Syureuseu, who had been entangled with the Queen in the same bed, furrowed his brow at Seorin’s indifference.
“Your Majesty, could you please focus on the task of producing an heir?”
“Nn… ung… you lot will manage well enough on your own, so why should I?”
She showed reactions, yet Seorin, lying prone and beading with sweat, was entirely absorbed in reading Earei’s letter.
That was right—Earei’s letter.
A letter that was real yet fake, and fake yet real.
Syureuseu was profoundly irked by the existence of those very “letters.”
He knew that those things would one day summon disaster.
He felt as though he would go mad, constantly recalling Mabin’s words and conduct as the man pushed forward despite his staunch opposition.
“Syureuseu! There’s no time left! When in the world are you going to get that letter?!”
“What do you expect me to do when there is no proper letter?!”
With the debut ceremony looming, Syureuseu lost his reason.
He was already being harried by the Queen every passing moment, even without Mabin urging him.
This damned bastard had spent nearly his entire turn rolling around with the Queen and making a mess of things, so that when Syureuseu’s own turn finally came, he had made it impossible to perform the heir-producing task more than a handful of times.
If it had been a scheme to restrain him, Syureuseu might have admired it, but seeing as both of them were hopeless and had simply dumped the burden on him, he was ready to burst with rage.
“If you’re talking about letters, they’re piled up here in heaps. What are you on about?”
Mabin pointed to the stacks of letters on the floor, yet Syureuseu could only let out a sigh.
“Your Majesty desires a letter containing an apology and reconciliation for the Jungheungjeol incident. Those are merely letters filled with everyday matters and longing.”
“Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Mabin leisurely wagged his index finger.
That smug display grated deeply on Syureuseu’s nerves.
“This is Earei’s letter. What Her Majesty wants is Earei’s letter. You need only grab any one of them and present it, so what exactly is the problem?”
“The contents are different! The contents!”
“Goodness. You Hairaen folk think far too deeply for your own good.”
Glancing over the endlessly piled letters, Mabin clicked his tongue.
“She certainly wrote a lot.”
“According to the servants, she wrote every day.”
“How pure and devoted.”
“You should be the one to become a little more devoted.”
“What?”
“There are rumors that you frequent brothels when it is not your turn.”
“They’re only rumors.”
“Rumors are sometimes true.”
Mabin smiled roguishly as he read a letter.
He simply could not understand why Syureuseu fussed so much.
“I regularly sponsor a few fallen noblewomen, and in exchange, they provide me with their bodies,” Mabin said in an easy, antiquated tone.
“Have you lost your mind?! You would step out on Her Majesty?”
“Our Queen has three husbands; she would hardly need to seek pleasure elsewhere. Alternating between three men, where would she find time to grow bored? Ah! Though in practice, it is two, is it not?”
Inferring the rough chronological order, Mabin picked out a bundle of letters.
“Since she has taken three men as formal husbands, the logic that it is not cheating should apply to me as well, should it not? I need only take those ladies in as concubines.”
“Spare me your nonsense. Moreover, those fallen nobles are traitors who failed to receive pardons during the revolution.”
“Precisely why they are so obedient and devoted. I send word and visit their modest homes, and from the moment they open the door they crawl over naked, lower my trousers with their mouths, and immediately take this thing down their throats.”
Mabin rubbed himself between his legs to provoke Syureuseu.
“They are far easier to toy with than stiff-necked Seorin.”
“Insolent! How dare you look upon Her Majesty as some plaything!”
“Whatever else she may be, she is our wife!”
Only now did Syureuseu realize that Mabin was not merely stupid—he had inherited every flaw of House Dereubek.
He keenly understood why, for all his status as a Dereubek, this man had been nowhere to be found on the battlefield during the counter-rebellion, and his temples throbbed with unprecedented stress at the fool’s audacity.
“You cannot take her when you want, and there is nothing cute about her. Yet her insides are exceptional, so you keep going back for more. Am I wrong?”
“I have no desire to appraise Her Majesty’s body with the likes of you.”
“Ha, of course. You Hairaen only move with your heads.”
Not entirely true, however—
Syureuseu inwardly denied this, thinking of his half-brother.
But he did agree that the Queen was a charmless woman.
Such a haughty woman had never been to Syureuseu’s taste.
After all, Hairaen had married off its eldest son for no other reason than to check the royal authority.
Hairen’s purpose was no different from Dereubek’s: to restrain the Queen and bring Earei south.
