#28. Just Because of That
The day Nettepel disappeared, the second prince of Aglante asked Ophelia for a dance. She accepted.
Throughout the dance, the prince showered her with compliments on her appearance. He congratulated her for finally coming to her senses and socializing with a “decent boy” like himself.
The moment the dance ended, Ophelia ran into the lounge and threw up everything inside her.
The following summer, at thirteen years old, another summit was held. Nettepel was absent, and Ophelia spotted a new boy. Rumor had it he wasn’t the son of the Aglante queen consort, but still of royal blood.
Mahanas, perhaps worried she’d get close to him, assigned a personal attendant to keep an eye on her.
But even without that, Ophelia had no intention of befriending the boy. He never left his quarters. Besides, she no longer had any desire to grow close to anyone.
Then the crown prince of Egelbamot, the eldest among the children of the three noble families, called her aside and told her that Nettepel would not be attending any more summits.
“You’re a smart princess, so I trust you understand what I’m saying.”
Looking up at the prince’s gentle gaze, Ophelia felt the same wave of revulsion as she had the previous year.
Feeling unwell ever since seeing the prince, she had told the attendant—her brother Mahanas’s eyes and ears—that she wasn’t feeling well.
But the attendant forced her into the ballroom anyway. Mahanas had repeatedly emphasized the importance of building ties with key figures of the future regime.
All dressed up, stepping into the ballroom, Ophelia resolved to dance the very moment the music began.
After all, attending the ball meant she was required to dance at least once. She figured she’d get it over with and rest.
Then it happened. The doors burst open and Aglante’s three princes boisterously entered. Ophelia noticed the eldest prince was dragging someone by the hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Who among you will show mercy and dance with this pitiful creature? Though he’s a wretched little thing, a single show of pity will be his eternal glory!”
Shouting this while presenting his half-brother, the eldest prince revealed they had found a new plaything after Nettepel’s disappearance.
Ophelia felt a rush of boiling anger.
The eldest prince of Aglante never threw stones at his own father, but delighted in tormenting a defenseless child.
Before she realized it, Ophelia had stepped in front of the eldest prince.
That night, she danced with a boy whose name she didn’t even know just to send him away, and afterward, she locked herself on the balcony, not holding hands with anyone else.
Standing on the balcony, she whispered again and again to the absent Nettepel: See, Nettepel? Now that you’re gone, they’ve found someone new. So was it really you who was the problem?
But Nettepel—the one who needed to hear those words—wasn’t there.
Even when another Aglante prince tried to pester her into a dance, Ophelia refused. She didn’t want to mingle with people who could only enjoy themselves by offering someone up as a sacrifice.
By the time she recalled up to that point, Ophelia felt a strange sense of déjà vu. The boy who had fled the ballroom that night had black hair.
Then, another memory surfaced.
Two years later, in the summer of her fifteenth year, she saw the same boy again—the one the first prince used to torment.
He had grown much taller than her, and unlike Nettepel, seemed to be treated decently now. Ophelia was glad he’d changed enough that he no longer reminded her of her absent childhood friend.
And his eyes—
“Ah, that’s right. Your eyes are golden. Just like a descendant of Yggdrasil.”
Weren’t they like golden starlight?
Ophelia’s eyes widened as she realized what she had missed all along. She looked at the man across from her.
Black hair. Big, golden eyes—just like hers.
“Ophelia, is something wr—”
“You.”
Ophelia finally uncovered the most crucial key she had been overlooking for over ten years.
“You saw me when we were kids, didn’t you?”
Idren blinked like someone startled, then asked quietly.
“…You remember?”
“It just came back to me now.”
Ophelia let out a deep sigh at her own foolishness and muttered,
“…So the boy I saw at the summit—that was you.”
His height and build had changed so much, and their meeting back then had been so brief, that she hadn’t even thought to connect the two.
Since that summit at fifteen, too much had happened to her. In her first life, after Haslen’s death, even Nettepel’s existence had nearly vanished from memory.
So how could she be expected to remember a boy she barely met in passing?
Still, they had lived together for three years. She should’ve recalled at least once. But she hadn’t—because she thought of him merely as a suitor Mahanas had brought.
Since Mahanas claimed the marriage proposal was all thanks to him, Ophelia assumed Idren had agreed to marry her based solely on her brother’s word. She thought he had seen her portrait and judged her worth based on that alone.
Naturally, she had no interest in him. Who would care about someone who decided their life’s future based on a painting?
In hindsight, that was where they had gone astray.
Ophelia sighed again, disheartened by how long it had taken her to realize all this. A wave of exhaustion crashed over her.
Wiping a hand down her face, she looked at the man staring at her expectantly and asked:
“Don’t tell me… you wanted to marry me because of that meeting?”
Her voice came out sharper than she intended, dulled by fatigue. Noticing the shift in mood, the man blinked. Still, his lips were sealed.
And in this situation, silence was an admission.
Ophelia pressed him again, looking at him with a confused expression.
“Seriously?”
“…Are you angry?”
Idren’s voice trembled slightly. Ophelia could sense the fear and tension behind it.
She wanted to ask the man—who had grown into someone so handsome, yet still acted like a boy—if he could understand her position, had the roles been reversed.
They were twenty-three now. Twenty-six before time rewound.
Honestly, until this very moment, she hadn’t even remembered their first meeting. It had happened so long ago, it was only natural.
So this marriage had always felt like a puzzle to her. In a situation where not marrying anyone would have been the simplest solution, she’d been forced to go the long way around—and never even knew why. That had always left her frustrated.
And to think the root of it all was something so trivial.
It was both laughable and infuriating. Idren had even used Mahanas and Reden as hostages to pressure her. Just to get her to cross the Reden border with him, he had manipulated her thirst for revenge.
Ophelia, knowing all this, had still been at his mercy with no other options.
But this?
If he had said it was because of her looks, she could’ve handled it. At least her appearance wasn’t something she had chosen. She could have dismissed his thinking as peculiar and moved on.
But believing that she herself was the root of it all—it made her vision go blurry with disbelief. Her head flushed with heat.
Ophelia took a deep breath. Regardless, unloading all of this onto Idren right now wouldn’t be wise.
Suppressing the roiling emotions inside, she spoke.
“So you proposed to me just because of that?”
“…Did you just say ‘just’?”
The man furrowed his brow. Ophelia noticed the flush in his ears, the tension in his jaw, and the watery glint forming in his eyes.
So she softened her voice to prevent him from crying.
“Listen carefully, okay? I don’t know what that day meant to you, but for me… it meant nothing. I just danced. That’s all.”
Two dances from that night—compared to an entire lifetime—were incredibly short.
And yet this man had thrown everything into chasing that fleeting moment.
Realizing this, Ophelia felt some of her irritation melt away. In its place, a faint pity welled up. The kind of feeling that always came when she saw someone clinging to something meaningless.
Perhaps Idren thought she was doing this just to hurt him. Seeing the pain etched across his face, she couldn’t help but think that.
But the truth was, Ophelia didn’t hate Idren.
Taken objectively, he was actually a very decent man. He had annoying and childish moments, but honestly, most people had far worse flaws.
So no—she wasn’t doing this to trample on his heart.
That was when the man, staring at her with trembling eyes, finally spoke.
“…Then maybe I should’ve done nothing that day.”
