I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 92

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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 92

Inside Bin-cheong at that moment.
“Is that truly the case?”
“Yes, sir.”
Park Dae-young gazed down at the Attendant So, who stood with her head bowed before him. Shortly after, his face twisted with disbelief as his fingers worked ceaselessly through his beard.
“You didn’t simply misread what you saw?”
“Forgive me, sir, but the other attendants witnessed it at the same time from that very spot. There is no doubt whatsoever.”
The Attendant So lifted her head slightly to meet Park Dae-young’s gaze, then lowered it again.
“There was unmistakably a red glow emanating from the flames.”
An uncomfortable cough escaped Park Dae-young’s lips. What he had heard from the Attendant So was, by any rational measure, utterly senseless.
For over a decade, color had drained from the world.
Natural objects like fire, water, and light had long since lost their hues, appearing as achromatic shades both within and beyond the palace walls.
Yet now red was returning.
Some time ago, he had ventured into Sa-ga and witnessed something peculiar: a red flower blooming at the roadside for the first time in over a decade.
What struck him as strange was not that he was seeing color for the first time in so long, but that the common people around him seemed utterly accustomed to the sight.
When he had finally stopped someone to inquire, the answer he received was absurd.
“That red flower? Ever since His Majesty brought down rain not long ago, they’ve been blooming abundantly everywhere.”
Watching them turn away with cheerful smiles, Park Dae-young had silently cursed to himself. The grip was tightening around the Sovereign’s hands—of that much he was certain—and events were unraveling in an entangled knot.
Yet within the palace walls, far stranger rumors were taking root.
Even before the Giuoje had begun, attendants had witnessed black flames in Pye-jeon-gak turn red.
As more people reported seeing those dark flames reclaim their true color, the rumor spread like wildfire.
Among the whispers rose impossible tales: that the Sovereign and the Noblewoman, having miraculously survived within those flames, had caused the fire itself to regain its hue.
And now, at the heart of this strange occurrence once again, stood Dan-bi. That woman who had always grated against his nerves.
Could this too be tied to her? Park Dae-young’s brow creased deeply.
“Sir!”
Just then, an urgent voice sounded from beyond Bin-cheong. Park Dae-young gestured quickly, and the Attendant So, catching his meaning, slipped quietly through the back door.
Heavy footsteps thundered as Woo-sang burst into the chamber.
“Hah, huff…….”
“Mind yourself. What is this unseemly commotion?”
“S-sir, this is no time to be sitting idle like this!”
“What do you mean?”
Woo-sang gasped for breath as he cried out.
“Blue light has returned, sir!”
Park Dae-young’s eyebrows twitched violently.
“What did you just say?”
“Come outside at once and see for yourself!”
Park Dae-young rose and followed Woo-sang’s beckoning gesture.
The moment they stepped beyond Bin-cheong, Woo-sang pointed past the courtyard wall toward the sky. Following that gesture, all color drained from Park Dae-young’s face.
“Look there. The sky……!”
Park Dae-young’s eyes widened. It was a sight beyond belief.
The sky beyond the palace walls—once a dull, murky gray—now blazed with a clear, vivid blue.
Above it drifted white clouds, untouched for over a decade, billowing in soft masses across the expanse.

***

“Surely this isn’t…….”
Dan-bi stared down at the ground beneath her feet in bewilderment. Beside her, Hyeon spoke softly.
“Blue has returned.”
“……!”
He was right. The world that had been buried in darkness mere moments before now shimmered with vivid blue light across its entirety.
There was no doubt. The world was beginning to reclaim its true colors.
Yet her joy was short-lived; Dan-bi’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“We haven’t done anything yet. So why has the color returned?”
She could not understand it. All they had done so far was fall into the water together with Hyeon.
There had been no special action to restore color, no parallel to the burning Pye-jeon-gak where red had returned before.
That wasn’t me spilling my own blood like before, so why on earth—
‘Wait, hold on.’
Dan-bi’s eyes widened. Now that she thought about it, there was one thing that overlapped precisely.

“Your Highness!”