A woman had already been prepared for him.
If too much time passed and that woman aged, the next candidate had already been selected as well.
Harbor such schemes though he did, Syureuseu warned Mabin nonetheless.
“If one of those fallen noblewomen bears your child, you too will be branded a traitor and thrown in prison.”
“I can simply kill the bastard and its mother myself. The refined southern nobles may not understand, but in the North we must press flesh against flesh every day merely to survive.”
“Ha.”
Syureuseu scoffed.
“If you learned of the pleasures of the South, you would never break free.”
“What?”
Mabin hardened his expression.
“That whets my appetite.”
“…Do not even dream of it.”
“Regardless.”
Mabin plucked three letters from the bundle.
The contents were the most delicate of those written by Earei, deeply voicing concern for the Queen’s safety and an intense appeal of longing.
“As the saying goes, the thief’s own feet go numb. Since we are the ones running the scam, the other side fixates on even the tiniest flaw they should never notice.”
“Once again, Her Majesty desires Earei’s apology and reconciliation…”
“Earei is gone. Only the letters remain.”
Mabin giggled.
“The men the Queen has are only the two of us.”
Was this bastard growing dickhead mushrooms in his brain?
Yet with no better option, Syureuseu sighed and had no choice but to turn a blind eye to Mabin’s trick.
He, who had been called the prodigy of Midona, was frustrated that he kept crashing against practical problems he could not solve.
He had always thought and acted on the basis of reason and logic.
“What is the matter? You have stopped moving. Hurry and finish. With all this rocking, the writing shakes so much I cannot read it.”
The truth was that Mabin’s trick had worked perfectly.
The moment he claimed they were Earei’s letters, the Queen snatched them from Mabin’s hand.
Even as she carefully broke the seal and read each character one by one, Syureuseu was unbearably conscious of the letter paper, faded and turning yellow.
However, the Queen noticed nothing.
Rather, struggling to hide her reddening eyes, she smiled a smile of victory.
“You miss me? Of course you do. Rei, how could you ever escape me?”
There was no admission of fault, no plea for forgiveness.
Seorin was thoroughly satisfied by the letter’s contents, which were filled with nothing but Earei’s desperate longing.
“It says another letter shall be sent in three days.”
Mabin’s plan had been recited exactly, yet Seorin was overjoyed.
All of Syureuseu’s worries now felt like needless fuss.
Because of this, the Queen did not even attend the debut ceremony in high society that she was supposed to attend that day.
She merely read and reread the single letter.
Especially whenever she read the passages expressing desperate longing for her, Seorin could not suppress the corners of her mouth from curling up.
“It has been some time, so it is rather strenuous.”
“Tsk… Very well. You have rendered great service today, so I shall bestow a reward.”
Seorin withdrew Syureuseu from inside herself and, for today alone, willingly knelt between his legs.
“Tz….”
“Nn….”
Truly shocking, but the inexperienced movements of Seorin’s mouth were merely monotonous.
Syureuseu was forced to admit it.
That in bed, the Queen was worse than a street whore.
No matter how beautiful she was, no matter how tight and supple her inner flesh.
Nevertheless, Syureuseu could not refuse the Queen’s goodwill, so he closed his eyes and imagined all manner of things, and only after quite a long time was he able to finish that day’s duty.
When it was over, Seorin spat the liquid in her mouth carelessly onto the floor and began reading Earei’s letter again.
Despite having embraced this woman many times, Syureuseu could not shake the feeling that he had lost to Earei, who had never once embraced Seorin.
Their night only deepened.
Without any knowledge of the bombshell Saintess Jenau had dropped upon high society that afternoon.
—
Rea worried once more before the candle.
Clutching a pen that would not move, Rea stared endlessly at the blank paper upon which not a single character had been written.
*I miss you.*
The words that usually came to mind as always.
But now, she feared even speaking them.
When she had been Earei, she could say them without hesitation, but would Rea’s longing be accepted by her?
Moreover, even Earei’s longing had been ignored by Seorin.
A drop of ink fell from the pen.
The precious paper was ruined.
Rea swallowed and drew out beautiful letters.
*I am lonely.*
Then she crumpled the paper and put it in her mouth.
She chewed and chewed for a very, very long time, until the word loneliness had blurred and no shape remained, and then spat it out into the wastebasket.
Still, she was lonely. Still, she missed her.
“Hoo.”
She blew out the candle.
Darkness flooded in.
Even that darkness was warm compared to solitude.