Chapter -28
In the end, still holding that hand, I got down from the carriage with Lari. Then a building of such overwhelming grandeur that it couldn’t be taken in at a glance immediately captured my attention. The difference between something described in text and seeing it in reality was truly enormous.
“Wow…”
I had tried not to show too much admiration, but an exclamation slipped out before I could stop it.
“How provincial.”
As expected, Rohen looked at me with a snort, as if he’d been waiting for it. His gaze was full of blatant disdain. As if he hadn’t been just as surprised, eyes widened, himself.
“Unnie isn’t provincial! Unnie is pretty!”
That was when it happened.
While we were talking among ourselves for a moment, someone came running from a distance, calling Lari’s name as if they had been waiting.
“Lari!”
A woman ran toward us, as though she’d been waiting for the carriage to arrive. A woman with blonde hair neatly tied back. Even without being told who she was, I immediately knew.
Helen.
The Grand Duchess of Blair.
The woman who drove the twins to the brink of death, who devoted herself to creating the hidden villains in the novel. And even now, she approached Lari wearing a mask, pretending to be a good mother.
“Auntie!”
Seeing her, Lari expressed her joy without the slightest hesitation. A child who still knew nothing. A child who opened her heart quickly to anyone who treated her kindly.
Normally she wouldn’t have opened up this easily, but perhaps because her relationship with me had been good, Lari seemed to have grown close to the Grand Duchess faster than expected.
“Auntie? You should call me Mom.”
The Grand Duchess was the same. To anyone’s eyes, she looked like a perfect mother. Even though Lari was not her own child, she bent down and opened her arms toward her.
“Uh… that’s…”
“I’m not asking you to say it right now. But later, if you can… will you call me Mom?”
“Yeah!”
It seemed the word “Mom” didn’t come easily, as Lari hesitated. The Grand Duchess, who had been holding her arms out awkwardly toward her, straightened up with a face full of regret instead. Instead, she gently stroked the child’s head with her well-cared-for hand.
“How can someone be this lovely?”
Like someone truly smitten with a child, the Grand Duchess wore a small smile. Watching her was almost strange. The original novel never said she had a bad appearance, but instinctively I had imagined her as someone sharp and sensitive-looking.
But the Grand Duchess in front of me had the face of someone undeniably kind. Slightly chubby cheeks for her age, and a small, short face overall made her look younger than her actual age, and gentle.
A face that would be perfect for getting scammed anywhere. That was my first impression of her.
‘But it’s all acting, right?’
Was it because of a face like that she’d never been suspected? Instead, it almost made me feel like the bad person for doubting someone with such a warm, gentle impression.
Meanwhile, the Grand Duchess’s gaze moved past Lari, toward the Grand Duke, and then to Rohen. As if I didn’t exist at all, she naturally ignored me.
“Don’t tell me that child is…”
The moment she saw Rohen, her eyes trembled ever so slightly. If you didn’t know better, she looked like someone overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of a child.
Noticing that, the Grand Duke looked back and forth between the Grand Duchess and Rohen.
“His name is Rohen. They say he’s Lari’s twin.”
“Twin… then you knew before you went?”
Her trembling voice made her emotions hard to read.
“That’s right.”
It was strange. Even as he answered her questions one by one, the Grand Duke looked uncomfortable. In the original story, their relationship had always felt odd. Whatever their private circumstances, the Grand Duke always seemed like the weaker one around her, constantly watching her mood.
I had thought it was because he felt guilty about the twins not being her children. But seeing the two of them now, it felt more complicated than that. Like it wasn’t such a simple issue.
While that was happening, the Grand Duchess stepped briskly toward Rohen.
“My goodness… I wondered where you had taken Lari… so you went to bring this child back…? You should have taken me with you. My goodness…”
Her eyes were shaking, as though she had met a lost child of her own.
“Hi…?”
Her pale hand hovered in the air. Rohen, who had been silently watching her, snorted and shook his head.
“Why. This time, am I supposed to call you Mom too?”
“Huh…?”
“I’m not planning to. So don’t pretend to be close to me.”
I didn’t know about Lari, but Rohen’s tone was full of hostility. Like a weak animal growing sharp thorns to protect itself. That was exactly how Rohen was.
As if to survive, he bristled with thorns, leaving no opening.
“You don’t have to call me that. It’s your choice.”
“Yeah. No reason to. Everyone in this family is annoying.”
Rohen moved closer to where Lari and I were standing.
“Lari. You shouldn’t even think about calling that thing Mom. No—don’t even think about getting close to the people here. You know, right? In this world, it’s just us…”
Lari’s face, which had been bright ever since we met, stiffened instantly.
“Yeah. It’s just us in this world. Oppa… me… and Unnie…”
As if she had forgotten that fact over the past few days, Lari clung tightly to my arm and shrank in on herself.
“Lari, you don’t have to think that way. Everyone here is on your side.”
“……”
Perhaps this kind of persuasion had worked on her before. Seeing Lari distance herself within minutes, the Grand Duchess gave an awkward smile.
“Right. That’s how it was. There was no one… no one at all. For us.”
It seemed Lari had been doing okay here. But as if she had belatedly grasped reality, she looked deeply hurt. She was still just a child—one whose entire childhood had been filled with bad memories. That’s why I pulled her tightly into my arms.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here now.”
“Mmm… Unnie is here.”
Only then—whether because she finally noticed me, or decided I was worth acknowledging—the Grand Duchess looked at me quietly.
But unlike the way she looked at Lari and Rohen, her gaze toward me was sharp, as if drawing a clear line. It was no different from the Grand Duke’s.
“What is that child?”
Her tone was cold, her words sharp. Gone was the gentle woman from moments ago as she scanned me up and down.
“That child is…”
“Did you bring back yet another child you had somewhere?”
At the word “another,” the Grand Duke’s face hardened instantly. He had been trying to speak with minimal courtesy, but now he looked at her with a stiff expression, as though he could no longer endure it.
“You speak carelessly, knowing how it will sound. And you are the Grand Duchess.”
“Carelessly? It’s true, isn’t it? You had a wife, you had your own child, and yet you brought in children born of another woman. And after all that, how much understanding do you expect?”
“…That’s enough. And that child is not mine.”
The feeling was strange. It felt like the Grand Duchess was deliberately exposing the Grand Duke’s shame in front of others. If she treated him like this here, how was it elsewhere?
‘Or… is she like this all the time, so that saying such things in public feels normal to her? They said their relationship wasn’t that bad outwardly…’
In the original, their relationship was never clearly explained. It only said that the Grand Duchess deeply resented the twins and, knowing of their existence, had arranged for them to be taken away.
She wanted to kill them, but couldn’t due to their strong life force. That was all. A Grand Duchess who treated children born of another woman kindly in public. A Grand Duke who lived deceived by her.
That’s why watching this situation unfold in real time felt surreal.
“Then… what is that child?”
“She was a child who was with Lari and Rohen. I only brought her because the two of them wanted me to. She has nothing to do with me.”
“Ah.”
With that short sigh, the Grand Duchess’s gaze toward me softened a little. She seemed extremely hostile toward anything outside her knowledge. A person who needed to know everything, and have everything go exactly according to her will.
“I see. I’ve been on edge lately. I got carried away for a moment.”
“……”
Even when she offered an apology, the Grand Duke showed no particular reaction. As if this kind of thing was routine.
