Chapter 127
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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Chapter 127
San Yu's face was consumed by anguish upon learning the truth.
[You mean that girl Jeok Soya?]
Young Ga Bok, who had followed from the Joojak Residence to attend to the head of household, spoke.
[After the head of household sent her to the Cold Palace, she lived as though she didn't exist for a time. Then, after Miss Riri arrived, the head of household gave that child to Miss Riri as a maidservant....]
At first, I thought I had misheard.
But I had not misheard.
[Still, the head of household ordered everyone to keep silent so that Miss Riri wouldn't find out. If someone hadn't made a slip of the tongue, Miss Riri would never have known.... Our poor young lady....]
Even so, young Ga Bok pitied only Riri, not Jeok Soya.
That alone was enough to understand.
How that child Jeok Soya had been treated by the members of the household....
My heart shattered.
The heavens collapsed, the world crumbled.
Or perhaps it was not the world that fell apart, but myself.
My entire being felt torn to shreds, fragmented into countless pieces.
During the three years I was absent, Jeok Soya had to endure loneliness alone in the Cold Palace, and after Riri appeared, she became that girl's servant and had to watch her receive love.
How much.
How much pain and suffering must she have endured.
In that vast estate where she had no one on her side, that small child....
Perhaps I should have sensed something was amiss from the beginning.
During the long war, when I heard that a young lady of the Jujak Family had ventured beyond the estate and ultimately perished.
How could the most precious young lady of the Southern Lands have met such a fate in the very heart of the Jujak Family's influence?
San Yu sighed at his own ignorance and went directly to the pavilion where the Baekho Family resided.
The young princes of the Baekho Family received him in place of their father.
"Father was summoned by His Majesty a moment ago. If you have something to say, tell me."
"Jeok Soya...."
San Yu could not bring himself to meet the young prince's gaze directly and lowered his head as he pleaded.
"Please, allow me to see Jeok Soya just once."
"Absolutely not! What cruel words are you trying to speak to Cotton Ball!"
At this, Baek Gayul growled, his voice dripping with hostility.
"You all said Cotton Ball looked pathetic and shabby! You said her beast form was hideous and that you'd tear off her wings if she dared show herself! You said that!"
"Such words...you said such things...."
San Yu's already pale expression grew even more ashen.
"Don't pretend you didn't know now! Because of you, Cotton Ball was so terrified of transforming that she had nightmares and hid her appearance! Even when told her beast form was the most adorable thing in the world, she couldn't believe it and only held back her tears!"
Baek Gayul remembered Jeok Soya when she first came to Baek Ho Palace, how she vehemently rejected her transformed appearance, insisting it wasn't impressive at all.
He remembered what Jeok Soya had said that year at the Mountain Lord Festival, holding back tears even as he and Arang called her cute.
At that time, being young, he hadn't clearly understood what had happened to Jeok Soya and had only thought there were cruel people who tormented her.
But now he knew.
That it was those who called Jeok Soya a pathetic baby bird with only unsightly white down, those who said her beast form was so hideous they'd tear off her wings if she dared be seen.
They were all members of the Jujak Family.
People I once believed were family.
'And now, after all this time, you dare ask to meet Cotton Ball?'
The head of the Jeok Family had thrown punches with Father just hours ago, and it seemed all the winged creatures from the Southern Lands were equally shameless.
Baek Gayul glared at San Yu with a snort.
The way his pupils trembled as if he knew nothing at all was infuriating.
Baek Gayul cast a sidelong glance at Baek Gahyun, hoping his older brother would say something cutting.
But something was wrong with his brother.
By now, he should have been smiling that characteristic gentle smile while hurling harsh words—yet he simply stared at the man from the Jujak Family with an expressionless face.
'How harsh are the words he's about to unleash? He's not even smiling.'
Then Baek Gahyun, defying Baek Gayul's expectations, opened his mouth in a measured tone.
