Even If Flowers Bloom on a Broken Branch - Chapter 2

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

2.
It was the first deep sleep she had enjoyed in a very long time.
She hadn’t dreamed at all, nor had she woken up in the middle of the night, having slept long and satisfyingly for the first time in ages. Lee Yeon opened her eyes, feeling the refreshing aftereffects of a good rest along with a slight hunger.
“……?”
She opened them?
Was “opened” the right word? No, was it even possible for her to open them?
“I clearly…….”
Died.
The words she couldn’t finish muttered inside her mouth.
The sensation of the flesh inside her throat burning away was still vivid. The agony of her internal organs melting and her bones dissolving from the poison that had entered her body remained stark. Even the feeling of clawing at the stone floor with her fingernails, unable to bear the excruciating pain, still lingered at her fingertips, so how—
‘Am I alive?’
How?
Furthermore, she was bewildered because everything reflected in her eyes was so intimately familiar, a scene from her everyday life.
Her dark eyes, blankly staring at the ceiling, moved to the items hanging on the wall, then to the cloisonné wardrobe, and finally down to the floor.
‘This place is—’
Lee Yeon bit her lip. It felt as though tears were about to well up.
‘My private residence.’
It was the place she had yearned for. A place she had never forgotten for even a single moment, the very place from those days she had desperately wished to return to.
Even though these were things she had last seen five years ago, they felt as familiar and welcoming as if she had seen them just yesterday.
This was the house where she had spent all seventeen years of her life before entering the palace.
“…….”
Lee Yeon pulled back the silk bedding, stood up, and slowly looked around.
The sunlight reflected and gleamed upon the fine blankets. In the gap of the paper-screen door lined with jade-colored silk, a breeze carrying the scent of early spring lingered.
Sliddd.
When she reached out and opened the sliding window, the faint scent of plum blossoms drifted in along with the sound of servants diligently sweeping the courtyard. It was an incredibly ordinary and natural morning.
She had risked her life just to see this sight again, only to be discovered, leading to the slaughter of her entire family. Yet to be shown this once more, she could not tell whether she should resent the heavens or be grateful.
‘Are they letting me let go of my final grievance before I depart?’
To soothe this grievance, I would have to end the life of the person who stripped away my everything.
It was just as she thought this and turned her head. Someone opened the door and entered.
“My lady, are you awake?”
It was a lively girl with long black hair tied into pigtails that gathered into one near the nape of her neck. Cheerful playfulness and a hint of mischief lingered in her rosy cheeks and round eyes.
Seeing that face, Lee Yeon’s eyes trembled faintly.
“…….”
She was a servant Lee Yeon had personally chosen when she was ten years old. Having spent seven years together, they were closer to friends than the relationship of a maidservant and a young mistress. When Lee Yeon had to enter the palace and part with her forever, she was a warm-hearted girl who wept for three days and three nights straight.
In that lonely place where no one had spoken to her for five years, the name of the child she had perhaps missed the most was—
“Chohee.”
Yes, that was it. Chohee.
Before Lee Yeon could even feel embarrassed by the tears that naturally spilled over and rolled down her cheeks, Chohee gasped in surprise and approached her on her knees.
“Oh dear, my lady! What is the matter? Are you hurting somewhere?”
It had hurt terribly. It had been eighteen hundred days filled with nothing but loneliness and sorrow.
Far from loving her, her husband had ignored and neglected her, and every single word she heard from all directions harbored a sharp dagger.
No one would approach her unless she spoke first, and even that eventually turned into mockery.
‘After all, there is absolutely no harm in offending a queen who is nothing but a hollow shell.’
Lee Yeon held Chohee’s hands as they grasped her own, and wept a little, just a very little. Perhaps as much as five days out of those five years.
“Well, I suppose there are times like that.”
Enormously flustered by the sight of Lee Yeon’s tears—something she had never seen before in her life—Chohee froze in place before clumsily patting her young mistress’s shoulder.
“When I get really startled, the tears don’t come out right away either. It’s only when I’m sitting alone by the well, or maybe when I’m eating a spoonful of warm rice, that they suddenly come pouring out. That’s it, right, my lady? You’re doing this because you were so startled, aren’t you?”
What could there possibly be to be so startled about?
For a life that had already died once, the fact that this wasn’t the end and she had come back to life wouldn’t even be surprising anymore.
“They say an order to submit the Cheonyeodanja will be handed down soon. Jain and I also heard the Master of the House say last night that the Geumhonlyeong would be declared shortly.”
……What?
“My heart sank so much when I heard that. Then it truly means the Gantaek is just around the corner, doesn’t it? Right now, literally everyone in the Capital City expects our lady to enter the court, so Jain and I are so restless that we couldn’t sleep a wink—”
‘What did you say?’
Lee Yeon stared at Chohee with an expression as if she had been struck hard on the head. She couldn’t immediately grasp what those small lips were babbling about.
The Cheonyeodanja had ‘not yet’ been submitted, the Geumhonlyeong had ‘not yet’ been proclaimed, and the Gantaek had ‘not yet’ begun. —Not yet.
“Not yet?!”
“Oh my goodness!”
When Lee Yeon cried out loudly like a scream, a startled Chohee fell back hard on her bottom. Lee Yeon grabbed Chohee by the shoulders and shook her.
“Chohee. Say that again. What? Why were you worried? I am still a young mistress?”
“Oh dear, what is wrong with our lady? Jain!!”
Chohee was genuinely terrified by how her mistress, who was usually as gentle and soft-spoken as a flower, was acting like a completely different person overnight.
Lee Yeon looked at Jain, who came rushing into the room belatedly, appearing deeply moved before long—
“M-my lady?!”
She threw her arms around both Chohee and Jain, wailing at the top of her lungs.
Because she was so happy and glad to see the two of them, or because she was afraid and terrified that this might be an illusion, and—
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry……!”
Because she was cut to the quick with apology for their completely guiltless deaths.
It was a reunion after five years.
* * *
Fortunately, they weren’t dead. And it wasn’t a dream either.
Chohee and Jain, who had moved Lee Yeon to lay on the bed after she poured out enough tears to almost faint, lingered around for a long while before finally closing the door and leaving. Lee Yeon fiddled with the cold wet towel placed over her swollen eyes.
The burning sensation felt across her entire face, the cold touch gently pressing on her eyes, and the sore throat from crying so much were all far too vivid.
‘To think I have truly come back to life.’
Moreover, she had returned to the time before she entered the palace, even before the Maiden Roster was submitted. To the time before she was dragged into that living hell.
‘If so, what should I do?’
Lee Yeon pushed herself up.
Her pale face was reflected in the mirror standing directly in front of her. Lee Yeon absentmindedly touched her face, then slowly brought her hand to her neck.
It was a smooth neck with nothing on it, yet it felt as though something red was visible to her eyes. An afterimage that looked like it was tightly wound with a red leash drew itself in her mind. Her pitch-black eyes turned ice-cold.
“First, I must sever this leash.”
So that the demand to hand over the Maiden Roster would never spring up from anywhere again, so that it couldn’t even be submitted at all.
There was only one way to make that happen.

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