It was Hyun who had rushed in to save her as she threw herself into the flames, and it was Hyun who had plunged into this frigid water without hesitation. All of it.
And the moment her hand met his beneath the surface, a blue light bloomed from their fingertips and spread in all directions.
‘Could it be….’
Dan-bi turned back to watch Hyun, who stood with arms folded across his chest, lost in thought.
What if the key to restoring color to the world lay with Hyun and her? What could it possibly be?
“Ja-ga!”
“Your Highness!”
Just as she was sinking deeper into contemplation, an urgent cry rang out from above her head. When she looked up, she could see Som and Rang leaning over the cliff’s edge in the distance.
Dan-bi cupped her hands to her mouth and called back.
“Som!”
“Ja-ga! Are you truly unharmed?”
Her voice trembled on the edge of tears. Dan-bi quickly reassured them.
“I’m fine!”
Catching her breath and surveying her surroundings, she noticed a thin shaft of light seeping in from the distance. It might lead to a way out.
Dan-bi immediately looked upward and called out again, her voice ringing clear.
“There seems to be a passage down here!”
After arranging to meet Som and Rang outside, Dan-bi set off with Hyun toward where the light led.
Fortunately, as they walked deeper, the light grew steadily more vivid—a sign they were indeed moving toward the outside world.
The footsteps of the two figures walking side by side through the cave echoed faintly. Dan-bi listened to Hyun’s footfalls behind her, her mind turning inward.
There was something that wouldn’t leave her thoughts.
That vivid dream she’d encountered when she fell into the water—fragments of countless lives flashing past her eyes like scenes from the Lantern of Life.
Though they were only momentary memories, as she confronted endless repetitions, a sharp ache bloomed in her chest. As if she herself had endured all that suffering.
And at the end of countless cycles, there was that one message she had witnessed.
Along with the words “An Assistant has been summoned,” there appeared none other than her past self from when she had first begun this game.

<Still don’t understand? I am you.>

Suddenly, the voice of that other Dan-bi reflected in the ice wall whispered past her ear.
Back then, she had dismissed her body moving of its own accord as nothing more than the strange behavior of a game character.
But if that statement—’we are the same’—was true, then certain questions finally clicked into place.
The Status Window that kept appearing before her eyes, endlessly asking if she wanted to start over from the beginning. The Dan-bi in her dreams, repeating countless cycles alone.
If that Dan-bi wasn’t really the game character she had thought… could it be….
“When did you first come to have that ornament?”
Hyun’s sudden question jolted Dan-bi from her thoughts. She turned to look at him as he walked beside her, his gaze fixed quietly upon her.
Dan-bi lifted the yellow ornament tied beneath her jacket slightly with one hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she answered honestly.
“As Your Highness has heard, according to Som’s account, it’s likely something I’ve had since I was in Sa-ga, even before I entered the palace.”
Now that she thought of it, this ornament was something she had encountered several times even in her dreams.
The Dan-bi in her dreams, repeating the same cycles over and over, hadn’t always started the game at the same point.
Sometimes it was inside a jostling palanquin, sometimes it was Sa-ga a moment earlier, and sometimes it was right before the palace gates.
The restart point of each cycle hadn’t differed greatly, but strangely, in some cycles she had possessed the yellow ornament, and in others there was no trace of it at all.
But what troubled her most was what Som had said.
Som had claimed that in this current cycle, Dan-bi herself had given her the ornament at Sa-ga. But when she had first started this game, she had already left Sa-ga and was already inside the swaying palanquin.

“An Assistant?”

Then a scene suddenly flashed through her mind.
That other Dan-bi standing before the Status Window that read “An Assistant has been summoned”—in her hand was unmistakably the yellow ornament.
She had already possessed it before the game had even begun? How could that be possible?
“Is that truly what happened?”
At Hyun’s follow-up question, Dan-bi looked up.
“What do you—”
“Whether the moment you first came to have that ornament was truly then, is what I’m asking.”
Hyun stepped closer to Dan-bi. He looked down at the yellow ornament clutched in his hand for a moment, then met her eyes.
“I saw it clearly. That was no ornament women wear.”
“What?”
Hyeon’s lips parted once more.
“That was…… the tassel that had been hanging from the Royal Seal.”

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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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