Winter Bud - Chapter 62

“Turnips certainly grow well. If it’s hard for you to get seedlings….”

“If I plant them, they’ll definitely die.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Everything I touch turns into a mess. At some point, everything….”

It ends up ruined. Not just crops, but anything at all…. Nanna thought of the things that had been ruined by her hands. Thea had been like that, and perhaps the Emperor might be like that, too. Nanna took unsteady steps slowly. He quietly followed behind Nanna.

“Should I borrow you a book that records how to manage farm crops?”

“There’s no need. I’m not going to tend the vegetable patch anymore.”

“Madam.”

A low voice stopped her. With her expression hardened, Nanna silently turned her steps toward her quarters. But soon, a booted foot blocked her path. Nanna looked up at the man in front of her. He wasn’t like the Emperor, but as a knight, his build was fairly large, enough to cover Nanna with his shadow alone.

“Anything is difficult at first.”

“…Please go.”

Nanna avoided his gaze. She didn’t want to hear words like that, so he felt nothing but bothersome. But he didn’t back down easily.

“Failure is an opportunity to look for a slightly better method.”

“I don’t want to hear that, so please return to your post.”

She tried to maintain what dignity she could. She wasn’t a concubine living in the harem, and the concubine system hadn’t even been reinstated. She hadn’t even received an official appointment and had ended up like the Emperor’s mistress, but even so, she was a woman who had once been Empress Consort.

She couldn’t exert any influence, whether in politics or society, and was called by a nickname like the ‘Reclusive Empress,’ but wasn’t she the birth mother of the imperial children? Nanna didn’t want to cry. She was no longer young enough to burst into tears because she couldn’t even get one humiliating feeling under control.

“My mother as well… Madam?”

Even so, the corners of her eyes heated up. The heaviness building around her eyes was dreadful, to the point that she couldn’t even feel the sting on the bridge of her nose. The startled man tilted his head and peered at her face. When Nanna faltered back and lowered her head, the man’s expression hardened firmly. Nanna twisted and bit her lip, trying to swallow her sobs. But stopping tears once they’d burst out was far too difficult.

The feelings she’d thought had been worn down at the edges and blunted were, in truth, very sharp. At a loss at the sorrow that had suddenly covered her without warning, Nanna let out a rough, strangled breath. She couldn’t believe she was pregnant again, and Orestes’s attitude, which left her confused, was painful as well.

Hearing him say it wasn’t love, that he was merely doting on a concubine, was dreadful. Nanna didn’t want to become something like that. She’d never even thought she wanted to face him as a man and woman in the first place. If that was the case, it would have been better to leave everything behind and go.

But why did it keep….

“Wipe it.”

A small handkerchief was held out before her vision, which kept collapsing and then rippling as it filled again. Nanna stared at it, then turned her head away. As she tried to stagger and turn her steps, he blocked her again.

“L-leave me alone.”

“It’s not too late to wipe your tears with this handkerchief and return to your quarters.”

“….”

“You’re not planning to cry for a long time all by yourself, are you?”

Nanna, who’d been trembling in tiny shakes with a blank mind, lifted her head. His calm face looked sincere. Nanna, who had been swallowing tears like a child, took the handkerchief. Then she scrubbed her face roughly and handed it back to him.

It wasn’t ladylike behavior.

But when had Nanna ever been a lady?

Nanna wasn’t a lady; she was a maid. She’d originally been a kitchen maid, and she’d almost ruined her life after being sold to a brothel, but thanks to a noble person’s intervention, she’d at least been able to live like a human being. Things like chivalry meant for ladies didn’t suit her.

“…Thank you.”

“No. Please go in now.”

The man didn’t hold on to her any longer. Nanna trudged back to her quarters, drained. She looked around the old bedroom, which seemed better suited for a disgraced priest to stay in than for the Emperor’s pregnant mistress to live in. Dragging her listless body, she sat on the edge of the bed and cried again.

