TDKB 29

Chapter 29

After spending quite some time doing something completely incomprehensible to the young noblemen, Scarlett finally put down her tools. Then, without hesitation, she pulled the lever—one that might very well have been connected to her life or death.

At that moment, a loud humming noise filled the warehouse.

“It works.”

Scarlett lifted her head as she spoke. Yet even amid the deafening noise filling the warehouse, there was a palpable tension between the navy and army.

Scarlett smiled awkwardly.

“It works, you know?”

At her words, Evan was the first to pull his hands from his pockets and applaud.

“That’s incredible, Miss Scarlett. You really fixed it!”

The others also looked stunned.

Blight spoke honestly.

“The Crimson family really is something. I never thought you’d actually be able to fix it…”

Scarlett smiled at that.

“You didn’t believe in me?”

“No. Honestly, not at all. That’s why I was seriously thinking about what we’d do after you failed to fix it.”

“What would you do?”

Waldo reproachfully turned toward Victor.

“Weren’t you planning to kill us?”

Victor snorted at that and took off his coat, holding it out. Waldo searched through the pockets, but there was no gun.

Evan scolded them.

“How are we supposed to work together when none of you trust each other?”

“You have to be trustworthy before I can trust you.”

Even as they bickered, the engine continued running.

Perhaps because of that, those who seemed ready to argue for a long time soon stopped and smiled.

Then someone shouted,

“A technician from the Crimson family has arrived!”

Scarlett flinched, and the others began shouting from beside her.

“She’s a technician!”

“We’re saved!”

With people shouting from all directions, Scarlett was startled and hid behind the engine, which was about the only thing she could rely on.

Seeing this, Victor looked utterly dumbfounded. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her behind him.

To celebrate the repaired engine, the soldiers drank alcohol.

Whether she felt relieved or not, Scarlett was so exhausted that she was on the verge of collapsing. She had climbed a mountain the previous day, hadn’t slept a wink, and then repaired the engine. Because she had been concentrating so intensely, it felt as though she had drained even the very last reserves of energy from her body.

For the time being, she borrowed Victor’s private bathroom, which was attached to his bedroom. She was about to soak herself in the hot water, but she thought she might fall asleep right there, so she took a cold shower instead.

“I’m so tired this week…”

Muttering to herself, Scarlett finished bathing and changed into the clothes she had brought.

The problem was, she hadn’t expected to meet Victor, so she had packed nothing but clothes she had intended to wear until they were worn out and discarded. Considering how Victor was always commenting on the way she lived, if he saw the pajamas she was wearing now, he would definitely have something to say.

Still, she had no other option, so Scarlett left the bathroom.

And, just as expected, Victor’s eyes swept over her.

“Are you protesting because I didn’t give you alimony?”

Exactly as she expected.

She tried to rationally convince herself that there was nothing to be embarrassed about, but it didn’t work. Heat spread across her cheeks.

“I only brought these because I was planning to wear them until I threw them away. I was trying to keep my luggage light.”

“Either way, that means you wore them until they got like that.”

“…I’d appreciate it if you thought of it as being frugal.”

At her words, Victor gave an incredulous little laugh.

Feeling unnecessarily embarrassed, Scarlett pulled her collar together and asked,

“Do you happen to have any spare rooms?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll sleep outside. It looks like the weather is warm enough.”

“Hmm.”

Victor didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he walked over and opened the closed door for her himself.

Just like the day he had accepted the divorce papers, he didn’t stop her twice.

Scarlett slung the sleeping bag she had brought over her shoulder and went outside.

Then she spotted a bug in the lobby and recoiled in horror.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

One of the young men standing guard stomped hard on the bug and flung it away.

Scarlett asked with a horrified expression,

“Why… why is it so big?”

“Ah, because we’re in the south!”

The young man answered cheerfully.

When Scarlett remained trembling in the lobby, unable to leave, another young man came over and said,

“You get bugs here that you could never imagine seeing in the capital.”

“What kind of bugs?”

Scarlett had decided to sleep outside because she thought there was no way a wild beast would appear at a military base occupied by elite soldiers.

But at that moment, she decided a wild beast would be preferable to those bugs.

The soldiers began enthusiastically sharing their tales as though they had been waiting for someone to ask.

“I once saw a centipede that was as thick as my forearm.”

“W-What?! There’s no such thing!”

“Oh, there really is! If you don’t believe me, I can risk my life and go find one to prove—”

“No!”

Scarlett didn’t even want to hear the rest. She covered her ears with her hands.

Meanwhile, Victor came downstairs, put an arm around Scarlett’s shoulders, and teased her.

“Sleeping with your ex-husband is better than that, right?”

Scarlett rubbed her goosebump-covered arms and asked,

“You’re lying, right?”

“If you’re curious, I can have them bring one over.”

Scarlett shook her head vigorously.

In the end, she returned to Victor’s room.

Scarlett looked around the bedroom before pointing toward a door.

“What’s in there?”

“A closet.”

“…And that door?”

“My study. You’re not an insider enough yet for me to let you in there.”

She looked around, wondering how she could sleep as far away from her divorced husband as possible, but there was no answer other than the sofa.

When Scarlett headed toward the sofa, Victor grabbed her forearm and pulled her back.

“You’ve been stubborn enough. Go to sleep properly.”

