Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 12

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 12
That night.
“I keep a Canary, and I would very much like to show it to you, Your Grace. Though it’s grown old now and can no longer sing as beautifully as it once did, in its prime even the prima donna of the capital wished to dance to its song.”
The handmaids held their breath, watching Bridget attend to me.
They all wore expressions of such astonishment, glancing sidelong, that it was clear they found it remarkable.
‘……My villain ally is certainly quite a reassuring presence.’
Moreover, Bridget had even cooked for me herself!
With truly alchemical skill!
I couldn’t help but feel bewildered as I ate.
‘Are these the same ingredients I’ve been eating all along?’
The chicken appeared to be fried just as it always was, yet the texture was remarkably distinct, and the bread, baked the same way as usual, was not merely fluffy but possessed a wonderful chewiness.
Even the common vegetables transformed into something extraordinarily delicious the moment they passed through Bridget’s hands.
‘……How on earth did she manage this?’
Two boiled eggs were crowned with a thick layer of deep violet jam, seemingly made from wild berries hastily gathered and crushed from various spots in the remote castle garden. Yet it was delicious.
Jam should ordinarily require aging to taste good—what secret technique could she have used?
Unlike my previous life, where one could easily learn a variety of cooking methods, in this era culinary techniques themselves were often closely guarded secrets.
The saying went that if one mastered even a handful of dishes, one could comfortably support an entire household.
‘So this is the sort of skill one must possess to become the confidante of a future Empress.’
Or perhaps not?
Bridget stood gazing at my meal with an almost slack expression, as though captivated.
Was it mere fandom?
After I finished eating, I offered Bridget some perfunctory praise. When I returned to my bedchamber after my bath, an unexpected ‘object’ was waiting for me.
“……The Duke sent this?”
“Indeed, Your Grace.”
I dismissed the servants and, my heart racing, began to unwrap the package.
What could Sherkan have sent?
As I opened the hefty bundle, I gasped in surprise.
“……Gold Coins?”
Inside a coarse cloth purse lay Gold Coins in such abundance they seemed ready to spill forth.
How much was this altogether?
Wondering whether the amount might be written on the Gold Coins themselves, I opened the enclosed folded letter.
My heart was beating rather quickly.
‘In the original work, he was the type to scrawl notes hastily, but…’
I hadn’t expected him to go to such lengths—envelope, seal, and proper letterhead.
The content was brief.
[Don’t tell the castle steward. Use it as your personal funds.
I’ll send more next week, so no need to be frugal.
Write your reply on the back.]
With all this blank space, why on earth would he send two whole sheets of paper?
My face flushed a deep crimson the moment I turned to the next page.
A square drawn in the middle of the letterhead.
And beneath it, a single short line of text.
[Place a kiss here and send it back.]
* * *
The Gonnet Dukedom—the only Grand Duchy on the continent.
Gonnet, a territory within the Gaiard Kingdom, boasted a history spanning well over a thousand years.
The continent was vast.
Across approximately 11.8 billion hectares of sprawling plains existed countless kingdoms, and among them, the two greatest were the Pasha Empire and the Gaiard Kingdom.
The Pasha Empire had been utterly destroyed by a continental coalition.
The Gaiard Kingdom, the second-largest power, soon proclaimed itself an empire and took the now-vacant Pasha imperial palace as its new seat of rule.
No one on the continent could deny the House of Gonnet’s enormous influence in the Gaiard Proclamation as Emperor.
The boy Duke, who had barely held his rank a year before sweeping the continent’s battlefields with terrifying momentum, was simultaneously an object of admiration and pity.
A few years later, when the House of Gonnet faced complete financial collapse, even the admiration vanished, leaving only ridicule and contempt.
For now, I began mapping things out in my mind.
I was determined to avoid the bankruptcy arc from the original work at all costs.
Though Sherkan eventually reclaimed the Dukedom, the toll it took on him was far too great.
‘Now that I’m the Grand Duchess, if I manage the castle’s internal affairs carefully, shouldn’t I be able to cut unnecessary expenses?’
In my previous life, I spent most of my time in an intensive care unit.
After being confined to the same place for years, there wasn’t much to do.
Back then I read many novels and played many games. Having watched countless videos on all manner of topics, I accumulated far more miscellaneous knowledge than most people.
Besides, ever since I possessed Lorelthiana, I’d sweated blood and tears to become a more perfect princess than anyone.
‘Which means domestic affairs don’t feel difficult to manage.’
The gold coins Sherkan sent totaled one hundred pieces, and deeper inside lay a thick sheaf of banknotes bearing a much larger sum.
‘Roughly a billion won, I’d say.’
Of course, there were differences in purchasing power, but that was the rough estimate.
‘A billion won…….’
Before I possessed Lorelthiana, when I was just an ordinary person, I would have been astounded by such an amount. Now I wasn’t.
The jewels that Lorelthiana wore as a princess alone—the expensive ones—exceeded tens of billions in value.
Though of course, all such things belonged to the royal treasury, so I could only wear them and had to return them.
‘Ayu was different, though. The jewels offered by the Saint’s followers all went straight into her personal vault.’
The Saint had an unusual custom: she celebrated her birthday not once a year, but on the same date every month, and Ayu maintained this peculiar tradition as well.
