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SERIES: What Remains in the Damaged Place
CHAPTER: What Remains in the Damaged Place 66
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66
“He kept mentioning that Rageil was alive.”
“……”
“As if he’s gone completely senile……”
“……”
“That’s impossible, isn’t it?”
Rageil.
It was a name Valderion also remembered clearly.
Prince Rageil had been an outcast, unable to adapt to the atmosphere of the Imperial Palace. He was so gentle and tender that it was hard to believe he had been born from the same womb as his foolish and ignorant siblings.
For that reason, he was always ostracized.
Unable to comprehend the actions of his blood relatives, so cruel and arrogant he couldn't bear to watch, he always stood out, and for that, he received sharp glares.
Then, after a certain incident, he was killed by Dailan.
Killed… or so it was known to the world.
This was yet another instance of the secret workings of the House of Justitia. Perhaps thinking Rageil was too valuable a talent to be left to die, Valderion’s father, the Duke of Justitia, had treated the prince when he was on the verge of death and secretly spirited him away.
From that distant past to the present day, Rageil had lived quietly in hiding, avoiding the eyes of the Alent Imperial Family and others.
The place he was staying was the coastal city of Pellini.
There, he survived under the protection of Valderion’s cousin, Rosiella, who ran a large merchant guild. Of course, since Rosiella acted on the orders of the Justitia family, her actions were tantamount to Valderion’s own orders.
Once every two months.
The letters that arrived at the Justitia ducal estate in the capital from Pellini were news regarding Rageil’s well-being.
Rageil’s survival was, naturally, a top-secret matter.
It was a matter so grave that, should the Imperial Family find out, it could cause the first great rift between the sun and moon of the empire.
Therefore, it was only natural to take every precaution.
But now, that very secret topic had emerged from Dailan’s lips.
“……”
He stared at Dailan, as if to plumb the depths of his intentions. But the Crown Prince smirked with nonchalant ease, as if he had brought up a topic so mundane it could be casually dismissed.
*Is he trying to sound me out?*
Valderion, his expression unwavering, let out a short laugh.
“His Majesty must have been very lonely on his final journey.”
“……”
“To be mentioning His Highness the Prince, who crossed into the twilight of his life long ago.”
When he drove the point home that it was, as Dailan himself said, utter nonsense, the smile on Dailan’s lips gradually faded.
Dailan turned his head with a dismissive snort, like someone who had lost interest.
Valderion gave a low warning not to be late and left the bedroom. The shell of his placid expression peeled away, step by step, as he walked.
Of course, the chances of Rageil’s whereabouts being discovered now were extremely slim.
Even if he were alive, finding the actual person would be quite impossible.
That was why he had hidden the prince in Rosiella’s grasp.
Pellini, the city with the world’s largest harbor.
It was a place where hundreds, even thousands, of merchants from foreign guilds, all connected by the blue sea, came and went each day. As such, it was the perfect place to hide a person’s tracks.
Moreover, in Pellini, there was a private army, conscripted long ago with the support of the House of Justitia. They were a contingency measure, prepared to be deployed if the need arose, but since the relationship between Justitia and the Imperial Family had never soured, there had been no opportunity for them to be called upon.
Rosiella, who managed the merchant guild, was tasked with the crucial role of both concealing and training this private army. Given her sharp and decisive nature, she would handle it well on her own, but one could never be too sure.
*‘I’ll have to tell her to lay low for a while.’*
Valderion looked up at the sky through a window in the hallway he was walking down. The weather was still as dreary as ever.
* * *
Lirette, holding the railing as she descended the stairs, glanced at the window.
*‘The weather isn’t clearing up.’*
What caught her eye was the sky visible between the intersecting window frames.
The way the dark clouds jostled against each other was ominous. She had hoped for a downpour that would quickly clear the air, but the weather had remained stubbornly unchanged for days.
Lirette rubbed her inexplicably stiff shoulder.
At first, she thought she had just slept in an awkward position.
But as her hand moved slowly, her thoughts deepened, and she realized that wasn’t it.
This was the aftermath of her night with Valderion.
Having reached the bottom of the stairs, she let out a sigh-like breath and approached the window.
Lirette no longer lived in the old-fashioned room in the basement. Valderion’s bedroom, where she had stayed for a short while from evening to night, had become her living space.
