Episode 18

It's a dream. It's a dream. It's a very long dream... Ines asked Luciano to slap her a few times, but received only a very affectionate reply, "Aren't you crazy because you're about to get married?"

Instead of pushing her brother further, she tried to cut off her own arm with the rifle, but was stopped by the frightened Luciano, and finally showed off her eccentricity by rushing to a nearby tree and ramming it with her shoulder. Luciano looked at her as if she was crazy, but he didn't care.

The pain was vivid. Too vivid… It was too long to be the last flashback before death, and it felt like a long time ago that I pulled the trigger. If that was the case, then at least this wasn't a dream.

Then what was Ines like at the age of twenty-six? Her last year, when she endured each day with the thought of killing Oscar, all the persecution and contempt of the imperial family… That was too long and gnashing to be called a dream.

Eleven years of living with Oscar. All those memories were placed in each hour. Distant memories were in a distant place. Near memories were in a nearby place… She had certainly lived in this state for ten more years. That sense of reality could not be denied either.

How could that long horror have been but a dream?

Ines went out hunting in Luciano's arms, caressing his cheek repeatedly. Her brother, who was only three years younger than her, was a young man of twenty-nine before he died, but he was nothing compared to the youthful freshness of nineteen.

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

"… I guess so. Didn't you switch the medicine with your mother this morning?"

Even after returning to Perez's castle, her eccentricities continued. She played with the young faces of her close maids as if they were dough, and with strange eyes, whenever she felt confused, she kicked the legs of the jagged console and continued to torture herself by hitting the back of her hand with a heavy ink bottle.

Eventually, she was dragged away late at night by Luciano and wrapped in a blanket as if she were locked up. She stared blankly at the ceiling like a corpse lying in a coffin, and then she called out to her brother who was looking at her with concern.

"Luciano, come here."

"…why?"

"Come if you want."

He looked at his sister suspiciously and leaned over the bed. Ines struggled to move her arms trapped inside the blanket, and managed to squeeze one hand out.

"Ines Ballestena, you again."

"… So, so fresh. Luciano."

She was muttering for a long time about how fresh and innocent her face was, how it was so fresh it was disgusting, and it was obvious to anyone that she was not normal. Luciano pulled his face out of Ines's grasp in fright.

Her maid, Juana, who had served her in the duchy since childhood, suddenly popped her head out next to her and muttered.

"Señor, is it possible that Senorita is acting like this because of her marriage?"

"That must be the only reason. You said it felt like you were going to fly away."

"Juana, you come here too."

"You rubbed my face so hard earlier."

"You're really pretty… didn't I tell you?"

"At least from this afternoon onwards, I'll be sick of it."

"Pretty, young… look at that fresh skin… … . You're seventeen this year, aren't you?"

"You sound like an old man obsessed with a young woman. Stop it, Ines."

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

Like a hunting ground, everything about Perez stopped at sixteen… In her dreams, she never set foot on Perez's castle again until she died.

The maids she had cherished here, the beautiful garden where she had played with Luciano, and the highest point of the castle, all disappeared from sight the moment Oscar placed the veil over her head, becoming things she would never see again.

She didn't know how the years had passed here, what kind of women Juana and her maids had become. Perez eleven years ago. The people of Ballestena at that time...

Everything was just as ridiculous as it had been the last spring I had spent here.

"… … It was spring, spring."

"what?"

"It's still spring. Spring hasn't come yet… … ."

"It's spring, then… ."

Luciano's eyes changed back to those of a lunatic, but she wiped her face with a trembling hand.

"You're going to marry the crown prince in four months, you. And you're going to leave for Mendoza in two weeks, so if you act crazy there like you do here—"

"I will not."

"Your mother told you over and over again. Do you remember? In Mendoza, before you get married, she'll do everything she can to get even a single speck of dust off your shoulders. Oscar is already too much for you. Too much… So I understand that you feel burdened, but…"

"… … ."

"Damn, maybe I should have called a doctor? Juana, look at her eyes. It's like she can't hear me."

"… … More than that, I think you should be careful, Senor… ."

