MB Chapter 1

Prologue

“Want to leave a little later today?”

"Why."

No reason.

They say you can’t spit on a smiling face—but a scowl is something else entirely.

Therio threaded his arm into the coat he had stopped putting on. The gesture, once indifferent, was irritable now. As if it were expressing its owner's displeasure on his behalf.

"I told you, Goiyo."

Having finished dressing, Therio looked at me, his face emptied of feeling.

"Don't expect anything from me."

Well, indeed.

Have a good trip, I offered with a smile. No answer came. Therio left the estate, and the servants, leaving me behind, filed back inside.

I gazed for a while at the place where Therio had disappeared, then quietly raised my head. They had said a storm was coming, but the sky was a clear, untroubled blue.

A strange day.

Therio Alte—my husband—was not a recent acquaintance.

Solaris holds two ducal houses beneath the Emperor's seat; they are called Alte and Rubiette.

Therio was Alte's son, and I was Rubiette's daughter.

The two houses, the only ducal houses there were, maintained an easy peace between them, and our ages matched, so it was natural that Therio and I should spend time together. That was how it began.

We had known each other since we were very young, so we were each other's best friend. Tastes, talents, troubles, even the dreams we had for the future—I dare say there was nothing about each other we didn't know, so close were we.

Between us there was a friendship thicker than anything else. There was a time I believed it would last forever.

That was before Therio confessed his feelings for me.

First came confusion, then denial, then anger, and at the end: love.

The changes in feeling over that one year were truly violent, and the eternal friendship sworn in childhood was truly fleeting. But more fleeting still was my own heart.

The time it took for a firm, unquestioned friendship to melt and become love—it was far too short.

'I love you, Therio.'

The moment I gave up, unable to master my own heart, having lost the future I had drawn for myself and finding myself frightened by that loss. He wept, and I laughed.

It's all right, nothing has changed. We've lost an eternal friendship, but gained an eternal love. Goiyo Rubiette decided, once again, to believe in forever. Foolishly.

After that, things were smooth. The clumsy love grew, taking time as its nourishment. That flutter—the kind that stops your heart—was not what it had been at the start, but in its place we had a kind of steadiness.

We came of age and conducted an informal engagement.

It was on the very day that marked three years since Therio and I had changed—and the day he first spoke to Melishi.

Melishi Rubiette—not a drop of shared blood, and yet carrying the Rubiette name. My younger sister.

Melishi was Lady Kazehl's stepdaughter, Lady Kazehl having become Duchess after my mother's death.

Melishi had been entered into the Rubiette household register when I was thirteen and she was ten, but Therio had never been interested in her—so that day was the first time any real exchange of words had passed between them.

I neither liked nor disliked the gentle girl who was my younger sister, so I let Therio and Melishi talk.

Not knowing that it would be the very thing to overturn the heart of that changeable man of mine.

I didn't know. Whether I hadn't wanted to know, or whether I had been unconsciously looking away—what lay at the bottom of all of it I still cannot say, but I truly didn't know.

We conducted the formal engagement ceremony and set a wedding date. As that date drew close, the expression on Therio's face grew stranger and stranger.

He said he was nervous. I nodded, but could not convince myself entirely, not all the way down.

Yet a bride-to-be on the eve of her wedding was not a person with leisure to dwell on such things.

The wedding approached, step by measured step.

Then a marriage proposal arrived for me. The other party was Marquess Bethelgius—a man who had distinguished himself greatly in the war and risen in a single leap from commoner to Marquess.

Receiving a proposal with a wedding already set was an extremely presumptuous business, and I expected Father to refuse it outright; but unexpectedly, Father placed it before me.

His reasons were two. One was a matter of political considerations. The other was—about Melishi and Therio.

Before Father had even finished speaking, I fled the ducal estate and ran straight to Therio.

To ask whether it was true—that his heart, changeable as it was, had changed again.

To ask whether it was true that he carried my younger sister in his heart while our own wedding approached.

To hear him deny it with his own lips.

But the moment I came face to face with Therio, I understood everything.

That Therio Alte no longer loved me. That there was someone else in his heart. And that even so—I could not let him go.

What's the matter, he asked. I said nothing, and smiled.

Back in my room, looking in the mirror, I saw a face so composed that no one could have imagined the typhoon raging inside it.

I really am a noblewoman, I laughed, because there was nothing else to do. And I wept, because there was nothing else to do.

That was the first time in ten years I had knocked over the water I'd been drinking in bed. That’s not like you at all, miss, Annie said. Quite so, I agreed.

It was Therio Alte who had made me like this. So he needed to take responsibility.

I refused the proposal, and returned to preparing for the wedding. The proposal I had refused passed to Melishi, and Melishi became the Marquess's fiancée.

I was the only one smiling. Everyone else's face grew darker by the day. Still, it was all right.

And so, on the very night before the wedding.

'I have something to say.'

Therio came to me, drunk.

"If there is anything you need, please ring the bell."

"Yes, thank you."

I gestured for her to leave, and all the maids filed out of the bathroom.

This was the first time I had said I wished to bathe alone, and not one of them asked why. Being not openly ignored was something to be grateful for, I supposed.

I found I’d gotten used to it. That surprised a laugh out of me.

I laughed quietly and lay back in the bath. I dislike strong fragrances and take no pleasure in showy things, so when I float petals in the tub it's always just a few small ones—but today was different.

The tub was full of red roses, so many that my body was hidden among them, and the bath tablet gave off a bright, sweet scent.

The lamp beside the tub glowed purple, and from the room beyond it, the sound of classical music drifted through.

All of it—so unlike my usual bath—was what I had asked the maids to prepare for the first time.

