Chapter 3

‘If only I could have thrown away even the memories.’

The memories of her previous lives, which had once felt like a blessing when she met him and loved him, were now little different from a curse to her, with nothing left but ashes.

Even when she tried to begin anew, the memories of her past lives held her back.

That was why, though still a child, she had ended up living as something awkwardly in-between, precocious yet neither this nor that.

Even if her appearance and age were young, inside she was a pessimistic old woman hundreds of years old, and she could not make the innocent face her older brother did.

It was awkward, and she was tired too.

The reason her exhausted self was still alive rather than dead was entirely because of her parents.

Feeling her gaze, Celia turned toward her.

The gentle smile that was always on Celia’s face deepened, and she reached out her hand toward her.

“Come here, Via.”

When Viviana stepped closer, Celia pulled her tightly into an embrace and patted her on the back. Tap, the lips that lightly touched her forehead were full of affection. With her face buried in Celia’s chest, Viviana could hear the sound of Celia’s heart thumping in her ears.

Listening to that heavy yet heart-stirring sound, Viviana pulled up the corners of her mouth and smiled.

‘In this life, I will live for you.’

She wanted her to be happy. She wanted that smile to remain on her face.

In this life, Viviana would do everything in her power to make Celia happy.

Even if that happiness were achieved through her own unhappiness.

‘All I have to do is not love him.’

She only had to stop expecting anything. Then there would be no betrayal.

He was never hers. She had simply realized that far too late, after several hundred years had already passed.

The foolish and lingering Viviana was dead.

She had died and sunk into the Han River. Everything had burned away in that blazing one-sided love, and all that remained was dry ash.

So she would not love.

She would never love.

She did not want to cry anymore.

* * *

The Crown Prince’s birthday banquet, being a banquet that young children had to attend, was held during the day unlike the banquets for adults.

The banquet hall, which was ordinarily likely filled only with adults, was even more crowded now that young children had joined them.

Dennis approached Viviana, who was standing there with a bored expression, and whispered.

“That looks delicious.”

As he said that, he drooled openly.

It was not as though he was starved at home, so why was he so greedy for food? Watching him quietly, Viviana asked,

“Brother. But you said you hate cake.”

At those words, Dennis made a startled face.

At some point, after seeing the older brother of one of his friends drinking coffee in a very grown-up way, he came back infected with strange ideas and started saying odd things about how bitterness was the taste of grown men, while sweetness was the taste of women.

Then in the end he declared that because he was a grown man, he would drink coffee, and even at such nonsense, her parents only chuckled good-naturedly.

‘Really? Then since you are a grown man, I suppose you will not eat things like dessert or snacks either?’

At those words, Dennis made a shaken face, but because of his pride he could not say no and simply nodded, and her father, the Marquis Orhan, poured another cup of the coffee he himself was drinking and held it out to Dennis.

Seeing that, Viviana thought, ‘Caffeine is not good for a growing child’, but she did not stop them.

The scientific knowledge in this world was too low for her to explain the harmfulness of caffeine.

She had no desire to show off for no reason and reveal her unusual nature to the whole world.

She wanted to live as ordinarily as possible.

That was why she tended to quietly lock her knowledge away in her head and simply watch and leave things alone, as long as it was not something that would make Celia sad.

Dennis, who had started drinking coffee from a young age, would probably grow less than other children his age, but she did not care because it would not kill him.

Well, in this world, unlike in modern Korea, parents would not grieve over their child’s height being short.

‘Ghk!’

Dennis, after taking the coffee and drinking it, let out a crumpling sort of sound and twisted his face miserably, but perhaps because he was too proud to show weakness over something like this, he barely kept a calm face and sipped the coffee. Even that sipping was little different from drinking it a drop at a time, so the coffee in the cup hardly decreased at all.

Perhaps intending to break Dennis’s spirit, since he was secretly stubborn and often caused trouble, Marquis Orhan did not stop him by saying this was enough.

In the end, because his father would not stop him, Dennis stood there awkwardly with the cup in his hand, unable to do anything, and from that day on, instead of the sweet desserts he had once enjoyed, he drank bitter coffee, and the snack time he had loved disappeared.

All he had to do was admit that he thought wrongly and give up his stubbornness, yet even while looking gloomily at Viviana eating dessert, he refused to yield.

Even Viviana, who had ignored it, softened when she saw Dennis sniffling and crying several times where no one was around, so she took the snack assigned to her to Dennis’s room, crunched one bite of it herself, said she was sleepy, and then lay down on his bed and took a nap.

When she woke again later, the plate that had held the snack had been emptied clean.

Viviana said nothing to Dennis, who, with a pale face, was agonizing over what excuse he should make to her.

That happened several times, and before long, Viviana stopped even taking that first bite and simply went to sleep.

‘I do not like sweet things.’

She did not like sweets.

Perhaps she had liked them in the distant past.

Was it because she had grown older? Or perhaps because every one of her loves had failed.

After all, love is compared to sweetness.

Through her many lives, the sweetness she had tasted was brief, and afterward a bitterness like swallowed poison clung all over her tongue.

Even while drinking, each time, despair and sorrow strong enough to send a chill through her insides, she was never able to stop because of the brief sweetness that had always dangled before her like bait.

And yet, when she looked back, there was nothing left for her.

What she had held so dearly had been nothing but scraps.

