Winter Bud - Chapter 71

“Answer me.”

“There was something I needed to talk about briefly. Nanna is also Everhardt’s adopted daughter. It isn’t strange for a father to look for his daughter, is it?”

Sermione pulled his lips away casually. Nanna, unable to lift her head, only stared down at the floor. The hand that had been gripping Nanna released her body. Nanna couldn’t keep herself upright and collapsed onto the floor.

Orestes walked up in front of the duke.

“So you’re the kind of man who puts his lips on his daughter.”

He laughed a little. His fist flew toward Sermione. Thud! A dull sound rang out. If it were an ordinary man, it would’ve been violence rough enough to send him rolling on the floor. But the duke was a man numb to that sort of violence. He himself was someone for whom violence was everyday life.

More than anything, he wasn’t a man with so little resilience that he’d roll on the floor from a punch like this. Both his build and frame were massive. Even so, the emperor’s punch landed with enough impact to leave a red mark on his handsome face.

“…How dare you go into heat in front of me?”

The duke’s green eyes shot toward him like arrows. Even after such a low-grade insult, the face that didn’t have so much as a small scratch remained neat as before.

Orestes forgot even to breathe as he grabbed him by the collar. Sermione didn’t resist. Before he was a son-in-law, he was his liege, and his sovereign. He didn’t forget himself as a vassal. Yet the savage energy that surged up from the floor numbed even that reason.

“…I want her back.”

He caught the hand gripping his collar. Orestes formed a sharp smile.

“She’s the woman you offered.”

“She was originally my possession.”

“….”

“Since my daughter failed to conceive the imperial children, I, as your subject, had to fulfill that responsibility.”

Sermione stared at Thea, who was quietly watching them. Nanna said she hated him because Thea was there. Not just embarrassed to be seen by Thea, but terrified. When was it? She said it felt like having an affair with your best friend’s father behind your friend’s back.

Instead of getting angry, he held Nanna as if punishing her. As he did, he chewed over what the woman had said. Because Thea was there…. Because he was Thea’s father, he couldn’t become a man in front of Nanna. Nanna liked him when he was Thea’s kind father, but she said that didn’t mean she wanted to become his woman.

He didn’t know what it was about those words that threw him into the mud. The moment he heard them, he felt filthy all day. So after a night passed and his mood was wrecked, he let curses spill out alone.

“My lady really has such a good father.”

“….”

“My father wasn’t a good father like the duke. That’s why I was surprised at first.”

A father and daughter can be this affectionate. A father can love his daughter this much. Nanna lowered her gaze. Thea had an abundance of everything and nothing she possessed lacked shine, but among them the most radiant was her kind father, she said. That was the one thing she could never have. Parents can’t be chosen….

It was a wistful murmur. Nanna, carefully wetting her lips, looked paler and frailer than ever, but he didn’t want to hold her and soothe her. It was because he knew the psychology beneath it.

In the end, it meant she didn’t need him as a man. They were words that drove him to despair. Words that made his desire shameful. He felt filthy. It was mortifying and infuriating. Thinking of Nanna with that gloomy face, envying his daughter, made him feel like he was going to die of anger.

“Why do you want the same thing?”

“….”

“You’re not my daughter. I don’t even know who your father is.”

With a cigarette between his lips, he parted his dry lips. Right after they broke apart, Nanna was still panting. Looking at the woman’s bare chest, he brushed back his disheveled hair.

“I’m not going to be your father.”

“That’s not what I meant, I just….”

“What father in the world fucks his daughter?”

At the low mutter, Nanna froze white. He stared at the woman, then pulled out the cock buried between her thighs. Semen was dripping. So the child must’ve been conceived then. Sermione still thought so.

“Then how about taking responsibility to the end?”

Orestes let out a crooked laugh. Sermione stared blankly at the man. Suddenly, Nanna tilted to the side and collapsed.

***

Dream and waking life were vague. Nanna wanted to believe she was walking the road to the underworld. She didn’t know why she thought that, or exactly what made her have such a horrible thought, but she didn’t hate the hazy fog that wrapped around her.

Nanna wanted to keep walking like this. Then the fog that covered her eyes gradually thinned, and a small cabin with an old door came into view. Nanna stopped and blinked. It was a familiar cabin, though it felt distant, like a memory from a past life.

There was a time when this cabin was her whole world. Nanna looked at the old fence surrounding the house. No matter how much her mother told him to repair it, her father, who would sprawl out the moment he drank and couldn’t even think of getting up, never touched it, not even until the day Nanna left home.

She wondered about her younger siblings. Nanna had six younger siblings, including a nursing baby. Originally, there were seven, but one caught a fever and died. Nanna couldn’t remember now whether that child’s name was “Liz” or “Elsa.”

Sometimes it felt like it had been Liz, and other times it felt like it had been Elsa. Maybe it was because the child died before even turning one. Strangely, she remembered her mother laying the baby down and asking Nanna what they should name it, but she couldn’t remember what name they decided on.

Still, she remembered her mother crying her heart out after sending the child away. Maybe because it was the sibling right below Nanna. At that time, she was still a farm girl who was tender-hearted and naive in her own way….

It was different from later, when she thought it wasn’t so bad even if a child died, since if there was one less mouth, life was less grueling.

Nanna slowly moved her feet. The hens and chicks that used to escape the yard all the time because the fence wasn’t sound were nowhere to be seen. It felt like there were ducks in this yard too…. Nanna rummaged through her childhood. Her small mother weeding the vegetable patch, and her snot-nosed younger siblings hovering around her.

What if her father hadn’t sold Nanna to a brothel? If that were the case, wouldn’t Nanna have grown up into a naive farm girl? Maybe she could’ve worked a little more for her family….

Nanna turned the doorknob with those thoughts. But contrary to what she’d thought, that her family would appear when the door opened, bats cried ominously and flew up. Nanna screamed, “Aah!” and opened her eyes.

“Madam? Madam. Are you all right?”

A youthful voice rang in her ear. Nanna opened her eyes as she sucked in a sharp breath. A high ceiling filled her view. Clutching the edge of the blanket that covered her up to her chest, she blinked. Because she still wasn’t used to the new quarters, it felt like she was still wandering in a dream. Nanna looked at the maid who was watching her with a worried face.

“Are you awake?”

“….”

“Should I bring you some water?” the maid asked.

Nanna licked her dry lips, then pressed her lips tightly together. The young maid was making a fuss as if Nanna had fallen ill with something fatal. She said His Majesty the Emperor and Her Majesty the Empress were very worried.

“Just a little while ago, the doctor was here, and His Majesty the Emperor and Her Majesty the Empress were also by your side. You didn’t wake up for a long time, so they went back, but….”

The maid murmured as she wiped Nanna’s damp forehead. The hands that peeled away her dried, stuck hair were kind and careful. Hearing that the imperial couple had gone back to their quarters because she hadn’t woken up for a long time, Nanna thought it was fortunate she’d been dreaming the whole time. If the first people she saw when she opened her eyes had been the duke’s daughter and son-in-law, she really wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

“Please wait a moment. Demerne….”

Demerne was the emperor’s chief attendant. Nanna grabbed the maid’s wrist. Was there any need to do that? Was there any need to tell the imperial couple that Nanna was fine now? Nanna wanted to live as if dead. She wanted to live with her breath held like that, then disappear from the court. And she didn’t want to face them again.

She never thought she’d say something like this in her life, but now she was sick of it. She was truly fed up….