its harmlessness.
“How interesting. What exactly did Marquis Aksimund say about me?”
I know who Marquis Aksimund is. One of the pack of wolves coveting Tatar’s power, he was lucky enough to still have his head attached to his neck, as he hadn’t yet been dealt with.
“He says you’re a woman unfit to be Empress! That you’re lazy, pushing your work onto His Majesty, and that you’re bewitching him, blinding His Majesty!”
Finally, Lady Margaret’s head hit the floor. She must have indeed been looking for someone young and strong like the noble, as despite her desperate attempts, she couldn’t free her arm from his grip.
Tears streaming down her face as if her head might fly off at any moment, the young noble forcibly pulled her to her feet.
“Don’t worry. My father is Marquis Aksimund, whom even His Majesty can’t treat lightly. Your well-being—”
Whoosh.
A black shadow brushed past Vinea’s side. A dark gray cloak fluttered, leaving behind a familiar scent. Vinea’s eyes involuntarily followed the shadow.
Soon, the shadow, a figure a head taller than the young noble, mercilessly gripped his neck.
“Kuhak…!”
As the young noble’s grip loosened with a short gasp, Lady Margaret, looking as if she might faint at any moment, seized the opportunity to crawl away from the scene.
“Kheuk, heuk…! H-help…!”
The young noble’s legs, which moments ago had been straddling Lady Margaret’s body, now collapsed pathetically. With his neck held tight, lifted so that he could neither kneel nor stand, his face was now turning from red to blue.
Gray eyes looking down at the young noble from an incomparably lofty height flickered with killing intent. The noble, unable to shake off even one hand gripping his neck, began to wet his trousers.
Seeing that he looked about to breathe his last, Vinea stopped watching and raised her hand to touch Tatar’s back.
She could feel the taut muscles of his shoulder blade beneath the cloak.
“Enough.”
Thud.
As if by magic, the young noble fell to the ground from Tatar’s loosened grip.
The sight of him trembling and foaming at the mouth wasn’t particularly pleasant to see. His completely soaked trousers were even distasteful.
“It’s disgusting.”
“I’ll have the garden rebuilt for you.”
“Your hand that touched him is just as bad.”
“Shall I cut it off?”
“If you cut it off, won’t it come back in the next regression?”
A satisfied smile spread across Tatar’s lips. With the moonlight spreading like paint across his picturesque face, it was irresistibly seductive.
“You know well. Should I take it that the Empress has resigned herself?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve agreed to be in your palm, but I haven’t yet tested whether I can endure it properly.”
Vinea took out a handkerchief from her bosom and wiped Tatar’s hand as if cleaning off filthy waste, then threw it to the ground. The fluttering handkerchief fell, coincidentally covering the face of the young noble who had fainted with foam at his mouth.
As Vinea released his palm, this time Tatar grasped Vinea’s chin. His thumb stroked Vinea’s plump lips, lightly pressing against her white teeth.
“Hurry and bite. Then confirm. That no matter what situation you’re in, you’ll never lose the Empress.”
His finger, having invaded Vinea’s mouth past her teeth, firmly pressed her soft tongue before withdrawing.
A thin silver thread hung between Vinea’s lower lip and the tip of his finger before snapping.
“I will soon. Whether you…”
Vinea raised her hand to touch the corner of Tatar’s eye. Looking at his slightly furrowed eyes, she could identify the source of the strange sense of déjà vu she had been feeling since encountering him here.
“…can endure it, I’m not sure.”
“Before my patience runs out completely and I end up tearing apart the Empress’s hope with my own hands, do it.”
“How arrogant. The thirty-fourth regression, Your Majesty’s face as you watched me fall… You don’t remember, do you?”
The silver-gray eyes, which had been shining with desire between narrowed lids, now glinted with a sharp blade-like quality.
“Why is that regression coming up now?”
That regression had rotted a part of him. It was the only rotten memory he couldn’t erase, could only cover up and turn away from, the only regret he would have cut out hundreds, thousands of times if he could.
That day, when the Empress fell to her death beyond the railing, the body that inevitably regressed recalled all memories. The moment he turned his head to look for her, who should have been by his side as always, Vinea, dressed in white, collapsed unconscious beside him.
Thus, the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth. He had to spend two regressions having lost his world.
“How terrifying it was. Afraid that when you opened your eyes, you would look at me as if for the first time, that I would face you who had finally abandoned me and fled alone.”
So he fled into dreams. To a place where he couldn’t confirm reality, into eternal darkness.
Vinea didn’t know how the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth lives had regressed. She lost consciousness the moment she saw the red carpet of that wedding hall and the white dress. All she knew was that when she came out of the dream again, he had changed somehow.
“This is what I think hell is, Your Majesty. That we, driven mad, fail to recognize each other and throw each other into the abyss. That’s the worst ending we could face.”
“Empress.”
A low voice roughly scratched his throat.
“We won’t repeat that time again. Since then, the first thing I do when a regression starts is to burn every last one of those damned tea leaves in this empire.”
A cold gaze swallowed Vinea’s eyes.
Don’t uncover it, bury it forever. That hell we’ll never experience again, the abyss of the Empress and me.
He moved on with those words. His body, which had heated up intensely only to cool down in an instant, brushed past Vinea.
Watching his retreating back, Vinea clutched at the hem of her dress. The pouch containing tea leaves rustled.
“It’s still a long way to go before all those damned tea leaves are burned in the empire, Your Majesty.”
