Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 3

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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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Repay me by marrying me!
Chapter 3
How could anyone put into words what happened to her in the past?
Sum it up in a word, and it was a catastrophic failure born of her own stupidity and naivety.
Three years had passed since she returned to the past. Quite a long time now, yet there were moments when she wondered if it was all just a dream.
Each time, Irene steadied her grip on reality by chewing over what her uncle had done to her, her anger rising anew.
‘If you give up here, I’ll set aside dowries for your younger siblings. But if you spitefully cling to this uncle of yours… well, what do you think will become of them?’
“I was so foolish…”
Why on earth had I believed that cunning man back then?
“Hm? What was that, Sis?”
“Nothing, nothing. That hat suits you well, by the way. It’s a lion, too.”
Spica, the finest dressmaker in the capital, where you couldn’t even step inside without an appointment.
Seated with ease in the VVIP room, Irene smiled with quiet satisfaction as she watched Elisabeth try on her fifth hat.
“As expected of my sister. Nothing you wear fails to suit you.”
Golden hair, curled yet glossy, and eyes as blue as a lake.
Dressed in a gown and hat that complemented her, the girl was lovely as a doll, her youthful vitality and fresh innocence utterly charming.
Irene clapped, and her praise was sincere, but Elisabeth only narrowed her eyes and studied her older sister in return.
“Everything you pick out is ‘lovely.’ Are you even looking properly, Sis? I asked you to choose what suits me!”
“What else am I supposed to say, when it all suits you?”
“Don’t say that!”
Elisabeth stamped one foot, making a point of it.
“Just pick the one that suits me best. Come on, look again. Which of these is the prettiest?”
Before Elisabeth had even finished speaking, the staff standing behind them brought over the hats they had been holding and set them on the table.
A large bonnet trimmed with elaborate lace. A silk hat in lovely shades. A straw hat dyed in colors, easy to wear on an outing.
Irene skimmed over them with an indifferent glance, then leaned back into her chair and sipped her warm black tea.
“They’re all lovely. They all suit you. But why must you buy only one? You know I’m rich.”
Rich was an understatement.
In truth, this dressmaker’s was hers entirely. Even the salaries paid to the designers and staff working here came straight out of her own coffers.
It was merely a matter of procedure that she paid by cheque. In reality, these were goods she could have walked out with without paying a single coin.
Yet even knowing all this, Elisabeth insisted on choosing only one.
“What’s the use of buying so many? I have nowhere to wear them. I haven’t even debuted in Society yet.”
“You don’t have anywhere to go without a debut? You can wear them when we go shopping like this, or for picnics, the opera, riding, the auction house, coffee houses, yachts. Goodness, there are so many occasions to go out! I suppose I’d better buy every one.”
“One is enough, I said!”
Elisabeth cried out in alarm, and then her expression soon grew gloomy.
Her gaze fell to the floor, and she took off the hat she was wearing and fiddled with its brim, speaking as if to herself.
“Ever since our parents passed, Sis, you’ve changed.”
“Me? How so?”
“You used to say that unplanned spending was out of the question, even when I asked for just a little more pocket money. Now you keep piling dresses and jewels on me even when I say I don’t need them.”
“Well, that’s…”
Irene faltered for a moment, gazing vacantly at her younger sister.
She knew her attitude had changed abruptly. But how could she explain why it had happened?
‘We were unjustly robbed of what we were rightfully due to inherit. And we died miserably.’
Elisabeth, who had grown up too early, and Charlotte, who had been nothing but adorable.
And… Irene herself, as well.
It was something that never would have happened had she been in her right mind.
Through a single moment of complacency and a wrong choice, how far a person’s life could plunge into ruin. Irene now understood that better than anyone.
“Elie, I’ve been giving it some thought.”
“Thinking about what?”
Soothing her sullen younger sister, Irene spoke in a gentle voice.
“Well, if your spending grows beyond what your means can bear, that’s a sure road to ruining the family. But even now, the figures in the Blair coffers, and in the accounts opened under my own name, are steadily climbing.”
And lest anyone find fault, she was paying every last coin of her enormous taxes without a single loophole.
It was no exaggeration to say the House of Blair shouldered a tenth of the nation’s annual budget. It was hardly without reason that the Emperor doted on her.
Of course, Irene did not begrudge the money. But so long as she paid her immense taxes honestly, even if her uncle and the other fools who envied her dug up some pointless complaint, the Emperor would take her side.
The current Emperor was not foolish enough to slit open the belly of the goose that laid the golden eggs.
‘For at least the next ten years, the Emperor will rule with unprecedented imperial authority, holding the nobles in check.’
What would happen ten years from now, she could not say. She had died by then.
Still, that much was enough. Would an Emperor who had flaunted such formidable power for ten years suddenly die overnight for no reason?
Even if such a thing did happen, should the throne change hands, she could simply pass her title to a suitable heir, retreat to some quiet countryside, and live out her days at ease.
Her purpose was one and only one.
To take revenge on her uncle without allowing him to snatch away what was precious to her.
And one of the most precious of the three belonging to that circle was standing right in front of her.
“My dear little sister, you must have felt slighted when your big sister didn’t give you much pocket money back then, right? I’ll make up for all of it now.”