I had requested it for a change of mood, but it didn't suit me, and I couldn't bring myself to like it.

The colors too vivid, the light too vivid, the scent too vivid. I’m going to suffocate.

Buried in the roses, I closed my eyes.

The wedding ceremony began. I wore a white wedding dress. Therio wore a black tuxedo.

Throughout the ceremony, the groom did not smile once—but that was enough for me.

From Goiyo Rubiette to Goiyo Alte. I became Therio's wife, and Therio became my husband. That was enough.

Even after the wedding, for a time, Therio continued to drift. There was someone else in his heart instead of me, and he had married someone he didn't want while unable to speak that aloud.

Therio was colder than usual, formal in how he treated me. He seemed sad. He seemed in pain. But after Melishi married the Marquess, he changed his behavior, as if he had accepted what couldn't be changed.

My husband came back again to something like his former self. Warm words, a warm smile, warm gestures. Occasionally he looked away at something, as if turning something over in his mind, but when I called to him, he would look back at me again.

At last I thought that everything had returned to its proper place. I believed that I would never again shed tears over him, or thoughtlessly reopen his wounds while pretending not to notice, or say cold words out of jealousy toward Melishi.

Rubiette was destroyed.

At first I thought I had heard wrong. My father who did not love me but gave me respect, Lady Kazehl who pitied me and found me pitiable, my half-brother who had not yet grown up—all of them were dead.

The charge was treason. The punishment handed down was execution.

It made no sense. A new man had taken the throne that my father had not supported, but even so—the Duke of Rubiette had not acted against the imperial house. Not active support, as in the former Emperor's day, but not active resistance either.

We were people who already had much. We would not risk losing everything over the small matter of gaining a little more. That was how it should have been—and yet the Emperor had ordered Rubiette's destruction without hesitation.

What survived were myself and Melishi—the two who had not participated in any conspiracy, who had moved their household registrations to another family. By grace of the imperial law's limited scope of collective punishment.

But before I could even call that fortunate, Melishi was found dead in the Bethelgius estate.

The Bethelgius side called it an accident, but no one who heard the news believed them. The one who had led Rubiette's destruction from the front had been Bethelgius.

In a single night, I lost a great many things. My house. My wealth. My blood family. My not-blood family. All of it.

I thought that would be enough—but there was one more thing I had lost.

'You killed Melishi.'

'If only you hadn't refused that proposal—if only you had let me go—Melishi would still be alive.'

'That child, not a drop of Rubiette blood in her, would be crying in my arms right now.'

Just like the night before the wedding, Therio came home blind drunk. The truest part of him, packed down deep, all that accumulated resentment, spilled out without restraint.

This time, however, I could not do as I had done that other night—could not press my hand over his mouth and turn the conversation. Even listening blankly, his words found their way into my ears without fail.

Having poured out all his reproach and then apparently recovering himself, Therio apologized to me.

I simply watched the unsteady steps that carried him to his room. What I wanted to ask was churning below my throat.

Then what about me.

If I had let you go—if I had married Bethelgius—then what about me.

Therio. Did you want me to die?

I was too afraid. I closed my mouth. I spent the rest of my life regretting that.

I had not been in there long, but the scent of roses had seeped into every part of me. The fragrance was too dense—it had been bath oil as well, apparently, and that too was rose.

My body was unsteady from the dizziness. Without waiting to be properly dry, I pulled my robe on over the water still clinging to my skin.

I stepped on the slick tiles and opened the door directly. The classical music that had been muffled before reached me clearly now.

I put on the slippers set out in front of the bathroom and crossed the carpet, settling myself at the glass table in the middle of the room.

As I did, drops of water fell from my hair and from my skin, staining the carpet a disagreeable color.

On the table, just as I had arranged in advance, was wine and a wine glass. I tipped the wine into the glass, and something redder than blood pooled into the crystal.

“Well. It’s been a while.”

Balrut Vintage '82—the wine whose cork I had pulled on the night before my wedding, after sending Therio away. And here it was, in front of me again.

I felt sorry for the wine, that I dragged it out every time I got this pitiful—but I had always been a selfish person.

I looked for a while at the red gathered in the glass, then opened the small container beside the wine.

Inside the container: silver pills. Silverbell—the heart medication I had personally asked the butler to procure.

I crushed the small pills, and the white powder settled over the wine. The white powder, fallen like snow onto the red, sank slowly and dissolved.

A low roll of thunder. Looking outside through the window, the sky that had been so clear was black, as if there had never been such a thing as clearness, and rain was pelting down.

A night where you could see the stars would have been nicer. I swallowed a mouthful of Silverbell-dissolved wine and muttered my complaint.

Therio had not been planning to return for some time. He had called it a business trip—though whether it was the Emperor's summons or a secret lover's request, what did it matter. Suspicion was my trivial freedom.

I rested my back against the soft cushion of the chair and took another sip.

Rose-scented. Still wet. My slight body wrapped in a robe. Wine as dark as roses. The soft chair at my back. The occasional flash of light and the noise of wind-tossed rain.

A day like this isn't bad, either.

My vision is going. I drained what was left in the wine glass. Only two sips. Impatient.

It suited, actually. In a lonely night with no one in it, listening to classical music tangled in rain, swallowing wine in a way that didn't become me—this violently fragrant Goiyo Rubiette.

How well my pathetic little death suits a night like this.

I'd chosen the day well.

A soft sound—the wine glass falling from my hand.

A very distant sound.

Translator Note:

The word "고요 (Goiyo)" also means silence or stillness in Korean. The name carries an inherent irony—a woman named Stillness, suppressing storms. I don't know how to replicate this in English considering the source never mentions it either. It's inherent. But since it's part of the character's identity, I thought a note on it would suffice.