Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 88

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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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Chapter 88
“I’ll bring it right away.”
Briget hurried out, and I slumped in my chair, the strength draining from my limbs.
‘Ah! I want to be the female protagonist too! I want to be the female protagonist!’
Not some worthless supporting character with no options but a family murderer—I want that role!
* * *
Siaka.
She was a woman who had trained for four years under a potter father and earned formal Potter Certification.
Yet her hands trembled now without cease.
It wasn’t the shackles.
To think she’d ever set foot in the Grand Duke’s Residence!
Seven years had passed since she’d even left the Labor Camp, much less seen the inside of a Prison!
She tried to steady herself, but it was no use. Cold sweat drenched her entire body.
The escorting guards said nothing.
Instead of prison garb, she’d been given a clean dress, which felt strange against her skin; the starched cloth scraped at her nape. She kept her eyes fixed on her sleeves. The dirt still caked beneath her fingernails and the calluses hardened from labor were beyond concealing.
Her fingers bore the marks of years of toil and grime that no amount of washing could erase.
The hallway seemed endless.
Marble floors beneath her feet echoed with each step—a hardness that terrified rather than startled legs that had known only earth for seven years.
“This way, please.”
Siaka didn’t know what to do with herself.
Even the servants of the Grand Duke’s House carried themselves with an air of refined dignity and impeccable appearance.
They looked more noble than the wealthy young ladies she’d glimpsed in her childhood.
“The Grand Duchess.”
As the maid greeted her first, Siaka lifted her head slightly, then lowered it at once.
It wasn’t for any other reason.
She was simply too bewildered.
The Grand Duchess?
Was what she’d just seen actually human?
To love beauty is the nature of every artist.
The Grand Duchess before her transcended all ordinary measures of beauty.
She seemed the work of a sculptor who had meant to carve a god but somehow fashioned a woman instead.
Light streamed through the window, fracturing into brilliant fragments across platinum hair. The line of her wrist as she held the teacup, the angle of her neck as she set it down—all seemed sculpted by divine hands.
If only there were clay. If only there were water. If only there were a pottery wheel!
Even in shackles, she would create something—inspired by this angel descended from heaven herself.
Her fingers moved as though possessed, then stopped a beat too late.
She had to regain her senses.
“Come closer.”
Siaka only realized the words had come from the Grand Duchess when she saw the maid move.
She approached trembling, stopping at a careful distance.
“What’s your name?”
“Siaka. I have… no family name.”
Loreltianna tilted her head with curiosity, though Siaka, her gaze fixed on the floor, could not see it.
“Why no family name? Did you kill your father?”
The bluntness of the question made Siaka flinch, but she quickly set her jaw and nodded.
“Yes, Grand Duchess.”
“I see.”
The Grand Duchess showed little reaction. Instead, she asked something else.
“How long have you trained in Pottery?”
“Four years. I received formal Potter Certification.”
“Learned from your father, then. So you killed both your master and your father.”
……
Siaka could say nothing more and sank to her knees. Her legs trembled too badly to support her.
What would happen now? How could a murderer—one who had killed her own father—stand before such an exalted person without her tongue being torn out?
Admiration drained from her mind, and in its place, fear flooded in to fill the void.
“Siaka, I’m curious about something.”
“…Yes?”
At a gesture from the Grand Duchess, a maid brought a small box and set it on the table.
Siaka’s eyes snapped to it, and she nearly burst into tears.
A small white ceramic jar sat there. The wildflower vines carved into its lid were delicate and exquisitely rendered.
“You made this, didn’t you?”
“……yes, that’s…… correct.”
Her voice cracked. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
She hadn’t known anything remained in this world. She’d thought it was all destroyed.
“It looks like one of those cosmetic jars women use.”
“I…… made it on the anniversary of my mother’s death.”
“The craftsmanship is exquisite. Your mother would have been delighted to see it.”
“…….”
The Grand Duchess picked up the jar and twisted the lid. It made a soft click as it sealed. Seven years had passed, yet the fit remained perfect.
“How old were you when you made this?”
“……I was thirteen.”
The Grand Duchess, beautiful as falling snow, fell silent for a long moment.
The delicate clink of teacup against saucer. The tick of the clock hand.
Those sounds made Siaka’s heart pound.
“Why did you kill your father?”
Siaka’s heart dropped like a stone.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But I can promise you that answering will serve your interests.”