"The eldest young master of the Jujak Family. Jeok San Yu, correct? The one who received His Majesty's commendation at today's banquet."
"Yes, that is... correct."
"Follow me."
Baek Gayul blinked at the unexpected response.
"Brother...?"
But Baek Gahyun ignored his younger brother's gaze and led San Yu to the back garden.
And there, San Yu discovered Jeok Soya.
* * *
At the same moment.
Sayeon and Tae Irim sat facing each other across a single table.
This was the first time the two had met again since Tae Irim's visit to Baek Ho Palace five years prior.
"It has been a long time, Sayeon."
Tae Irim greeted his former master with a languid smile upon their reunion.
"I hear you had a fistfight with the Jeok Family head in front of the banquet hall."
"Has word of it already reached His Majesty's ears?"
"That is hardly all. Several officials from the Central Region have already come to me, insisting that the two family heads who caused a disturbance within the Imperial Palace must be punished."
"Then there is no help for it. However, if punishment must be administered, I beg you to deal more severely with that feathered creature from the Jeok Family. He is the worse offender."
At those words, Tae Irim burst into laughter.
"How could I punish one who is like a father to me?"
Tae Irim lifted the teapot on the table and poured it into a cup.
Splash—
The sound of tea striking the cup rang out with crystalline clarity.
"Listen, Sayeon. The fragrance is quite exquisite."
"Your Majesty."
But Sayeon did not reach for the teacup. Instead, he looked directly at Tae Irim and asked in a low voice.
"Five years ago, Your Majesty sent me to the Southern Lands."
It was a question that had long remained unanswered for Sayeon.
"Why did you issue such a command specifically to me?"
That enigmatic order to steal the most precious thing from the Southern Lands.
My small, pure white treasure whom I met by chance there—Jeok Soya.
Had it not been for Tae Irim's command, Sayeon would never have met Jeok Soya.
And had I not happened to be absent that day, Soya would have....
It was a terrible thought.
Clink.
Tae Irim set the teacup down with deliberate care, his gaze fixed intently upon Sayeon's face.
Over it, a memory from some distant past overlaid itself.
[Master, please, I beg you...!]
[Your Highness...? At this late hour, how is it....]
[This child must be saved! Please...! I implore you!]
The face of that pale-skinned man who, in a moment when someone's help was desperately needed, had reached out his hand to a powerless young prince....
[I could not protect them.]
[....]
[I failed to protect that child.]
That sorrowful voice, uttered so hollowly before the corpse of a child he could not save in the end....
[Even if this life were severed, and severed again, a hundred times more...at that moment, I swear I surely will....]
That anguished oath that had torn through his very being....
Splash―
With the sound of tea water striking porcelain, Tae Irim returned to the present moment.
He raised his teacup with an elegant flourish of his eyes toward the man before him.
"I suppose."
At that evasive response, Sayeon laughed lightly, as though he had never expected anything else.
"Do you know, Your Majesty."
"What is it."
"When Your Majesty was young, you were truly adorable, but now that charm has completely vanished."
"What an impudent thing to say."
Tae Irim chuckled softly, his eyes growing somewhat tender as he gazed at the shadow of his master reflected in the teacup.
* * *
Jeok Soya was spending time alone in a small back garden attached to the pavilion assigned to the Baekho Family.
Without her older brothers, without Yeon Jeong and San Ho, without Seol Yo and Jjak Jjak, she sat leaning against a wooden pillar, resting.
Birds flew down and chirped around Jeok Soya.
The smile she turned toward the birds, as she always did, seemed unusually weak today.
'How strange. I accomplished something quite remarkable today, yet why do I feel so listless and drooping?'
Jeok Soya could not understand her own sinking mood.
She had certainly said everything she needed to say before them without trembling, just as she had imagined dozens of times in her head before coming to the Imperial Palace.
But then, at this moment.
Rustle―
The sound of footsteps on grass reached her ears.
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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