Why did she think that would be the last time? 

She’d thought that after that night, her curiosity about her… about her body would fade. It was a foolish thought. If it were now, she wouldn’t do something so stupid.

“…Just, just go back.”

Her cheeks ripened red. Ann felt ashamed of blushing in front of him and turned her head at an angle. She didn’t want to see the man’s confused face. She was glancing at him and about to turn away when it happened.

Her shoulder was grabbed again. Ann flinched and trembled. Lennox narrowed his brow.

“What just happened…”

“I, I’ll pretend it didn’t happen. Don’t, don’t worry about it too much. I’ll forget it soon enough.”

Like that night… Ann bit her finely trembling lips tightly after those final words. Then she left his presence like she was fleeing.

* * *

Where Ann grew up was “Bluebilt Village,” the largest slum in the capital city of Rosbon.

Her father, Pierre Rosenthal, was a young man who learned to make alcohol at a brewery in Roderville, a wealthy town not far from Bluebilt Village, while working as a servant at an inn near his home. Her mother was a maiden who worked at a hat shop in that area.

The inn where Pierre worked also served as a restaurant. He met Ann’s mother at that place where the first floor was a restaurant and the upper floors were guest rooms. It was the year he turned twenty.

Rianna, Ann’s mother, was an orphan. Having lost her parents to an epidemic at just twelve, she’d bounced between relatives’ homes before just arriving in the capital, where she was working at the hat shop.

Pierre fell in love immediately. Though her fingertips were blistered and rough from domestic work, Rianna was a maiden whose beauty shone with the freshness of seventeen, drawing attention wherever she went.

Rippling silver hair, a lovely face buried within it… The maiden with eyes beautiful like the water-colored gems noblewomen loved captured Pierre’s heart in an instant. 

Seventeen-year-old Rianna possessed all the beauty that Ann now held.

Even in Rosbon’s social circles, Ann was evaluated as having “beauty too precious for a commoner.” Her water-colored eyes, the purity captured in that clear light… 

The innocence and depth evident in her delicate features. The beauty that shone even in the cutthroat Rosbon social scene was what Ann had inherited from her mother.

Pierre wormed his way into the side of the maiden wandering in an unfamiliar city. Pierre was different from the idlers hovering around him. Moreover, he was as handsome as he was kind. 

Rianna fell in love quickly.

The twenty-year-old youth and seventeen-year-old maiden formed a household that way. 

Though not abundant, they lacked nothing. Rather, compared to couples their age, they had quite a bit of wealth. Both were quite diligent.

Rianna especially possessed an industriousness that didn’t tolerate even small luxuries. Pierre liked even that about her.

Their first child was born not in Bluebilt Village but in a villa in Roderville. The child was born half a year after marriage. It was a son, and he was healthy. But he died. The doctor had clearly said he was strong and healthy with no ailments…

It wasn’t an epidemic. Neither of their family lines had any unusual medical history, so they couldn’t assume it was hereditary. Still, the child died. The result remained unchanged.

Rianna couldn’t overcome her grief for a while. The child hadn’t died in the womb, nor passed away after a difficult birth. The child born healthy, who had been laughing in her arms just the night before, wasn’t breathing.

It was horrific. The couple couldn’t rise from their grief for some time. The laughter that had filled the dinner table disappeared. But they lived on.

Pierre went to the brewery every morning to make alcohol. His dream was to someday create the largest brewery in Roderville. 

Just because the child died didn’t mean tomorrow disappeared, so he had to grit his teeth and work. Especially since his wife couldn’t pull herself together.

A month passed that way, then two months. Living on, they came to live. That was life. The grief that seemed unforgettable gradually faded as time passed.

The child came again. Rianna never wanted to lose a child again. So she quit her work. Instead of going to the inn with her husband, she did embroidery bit by bit. She was skilled and her hands were quick. Even with complicated patterns, she finished them quickly.

To help her husband, she embroidered several pieces a day. The embroidery was quite popular. 

