Even If Flowers Bloom on a Broken Branch - Chapter 5

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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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5.
How should she put this into words?
He had no knowledge of what she remembered. Running down the palace corridors together hand-in-hand to escape the Imperial Guards, their eventual capture, and everything that followed after.
“Lady Seo?”
Even so, a sigh escaped her lips, born from a mix of joy at meeting him again, a pang of bitter resentment, and the sheer helplessness of not knowing what to do now. A brief glint of moisture gathered in her eyes.
Lee Yeon bit her lower lip hard to conceal it and pulled her ssugaechima back.
“I greet the Grand Prince.”
With the sky grown dark, there were hardly any people left on the streets.
Jinyul’s attire was somewhat disheveled.
Perhaps because he had been drinking, his expression was languid and his collar was not properly put together. The hem of his pale blue dopo fluttered in the early spring breeze.
“But how did you recognize me?”
It was a genuine curiosity.
Because she was covered in a ssugaechima, no one else had been able to recognize her. Through such a tiny breathing slit, only her eyes should have been visible.
However, Jinyul merely let out a smirk.
“When I can locate an assassin who has buried their presence in the pitch black, would I fail to recognize a single face hidden beneath a piece of cloth?”
He slowly reached his hand out. Lee Yeon felt the space around her waist stiffen, and after watching the hand approaching her, she squeezed her eyes shut.
“I recognized at a single glance that you were the young lady of Lord Seo’s household.”
Jinyul said in a lazy voice. He pinched the ssugaechima with his fingers and draped it back over Lee Yeon’s head.
“Are you not the one destined to become my older brother’s wife in the future?”
Lee Yeon’s eyes snapped open. And looking into the pair of eyes before her, she felt herself momentarily struck speechless.
It was a gaze that was unmistakably saying, *That is surely how it will be.*
“…….”
Lee Yeon silently curled her hands into fists.
Perhaps it really could be the truth. Before the Regression, she had been uniquely designated according to Jinpyeong’s wishes and had become the master of the Queen’s Palace.
Yet hearing it put that way from Jinyul’s own mouth made her feel utterly unpleasant.
Because it sounded as if it were a fixed destiny, as if it could not be changed.
“No.”
“……Hmm?”
Was it because he did not know what she was answering no to? His response was a little delayed.
Lee Yeon collided straight with the gaze looking down at her as she continued her words.
“Because I dislike having the path I must walk decided by another person’s will.”
It was something she had been thinking about ever since she heard that it was before the Gantaek, the Geumhonlyeong, or the Cheonyeodanja had even been issued.
A legal and justifiable way to avoid submitting the Cheonyeodanja, and the single method to twist all of destiny.
Lee Yeon steadied her breathing slightly, then looked up at Jinyul.
“By chance, does the Grand Prince have someone he loves?”
Jinyul blinked. He replied a beat late.
“……I do not.”
“Then, do you have a reason not to love?”
A reason not to love.
Jinyul looked down at Lee Yeon. The questioning was becoming increasingly interesting.
‘I thought it was a chance encounter, but was it inevitable?’
Or was it fate?
The gaze looking squarely up at him was dignified, and her pitch-black eyes were straight without a single tremor.
Jinyul tilted his head, peering even closer into that face.
“I do not have that either.”
Lee Yeon looked up at Jinyul and spoke with confidence.
“Then please marry me, Grand Prince.”
Having nothing to lose, she went straight to the point.
“Feelings are optional, the conditions are clear, and there is no expiration date.”
Even without looking, she could tell. That the eyes of the two people behind her back had grown so wide they could roll out onto the ground, and that their mouths were gaping wide open. And that another emotion had slipped into the gaze of this man looking down at her.
Probably, something along the lines of amusement.
“……Is the daughter of the Inspector General requesting a contract marriage from the King’s brother?”
Lee Yeon met Jinyul’s gaze calmly.
“Do you desire a position inside the palace, or do you desire freedom outside the palace?”
In an instant, Jinyul’s eyes turned sharp. At the atmosphere which was completely different from a moment ago, Chohee and Jain stiffened in fright.
Lee Yeon waved her hand, signaling the two of them to back away. There was no reason to let the upcoming conversation leak to those two.
Jinyul condoned this and spoke chillingly.
“You are asking a highly dangerous and arrogant question, Lady Seo.”
“If I lacked the power to make it possible, it would be arrogance. Since I have it, it must be promise.”
Lee Yeon slowly parted her lips. The words flowed out easily, as if she had been thinking about them for a very long time.
