Chapter 13
Translator: wuttisyun
“W-what happened?”
“It’s because my face has such a huge scar running across it… My etiquette teacher told me that I would never be able to find love because of my face. That I could never have that happy marriage I’ve always dreamt of…”
I placed my hand on my chest as I spoke with my voice trembling. Ah, shit. I overdid it.
“Actually, I think my teacher might be right…”
My etiquette teacher gave me the most stress. They* were cheeky and rude. They kept calling me ugly, telling me without hesitation that it was because of my face that I was abandoned in this palace.
*T/N: Just using a gender-neutral pronoun because the gender of the teacher hasn’t been confirmed yet.
As long as I was the Princess who the Emperor does not even care about, my teacher wouldn’t be afraid of punishing the young and powerless me. Although I’m sure they said those things just to hurt me.
‘I’m sorry but thanks to you, it’s been fun.’
Because thanks to that teacher, I learnt a lot. For example, the fact that because of my face I have ruined any chances of marriage.
My word. I was just breathing and living my own life. I’ll admit that your rude remarks have saved my life. Hooray. I’m very grateful to you, teacher. Trying to use my teacher in this act brought as much remorse to me as a chick’s tears*.
*T/N: Chickens aint got no tear ducts HAHAH.
Teacher. Though I may not have any regrets, I needed you to become the villain.
Anyways, it’s true that she has said rude things to me. So, everything just flowed out of me without having the need to make anything up.
I wasn’t particularly sad about it. But I needed to pretend to be while reflecting on the life I had led.
As I opened my eyes, tears flowed down in streams.
“His Majesty, my royal father, has not once come to visit me. Fleon orabeoni has already told me to give up hoping. He said that no one would ever come to see me.”
I suddenly felt sad.
“Maybe orabeoni was right.”
I just happened to look like this. Everybody probably had the same amount of luck as me, right?
“I had been abandoned and I’ll be stuck in this palace my whole life. Sob. But I want to see the faces of my other orabeonis.”
The girl who had dared not to look at me now looked at me. Her gaze stopped at one place and looked at it pitifully for a moment.
She looked sympathetic.
Pity.
Sorry.
Regret.
Her pupils shone brightly under the sunlight.
Anna took a deep breath and looked at me.
“I’ll help you, Your Highness.”
I raised my moist eyes and blinked. I could see the firm resolution in her eyes.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
The first thing I had to get used to after my reincarnation was people’s gazes when they looked at the scar on my cheek. The gazes I have seen in this world can be divided into two types.
Like my etiquette teacher, they could look at it with disgust as if they were gazing upon something vile. Or they could look at it with pain, compassion and sympathy like they were looking at someone with a great disability.
Those who did the former were usually not all bad people. But those that did the latter were sometimes worse. Because they were not even aware that they could be hurting me when they gave me those looks.
In this aspect, I had always been blunt.
This was true even when I was working in my previous life. The opposite party may have been a good or a bad person. A person who has been the subject of workplace sexual harassment or just a bystander. At the end of the day, it’s all over after you hand it your documents on time.
Hence, even until now, if someone was offering me a favour, whether it was out of hate, compassion or sympathy, I didn’t have the heart to judge.
“You’ll really help me…?”
Dying right now also didn’t seem to be a big deal, right?
“Yes. I can swear on the River Styx.”
“The oath of Styx that you must keep no matter what. You’ll do it for me?”
“Yes!”
But I don’t want to die again. Especially not by the hands of another.
An artist is willing to sell their soul to the devil in exchange for a masterpiece. Then I’ll exchange sweetness in exchange for my survival.
If I had to take advantage of others’ favours and kindness to survive, I’d gladly use my tears to act like a weak human.
I grabbed both of Anna’s hands and smiled brightly.
“Thank you so much, Anna.”
Looking happy, Anna carefully wiped my face with her handkerchief.
“I will never forget this kindness.”
Although there were limits to using this body of a child, there were also many useful benefits. Like my face after I cried.
“It’s nothing.”