It wasn’t anyone’s intention; the situation had just naturally evolved that way.
At some point, their bodies coming together had become a natural part of time, and when she drifted off and opened her eyes again, she would be on the soft, wide bed.
The man, who was usually so relaxed and thus dispassionate, was uniquely insatiable when it came to this act.
He would take her when she was awake, of course, but sometimes he would do so while she was asleep. Then, she would wake up in a daze, as if she’d been assaulted in her sleep, left with no choice but to cling to him, gasping.
The nightly act of treatment had been completely replaced by sexual intercourse.
Perhaps because of that, the side effects of the Name were not particularly noticeable even when he was away for a few days. Whether this was a good thing or not…
More than that, the act, for some reason, made a corner of her heart uneasy.
And she felt a pleasure exactly equal to that unease.
In the savage afterglow where they tangled in equal measure, Lirette experienced chaos every time.
She was not unaware of the reason her emotions were in such a messy tangle.
It was because her relationship with Valderion had not been properly established.
The problem was that there were too many ways to define him and herself.
The sinner of a traitorous family and the executioner who had brought them to ruin.
Or a one-sided relationship of dependence, where only one of them bore a Name.
A relationship where they frequently shared their bodies without sharing their hearts…
It was difficult and complicated.
And so, it was always awkward and difficult.
The relationship that could not be defined in a single sentence made a corner of Lirette’s heart ache.
“The imperial funeral ends today, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Time has flown by.”
As she was lost in thought, she sensed someone approaching.
It was the sound of voices chatting.
She happened to be standing next to a protruding pillar, so she was hidden from their view.
“The whole country is in turmoil.”
“I know. Oh, I wonder what’s going to happen.”
“The master left the day before yesterday, right?”
“Yes. He’ll probably be back today or tomorrow, don’t you think?”
The two, completely unaware of Lirette’s presence, continued their conversation naturally. It wasn’t intentional, but it felt like she was eavesdropping, which made her uncomfortable, so Lirette decided to head elsewhere.
“By the way, did you hear? The story about Daisy?”
A voice that had been perfectly normal suddenly dropped low.
As if sharing a story that no one else should hear.
“Ah, you mean about the master’s bedroom being a mess?”
Just as a sense of wonder at their behavior caught one of her feet, the subsequent question from the other person caught the other.
Lirette was suddenly frozen in place.
“Yes! I heard it was no joke. They said it took an hour just to clean up.”
“Well, they did spend every night together until the master left for the funeral.”
“I guess he’s not trying to hide it anymore. I mean, taking her to the hunting competition where everyone could see…”
The new topic they had brought up was her and the Duke.
“How can they do it every night? Like animals.”
While chiding them as if it were shameless, a vulgar curiosity was clearly embedded beneath the surface.
Lirette’s position became even more awkward.
It would have been one thing if she had been discovered earlier, but now that they were talking about her, being found out would be an awkward situation for everyone involved.
“But… are they using contraception?”
At that moment, a wisp of curiosity, following casually, dug deep into Lirette’s heart.
“Of course they are. It might be different if it were Brilin, but the Duke is engaged… He wouldn’t throw away his future for a passing amusement, would he?”
“That’s true. How troublesome would it be if his mistress got pregnant right before his wedding.”
Fortunately, before Lirette could move, their voices grew fainter as they moved on to another place.
Contraception?
Letting their departing voices go in one ear and out the other, Lirette mulled over that word for a long time.
The more she did, the more dazed she felt, as if the ground had fallen out from under her.
It felt as if a very, very distant matter, one she had considered to have nothing to do with her, had suddenly invaded her life.
To someone else, it might have been common knowledge.
But nothing in this world was common knowledge to everyone.
Lirette was only eight years old when she lost her family, her blood relatives, and herself.
To her, contraception was a distant word.
Though she saw doctors as often as friends, the treatments she needed were all for things like bruises or fractures. Had Dailan touched her sexually, it might have been different, but he had never laid a hand on her in that way, so Lirette’s knowledge of contraception was so scant it couldn’t even be called hearsay.
That was why she had never once considered it.
That the fundamental purpose of the act she had been engaging in with him these days was for the purpose of conception.
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