***

“Rosie, save me! Rosie, Rosie!”

Like a demon from hell, a man kept screaming in a hoarse voice, but Rosie didn’t even glance in the direction of the sound. Profanities followed.

Rosie, who had been silent until then, only looked back after the voice had completely ceased.

“Your Majesty, are you alright?”

Today was the day of the Prettilia head’s execution. Given all he had done, when news came of his imprisonment, demands for his execution from opposing factions, and even petitions from commoners had piled up, ultimately leading him to the scaffold. Perhaps because of that, she could feel concerned gazes upon her.

They likely knew she shared the same Prettilia roots.

Contrary to such concerns, Rosie only stared blankly at the back of the man’s head as it receded, her expression showing not a ripple of emotion. She simply took in the man’s yellowed scalp, once glossy but now dry and ashen, and his thrashing movements.

And feeling no emotion whatsoever, Rosie deliberately curled her lips into a sneer.

“Am I alright?”

“Your Majesty?”

“Quite relieved, actually. Do not worry.”

At her strangely smiling face, the lady-in-waiting flinched and lowered her head. Rosie quickly turned her steps. There was one more thing to settle.

The disposition of the Oferun family’s princess.

“If you wish, I am willing to spare your blood relative, Cedric Prettilia.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. I do not desire that. What I want is different.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“The head of the Oferun princess. And I must watch with my own eyes the ruin of her father.”

“Because they tried to kill you?”

“What I’m saying is we watch it together.”

“What?”

“You must see it too. That they tried to kill me, and that they deceived you.”

Having been on the battlefield, he had already grown numb to blood. He believed he wouldn’t be too shocked by someone’s death anymore. Moreover, for those who had committed treason, such punishment was fitting, and above all, they had done those things to her.

“Is it necessary to watch with your own eyes? Even if you don’t, I will mete out fitting punishment.”

“It doesn’t matter. What I want is to watch with my own open eyes as they are ruined.”

Just as they had done. And this was also her unresolved resentment toward Arthur. It was no different from protesting: why did you realize so late that the woman you chose tried to kill me? And why did you let them live until now? Why couldn’t you uncover it? Yes, it was a tantrum. Like an adult acting childishly. And she would make sure he clearly remembered that they had participated in committing heinous acts against him and her daughter. In their deaths, in the process of watching the settling of that karma with her own eyes, Rosie would watch Arthur. She must. Because only then could she shed this burdensome, lifelong unease.

Arthur. You probably don’t know. That even while loving you, I still resent you, hate you, dozens of times a day. This vicious cycle of hating you, then turning back to love as if nothing happened, only to turn away and hate you again.

‘I am broken.’

Rosie realized it suddenly at some point. She had become a cold-hearted adult who could feign ignorance even upon seeing someone’s death. She had become a cruel adult who made the man she loved witness terrible things. And yet, she had also become a selfish adult who wanted to hold her daughter in her arms and ensure she never saw such things. Rosie knew. She was broken. And she could never return. But.

‘I don’t regret it. Because it’s already happened.’

She wouldn’t even regret what had already happened.

That was the only attitude she could adopt toward the life left to her.

***

The execution was carried out horrifically. The two beasts were disposed of in the most terrible way imaginable.

Rosie was satisfied. Arthur stared at the smiling Rosie with a dazed expression, and Rosie, smiling, treated such an Arthur as if it were nothing.

“You seem changed.”

After the execution ended, watching Rosie leisurely observe the scene of the shattered pieces being loaded onto a cart, Arthur felt a slight chill. But that was also the result of his original sin. It seemed he was only now beginning to understand that he had broken her. It was some kind of chronic, unsolvable problem of life that not even love could fix.

A burden everyone carries. But for her, that burden seemed especially heavy, pitifully, heartbreakingly so. Seeing the deep shadow stretching behind her, Arthur momentarily wondered if he could step into it.

“Who?”

“You, Rosie.”

“Nothing in the world stays the same. After what happened to me on the battlefield, the only thing that kept me sane was the desperate need to keep my blood relative alive.”

Rosie willingly took in the Oferun princess’s final screams begging for her life. As if savoring a very sweet wine, she accepted it deeply and richly as her own. Even in a situation where she should have felt revulsion, she seemed utterly unfazed.

It wasn’t that her emotions were gone.

She had simply gained control over them.

She no longer wastefully empathized with those unworthy of her emotional expenditure.

Though her changed self felt unfamiliar even to her, Rosie looked at Arthur and pretended it was nothing. That way, he would be shocked. The positive change his shock would bring was a lifelong guilt. That’s what she wanted.

“Throw those corpses into the pigpen. Then hold a funeral.”

Rosie coldly ordered, and as hands and feet busily moved to carry it out, Arthur watched with sickened eyes.