Clinging to the scraps left behind after that brief sweetness passed, she kept repeating the same mistake every day, telling herself that next time she would be able to taste the real thing, that she would be able to become fully drunk on that sweetness.

That sweetness was always brief, and it disappeared before she could even lose herself in it.

Dennis nudged Viviana, who had been reminded both of Dennis’s foolish behavior and of her own foolish past.

It was good that he had pulled her out of the past she had sunk into, but she did not like the way he kept nudging her, so Viviana looked at Dennis with a crooked expression and asked,

“What?”

“Is there anything you want to eat?”

And while saying that, he tempted her little by little.

He asked whether she did not want that bouncy pudding over there, whether those brown cookies with large chocolate chips in them looked good.

He wanted to use her as an excuse to bring them over, and then hoped she would yield them to him just as she had before when she gave him her snacks.

Viviana began to feel a little irritated.

She was irritated that after taking her snacks through her kindness, he should have known to be grateful, and yet even in a place like this he was still trying to look after his own interests. She was also irritated that even though, thanks to her, he had managed to satisfy both his desire for snacks and his own pride, he had never once told her thank you.

‘I should not have helped him.’

Men, honestly ― though Dennis was far too young and small to be called a man, genetically he was still male, so treating him the same way should be fine.

Though she wore a twisted smile, Dennis, too oblivious to notice, failed to read her mood and kept chatting, asking what she thought of that crème brûlée, or that mille-feuille that looked so crisp.

Although she had prepared her heart, it was more than enough to irritate Viviana, whose mood had been poor all day at the thought of meeting him today.

Hiding her tangled feelings, Viviana put on a kindly expression like a shell and whispered to Dennis.

“Brother, bring me whatever looks delicious.”

“Should I?”

At those words, Dennis brightened at once and hurried over to where the plates were, and without realizing that Viviana was coldly watching him from behind, he happily bounced on his feet at the thought of eating tasty snacks and carefully arranged them one by one on a plate as he brought them over.

“Here! Look at this!”

It looks delicious, right? Hurry and give it to me. Dennis looked at Viviana with eyes full of expectation, but Viviana only twisted her lips into a slanted smile and picked up the éclair from the plate.

“Huh?”

Dennis would never forget this day.

Viviana, smiling with a face as cold as a raging snowstorm, unlike her usual quiet manner, opened her mouth wide and stuffed about half of that one into it ― the very one he had carefully chosen, the most beautiful among that mountain of éclairs, the one glazed most beautifully with chocolate ― and then bit down with her front teeth as though snapping it at the waist.

“Hrk!”

It felt as though his own waist had been torn away.

As she chewed the éclair in her mouth, she set the half that remained, its middle severed, back onto the plate. Then she stabbed into the cute custard pudding ― the biggest and prettiest one he had brought, plump and glossy, wearing caramel syrup like a hat ― with a dessert spoon until it was ruined, ate about half of that too, and set it back down on the plate.

“My pudding….”

It was such pitiful wreckage that it was hard to even call it pudding anymore.

His little sister smiled like a devil and split in half the mille-feuille he had brought, the one with the most beautifully sandwiched cream, and chewed it away in rough bites as well.

“You were right. It is crisp.”

“Hngh…!”

That much even Dennis could tell.

Because the crunching sounds coming from Viviana’s mouth were reaching his ears.

After mercilessly smashing apart, one by one, the kingdom of dream and hope made of desserts that he had brought, Viviana’s mood eased a little, and she smiled brightly at Dennis.

“Thank you, Brother. For thinking of me and bringing me such delicious things.”

“……”

“Give me the plate, and the coffee you like is over there, so hurry and go drink it.”

“…Okay.”

Watching Dennis’s back as he trudged away with a drooping face, Viviana let out a scornful snort, and from behind her came someone bursting into laughter.

“Looks like our Via is very angry.”

“…Father.”

It was her father, Marquis Orhan. He had been watching from the time Dennis came into the banquet hall and pestered Viviana for snacks.

‘Now then, when will she get angry?’

He had stayed still and watched out of curiosity, and true to Viviana’s nature, he had gotten to witness her quiet fury.

He knew Dennis was too stubborn and too oblivious to understand if spoken to politely.

That was why, though he had known his daughter was mature, he had thought that because of Dennis, who could not be reasoned with, he might get to see her lose her temper, but she had broken Dennis’s stubbornness more clearly and quietly than he had expected.

‘She always exceeds expectations.’

Marquis Orhan laughed lowly as he looked at Viviana.

He knew everything.

He knew that Viviana, who was more mature than her older brother, had been giving her own snacks to that stubborn brother of hers.

Even knowing that, the reason he had not lifted Dennis’s ban from snacks was because he wanted to teach his children how to clean up the consequences when something they chose did not go as they had thought.

Dennis knew that the words he had spoken thoughtlessly had brought about his own unhappiness.

If he had honestly told Marquis Orhan or Celia that he had been wrong, that unhappiness would have ended, but because of his stubbornness, he had not been able to do that.

‘At most, it will take him a week.’

Dennis’s patience was not that great, so if it was quick, perhaps two days? Thinking that, the Marquis had waited leisurely.

However, even after a week had passed, seeing that his son still had not come, the Marquis had begun to doubt, thinking, ‘That cannot be right’, when his eyes caught sight of Viviana handing her own snacks over to Dennis.