Chapter 01

“You’re a demon, aren’t you?”

Because I could no longer pretend not to notice, I finally gave voice to the question I had been holding back.

“I won’t break the contract just because I got unlucky, so please be honest with me.”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

Although I had deliberately sharpened my question, the man responded with a light scoff.

“Orbe. I’m your husband, aren’t I?”

“…….”

“Hm? Honey.”

His answer came as smoothly as though he had been waiting for me to ask.

I shifted my gaze and slowly examined the man from head to toe.

Two sharp horns sprouted from the top of his head.

A long, arrowhead-shaped tail trailed behind him.

“I look like an ordinary human, don’t I? Right?”

As if.

I sighed and replied,

“I have eyes too, Camille.”

It didn’t get through to him in the slightest.

“I know. Why?”

“…….”

“Do you want me to kiss your eyes?”

‘No. There’s no way I can reason with him.’

I let out an exaggerated sigh.

I felt like I would have had a more productive conversation with a human-shaped wall.

How could someone be this shameless? At this point, wasn’t it practically a talent?

This man was my husband.

My husband, who had taken his own life two months ago.

The fact that he had come back to life inside the canvas I had painted was shocking enough.

And now I was supposed to believe that he had even become a demon?

‘Is this really reality?’

Was I the one who had gone insane, or had the world gone insane?

Either way, one of us had clearly lost our minds.

“Orbe. More importantly.”

The man had approached until he was right in front of me, casting his shadow over me with the sunlight at his back.

His cherry-blossom-colored hair fluttered gently in the breeze, and beneath it, clear blue eyes stared straight into mine.

“Aren’t you going to do that again today?”

“……You mean take a walk?”

“Yeah. I already got it ready.”

Something dropped onto my lap with a soft thud.

A red ribbon.

When I lowered my gaze and then looked back up, Camille was calmly tying the other end of the ribbon around his own neck.

“……Are you serious?”

“Hm? About what?”

The red ribbon.

It was something my late husband had prepared for me because I was uncomfortable with physical contact with men.

It was not meant to be used as a dog leash!

“I told you, it goes around your wrist, not your neck.”

I patiently pointed this out as calmly as I could, but once again, he pretended not to hear me.

“But I like it better this way. It feels more like we’re actually going for a walk.”

“That’s vulgar.”

“That’s why I like it even more.”

“…….”

Just to make this perfectly clear, my husband had never been anything like this when he was alive.

The Angel of Ortega.

The perfect husband.

The kind of man who could walk into any family meeting and receive an instant stamp of approval.

Those were some of Camille’s nicknames.

But now……

“Who should I kill this time? Your family? My friends? Or Belladonna?”

“Belladonna is your mother.”

“Oh, right.”

“……Sigh.”

I gazed toward the blue sky beyond the endless field of flowers and began recalling the past.

‘How did things end up like this?’

Yes.

When I looked back, all these strange events had begun on that day.

……The very day I lost the person I loved most, forever.

My husband’s body had been found.

The funeral was held in grand fashion. Perhaps it was even more extravagant than our wedding.

“Belladonna, I am truly sorry to hear such terrible news.”

Even though the eldest son had died, the prestige of the House of Ortega remained unshaken. No—in fact, it almost seemed to have become even more firmly established.

“If there’s anything you need, please don’t hesitate to tell me. And make sure you eat properly, all right?”

“Sob…… Sniff……!”

The nobles who attended the funeral swarmed around Belladonna like a pack of jackals that had spotted prey, offering their condolences.

Warm words of comfort were exchanged, but to me, it all looked like nothing more than a carefully rehearsed play.

‘Is there even a single person among them who is genuinely grieving?’

A self-deprecating laugh almost escaped me before I stopped it. I composed my expression.

‘……No. I suppose I have no right to say that.’

Pushed outside the crowd dressed in black, I watched the old priest deliver his hollow eulogy and sank into my thoughts alone.

“…….”

Yes.

My husband’s death must have been quite a shock to me as well.

