Chapter 7 …
When I finally stopped crying because I had no strength left to cry, I realized I was standing quietly with my feet on the ground.
I had cried so much that my vision was hazy and my head felt numb.
Beyond the blurred veil of my vision, I saw Zeusia take a step away from me.
Did she at least have a shred of conscience that prevented her from killing a crying child?
No.
Only today did I painfully realize how cruel and inhuman she truly was.
I had read Zeusia’s wickedness and immoral acts in print many times, and I had almost been killed by her the moment I was born.
Ridiculously, only today — not as a reader but as an actual person — did I feel it in my bones.
That I truly could die by that woman’s hand.
“But I’ll live. I’ll use everything I can to survive.”
Wiping away the remaining tears to clear my vision, I took a deep breath and looked up at Zeusia.
She was wearing an odd expression.
Not a laugh, not a cry — something like guilt seeping into her face…
“No. Don’t expect any parental role from that woman. Don’t be fooled.”
I decided to treat Zeusia not as a mother but as the emperor.
“I never really had parents anyway.”
Thinking of her as a business contact made negotiation less hard.
In this world there were only Klein, Senya, and me.
I thought of what I had to protect, rubbed my wet eyes hard, and forced them open.
Then, in the gravest voice I could manage, I spoke.
“Your Majesty, p-please don’t — don’t kill me.”
“……”
“I — hic — I can be, I can be of use to you, Your Majesty.”
I had somehow wiped away the fresh tears and, sobbing, I pushed on with my words.
“Be of use?”
I didn’t have the energy to notice the slight roughening of her voice as she repeated the question.
Grasping at the last straw, I nodded quickly.
“Yes. I will protect you, Your Majesty.”
Zeusia blinked at me for a moment, then finally laughed aloud.
“You, who look like you’d die if someone poked you, will guard my things?”
Intimidated by that domineering gaze, I clenched my tiny fists and gritted my teeth, continuing.
“I can do it. I have… a special ability.”
A six-year-old trying to speak clearly despite sobbing, sniffling from the aftershock of crying.
Zeusia, who had been looking down at my little bloodline, tilted her head as if to tell me to try.
“I can see the future. I can certainly see Your Majesty’s future even if I don’t know others’.”
“My future? How?”
“D-dreams! Sometimes when I dream, I see Your Majesty’s future. The things You will do, the people You will meet, and…”
Instead of revealing that I was a reader of the original work, I skirted the reason I knew the future and boldly played my card.
“I even know when and how Your Majesty will lose your life… I know it all.”
Zeusia, who had been scanning me with an indifferent look, was the first to make an intrigued sound.
“You know about my death even though I don’t? Interesting.”
She pursed her lips and then, with a small movement, closed her eyes and bowed slightly.
“Tell me. Tell me when and how I die.”
“Your Majesty will…”
You will die ten years from now — that is, two years after the original story begins. You will be killed by a rebel army centered around Sinope and the male leads.
The rebels, who wanted to execute the emperor in the most barbaric way possible, brought competent priests from the Holy Nation as soon as they surrounded you.
You will be denied even the chance to die peacefully; they will torture and kill you repeatedly.
Only when your body is so ravaged that divine power can no longer restore you will death finally take you.
Your battered corpse will be mangled beyond recognition, and recovery will be impossible.
Above all, on the day you finally draw your last breath, the empire — indeed the whole continent — will rejoice in your death and hold a grand festival.
“Tell me. How will I die?”
“……”
Her teasing demand continued, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Thinking of Zeusia’s end made my stomach churn; tears threatened to spill again.
Not only because she was my biological mother.
It was that this woman, who now ruled coldly, would — ten years from now — be so thoroughly corrupted and beyond redemption that she would meet such an end… and as a fellow human, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy.
“In the dreams… Your Majesty dies ten years from now.”
I gave only the barest portion of what I’d seen concerning her death, forcing myself not to recall the full tragedy of the original work I had read so many times.
“Ten years, huh. That’s farther off than I thought.”
She sounded as if she had little attachment to life.
As if she might slip back into that lake and disappear at any moment.
“I’ll make sure, Your Majesty, that you are still the Emperor of the Eastern Empire in ten years! I know how to do it. So you won’t have to go through bad things…!”
“My child.”
Zeusia sat down in front of me, knees folded, and rested her chin on her hand, looking at me with pupils slightly darker than mine.
“How can I believe that crude nonsense about seeing the future in dreams?”
It wouldn’t be hard to prove that an abandoned princess could foresee the future.
I could show her that the businesses I picked would become hits, or predict the drought that would come next year.
But those proofs would take time, and Zeusia would not idly wait for me to prove myself.
Then I would have to gamble.
“…W-well, it might just be dreams. But the things I see in them are so vivid.”
I swallowed my dry saliva and, locking eyes with her, slowly raised my hand.
The cold, tiny palm that touched her landed on Zeusia’s left cheek.
That cheek, which I had once slapped with all my force as a newborn.
Her cheek, after six years, was unexpectedly warm.
The soft warmth, embarrassingly tender, seemed to melt my frozen hand.
Zeusia didn’t pull her hand away; instead, with narrowed eyes she glared at my trembling lips.
A shocking villainess, a figure hated both inside and outside the book, and the woman who gave birth to me.
“…I don’t want you to die that way, Your Majesty.”
It might mean little to her, but that was my futile, sincere feeling directed at her.
“You don’t want me dead? Why?”
By the textbook answer, I should have replied, “Because You are my mother,” with an innocent smile.
In every parenting story I’d read, the protagonist would melt a cold parent’s heart with such a warm reply.
No matter how indifferent the parents were, the protagonists cherished and loved the parents who had neglected or abandoned them.
But… I couldn’t do that.
I couldn’t, even falsely, say I loved her. A corner of my heart still harbored bitterness toward Zeusia.
“Don’t cry — we’re all going to a better place!”
Maybe because memories of a previous life overlapped, I still could not forgive the terrible parent who once tried to kill their child.
Perhaps I never would forgive them in my lifetime.
Still… I didn’t want Zeusia to meet the cruel death the original story had in store for her.
My ambivalent feelings overflowed like an eruption, and I didn’t know what to answer.
Driven by emotion, I replied like a child of my body’s age.
“I don’t know. I don’t know… I just don’t want it and I’m scared.”
Tears welled up again.
“……”
Instead of wiping my tears, Zeusia looked at the crying child before her quietly.
Beyond the blurred sight, there was no sign she wanted to comfort me.
A daughter who couldn’t act cute and an unchangingly harsh mother.
We were a mother and daughter who couldn’t follow many clichés.
“Don’t act my age again. This won’t do. Don’t be emotional — get it together, Lira. You’re at a crossroads in your life.”
If this deal went through, I could live the rest of my life peacefully, and Zeusia would avoid a horrific execution — mutually beneficial.
“So, so, Your Majesty, if you spare me…!”
“Fine.”
“R-right. I know it’s hard to believe right away, but please hear me out… eh? Huh?”
“You’d better shut that mouth of yours; I’ll try believing your ridiculous nonsense.”
She whispered the harsh words and for the first time smiled.
Not a mocking smile — just a normal smile.
“In exchange, there are conditions. One: do not cry in front of me.”
For a moment I almost retorted, “Children of my age — no, people cry,” but I forced my mouth to stay shut.
“I — I will remember that!”
At my words, Zeusia’s eyes softened a touch and she continued.
“The second is…”
