Episode 19

What was the result of living a life as the royal family and the family had planned? What was the reward for the woman who had complied with the honorable engagement and had been faithful to her marriage? She should never waste her life like before. This time, it had to be different. It had to be completely different… .

But there was one more thing that Ines had overlooked besides this dubious return to time.

"Senorita Ballestena, the painter who will paint your portrait for the weekly magazine in two weeks has arrived with Her Majesty the Empress's messenger. He has said that time is of the essence and that we must begin work as soon as possible, so please come down as you have dressed up."

The fact that she was now 'really' a young girl of sixteen.

A very strange hybrid, having twenty-six years of memories but thinking like a sixteen year old… … .

"Senorita?"

"… … ."

The sixteen-year-old girl fell in love at first sight with the beautiful young man bowing his head next to the portrait artist.

And the memories of twenty-six were urgently reminding her that once she left for Mendoza in two weeks there would be no chance of turning her life around.

There was no time. She had received a revelation, an informal yet thorough plan. This was a chance not to live as the world wanted, not to be faithful to a political marriage, and to find true love.

True love… The thought that was hastily inserted at the end would have slapped Ines in the face if she had heard it at the age of twenty-six, but to the romantic sixteen-year-old Ines, it was a very plausible topic. Love. Yes. It was love… … It felt like it was the thing that would make up for a failed marriage that had been nothing but deception.

That night, Ines went naked into the old room where the artist's assistant was staying. It was a choice based on her own sense of reality, thinking that since there was no time, she had no choice but to seduce him quickly with her body.

"Senorita Ballestena…!"

"If you don't want to be caught, keep quiet."

It was a line that only a villain would say, but to the man who was entranced by her perfect naked body and couldn't take his eyes off of her, it must have been a taunt like a cuckoo.

But the eighteen-year-old youth, despite his appearance, knew nothing about women, and kept sobbing, saying, 'How dare you, with the Duke's daughter, how dare I, how dare you do such a thing... '—and since he couldn't even 'dare' push her away with strong force, he eventually surrendered and became agitated. She had unintentionally accumulated various experiences through her many unpleasant relationships with the crown prince, so it was a fight she couldn't resist from the beginning.

You are so beautiful. Are you a goddess? Is it true that what is moving above me now is not a goddess but a person… … The romantic Ines of sixteen had a talent for saying ridiculously romantic, if not disgusting, words for a young man.

"Actually, I thought that from the moment I first saw you. Someone like me could never touch someone as noble as you in my entire life, but you are someone I cannot help but love."

"… … ."

"Ah, you are so beautiful and noble, so lofty and elegant, so lovely… … ."

"… … ."

"Your lofty eyes seemed to devour my soul… … ."

Unfortunately, Ines had a weak stomach and was mostly absorbed in his face, which he found much more beautiful than she was.

It seemed as if the artist had called him by some name, but even then, she was so focused on his face that she must have just ignored it and ignored it. She couldn't remember any name, so she just smiled and couldn't call his name.

The young man smiled shyly and said, perhaps noticing the frustration.

"My name is Emiliano. Please don't forget it."

It was a smile that seemed to shine even in the darkness. Her heart was so full that she felt like she could not breathe for a moment. Ines tried to pronounce his name quietly.

Knowing love may be a momentary thing. To the point of being vain.

She learned Emiliano's name, and thus she learned love. And that was never a good thing.

They disappeared together in Perez ten days later, and after four years of wandering and living a happy and poor life in distant places, they were captured by the Duke of Ballestena in a small port off the coast of Calstera. Emiliano escaped for a while with the help of someone she knew, but eventually returned on his own feet and was killed by Luciano.

In front of her. In front of their newborn son… … .

She was carried by Ballestena's men like a bundle of luggage, wailing and embracing the body, and pushed into a carriage. Ballestena begged the royal family for forgiveness and said that she would be imprisoned for life, as she could no longer be the crown prince's woman. She was now a blemished object. But she was still Ballestena's noble daughter.

The Empress showed mercy, saying that it would be appropriate for her to become the second wife of Count Almenara. She also gave a blessing saying that if she knew her own shortcomings and lived her life serving and serving her experienced husband, it would be happiness, and she even received praise from the world.

Count Almenara was already well into his fifties and approaching his sixties, but an old new husband was no problem to Ines. In the first place, it didn't matter if it wasn't him or any other handsome man.

As long as it wasn't Emiliano, it didn't matter who it was.

She agreed to marry the Count of Almenara, and that their child would be adopted by a lawyer from a distant branch of the Ballestena family. The family prepared a grand wedding, as if to silence Ines' scandal. She did everything as she was told, until she heard her father's words from beyond the wall that the child would not be sent to some poor lawyer's two-story house, but deep underground in a closed hunting ground.

The peacock said it was better to cut off the dirty shoots before they grew any further.

Their beloved child was now a dirty sprout, just as she was now nothing more than a blemished object.

Ines decided not to resist. It was a world without Emiliano anyway. It was a sadness she had never experienced before.

If this is love, then she never loved Oscar for even a second.

Ines loved Emiliano too much. She couldn't breathe because there was no one who could accept her love anymore. The child was proof that Emiliano had once lived by her side. It was just a piece. But the world that Emiliano had shown her was too big, and the child who resembled Emiliano was too small to be enough.

Still, since she was the only one she could love, Ines hoped that at least the child would not die a painful death in an unfamiliar place.

So she killed him. With her own hands, she strangled the three-month-old baby.

It was the last night she was allowed to spend with the child. The child was so weak that she could easily have died with her weakened strength, and she stared blankly at the dead child for hours before stabbing herself before daybreak.

Twenty. It was a week before her wedding with Count Almenara.

'My name is Emiliano. Don't forget it, miss.'

Sometimes a name changes the world. For Ines, Emiliano was the only color in a world that was all black and white. Could there be anything better or more perfect? ​​Could there be anything more loving or beautiful? She would have snapped her neck and given it to him if she could have brought back even one of his fingers to this world. Emiliano was so great that even the hatred she felt for Oscar became dust in the wind. She thought of Emiliano as she watched the blood pouring out over her child.

The world had changed, but Emiliano was gone. In the world that Emiliano had changed, Emiliano no longer existed. Then, she had to disappear too… … .

'Please don't forget, miss.'

She killed her own child. A woman like this will end up in hell. But even in hell, she will never forget Emiliano's name.

In the blinking vision, Emiliano hugged her.

***

And then, Ines opened her eyes again.

This time from a slightly older memory.

***

One day, when she opened her eyes again in the hunting grounds at the age of sixteen, she thought that all of this was a miracle. She was glad, thinking that even God could not bear it because he felt sorry for her. Because she had been given another chance to live. Because there is no greater blessing than life… … .

Ines stared at the six-year-old child reflected in the mirror.

"… It's just so damn funny."

She thought that a woman like her who killed her own child would end up in hell. However, the place where she ended up was not a pit of fire where she could not die, but the comfortable bed of a noble lady, and a place of noble abundance where she lacked nothing.

She came back, comically enough, to a time long before all the misfortunes of life had befallen her.

Ines nervously knocked over the mirror and broke it. Her tiny fingertips trembled. This was hell. It couldn't have been anything but hell.

The moment she shoved the gun down her throat in front of Oscar, perhaps from that moment on, she was destined to be punished.

There was no opportunity or blessing from the beginning.

It was hell, repeating the same life over and over again only to become unhappy again.