The fact that I suddenly remembered a forgotten fragment of my past life was proof of that.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

—Those are the opening words of the novel Anna Karenina.

But to be honest, I still didn’t fully understand what they meant.

Then again—

‘You’d have to have lived in a happy family to know.’

I had lived through two families, and both had been unhappy.

‘……No.’

Did that make three now?

“Camille Ortega, the eldest son of House Ortega and Lady Belladonna’s pride and joy, was an ascetic and benevolent man during his lifetime. Though he was called by God and departed from our side earlier than others, we shall remember for a long time the exemplary life he left behind.”

When the interminably long eulogy finally ended, several burly laborers slowly walked forward carrying the coffin.

The old priest cleared his throat twice before continuing in an even voice.

“……Ordinarily, we would open the coffin and proceed with the viewing, but at the request of the bereaved family, we shall omit that part today.”

At the request of the bereaved family.

I hadn’t had anything to do with it, so it was obvious that this had been Belladonna’s decision.

And I knew why.

‘Because my husband’s face cannot be shown to other people.’

Because the cause of his death was……

Rumble—

“……Ah.”

As if bidding farewell to the one who had departed, rain poured from the sky as though a hole had opened in the heavens.

“The umbrella…….”

As the torrential rain came down at precisely the right moment, my mother-in-law, Belladonna, collapsed over the coffin that had been lowered into the freshly dug earth.

Then came a wail so unpleasant that it rang louder than the rain itself.

“Just look at Lady Belladonna. To think that woman of iron blood would cry like that……”

“She loved her son dearly. Of course she’d react this way. Tsk.”

“By the way, I heard it was suicide…… Is that really true?”

“Good heavens, man! Keep your voice down!”

I clenched the umbrella in my hand tightly and stubbornly kept my eyes fixed straight ahead. My lips were pressed into a hard line.

“Ahhh, Camille……! How, how could you do this to me and leave me behind! Sob……!”

The gloomy whispers of the people around me and Belladonna’s unpleasant wailing.

‘Ah, it’s so noisy.’

That was when it began.

The theatrical mourning started to irritate me beyond endurance.

“I’m amazed you actually thought you could go outside dressed like that.”

“……I’m sorry.”

“I know your origins are humble, but now that you have become an Ortega, you should at least maintain a minimum level of decorum.”

Belladonna.

The very woman who had always gone on and on about the dignity of nobility couldn’t even be bothered to properly pin up her hair today.

It was an astonishingly disheveled appearance.

‘……No, that’s understandable, isn’t it? Her son died.’

But I wasn’t crying.

If so, wasn’t it only natural that I found this woman, who had abandoned all decorum to weep like this, ridiculous?

Yet when I looked around, everyone except me wore expressions of grief.

Even some great-aunt I had never seen before was dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

Even people who hadn’t shown their faces once during the entire year I had been married into this family were mourning his death, having even thrown aside their umbrellas.

‘Then why don’t I feel anything? Have my tear ducts dried up?’

The question naturally arose in my mind, and I soon found the answer.

……Ah.

Right.

I had never loved Camille.

Not even a little.

The moment I reached that conclusion, it felt as though a stone that had been weighing heavily on my chest all this time had finally rolled away with a dull thud.

‘Finally, I’m back to normal. Yes. This is how it should be.’

I no longer had to go outside with Camille beneath the dazzling sunlight just because he wanted me to.

I wouldn’t have to endure that inexplicable flutter in my chest whenever I looked at his refreshing smile.

In other words, I had finally regained my peace.

‘At last, peace.’

But it wasn’t until that night, after the funeral had ended, when I was left all alone, that I finally realized.

My first life had ended at the short age of twenty-five, when I was struck by a green soju bottle wielded by my biological father.

In my second life, carrying the memories of my previous existence, I had been born as the eldest daughter of a baronial family and endured another form of unhappiness.

And then there was my current life, which had begun with a political marriage to Camille.

“My lady, I want to know more about you. So please, keep taking up my time.”

After passing through three bitterly cold seasons,

I finally realized that the only happiness I had ever possessed was that man—

Camille.