Chapter 1

Elena’s life had always been the same, as if she were running on a hamster wheel.

A father who worked himself to death, and a mother rotten with vanity.

To think that the only sane person in this shabby house was Elena.

“Elena!! Come here and let me fix your hair a little.”

It was such a small house that when her mother shouted from her room, Elena could hear it even from her own room.

Even in a place like this, her mother’s vanity—wearing expensive dresses that did not suit the house and putting jewels in her hair—was one of the things eating away at Elena.

Elena set down the glasses she was wearing and tidied the book she had been reading.

She did not forget to close the inkwell, either.

In their poor household, even a little ink drying up would be a great loss.

The only person in this house earning money was Elena, yet there were three people spending it.

She could endure each day only by saving on small, trivial things.

“Elena!! I told you to come here!!”

The floor shook along with her mother’s voice.

It was obvious she was stomping her feet again because something had not gone her way.

Elena let out a small sigh.

“I’m going, I’m going.”

Elena opened the door to the room Cecile was using.

It was a room barely ten steps from her own.

The luxury goods Cecile had clutched desperately and refused to let go of even in the moment they were driven out of the huge mansion that always smelled sweet were scattered all over the room.

‘None of it suits this place.’

With the floorboards rotting away as they were, how could such luxuries suit this house?

If those were sold, they could live comfortably for this month—no, for three months, it seemed—but Cecile was a person who paid no attention to such things.

For Cecile, filling her own vanity was the most important thing.

Elena glanced at the things strewn across the bed and then fixed Cecile’s hair.

“Why are you so slow, child? When I call you, you should come right away!”

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

No matter what, if the words dragged on, the one who got tired was Elena.

It had been several years since she had simply chosen to keep her mouth shut.

It had already been five years since they had come here as if chased out after her father died and her mother squandered the family fortune.

It meant it had taken her mother only a single year to squander that vast fortune.

How impressive, really.

Part of the fortune went to feeding her maternal family, part was spent buying up luxuries, and another part was used to host parties.

While Elena grew from a child with tiny hands into a young lady of twenty, her mother had not changed at all.

Cecile still thought she was a noblewoman living in a huge mansion.

Cecile puffed out her cheeks and then touched her own cheek.

“You don’t have some money, do you? Look at how your face has been ruined because you use cheap cosmetics. I need to buy new cosmetics…”

Even now she was going on about expensive cosmetics like that.

Did she even know that the money to buy those cosmetics would cover a year’s worth of Leana’s medicine?

Cecile checked Elena’s reaction.

Elena’s and Cecile’s eyes met through the mirror.

Elena spoke quickly.

“There is no money, Mother. We don’t even have enough for tomorrow’s soup…”

“How important is that food?! Isn’t it more important that I’ve been invited to the evening party Countess Presto is hosting in a week!! How long are you going to keep being like this? Do you think I’m doing this for my own sake? It’s all for your sake, isn’t it! Leana is hopeless for marriage, so you at least have to be sent to a good house! How long are you going to cling to those scraps of paper and live in shabby poverty?”

Cecile’s voice grew louder and louder.

Cecile’s selfishness—wanting to buy cosmetics because a ball a week away was more important than tomorrow’s soup—gnawed at Elena.

“But, Mother… We don’t even have enough for Leana’s medicine. So, the cosmetics can wait until next time…”

Smack!

Cecile rose from the vanity chair and slapped Elena’s cheek.

“You, you! Are you doing this because you don’t know how humiliated and upset I am right now? Is that why you’re talking back to me like this?”

Elena was the one who wanted to cry, but it was Cecile who instead let tears fall.

Black streaks ran down her carefully made-up face.

Elena stared at it blankly.

“Last month, and the month before that! There wasn’t a single invitation for me! I finally got just one! And now, when it’s so dreadfully humiliating that I have to go in a dress long out of fashion, are you going to do this too? I’m not asking you to buy me a dress or jewels! It’s just cosmetics!”

Cecile huffed and stormed out of the room with her hair still disheveled.

“No!”

Elena chased after her, but her body, having starved for two days, could not muster the strength and was shoved back by Cecile’s force.

Cecile roughly shoved Elena and ransacked her room.

Cecile finally found the small money pouch in Elena’s room.

“You sly little thing. You hid money like this and deceived your own mother?”

Elena trembled with despair.

“Not that money, Mother! If we don’t even have that money, we won’t be able to buy Leana’s medicine!”

Desperate, Elena clung to Cecile.

Cecile pushed Elena away once more.

Elena’s thin body was hurled to the floor.

“Not taking medicine for a month won’t kill her.”

Cecile muttered coldly.

“Just wait. I’ll find you a fine match. You just have to do as I tell you! Where else would you find a mother like me? Going this far for her daughter’s sake.”

Elena let out a hollow laugh.

Please, if there is a god, please!!

She wished someone would save her from this hell.

Even a rotten rope would do.

Even if it ended up driving her into hell in the end, that would be fine.

If only she could escape right now!

She wanted to breathe comfortably even once.

Elena kicked open the door and ran out of the house.

With shoes barely on her feet, she ran through the streets as the sun was setting.

‘Father… I miss you.’

She whispered mournfully.

* * *

Maxim languidly closed his eyes and opened them.

If it had not been an invitation from the Presto family, he would not have set foot here.

It was the first time in nearly five years that Maxim had come down to the Rebunto region.

Thanks to his aunt, who was counted among the eccentrics, he had ridden for hours in a carriage to come all the way down here.

Countess Presto liked to gather a crowd of people and socialize.

He had avoided it until now, making one excuse after another, but with her sixtieth birthday being paraded about, he could no longer refuse.

The family elders had pressured Maxim as well, and in the end he had come here.

[‘How much your aunt cherished you. Can you not grant her even one small wish?’]

[Your aunt is right. Why not take this chance to clear your head?]

The words, repeated like a refrain, made Maxim unable to bear it.

If they wanted to be so dutiful, they should do it themselves instead of using me.

Maxim clicked his tongue coldly.

It was a moment when he desperately missed the cigarettes he had quit the instant he was discharged from the army he had fled to.

Aunt Presto was a person who believed in strange superstitions.

She had apparently had a tarot reading, and the fortune-teller said Maxim’s fateful connection was in the Rebunto region.

Because of that, the entire Presto family had come to their villa in Rebunto.

She had apparently declared she would personally find the woman who would become Maxim’s wife.

‘Just let me find out who that fortune-teller is.’

I won’t let them get away with it.

Maxim pressed his tired eyes.

Maxim had no time to waste in a place like this.

How many matters were waiting for his approval?

Countess Presto needed to see the pale faces of his aides stamping their feet in frustration.

Countess Presto needed to know that he was no longer the sickly boy of his childhood.

Maxim rubbed his rough lips with his fingers.

“I don’t know what kind of pointless waste of time and manpower this is.”

Muttering that discontentedly, he leaned back in the carriage.

He wanted to quickly finish all these troublesome matters, prove that Aunt Presto’s wish was futile, and then return to the capital.

He had recently purchased new land on Kengersi Island, a new resort that was just beginning to rise.

These days he was busy with the work of building a Rostain department store chain there.

Even two bodies would not have been enough.

“Marriage, what nonsense.”

He had no interest in women, and even less interest in marriage.

Maxim did not trust any woman.

He did not understand why everyone was so eager to push him, a marriage skeptic, into marriage.

“They’re so meddlesome.”

Maxim chewed on a curse and then let his head fall back against the chair with a thud.