"Who is too much for whom!"

Ines screamed and threw off the blanket, rushing towards her brother. Luciano, who had fallen onto the bed with his neck crushed, was unable to say anything and let out a silent scream as his sister hit him with her eyes wide open.

"Who! To whom!"

"Hey, Ness!"

"It's too much!"

Say it again! Look me in the eye and say it again! She shouted madly, holding Luciano's neck with her hands that were holding the collar. Luciano, who had no way to answer because his neck was being crushed, was beaten even more violently for not answering his sister.

The feeling of hitting someone alive… It's real. This feeling alone can't be fake. She suddenly smiled meaningfully and got down from Luciano's stomach.

The sight was so grotesque that Luciano, who had been planning to swear harshly at Ines, forgot what he was going to say and just stared at her for a moment.

"… Are you really out of your mind? Tell me, Ines. It seems you took your mother's medicine instead…"

The feeling of beating Luciano was identical to the feeling of beating Oscar indiscriminately.

It was as if the weight of the rifle she had held upside down before she died was still there when she opened her eyes in the hunting grounds.

It was all real. Neither her desperate life at the age of twenty-six, nor her foolish life at the age of sixteen, when she spent each day dreaming of becoming Oscar's wife, were any of them dreams. Ines had been convinced of this through dozens of experiments.

It was the spring of her sixteenth year, four months before her wedding to Oscar.

She came back, just before all the misfortunes of life came crashing down on her.

It was an opportunity and a blessing. The price of goodness that swallowed one's own hatred without harming anyone. The price of patience. A chance to finish one's life properly before going to heaven. A destiny blessed by God... At that time, that was all I thought.

When she had only known one death.

***

There were four months left until her wedding with Oscar, but only two weeks left until she left for Mendoza.

The statement, "I want to break off the engagement with the Crown Prince," was dismissed as nothing more than the whim of a young Ortega woman about to get married, and even if she had sent a letter to her father, who was inspecting the mines in the border region, she would likely only hear an answer in Mendoza.

His mother, the Duchess Ballestena, had become so neurotic by this time that she found it annoying to even look at her children's faces, and objects would fly at her if she said anything that did not please her even a little.

As a result, Ines, who had been hit with objects about a dozen times in the Duchess' bedroom, went into an unofficial plan.

It was already a ten-year official engagement, and now that the long-awaited wedding was only four months away, it was only natural that people would turn a deaf ear to her serious intentions. How dare she… If it had been her brother Luciano, she would have just let it slide.

At twenty, Oscar was not yet a great lecher, unfortunately. If there was anyone who could be shaken off in that terrible imperial court and not get dusted, it would be Oscar at this age.

She remembered vividly all the malice, murder, hatred, disgust, and contempt she felt toward Oscar, as if it were yesterday. In fact, it was yesterday… . In any case, even if she poured all the darkest emotions into the world, it would be nearly impossible to find a flaw in Oscar as he was now.

It would take two more years for him to open his eyes to prostitution, orgies, and sodomy. The crown prince, who now has the uprightness of a saint, a cool intellect, and a single-minded determination to spend his first night with his bride, would be a pervert who would collect all the sexually transmitted diseases in the world in two years, but who would believe him?

Of course, after just two years, some people behind the scenes would remember her prophecy and be horrified, but the world was unaware of Oscar's ugly nature until the moment of her death at the age of twenty-six.

There is no need to waste this precious opportunity on such a lonely fight. You will be locked in the tower for insulting the royal family, and Ballestena will lose his position as Grandes de Ortega.

There is no point in cutting off your own throat to cut off someone else's finger. She had already blown her own head off once in a fit of anger.

"…I can't risk dying twice just because of Oscar."

But getting married again was even more impossible.

She would probably strangle the innocent twenty-year-old Oscar in fear of seeing him again, or she would be so disgusted by the sight of his naked body in the wilderness that she couldn't stop vomiting.

Then one day, while he was sleeping, they would castrate him and send him to the guillotine… Ines imagined all the worst-case scenarios.

And then I decided to get a little more detailed.