***

“Thinking about it again, I think I should apologize for saying you’ve changed. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.”

A bedroom lit by dim light.

Rosie, leaning against a bed piled high with numerous cushions on white sheets, was wearing a slip.

“But what’s this?”

What Arthur pointed to then was the doll on the bedside table. The doll with the broken voice function. The pink bear doll. The one Cain had given to Nadia.

Rosie had ordered an identical doll for Nadia’s room and had brought this one to her own quarters. She knew Arthur would see it since they shared a bedroom, but how would he know who gave it? And Rosie wanted to be forthright before him.

The crackling noise of the doll still seemed to ring in her ears.

-Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Truly, thank goodness. Thank goodn…

“It’s a doll.”

No, this is not a simple doll. Rosie picked up the doll indifferently and looked at it. She thought she understood what thoughts might have led him to buy this doll for her daughter. A greeting wishing her well. Well, then her reply to that greeting would be this.

Rosie picked up the doll and gazed at it for a while, and Arthur also watched, thinking nothing of it.

“That’s good. Seeing you playing with a doll, it doesn’t seem like your emotions have withered.”

And at that moment, Rosie threw the doll into the fireplace. Before it could even dry, the fire in the hearth engulfed the doll’s body.

“What are you doing?”

“A farewell.”

Rosie stared at the burning doll. A voice echoed in her head.

A different voice from before.

-Be well. Be well. Be well.

The treasure sword, which happened to be nearby, also approached, humming, and sent a telepathic message into her mind.

-A cold mother, aren’t you. I’ve lived over three thousand years since the Age of Magic, but I’ve never seen a woman this resolute. I acknowledge you, master.

‘Be well, Cain.’

Instead of responding to the sword’s voice, Rosie repeated the name in her mind.

Just then, the intensified flames consumed the doll’s remaining body. Its button eyes, sewn on, fell off and rolled with a clatter before her slippered feet.

Suddenly, the back of her head tingled. Rosie turned around again. And then she saw. The person staring at her with frightened eyes.

‘Arthur Petrichor.’

Her husband.

‘You’re frightened.’

It’s no wonder it seems strange.

Is there a reason to go this far? This isn’t necessarily because some emotion remains. People simply have different ways of finding peace of mind.

So burning this is merely,

because I want no future complications.

“Arthur. I haven’t changed.”

“…What?”

“I’m just the same as I’ve always been. But maybe the versions of you and me that we once knew have disappeared. We are gradually adapting to that unfamiliarity, and saying we’ve ‘changed’ ultimately means failing to adapt. You, that is, Your Majesty… are still saying you don’t know me.”

You don’t know the time I spent with Cain. Or the time with Amadeus. Or the time spent with Nadia. Finally, after being abandoned by you, getting pregnant, and then demanding money from the woman you were about to marry before leaving, you know nothing of that wretched time.

And yet, there is one reason I cannot let you go.

“But you are my best option.”

The truth was, there was still love left.

“So I will try. So that you don’t leave this unfamiliar version of me. I’m saying that the unfamiliar version ends today. And—”

“Rosie.”

Then Arthur, who had been looking at Rosie, buried his face in his hands. After calling her name, he buried his face in his hands.

‘What is he doing?’

As Rosie stared at him blankly, uncomprehending, Arthur lifted his face from his hands and looked at her.

Wearing a terribly contorted expression, tears were flowing down his cheeks. Staring at her with an agonized expression, he slowly continued.

“I will try. Until I die, I will try. Even if I become wretched, it’s okay.”

“……”

“I realized earlier. I realized what price I must pay now that you’ve forgiven me again. Rosie, so please, don’t leave me.”

Arthur pleaded with a restless voice, as if aware she might still leave.

“I will love you. Even if you don’t love me anymore now. And I know you still love me a little, too. So I will try harder. Until you are no longer bound by the shadows of the past.”

Arthur was in the bedroom, so he wasn’t wearing his eyepatch.

But his blinded eye had no focus, making it easy to tell which side the eyepatch should go on. Rosie kissed his useless eye.

She licked the tear fragment clinging to his eyelash with her tongue.

It tasted bitter, salty, and painful.

But at that moment, Rosie felt happy. Because an immensely gratifying emotion arose.

Ah. It seemed she finally understood.

That I want you to kneel and beg before me, to break further, while simultaneously hoping that doesn’t happen. That I don’t care what happens to the Oferun family or Cedric, but I want you to be different. So that such a wretched future is not destined.

It was a bitter reality. It felt like finally waking up from a dream and opening her eyes. Rosie licked Arthur’s cheek. Moving lower, she licked his lips.

“I’m happy.”

She suddenly whispered, and Arthur’s eyes flew open wide. He, too, seemed to have awoken from a dream.

<Side Story Completed>