“If the Grand Prince wishes to grow your position in the palace, use me. I will gladly become your reliable foundation.”
“……What if I want freedom? If so, would marrying you not shackle my ankles?”
“People always guard more against a free wolf than a dog wearing a collar.”
Jinyul let out a scoffing laugh, incredulous. His eyes gleamed lazily.
“Do you dare compare me to a dog? And you are the collar?”
“Even if His Majesty mistakes me for your collar, it will not be something for you to care about. Furthermore, marriage does not only become a shackle. Rather, it can also become a camouflage and a shield.”
“So I should use you to my heart’s content and discard you as I please?”
“Until you let go, the marriage will be maintained.”
Lee Yeon answered without shrinking back in the slightest before Jinyul, who was a head taller than her.
“If you ever deem that I am no longer necessary, let go at any time. I will meekly allow myself to be cast aside.”
Instead of answering, Jinyul stared down intently at Lee Yeon. It was as if he was trying to read her expression to see what she was thinking.
However, whether it was because he could read nothing from Lee Yeon’s expression, he tilted his head further and looked straight into Lee Yeon’s eyes.
“And by doing so, what do you gain?”
“A justification to be excluded from the Gantaek, a valid reason not to enter the palace.”
Lee Yeon then murmured softly, adding onto it.
“A husband who suddenly appeared is a bonus.”
At that, Jinyul, who had been listening quietly, burst into laughter.
It was a loud laugh that erupted as if he could no longer hold it back because it was too ridiculous.
After laughing for a long while in front of a bewildered Lee Yeon, he wiped a tear with his finger.
“No, even if everything else is fine, calling your husband a bonus right in front of me seems a bit much.”
Lee Yeon turned her head away with an embarrassed expression.
“……My apologies. It was merely a figure of speech.”
“Then that is a relief. I am quite sick of being treated like a bonus by now.”
“I as well—”
Lee Yeon caught herself mid-sentence.
The words she was about to say belonged to information that the ‘present’ him would not know. That he wasn’t the only one who had received such treatment in the palace, that she had been the same way.
Lee Yeon swallowed her words and turned her head. Jinyul’s gaze landed on Lee Yeon’s lips. He seemed somewhat amused.
“Feelings are optional, conditions are clear, and there is no expiration date, you said.”
“I did say that.”
“A marriage that fulfills each other’s needs.”
The lips of Lee Yeon, who was about to reply, froze solid. It was because of the sensation touching beneath them.
Jinyul slowly lifted Lee Yeon’s chin, looking down at her face.
“No matter what that need may be?”
Lee Yeon failed to answer instantaneously. It was because she felt an intuition that she might never be able to escape the eyes looking down at her. And just how dangerous the proposal she had voiced was.
However, the single reason she did not regret the spilled water, nor hesitate to pour out more, was because she knew the man who, before the Regression, had risked death to run and stop her execution.
Because she knew he was the kind of person who had thrown away everything for her sake.
“…….”
Therefore, she summoned her courage.
So that this time she wouldn’t lose him, wouldn’t hide it, wouldn’t repress it.
Even if it was a memory and an emotion that only she knew in this world.
“You should answer.”
His voice was low and lazy. There was a temperature to it, as if it had somehow been moistened not by lips, but by the tip of a tongue.
“……!”
When that lazily spreading breath brushed against the edge of Lee Yeon’s lips, she squeezed her eyes shut at the unfamiliar sensation that made every single hair stand up. Her body’s senses grew acute at the voice echoing from such a close distance.
The balance of her heart, which she had barely been maintaining, tottered at the slightly further tilted angle of the fingers holding her chin, and in that breeze, the distance between lip and lip grew even closer.
Lee Yeon tried soundlessly to keep the edges of their lips from touching, but she no longer had the luxury to escape.
‘Even though I was the one who made the proposal.’
She had extended her hand like someone cornering prey, but the one who had actually ended up cornered was her. Out of breath from the fear that he might step one pace closer, Lee Yeon barely squeezed out the answer he wanted.
“—No matter what.”
Lee Yeon’s upper lip lightly brushed against his lower lip like a feather.
It was neither intended nor calculated. She had merely moved her lips at the upward-pushed angle, and they had touched. Yet Jinyul smiled slowly, as if even that was pleasing.
“No matter what…… is it.”
Lee Yeon was still holding her breath.
She could not break her gaze away from the eyes that seemed to slowly lick across the surface of her lips. Jinyul, smiling lazily, whispered softly.
“Very well, Wife.”
His voice dug deep into Lee Yeon’s ear.
“Let us do it, this marriage.”

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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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