“Hah… hah….”
Earei ran.
With his mind gone completely blank, he simply ran.
He was confused about what he had just witnessed.
He didn’t want to recall it, yet it kept surfacing, as if he were deliberately forcing his eyes wide open and pressing them toward it.
His disheveled queen was half-embraced by another man.
It was an affectionate act she had never performed with Earei, never granted him.
As her first husband, he had longed for it so desperately, yet she had never given it to him. Instead, she had humiliated him by making him the lowest priority and refused him; and so three years had slipped away.
“Hah… hah….”
His chest felt tight, aching with the pain of a sharp sword run through it.
His breath came short; he wished his heart would burst and kill him like this.
Yes, it would be better to die.
Inside his blankly emptied mind, a pen scribbled delusions and inferences of its own accord.
Why had the queen called for him? To show him this sight.
Why had the queen tried to show him that scene? To force Earei, who had refused to accept and turned away until the end, to recognize that her plan was already in motion.
I see.
Earei understood.
He had vaguely known that the work of producing a successor had already begun and was underway.
Otherwise, it would mean that for three years, the queen and her other husbands had only held hands as they slept.
That was impossible.
Bearing a child was a very important duty.
All the more so if it was a child inheriting the blood of the royal family and nobility.
It had been strange from the start.
The letter suddenly left on the desk.
Having taken care to dress up, he had arrived slightly late to the dinner.
Though he was only slightly late, the guards had stubbornly refused to let him in. Having heard the answer that he was not on the list numerous times, he could not bring himself to give up after coming all this way.
“Aren’t you Birensha?”
Someone recognized and called out to him, but Earei pretended not to hear and disappeared to the rear of the palace.
He hadn’t been greedy.
He had simply wanted to see the Queen. *His* queen.
Even from afar, he had wanted to capture her, dressed up for today, in his eyes and return to his room.
But then why did the gods turn away even the humble dream of an old hero?
The face of Seorin, biting her lip tightly and enduring with her white hips exposed.
That face she had never shown him.
To him, who had ridden through death and crisscrossed battlefields to make her queen, she had never shown that face even once, yet now it seemed to scream.
That he had no right to it.
“Hah… hah… hah….”
His legs hurt as if they would break.
When he stopped running, soreness flooded his entire body, and sweat trickled down from his head.
His body was hot.
No, cold.
As if stricken with chills, his insides were hot and his skin cold.
Earei could not breathe from the agony of his heart being torn into thousands upon thousands of pieces.
“Hurk, hurk!”
“Birensha!”
Someone grabbed his shoulder.
Chareuten?
Or the Queen?
It was neither.
The person who seized and turned him around was the Queen’s younger brother, Yurien Rionera.
He was frail; how he had come here, how he had caught up to Earei, was a mystery.
“Earei Birensha. Why is a hero panting in a place like this?”
“Your Highness….”
“You do not look well. Your body is cold as well.”
Yurien held out a large cup.
“Wet your throat, at least.”
“…….”
Earei did not take the cup.
It was simply that he was neither hungry nor thirsty.
The stress he had endured until now had exploded, blocking every desire.
“For my sister’s sake as well, you must remain healthy, must you not?”
Cowardly, Yurien pressed Earei by mentioning Seorin.
Though she was the one who had driven him to this state, the moment he heard her name, Earei reflexively took the cup and brought it to his lips.
“Urp!”
The cup smelled of herbs.
Only after drinking about half did he realize.
Rather than spit out what was in his mouth at the bitter, poison-like taste and scent, he swallowed it, and instead dropped the rest on the ground.
“What in the world is this taste…!”
“…….”
Wordlessly, Yurien picked up the fallen cup and brought it back to Earei’s lips.
“Drink it all.”
With a terrifyingly calm tone, Yurien pressed the back of his neck.
Earei resisted desperately.
For some reason, strength wouldn’t enter his body.
“Kuk… Uwaaaaaaaah!!!!!!”
Earei screamed at the pain of his body being split in half.
That he, who had cut down enemies on countless battlefields without a single shout, would let out such a scream.
“General!”
Even Yurien was greatly startled and held Earei’s body.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaack-!!!!!”
Unbearable sorrow was ultimately racking Earei horrifically.
The other half of his soul, already split in two, was being torn to shreds.
Writhing fragments of his soul began seeping out through his back and shoulders.
Seeing this, Yurien urgently brought the cup again.
“Damn it! If his soul is torn away, there’s no meaning to the transformation!”
“Aaaaaaah-!!!”
The already-mindless Earei flailed, and his arm struck the cup, sending it flying.
The superhuman patience of his youth had vanished without a trace.
Because depression and pent-up rage had knotted into grudge for too long, the hero had rotted from within like a withering giant tree.
The days the queen had treated him coldly flashed by.
Tears streamed down Earei’s face at the montage racing toward the tragedy and cruel reality he had witnessed this morning and moments ago.
He could not tell if his heart ached or his body ached.
One thing was certain: this pain had begun immediately after he drank the cup Yurien offered.
