Even If Flowers Bloom on a Broken Branch - Chapter 1

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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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It was a slaughter, a total annihilation.
The fires of the crematoriums never died down, blanketed the Capital City in a thick, acrid smoke.
‘Where did it all go wrong?’
Sitting listlessly on the stone floor, Lee Yeon slowly turned her head and stared blankly at the sky beyond the iron bars.
‘Where did the mistake begin?’
It had been five long years since Lee Yeon ascended to the throne as Queen. During that time, far from bearing or giving birth to a Royal Descendant, she had not shown even a single signs of pregnancy, which naturally drew endless gossip.
Some said she lacked virtue, others that she was of shallow character, and some even went so far as to call her a barren wasteland incapable of holding a seed.
Her bloodless lips twisted into a fleeting, cynical smile.
‘It was something that could never have happened in the first place.’
The King had not visited Lee Yeon even once—not on their wedding night, nor in the more than eighteen hundred days that followed.
They had never even shared a bed, let alone combined their bodies, and their eyes had never crossed. There was no way a Royal Heir could be conceived. Indeed, it would have been stranger if she had.
‘If that had somehow happened, what would he have accused me of? Would he have claimed he never bedded that woman?’
Lee Yeon laughed self-deprecatingly.
‘If I had done that, at least the misconception of being a Barren Woman would have been cleared.’
Meanwhile, when the news broke that the King’s favorite concubine, Hong Ran, was pregnant, the murmurs surrounding Lee Yeon grew even louder.
People whispered that she had less blessings than a mere concubine, and it became a daily refrain that she lacked the qualifications of a Queen because she had disrupted the order of the Internal Court. There were even arguments that the true master of the Queen’s Palace should be installed immediately.
She acknowledged it all, and she agreed with everything. That was precisely what Lee Yeon desired most.
And so, she made a request.
‘Please allow me to leave the palace.’
The night she heard that Hong Ran was carrying his child, Lee Yeon did something rare: she requested a private audience. When King Jinpyeong came out quite willingly, she begged him to depose her. She implored him to strip her of her title and reduce her to a commoner.
At that, he smiled.
‘There is indeed only one way for you to cross these palace walls.’
Leave inside a coffin as a corpse.
His answer was like a blade. It was a ruthless severance, devoid of the slightest hesitation, faltering, lingering attachment, or pity.
‘As long as breath remains in that body, you are of use to me.’
Jinpyeong had never loved her from the beginning, had no intention of loving her, and had no thought of ever doing so.
Locking her in a cage without bars for all to see while withholding any shred of attention, turning a blind eye to whatever malicious rumors circulated, publicly displaying a Queen who was slowly texturing away into death—this was Jinpyeong’s attitude toward Lee Yeon.
To him, Lee Yeon was merely a hostage for his own insidious, wretched revenge, nothing more.
‘Besides, if you are gone, won’t my person come under attack?’
Thinking back on those words, they were laughable. He had asked his legal wife to serve as a shield for his concubine.
Lee Yeon hailed from an illustrious family; by birthright, she was a noble figure who stood second to none. Hong Ran, however, was a palace maid from a humble background.
‘Even if you are deposed, Ran would not be able to take that place. Instead, she would be branded an evil woman who ousted the Queen on the back of the King’s favor. I cannot bear to watch that happen.’
It was the love of a millennium.
Because he could not bear to watch that happen, he was telling her to sacrifice herself in this palace until the day she died, all for the safety of his beloved concubine.
And so, Lee Yeon—
‘Yes, Father.’
She accepted her father’s secret proposal to flee this palace undetected, to go far, far away and live like a dead person.
‘I shall exist as if I am not in this world.’
Yet, unlike her long endurance, the Queen’s attempt to escape was discovered with hollow ease, and that single flap of her wings swiftly led to the extermination of a clan.
The King dealt harshly with the crime of daring to abduct the Queen. Every single person connected to the Seo Family—not just their relatives and soldiers, but down to their dogs, horses, and even a single pumpkin growing in their garden plot—was utterly crushed. It was a cruel retaliation and a horrific obsession born of her attempt to slip from his grasp.
‘And today.’
It was the third day since she had been deposed from her title as Queen, just as she had wished. Today was the day scheduled for her death.
Lee Yeon slowly turned her head. She could hear the footsteps of those bringing death. A moment later, with the creak of the old door, eunuchs dressed in black entered.
“By order of His Majesty.”
Lee Yeon stared at the porcelain bowl resting on the wooden tray, then calmly bowed her head.
“I accept the command.”
To someone who had lost everything, death was rather welcome. If anything, she felt regret. If only she had died alone, everyone else might have lived.
That pitch-black liquid would enter her body and melt her organs.
‘Death won’t come easily either. There is no way he would grant such mercy.’
Perhaps because she had reached the absolute end of the end, Lee Yeon hesitated for just a brief moment. The eunuchs exchanged glances and took a step closer to her.
“Execute the criminal’s sentence immediately.”
As the rigid voice rang out, cold hands firmly secured the back of Lee Yeon’s head while another hand tilted the bowl of Poisonous Drink high. Soon, the black poison forced its way down her throat, pouring in violently.
Whether a revolving lantern truly existed or not, memories flashed past at a rapid speed, from her recent agonizing experiences to long-forgotten moments of the distant past.
‘This is the place where you shall wither and die.’
The words of the King, who had smiled cruelly while showing her the grand palace, had indeed come to pass.
‘I loathe those who have everything. Because I never did.’
Therefore, I quite enjoy turning those who have everything into those who have nothing.
She hadn’t understood what those words meant back then. She couldn’t even fathom them. But now, she knew.
Jinpyeong was truly a pathetic, base human being, consumed entirely by an inferiority complex. And Lee Yeon herself had been toyed with by such a man for her entire life, only to be utterly ruined in the end.
‘So.’
Perhaps it was because her time to die had come. The great mistake of her life came to mind.
‘Use me. This is a request, a wish. You may even call it blackmail.’
A mistake, or perhaps a smoldering ember.
‘You, at least, must leave this place forever—this living hell.’
‘……Grand Prince Jinyul.’
She knew. She had known for a very long time.
His gaze, the look in his eyes, his expressions, and his emotions whenever he looked at her.
She couldn’t help but know. It couldn’t be helped. Because he and she were identical; they were exactly the same. Even the fact that they had lost everything to the same man and been abandoned was identical.
That was why she had taken his hand, tried to climb over the palace walls by stepping on his back, and tried to pull him along with her, only for both of them to be caught in the end.
‘Jinyul.’
What would it have been like if our beginning had been different?
If I hadn’t pretended not to notice your gaze, or if I had met you before I ever entered this palace—
‘Or if I simply hadn’t taken your hand that day.’
Then, wouldn’t you, at least, be alive right now?
It was terribly shameless of her, but she wished, just a little, that he would come to meet her once she died. Because the hand she had held for that very brief moment back then had been so remarkably warm.
And as she closed her eyes, there was only endless darkness.

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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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