Under Irene’s tender, lingering gaze, Elisabeth jumped back in a fright.
“No, I don’t need it! I didn’t mean I wanted pocket money, I just…”
“Truth be told, I’ve already opened four accounts in your name at Jacqueline Bank.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you a chequebook, so whenever you need money for something, just pay with your signature. It’ll be drawn straight from that account.”
Elisabeth’s mouth dropped open at the rapid-fire torrent of words, as if Irene had been rehearsing them. Then her face crumpled, as though she might burst into tears.
“I don’t think you’re really my sister. What did you do with her? Bring her back, you villain!”
“Oh, what am I going to do with you? Your sister is already dead and gone.”
Truly.
Your innocent sister died long ago, Eli.
“Hey! Don’t say things like that! It’s only been three years since Mother and Father passed away…”
Tears welled up in Elisabeth’s eyes. Seeing this, Irene clicked her tongue softly.
“Sorry. I was being too much of a tease. There, there, all right?”
Elisabeth sniffled, glanced at Irene with a faint hint of resentment, and then quietly made her demand.
“…Then pick one out of these quickly. Whichever suits me best.”
“You’re impossible, really.”
Irene handed her a handkerchief, let out a helpless chuckle, and placed a brilliant white straw hat on her sister’s head.
“You said you were going on a picnic with Charlotte this weekend, right? Wear this when you go.”
“Hehe, see, this one suits me best, doesn’t it? Anything too big or flashy just doesn’t look right on me.”
Beaming brightly, Elisabeth grasped both sides of the brim and tugged it downward, as if trying to hide her flushed eyelids.
Irene gave her adorable little sister’s cheek a gentle pinch and shook it lightly.
“It suits you just as well in all the others, you know. Strange. When did my sister start refusing to trust her big sister’s word?”
“Ever since you said you were too busy to play with us anymore!”
Just as Elisabeth stuck out her tongue in a childish display of impudence, someone politely knocked on the door of the VVIP room where the two sisters sat.
When Irene granted permission to enter, the door eased open. On the other side stood a young woman with silver bob-cut hair and grey eyes, bowing low with courteous precision.
“An urgent message has come from the Clio branch, my lady.”
“From the Clio branch? …Understood. I’ll be right there.”
“Off to work again?”
As Irene rose from her seat, Elisabeth looked up at her with eyes still damp.
‘Mm…’
It had been ages since she’d managed to carve out this time for her.
She felt terribly sorry too, but with word coming from the Clio branch, there was no helping it.
“Instead, I’ll come home early today. Let’s have dinner together, the three of us, for the first time in ages, with Charlotte.”
“Promise? Charlotte and I won’t eat dinner until you get home. We’ll wait up all night if we have to!”
“Alright, I promise. Kiri, the thing I mentioned before, hand it over now.”
“Yes, my lady.”
What Kiri pulled from the bag slung over her shoulder was a chequebook.
“I wasn’t joking about what I said earlier, so use this to buy whatever you need.”
“Oh, big sister!”
“But keep it a secret from Charlotte. She’s still too young to be carrying a chequebook.”
With a playful wink, Irene turned away, and Elisabeth’s dumbfounded voice trailed after her back.
“I-I’m too young to have a chequebook too…”
I wonder when I’ll finally get to see just how generous my little sister can be.
The laughter fading from Irene’s face vanished entirely the moment she climbed into the carriage with Kiri.
“So… what has my uncle gone and done this time?”
Clio branch.
It was a real place with a real branch office, but in that quiet countryside town, there was no such thing as an urgent message to send up.
It was a code between Irene and Kiri, her chief secretary. It meant there was something to report about Viscount Kalio.
“He’s reportedly gone to meet an alchemist in the black market.”
“Good heavens, that lofty man actually set foot in the black market, did he?”
Born and bred an aristocrat, steeped in an elitism deeper than even the Emperor’s, he couldn’t stand so much as exchanging words with the servants in his own household.
Naturally, he would never set foot in a back alley crowded with the poor and vagrants.
“Still, an alchemist, hm…”
After mana, once so abundant, gradually vanished and the age of magic faded away, the continent began its slide into an age of machines powered by coal and steam, springs and gears.
In that transitional period, there were those who appeared like comets and then vanished: the alchemists.
How many people had been tempted by their claim that they could turn ordinary stones into gold?
But most alchemists were charlatans, and what they produced, with the patronage of nobles and merchants, was none other than poison.
In a word, they were less alchemists than poison manufacturers.
Whenever an alchemist got involved in an ordinary dispute, it had a way of turning into a horrific incident.
When a single vial of an alchemist’s poison finally set off a plague across the eastern reaches of the Empire, the Emperor of the generations long past, in a towering rage, launched a purge of alchemists.
Countless alchemists were marched up to the execution platform, and their heads fell. The few who barely survived either fled the Empire or hid their identities and slipped into the back alleys.
Irene knew, too, that one of the alchemists who had become so hard to find was hiding in the back alleys of the Capital.
The reason she hadn’t reported his existence was simple. Once, in a past that had since been erased, he had helped her.
And in this life, he regards Irene as his benefactor, though.
Him, who in this life clings to the belief that Irene is his benefactor without a shred of doubt.

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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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