It was around the next afternoon that she pulled herself together. Hadn’t he said the beginning was difficult? It was embarrassing that she’d burst into tears, saying everything had become a mess just because she couldn’t even cultivate a single vegetable patch, after seeing wilted pumpkin leaves.

Thinking about it, maybe it really was because she was pregnant. In her experience, it was. She’d cry over nothing, and her head would get complicated…. That was why Nanna hated having a baby. Because her body wouldn’t be her body anymore. There wasn’t much she could control. The drowsiness that surged in, and the morning sickness, too. The sensation of her stomach turning even when she drank water was so unpleasant that there were times she thought, so now even drinking water is a painful, exhausting thing.

Even so, she thought it wasn’t good that she’d snapped like that at someone who’d shown her kindness. Nanna left her quarters and looked around. They’d called it an abandoned palace, but as time passed, it felt like the palace was getting busier. Nanna didn’t have much to eat, and she wore nothing but a linen dress every day. Even so, she often spotted maids and servants who seemed to have come from the main palace.

The same went for the imperial guards. Nanna didn’t understand why people like that were stationed at this palace. After coming out of her quarters, she quietly walked through the backyard. Unlike the Empress’s garden, which was so meticulously refined that even a single weed seemed to have sprouted according to a landscaper’s plan, the backyard, thick with nameless wild grass, was shining green under the summer sunlight that shattered everything.

Nanna shaded her eyes with her hand and looked at the vegetable patch. In the patch where she’d thought there would be nothing but withered pumpkin leaves, three neat rows of seedlings she’d never seen before had been planted in lines. Nanna slowly approached the vegetable patch and looked at the green stems.

Was it Sister Raphaella? The older woman came to mind, the one who’d asked Nanna why she was crying so much while she’d been shut up in her quarters, weeping for a long time. Nanna had hesitated, then answered that it was because all the pumpkins she’d planted in the vegetable patch had died.

“…Carrots?”

She crouched down and was touching the leaves when a shadow fell. When the startled Nanna turned around, the man grinned. In that moment, she remembered the name he’d told her.

“Jerix?”

“You remembered.”

“I don’t think I called you that….”

“What does it matter what you call me?”

A cheerful laugh spread across his neat face. Nanna rose from where she’d been crouching. Since she’d been sitting under the sun, her slender body swayed. A gloved hand supported her as she stumbled. Nanna looked up at the tall man.

“Are you all right?”

“D-did you plant them, sir?”

“Don’t you like them?”

“…No.”

“It’s hard at first, but after that it’ll be much easier.”

He smiled. Nanna stared blankly at that smile, then lowered her gaze. Could she do well? Life in the Western Palace, nothing went the way she wanted. No. For a long time now, it had been like that. Maybe from a very long time ago…. There was nothing that came true the way Nanna wanted.

Everything became the opposite of what Nanna wished for and thought. When she was young and lived as a kitchen maid, her wish was to become a teacher. She thought she could achieve that dream if she went to the neighboring village, but Nanna couldn’t become a teacher.

Instead of taking Nanna to school, her parents, saying life was hard and intending to get rid of one mouth to feed, sold her to a brothel. She was fifteen when she escaped, prepared to die, and was saved by Thea.

Nanna didn’t really want to stay in the duke’s household. Thea was her benefactor, but rather than a life of attending to lofty nobles at their side, a life where she could live on her own was better. That was why Nanna wanted to become a teacher. When she told Thea that if she became a teacher she’d definitely come back to repay her kindness, Thea suggested she stay here.

“I like you. Don’t you like it here, too?”

“Pardon?”

“Being a maid for a wealthy noble is better than being a teacher at a poor school.”

“But….”

“It’s true. Not a maid who just sweeps dust off the stairs, I mean, my maid.”

“Miss.”

“If you spend time with me every day, you’ll gain things too. I’ll teach you letters, too. So stay here.”

Thea smiled brightly. She said living as her maid would be better than being a teacher at a poor school, where she might end up with a festering belly. Looking at the young lady who so boldly assured Nanna of her future, Nanna could only nod slowly. Thea really was her benefactor. How could she say she didn’t want to?