Anna smiled like a parent looking at their children in satisfaction.
“Anna.”
“Yes.”
It was a little funny. We were only a year apart. Do I look younger? I hugged Anna.
Kung. Kung. Kung. (sfx for heart beats)
I opened my mouth after hearing her heart beat pleasantly.
“Swear it right now.”
An oath on the River Styx can never be broken. It’s like a warranty in my previous life. It cannot be taken lightly of in this world.
A little later, she took an informal oath. While swearing, Anna kept glancing over at me. But I deliberately didn’t say anything until she finished her oath.
After she swore the oath, my gaze fell on the floor. As if I needed to turn a blind eye to her innocent faith.
Now that she finished swearing, Anna must keep her oath.
I felt sorry for Anna who looked at me as if I were a three year old but it’s time for me to take the lead.
“Then, would you help me with a favour?”
“What is it!”
My eyes crinkled as I smiled prettily. I whispered in her ear.
Sorry, Anna.
“Take off your clothes.”
***
“Y-your Highness, you have to come back soon. You have to…”
Thinking of the sobbing Anna, I became depressed. When she swore the oath, she must have thought that I was going to ask her to listen in on the gossip when she goes out to do the laundry.
I didn’t bother to correct Anna’s guesses until the end of her oath-taking. All I asked for was a simple request but I never specified what kind of request it will be.
The kind Anna had no choice but to take off her clothes because she couldn’t go against Her Highness’ request to go out in person.
Despite knowing that she had been deceived, she did not forget to tell me what I should worry and be careful about. She even placed a bandage on my cheek, helping me hide the wound.
Thanks to her, I managed to obtain freedom and time. But the remorse and burden of deceiving such a young child remained.
This only ate away at my conscious. The walk outside the room was really stressful.
“So what if I’m a bitch.”
They couldn’t do anything. Who could they blame? This is all I could do to dig a hole to survive*. I had to take charge.
*T/N: metaphorical. I don’t think the author was referring to any idiom/saying.
Most importantly, it will be hard to act like I missed the rest of my brothers when I meet Anna again in the future. I shouldn’t have tried to be virtuous!
“… No. Having more cards at hand is a good thing.”
Though rather than a card, it felt more like I had a diehard fan.
As I walked along the path Anna told me to, I soon found the laundry place she was talking about. When I arrived, I could only blink my eyes.
“Wow. This was bigger than I thought it’d be.”
Two white pillars stood tall without holding up a roof. On both floors of the space, thick marble stones were laid in a circle. Looking at it whole, it looked like an outdoor concert hall. But on the bottom floor where a stage would be located, streams that looked to be waterways flowed through.
“Kyahahahaha!”
On the stairwells that connected the two floors, maids sat there doing laundry on red stone plats, chattering happily.
Compared to the quiet forest path I took to get here, other than the sounds of laundry being done, this place was full of other noises.
Soon after I took the first step into the place, I could feel the atmosphere of it closer.
“You know, I went out to the town with Max!”
All the maids I could see were dressed in clothes that seemed to have popped out of a Greek mural.
“Hohoho. Then? Then? Does anyone need more soap?”
“Hey, lend some to me!”
I met eyes with a maid coming up from the first floor. Her thighs were exposed. Her sleeves were rolled up. And her face looked refreshed.
Sweat forming on her chin flowed down her neck before turning white when it met her clothes. I could hear bursts of laughter accompanied by splashes of water everywhere. The lively and cheerful faces of the maids looked like a folk painting I saw when I went to the museum.
“Are you new?”
While staring blankly at what seemed to be a by-product of another era, one of the maids came to talk to me.
“Hey. I’m talking to you. You.”
It was a pretty lady with dark brown hair and thick lips.
“Are you not here for the laundry?”
“Huh? I mean. Yes?”
“Come this way. It’s here. Give that here!”
One of the maids ran over at her instructions. Soon after, the maid who took that sheet I had been holding from me and placed it in a large basket before smiling coolly.
“You’re lucky. You’re just in time to see Lené show off her skills.”