“On the sofa…”

“How could I make a lady sleep on the sofa? Haven’t we lived together long enough for you to know that much?”

Victor led Scarlett to the bed and made her sit down.

Fortunately, the bedroom was ridiculously spacious. With Victor so far away, it hardly felt as though they were even in the same room.

Scarlett eventually took off her slippers and climbed onto the bed.

Through the enormous window, she could see stars that seemed ready to pour down from the sky.

“How beautiful…”

It was as though all the stars that had become difficult to see in the capital had moved here to this gorge.

There were so many of them packed together that she wondered if there could really be that many stars in the sky.

She had been wondering how on earth she was supposed to sleep in the same room as her ex-husband, but sleep eventually came.

She closed her eyes for just a moment beneath the covers, and before she knew it, she had fallen asleep.

A while later, Victor, who had been reading on the sofa, got up and walked over to her.

He pulled Scarlett’s left hand out from beneath the blanket and examined it with his own eyes.

There were still wounds on it.

“…Self-harm.”

He remembered what Scarlett had said.

It was absurd enough that she claimed not to remember doing it, but the wounds on her wrist were even more baffling.

Her claim that she didn’t remember and the wounds on her wrist simply didn’t connect.

Yet Victor couldn’t take his eyes off Scarlett’s wrist for a long time.

His mother was royalty, but because his father wasn’t of royal blood, whenever he visited the royal family with his mother, he was treated as only half-royal.

Afraid that her family might find fault with her, his mother had permitted his tutor to discipline him physically so that he would never make even a single mistake.

And whenever they returned from the royal palace, his father would embrace Victor and repeatedly tell him, almost as though brainwashing him, that one day he had to bring those royals who looked down on him beneath his feet.

As a child, his body had always been covered with scratches from the cane.

To him, family was something sticky and persistent, like a spider’s web.

Scarlett Crimson had fallen completely in love with him from the very first moment she saw him.

All she had was a beautiful face with a slightly seductive quality, yet she was desperate to give Victor something—anything more.

She would relentlessly ask what he had done all day, cling to him and initiate intimacy, and even after they shared a less-than-tender night together, she would always sleep facing him.

Then, the next morning, with flushed cheeks and a voice full of embarrassment, she would whisper,

“I love you.”

And she would say,

“I’m so happy when I open my eyes and find you beside me.”

Then, one day, she came and sat beside him while he was drinking.

She said he looked lonely, so she would drink with him, and began taking tiny sips of alcohol.

Eventually, she became completely drunk and could barely walk, so Victor carried her to the bedroom in his arms.

While being carried, she complained drunkenly.

“I heard you get better at drinking if you drink a lot, so I practiced by drinking all week, but I haven’t improved at all. It’s so unfair…”

“Why would you do something like that?”

She struggled to keep her unfocused eyes open and replied,

“Because you looked lonely…”

That was probably the first time he had smiled after their marriage.

The fact that she had practiced drinking simply so she could drink with him had been so absurd.

Love isn’t something you want to receive. It’s something that makes you want to give.

That was what he had thought while looking at her.

She never bothered Victor.

Even when he did nothing, she was happy.

So, not long after they married, he began thinking that perhaps it would be all right to simply live like this.

She was always happy.

He didn’t have to do anything.

But as he thought that way, he slowly began to fear that she would eventually grow tired of him.

And that fear gradually became reality.

For a while, Scarlett remained the same as always.

She attended various gatherings, and when she came home, she laughed happily.

But at some point, she stopped saying that she was happy.

Then, one day, she actually said out loud that she was unhappy.

And eventually, one day, she handed him divorce papers.

Scarlett believed that Victor had simply signed the divorce papers without giving it much thought.

But he had his own reasons.

At that time, his wife was unhappy, and Victor had no idea how to make Scarlett Dumpelt, who had grown tired of him, fall in love with him again.

Nor did he know how to make her happy again.

She had been happy even when he did nothing.

If he remained exactly the same but her love for him had faded, was there really anything else he could do?

In the end, even by his own reasoning, divorce was the only solution.

Just as he had expected at first, he simply wasn’t suited for marriage.

If there had been any variables, one was that Scarlett Dumpelt was someone who said I love you far too often.

And the other was that he had been wrong to think there were plenty of beautiful women in the world, so the fact that Scarlett Dumpelt looked exceptionally beautiful to him would only last for a short while.

She had been breathtakingly beautiful even when she handed him the divorce papers.

And on the day she left, taking nothing from the fortune Victor had accumulated except what belonged to her, exactly as stipulated in their prenuptial agreement, packing everything into a single suitcase—

She had been so beautiful that it drove him mad.

Even until the moment she left and the door closed behind her, Victor thought the divorce was nothing significant.

He truly, absurdly, hadn’t realized what it meant to become strangers to Scarlett Dumpelt.

The moment Scarlett Dumpelt left, the house became as desolate as a desert.

And so did his life.

She had to be the one who betrayed him.

Otherwise, she would never feel guilty about anything she had done to him, and if she had no guilt, she would never return to him.

He needed her guilt.

Victor stared at her wrist for a while before fetching some medicine and applying it to the wounds.

Scarlett flinched at the sting, but she was so exhausted that she didn’t wake.

Victor applied the medicine and wrapped a bandage around her wrist.

Then he frowned at the result, looking thoroughly unimpressed.