So every month, a birthday celebration was held in the palace, and each time the Saint’s followers would throng forward to present rare treasures.
When Ayu was in a good mood, she would summon me and give me small pouches containing a few modest jewels, silver coins, and gold coins.
Lorelthiana was a princess, the legitimate offspring of the Queen, yet she received no favor from the King and Queen, so her clothing and adornments were meager.
Because of this, the maids who attended Lorelthiana were always bowing so hard their backs nearly broke, scrounging together what silver and jewels they could.
‘That’s why Lorelthiana looked so scrawny, after all.’
I held the gold coins Sherkan had sent me clenched tightly in my palm.
Gold readily retains body heat. The warmth radiating from the heated coins made me feel oddly ticklish inside.
These weren’t jewelry scraps that Ayu had bestowed on me, nor were they budgets that the royal treasury had whittled down and sent over.
No one had ever looked after me so completely before, and the feeling was strange. Yet it wasn’t unpleasant.
Rather, it felt like being wrapped up entirely in soft, plump down…….
But I was cautious, afraid that if I wasn’t careful, all the feathers might be crushed. I wasn’t used to it, after all.
I set the gold coins down carefully and leaned my upper body against the table. My wavy platinum hair scattered like wildflowers.
And then…….
I gasped in surprise the moment I read it and nearly threw the letter, but caught myself and picked it back up.
[Kiss here and send it back.]
“You’re really asking me to do that?”
With a hollow laugh, I hesitated before opening the large side table beside the bed.
Inside lay lip rouge for the lips.
When applied, it gave off a subtle reddish hue as if from crushed flower petals, and it was a very fragrant balm.
The maids had brought it fresh this morning when they dressed me…….
‘……He didn’t plan this on purpose, did he?’
No.
Who in the castle could have imagined that Sherkan would make such a request?
[I received the gold coins gratefully.
I shall use them wisely.]
I couldn’t bring myself to write a longer reply.
I spread the lip rouge on my lips and then bent my head to the spot Sherkan had marked on the paper.
Staring at the faint impression of lips on the paper, my earlobes grew warm for some reason.
I found myself fidgeting with my ear absently.
“…….”
How should I even define what I’m feeling right now?
Truth be told, ever since the day Sherkan kissed me, I hadn’t slept properly for days.
What was Sherkan thinking about me?
‘Does he actually desire me?’
The thought flashed across my mind, and I immediately shook my head.
Sherkan wouldn’t be like that.
Though Lorelthiana was a woman of incomparable beauty, this was not an ordinary world.
After all, the male lead had no interest in any woman besides the female lead—whether he had a hundred eyes or three hundred mouths made no difference.
‘If I had met Sherkan first, before the Northern Kingdom’s royal family, I definitely would have been deeply mistaken.’
But I was already a transmigrator who had been through it all.
I had devoted three years, and finally heard them say they loved me.
Yet the result followed the original work.
No—it was an even more painful betrayal than in the original.
At least in the original, Lorelthiana didn’t love her family.
But I was different.
I had given them my best for survival, and before long I had come to love the bonds of family far too deeply.
“Our Lorelthiana has grown so wise. That’s why this father loves you so.”
“You and Ayu are different now. You’ve both become my beloved younger sister.”
It was then that I grasped the cold reality.
In this world, no one could replace Ayu.
The affection I’d labored to earn was nothing but dust compared to the love destined for Ayu.
If, after everything that’s happened, the male lead still seems to care for me, then—
‘I’d have to question my own intelligence.’
A dolphin would be smarter than me.
Besides, there was no real rapport or common ground between Sherkan and me.
After staring at the letter for quite some time, wrestling with the question, I finally reached a decision.
“All right, fine. I’ll do it.”
So what if they call me a reincarnator or whatever—that’s just something in my own memory.
Sherkan brought me home as his wife.
Naturally, it would be reasonable for him to want this much.
‘And there’s still quite a bit of time before I return to the original work.’
Since he’s acquired such a beautiful wife in the meantime, it makes sense he’d want to see her often.
I conveniently shifted all the answers onto Lorelthiana’s devastating beauty.
“Anyway, once time passes, none of this will matter.”
As the Grand Duchess whose life has been saved, I should do what’s asked of me.
I carefully pressed my lips to the paper, and as I folded the dried letter, my hands and feet suddenly went still.
An unexpected thought had surfaced.
Would he ask me to do more later?
“…More?”
I stared straight into empty air.
Would he?
He would, wouldn’t he?
The phrasing was inhumane, but objectively speaking, Sherkan had paid an enormous price to acquire me.
And besides, Sherkan was…
a half-breed of the wild clans.
Already taller than me despite being years younger, his future height was easy to envision—he’d clearly grow to considerable stature. Most likely to full potential.
I carefully traced through Sherkan’s trajectory as it appeared in the original work.
“Your Grace the Grand Duchess, I, Bridget, have prepared a boiled egg with these hands. With naught but honey and salt, I beseech you to take nourishment and rest. It shall warm your body!”
If Bridget hadn’t arrived with a warm late meal at just the right moment, I truly would have spent the entire day ruminating and stayed up all night without sleep.
That night, I dreamed of Sherkan.
I was far too curious to know what expression he’d have when he received that letter.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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