“Skills?”
The woman replied, “You’ll find out soon”, before taking sheets from a maid next to me. Soon, she piled the several layers of sheets in the basket before placing a white stone, which seemed to be the soap here according to the woman next to me, in it.
“Are you all ready?”
The women all shouted excitedly.
“Let’s begin!”
It sounded like she was going to start doing laundry. But there was no water? Furthermore, the woman still looked at ease even though the stream was quite far from here.
Wait, did she tell me to stay here because of this? To perform some new type of shuttle? While I wondered whether I had to bring the water in person, the lady whom I first talked to waved her hands at the people below.
“Lené! Everyone’s ready!”
“Yeah yeah. There are no exceptions?”
As I tilted my head down, I saw a maid in front of me with her arms akimbo who waved her hands with no sincerity as if that was her reply. She stood out. Maybe because she was tall. Even more so because she was swinging her arm around while looking annoyed.
“I’m ready, too!”
After hearing giggling sounds, I turned to my side only to notice that it wasn’t from just one person.
“Lené! It’s hot so while you’re doing it, please spray it everywhere!”
“That’s right! Hey, it’s hot!”
Empty baskets with no water could be seen all over the place. Everyone who was doing laundry stopped to look at the young woman.
“How noisy. Don’t order me around. I’m going to grab everything and throw it over there.”
“What—did—you—say? We can’t hear you over here!”
The brunette I first spoke to giggled.
“Let’s quickly get started! Hey!”
It’s hot! It’s hot! The other maids chanted and chuckled. The tall maid glared at them.
“Ah, seriously. I already told you this isn’t the Colosseum.”
As she stretched out her hand, the rumbling noise died down and the surroundings became as quiet as a cinema before the movie screens.
Not knowing what was going to happen next, I felt pressured by the tension in the atmosphere. I gulped unconsciously and stared.
“Oh my. This happens every single time.”
The irritated maid waved her hand widely.
“Heok (sfx for gasp), w-what’s t-that?!”
Tok tok.
The water splashed as if responding to me before the stream rose high as if it were a fountain show.
‘A water show?’
The height of the huge column of water seemed to be higher than that of a tree along the streets. While I was amazed by the huge water dragon, the women’s hands spread gently in the air without blinking. The column of water then changed shape.
“Give thanks to the River God, damn children.”
The women mumbled then applauded.
Shaaa—
The water fell in a drizzle. Using the stream as a sprinkler, only this area was hit by the shower. I was overwhelmed as I watched the entire fantasy-like scene that suddenly appeared before me blankly.
“Kya— How refreshing!”
Still wet from the rain, I mumbled dumbly.
“… Magic?”
Wait. There was magic here? Even after preparing my mind for it, can such a fantasy appear so naturally?
“Lené! Pass the water here! The water!”
“Oh stop whining, seriously.”
After the tall maid grumbled by the stream, she shifted her hand and something even more surprising happened. The water swelled up according to the movements of her hands and then fell into the basket. The stream of water that moved as if it were alive poured into the empty basket with the beckoning of a maid.
“Lené. Give me lots!”
“Damned people. You think I’m some priest that comes when a divine message arrives.”
Streams of water kept pouring from the sky. After wiping off the droplets of water that wet my cheeks, I asked.
“W-what is this?”
“Oh my. Is this your first time here? Lené is a templar of the God of Rivers, Inachos[1]. Though, she ran away saying that it was bothersome and that she hated it.”
“A templar?”
T/N:
[1]: Inachos is one of the river gods, all sons of Titans Oceanus and Tethys and thus to the Greeks, part of the pre-Olympian or “Pelasgian” mythic landscape. He can also be considered the first King of Argos, after whom a river was named.
Also, I might change the term ‘Templar’ in the future. In the raws, it says 신관 which actually refers to priests but if you see in the later chapters these 신관 don’t actually pray or anything. They fight using the powers gifted by their respective Gods. Meh I left it as templars for now but if I find better word I’ll just replace it.
Comments