“How could I…… how could someone as noble as Your Grace possibly concern yourself with someone as lowly as me…….”
The Grand Duchess sipped her tea without reply.
She neither rushed nor pressed.
And gradually, Siaka’s anxiety began to settle.
With flushed cheeks, she hesitantly opened her mouth.
“My father…….”
Having gone so long without speaking to another soul, her voice emerged hoarse, like metal scraping stone.
“My father was originally a poor potter, and my mother was the finest seamstress in the village. She did the most beautiful embroidery, and her work was fast too…….”
With her mother’s wages from needlework, her father was barely able to earn his Potter Certification.
And thanks to her mother’s embroidery work deep into the nights, they could even afford to open a small shop.
Her father worked hard in gratitude, forever apologetic to her mother.
The two of them were happy together.
Back then.
“I also begged my father to teach me pottery. People said it was absurd for a woman to be a potter…….”
Siaka paused briefly.
“But my father taught me anyway. He said I had talent.”
A long-buried anger flickered across Siaka’s eyes.
The delicate, charming ceramic ornaments she crafted were popular among common women.
Her father passed them off as his own work and sold them in the shop.
At first, she had no complaints.
She was even grateful to him.
This world judges the work of female potters with prejudice.
People would only buy if they thought a man had made it.
She believed the family would live happily this way forever.
But as their finances grew, her father changed, little by little.
His walk became more arrogant each day, and he began to pick and choose his commissions.
She thought his pride as a potter was simply growing.
She didn’t know it was a lie.
Exactly five years later, her father brought home a child from outside.
A son born of him outside the family, he claimed.
Her mother collapsed on the spot.
She never rose again after that.
Eyes already damaged from a lifetime of close needlework grew clouded from endless tears. Her mother left this world unable to see.
The last thing she reached for, fumbling in the darkness, was a water bowl Siaka had made for her.
The day after the funeral, that woman came inside.
“Well, the funeral’s finally over, so I’m moving in now. Call me mother, Siaka. I’ve heard so much about you already.”
Nausea rose in her throat. The woman’s eyes and hands, which reached out to touch her, were cold as the skin of a snake.
“But that sick woman’s stench won’t leave. All these dishes need to be smashed and thrown out, dear. We can’t have the sickness spreading, can we?”
The dishes her mother had used were hurled into the courtyard. Every last one, including those Siaka had made for her mother.
The sound of shattering plates filled the yard.
The water bowl shattered that day too.
That day, Siaka grabbed that woman by the hair. And her father beat her until she nearly died.
Days later, her father announced he would pass the shop to her half-brother instead.
“What are you saying? Father, you promised you’d pass the pottery trade to me!”
“A woman doing pottery! And when she has a perfectly respectable brother? How could that possibly work?”
The foundation of this shop had been laid by her mother, and everything else had been built by Siaka’s own skill.
Yet both of them had stood in shadow. Their only fault was that the mother had trusted her husband, and the daughter had trusted her father.
Her father spoke gently to Siaka, trying to soothe her.
“Siaka. Don’t be so disheartened. You have a good match waiting for you. Do you know how hard your father worked to arrange it?”
……
“True, the man is marrying again, but he’s quite wealthy and well-connected—truly a rich household. There’s even a baron in his family, I hear. You’ll go there and live in comfort. Forget your mother! The truth is, your father hasn’t loved her in so very long……. Hack!”
She barely remembered what happened that day.
When her mind cleared, her father lay crumpled beside the pottery wheel, and Siaka’s hands were still caked with the clay she’d been shaping.
“……So I killed him.”
Siaka could not lift her head.
It would be over now. This noble woman would send her back to Prison.
Yet something felt strange.
Siaka felt an inexplicable sense of release, an odd lightness washing through her.
Siaka, the woman who had murdered her father, had never been treated as a person. No one had ever asked her circumstances, or cared to wonder about them.
This was the first time. The first time someone had asked to hear her story.
For seven years, something had lodged in her throat—and only now did she finally cough it free.
It was like breathing for the first time, a relief so profound it nearly brought her to tears.
“Your name is Siaka, then?”
“Yes? Yes, Grand Duchess!”
“Yes. I think our greeting as Grand Duchess and prisoner is finished.”
In Siaka’s lowered gaze, she saw the Grand Duchess’s pale, delicate hand extending toward her.
“Now we should greet each other as Workshop owner and Workshop master.”
Siaka doubted her own ears.
“I won’t force you. What do you say?”

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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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