Her experience working at the hat shop as a child helped considerably. Back then, she’d embroidered lace decorations for hats every day, so this much was a piece of cake.

A year passed that way. The child born was a pretty daughter who resembled her. Her hair was just like waves. The eyes set beneath long lashes were also a beautiful water color.

“The girl’s got a strange look about her. When she grows up, she’ll make plenty of men cry.”

The midwife cackled. Rianna didn’t care either way. She’d constantly worried whether the child would miscarry, what if she wasn’t healthy.

After losing her first child, those thoughts had been constant. Even if the child was born disabled, please just let her be strong. Even born that strong, babies were so small and fragile they could leave this world at any moment.

“What should we name her?”

Pierre asked. Rianna stared down at the baby.

“Ann. Ann would be good.”

Her haggard face smiled faintly. It was the name she’d planned to give if her first child had been a daughter.

“Good. You like it too, right? Ann.”

Pierre asked the child. The baby who’d been nursing smiled, puckering her lips. He laughed broadly, colored by a joy different from his first child. He raised his head. 

His wife’s eyes were glistening with tears. He hugged his pale wife and patted her back. The couple shared a genuine smile for the first time in a while.

It was the first peace they’d experienced since losing their first child. The family of three lay down together like that and fell asleep. How would it have been if they’d been happy that long? 

Without separation for so long, if there had been no parting… What kind of life would Ann be living then?

Without losing her parents, without bouncing between relatives’ homes. Without suffering from hunger, without living while reading others’ moods. Not abundant but without lack… 

Then she wouldn’t have met Lennox. She wouldn’t have lived in the court either. Ann found it easy to picture herself living outside the palace.

Life without living in the court would have been difficult and hard, but it would have been much more comfortable. 

Ann was always tired of the inferiority complex and sense of inadequacy that followed her like a shadow. The women she encountered were mostly daughters of noble families.

Beautiful and gentle like angels, they were generally kind but not sincere. Ann was sick of this court life where people pretended to be kind on the outside while busy finding faults inside.

She hated possessing and wearing things that weren’t hers while pretending they were. What she hated most was herself, who could never be incorporated into noble society. 

To love a man at the very top of the class system in the Las Palmada Empire where marriage between classes was impossible…

‘Foolish. Ann Rosenthal.’

The incantation she’d always recited during her growing years, Ann still chanted like a prayer several times a day these days. To not love Lennox.

Because she wasn’t Lennox’s friend. Yes, she wasn’t Lennox’s friend.

Every time she saw Lennox trying to embrace her or kiss her cheek without caring about others’ gazes, acting like they were lovers, she was seized by a strange hatred. No, it wasn’t just hatred. What was really the problem was…

‘Because even that kind of contact feels good.’

Skin touching, scent lingering… In the end, it was because of that vulgar desire. Even when his actions were terrible, she liked the time when she could possess his affection in that way.

‘Will Lennox still embrace me like this even after marrying Charlotte?’

That would truly be horrific. Ann had tried to leave the palace because she feared facing Lennox who would embrace her as a friend even after becoming the proper father of young princes and princesses. The palace had never been her home to begin with.

It was even a palace without a single relative. It might be different if she had blood relations, even distant ones. But the royal palace had no such thread-thin support. The only person she could purely rely on was Lennox.

Because he was the one who’d wanted to keep a commoner child like her close from the beginning. But Lennox would marry someday too. Then he’d have his own family. When children were born, his relationship with Charlotte would be quite different from now.

Ann didn’t want to become lonelier than now. She was afraid that the one person she relied on in a place without any of her family would gain a family. Watching Lennox’s family while endlessly missing her deceased parents was also a terrible thing.

So she had to find her own family. That was why Ann actively went on arranged meetings.

But the best thing would have been not losing her parents. However, Ann’s… young Ann’s modest and loving household never stopped experiencing misfortune.

The first misfortune was her father Pierre’s death. Regrettably, Pierre didn’t live long. He even passed away a month after his daughter was born.

The inn’s owner called it an “accident,” but it was m*rder nonetheless. And Ann’s misfortune began from there.