But the root of the pain was the sorrow that had accumulated since three years ago.
Perhaps what should have burst soon had simply burst now.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaack-!!!!!”
“My lord, the Queen and soldiers are coming.”
Viscount Vishfort whispered from the darkness.
“Where?”
“They are heading toward the residence of my sworn enemy. It seems Marvin Berdeck and Shurz Hairan are conspiring in a play to prevent the Queen from contacting my enemy.”
“…….”
Yurien’s eyes followed the cup that had been knocked away.
However, Viscount Vishfort urged Yurien on.
“My lord.”
“It can’t be helped. There is no choice but to endure the pain.”
The handsome blond man rolled up his sleeve and bit down on Earei.
*Crack.* His teeth dug into flesh, but Yurien did not blink an eye.
Compared to the pain Earei was experiencing, it was nothing.
“The General’s frame is shrinking.”
“…Does that mean he is truly transforming into a woman as his soul tears?”
“We’ll have to see. Before the General turns my arm into a rag, let us return to the residence.”
“As you command.”
“Uuuuuuuurp!”
It was an act of resolve unlike the image known to the world of the sickly blond pretty boy.
The sound of Earei’s screams, buried in his arm, gradually changed from deep to thin and shrill.
They had to leave before the Queen’s party noticed and changed direction.
“My lady will have made preparations as instructed.”
“He must be cared for meticulously,”
Yurien emphasized coldly.
“He is to be the woman who becomes my consort.”
Viscount Vishfort merely smiled.
Whatever the case, the Viscount and his wife only needed Earei, the enemy of their child, to taste horrific pain.
--
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaack-!!!!!”
The Queen was bewildered by the sudden scream.
It was unmistakably Earei’s voice.
Her beloved’s voice, heard for the first time in over a year, was a scream; her heart sank.
Conversely, Marvin admired Shurz’s breathtaking orchestration.
‘This fellow, he said he would make the General turn back before Her Majesty reached his residence without them even exchanging a word, and indeed, he has a fine head on his shoulders.’
However, Shurz was puzzled in his own way.
‘I haven’t even given the signal yet? Already? But it’s just as well. The Queen was moving too fast; it was only a matter of time.’
As soon as her business with Marvin was finished, the Queen had hurriedly broken up the dinner and insisted she would go meet Earei.
Though Shurz had tried to dissuade her, Seorin, feeling a foreboding so ominous it made even her hairs stand on end, was relentless.
It was faster than expected, but preparations were complete, so Shurz pretended to relent and headed toward Earei’s mansion.
Shurz’s plan was as follows:
When the Queen drew near the mansion, the servants would create noise as if Earei were throwing a tantrum, enraged at not having been invited to the Restoration Festival party, and extinguish the lights.
Then he himself would advise the Queen and send her away before she could exchange a word.
“It is his voice….”
“He is surely venting his anger alone, furious that he did not receive Your Majesty’s invitation today. I have heard that he has recently been raising his voice and telling the servants not to show themselves.”
“He was that angry?”
Seorin bit her lip.
She herself thought it had been too much to not send any word on the Restoration Festival of all days.
Yet on the other hand, she also felt it a pity that his patience had been so lacking when, if he had only endured a little longer, she would have come to see him like this.
They had come to the street where the lights of Earei’s mansion were visible, but from inside came sounds of things breaking and shattering.
At Shurz’s command, the servants and maids began their play.
“What is that sound?”
“It seems the General is throwing an even greater tantrum, unable to contain his anger.”
“His anger is at me, and he behaves like this? Did he do this before as well?”
“That much I do not know, but it is certain that he is acting this way today from the sense of loss at not receiving Your Majesty’s summons.”
“How dare he… Presuming on his own that I would not come and taking out his frustrations like some ruffian?”
“Please calm yourself. No matter how great a general, from this distance he should detect Your Majesty and prepare to greet….”
*Fwoosh.*
Before Shurz could finish, the lights of Earei’s mansion went out.
At the sudden darkness, the Queen was too stunned to speak; she could only open and close her mouth.
“T, this is….”
“…I am afraid the General does not wish to see Your Majesty at the moment.”
With her anger stoked, the Queen decided to assert her pride over her lingering attachment and regret.
It had been over a year, and she had come to meet him personally; even from this distance he should have noticed, yet to be rebuffed at the door like this left her heart truly cold.
The fluttering excitement of moments ago felt like a lie.
“Let us return.”
“Your Majesty, after coming all this way….”
“I said let us return.”
Though outwardly pretending to dissuade her, Shurz cheered inwardly.
Marvin too was pleased that Shurz’s scheme had succeeded and tried to drape his arm over the Queen’s shoulder, but Seorin coldly shook him off.
“I have filled today’s quota. I shall enter the bedchamber alone.”
“…Understood.”
He was displeased, but it wouldn’t do to show it in front of the residence of the first husband, who had endured three years of cold neglect.
Recalling Earei, who was in a worse position than himself, Marvin felt his mood improve considerably.