Chapter 7. What Have I Ever Done to You?

I graduated from an all-girls middle school, an all-girls high school, and an all-girls university, then worked myself to death. Even after being reborn, I worked an absurd amount.

There was simply no room in my life for something as soft as love.

‘My average daily commute was three hours. Anyone who could fit a relationship into that schedule would have to be superhuman.’

Even if I left the office sharp at six, I wouldn’t get home until nearly eight. By the time I ate and watched a little TV, it was already time to sleep. Because the next morning, I had to be up by six again just to make it to work on time.

The only love in my life came in the form of novels I read in stolen moments during those commutes.

‘Now that I’m actually face-to-face with it, I can’t even tell if the other person is being sincere or not.’

Honestly, it’s not as though I had absolutely no opportunities. If I’d tried a little harder, made more of an effort to get to know someone, maybe things wouldn’t have come to this.

‘But it’s also true that I never had a compelling reason to bother.’

When you’re utterly drained, even facing another person becomes a source of stress. That was exactly how I was. Not wanting to deal with the emotional exhaustion that came with romance, I simply let the years slip by.

‘Maybe that’s exactly why I ended up in this situation.’

Reject him, and the dragon goes berserk. Ending: a sea of flames.

There was no running away anymore.

‘But seriously, what am I supposed to do?’

Stuck between two impossible options, I’d been buzzing around my room like a bee, getting nowhere. I picked up a pen.

〈To my dear pen friend of many years, Miss Nanari〉

A life without love, and yet I still had one person I could unburden myself to.

〈This letter may turn out to be the last one I can share with you. Nothing has happened to me yet. Something might happen, but…… I thought writing it out would help me sort through my thoughts, but even on paper I’m rambling. Still, just knowing I have one friend I can write to honestly like this makes me feel like my life hasn’t been wasted.〉

That last sentence, at least, was my genuine truth. I let out a sigh and continued.

〈Your brother, Sir Karl Drian, has proposed to me. Along with a large pink diamond ring that matches the color of my hair. If I told you I felt my life was in danger because of it, would you believe me?〉

It would be wonderful if Nanari Drian wrote back the way she always did, her reply plastered with lols and hahaha’s. It would be even better if she assured me that her brother going berserk was absolutely impossible.

I sighed and kept writing.

❀❀❀

Someone once said that life is enjoyable precisely because it’s unpredictable.

At that very same moment, Nanari, the young lady of the Drian household, was scouring the borders near the estate. Something had happened within the family, something that should never have happened at all.

She swept her silver hair, tied high in a ponytail, behind her as she gazed toward the horizon where dawn was just beginning to break.

‘Who on earth could it be? Someone brazen enough to break into the Drian family’s treasure vault and steal the pink diamond ring.’

That pink diamond was no ordinary jewel. It was a priceless treasure passed down since the very first ancestor of the Drian family.

Before the dragon took human form, it breathed its final breath over a mine on the Drian estate. The force of that breath was so overwhelming that all the coal in the mine transformed into diamonds, turning it into a diamond mine.

Of all those diamonds, the largest and most luminous pink diamond had been set into a ring and kept in the family vault. A reminder never to forget that they were the true descendants of a dragon.

And now that ring had vanished without a trace.

‘They couldn’t have gotten far. I have to find that ring no matter what.’

Nanari ground her teeth and combed the area around the estate. But there was no trace of the ring to be found anywhere.

‘Who could possibly have the audacity to slip past me and sneak into the castle without leaving a single clue!’

That was something only Karl Drian, known as the most perfect dragon of all, could have pulled off. She was twisting her lips and swallowing her simmering anger when something caught her eye near the bushes.

“……Isn’t that the family’s messenger beast?”

“It appears so.”

The large black Komodo dragon was a spirit beast the family used in place of messenger birds. It was also a creature only the direct bloodline of the Drian family, descendants of the dragon, could use.

‘So what is it doing crawling around here?’

Her parents were at the Drian family residence in the capital, and her other siblings had gone abroad on their training journeys, outside the Empire. And she had not sent any letters.

Which meant the messenger beast had been sent by the one Drian family member whose whereabouts were currently unknown: Karl.

‘Is my brother somewhere nearby?’

That couldn’t be right. She tilted her head, then gave a crisp order.

“Catch that messenger beast and bring it to me.”

❀❀❀

I’d stayed up late writing letters the night before, so when I finally opened my eyes, the sun was already high in the sky.

I washed up quickly and walked out to the café, where a familiar face sat waiting—a face that had no business being there.

A fitted uniform with epaulettes, a spine held ramrod straight without so much as leaning against the chair, and two fists resting neatly on top of both knees.

Sitting in a posture so rigid I wanted to take a protractor to it was a handsome young man, and he was my little brother, whom I had left behind in the capital.

“……Ben?”

“Sister.”

The moment our eyes met, Benjamin rose from his seat and walked toward me. My shoulders drew in before I even realized it.

‘What if Ben despises me now?’

When I left the capital after the engagement annulment, I deliberately avoided seeing Father and Benjamin. I knew they loved me as real family.

‘But there’s always the possibility of original story compulsion.’

Unlike me, who had left the capital and cut myself off completely from Georgiana, the two of them had been forced to keep encountering her. It would only be natural if a thought like this had quietly taken root in their minds.

‘This person is actually quite good. What if my sister was the one who was truly terrible?’

That was what I feared most.

Gripped by anxiety, I stood there with my head bowed, needlessly crumpling the hem of my clothes. A quiet sigh fell over my head.

“You’ll catch a cold.”

The cold air was cut off, and warmth settled over my shoulders. Benjamin had taken off his own jacket and draped it around me.

‘What a relief. He hasn’t come to dislike me the way he did in the original story.’

Right. So much had already diverged from the original that it would be strange if Benjamin treated me as coldly as he had in the story.

The relief hit me all at once, and my two cold hands began to tingle as though they’d been plunged into hot water. I wiggled my fingers and opened my mouth.

“Thank you…… actually, wait, how are you here?”

I had kept my location in this small town a complete secret. That was exactly why I had dismissed all my intelligence agents, keeping only Silvie with me!

‘Don’t tell me word of where I’ve been living has already spread everywhere?’

Was that how Karl Drian found me too?

My blood ran cold for an entirely different reason. I was still turning over what I’d do if that were the case when Benjamin answered in his characteristically flat tone.

“Silvie called for me.”

“Oh, right. Silvie…… wait, Silvie? Silvie told you?”

I had told her absolutely not to say a word!

I spun around to glare at Silvie with daggers in my eyes. She shrugged, completely unapologetic.

“Were you planning to get married without a single family member knowing?”

Before she even finished speaking, Benjamin’s face went rigid.

“Married? What is the meaning of that?”

Silvie! You can’t keep dropping bombs like this!

I had wanted to say something too, but not like this—not with a sword being drawn into the conversation.

Benjamin Goldworthy.

Twenty years old. Knighted at eighteen. A combat-oriented talent whose abilities were heavily concentrated in martial prowess. That was how the world saw him.

‘Cool-headed, dispassionate, a man of principle.’

But to me, he was still nothing more than my spoiled little brother. He had lost his mother when he was young, and he had been such a fragile child that he couldn’t fall asleep without hearing me sing him a lullaby.

And perhaps because I had worked so hard from an early age to fill the void our mother left, he had a blindly devoted streak when it came to me.

‘The moment he hears I’ve received a proposal, he’s going to go absolutely wild.’

Whether I accepted or rejected it, I had told Silvie to keep it from him until the very last. But she had summoned him before I’d even made up my mind!