Rewriting the Trash Ending - Chapter 10

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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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10.

***

Late at night, outside an upscale inn near the Capital.
“Ah…”
Lumiere reached to take Axid’s hand as he stepped down from the carriage first, then let out a small gasp of pain.
Axid’s expression hardened at once.
“If I may be so bold, might I examine your hand for a moment?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Show it to me, please.”
When he pressed the request again in that firm tone, she had no choice but to extend her hand.
Her palm was taut and swollen, her wrist marked with deep purple bruises.
It was merely a contusion that would fade in a few days at most.
She hadn’t mentioned it because the injury wasn’t severe enough to show, but under the weight of his serious gaze, she felt oddly self-conscious.
It was embarrassing, really—making him fuss over nothing, and she found herself apologizing for the concern she’d inadvertently caused.
“It’s truly fine. Nothing is broken, and bruises like these fade quickly enough.”
She smiled sheepishly, and a faint crease appeared between Axid’s brows.
He finished the check-in swiftly, then led her—who had been standing about awkwardly—into the guest room.
“Excuse me.”
He had her sit on the bed and began wrapping a bandage around her wrist.
His touch was careful, wary of causing further injury.
‘It’s only a dull throb; nothing’s actually broken.’
Through both her past life and her current one, she had never received such consideration.
“Really, I’m quite all right…”
She murmured uncertainly, feeling the awkwardness of it all, and Axid let out a restrained breath.
“No. You are not all right.”
A princess of the highest rank had not only been insulted before everyone, but injured as well.
How could that possibly be acceptable?
Even if he lacked the gift of reading hearts, he knew well enough that this was something that could not be overlooked.
More than that—wasn’t this the same Trobytan, the Grand Duke whose name had been linked to the princess in gossip?
Yet watching her smile so determinedly stirred in him a sense of profound sadness.
He had believed her to be inscrutable, unknowable; but beneath that composed smile, he glimpsed a tender heart she kept hidden.
He gazed down at her thin wrist with eyes grown dark and still, like a child studying something precious.
Was it truly the right thing to bring a princess whose heart bore so many wounds to the harsh, cold North?
No matter how carefully he kept watch over her, life in the North—where resentment toward the Empire ran deep—would surely not be smooth.
With movements grown even more cautious, he tied off the final knot and rose from the bed.
“Rest well, then.”
After that brief farewell,
as he turned to leave the room, a soft voice came from behind him.
“You really are a kind man, aren’t you?”
He paused.
Her words struck him unexpectedly, and his body went rigid.
He had done only what needed to be done—and yet she called it kindness.
“That is hardly the case.”
He spoke in a low, measured voice, then quietly withdrew from the room.
She had called him kind, but he knew he was no such thing.
His entire life had been spent amid the stench of blood, cutting the throats of monsters.
He had never learned the way to share warmth with another person.
‘Didn’t she say she’d never lived a single day as a human being while in the Imperial Palace?’
If such modest care could draw the word “kind” from her lips, what manner of life must she have endured until now?
Suddenly the man who had seized the princess’s wrist so carelessly came to mind.
‘I should have broken his wrist for that.’
He looked down at his own hand for a moment, then slowly opened and closed his fist.
As though regretting he’d let the wretch go unscathed.
Just then, Kaiden, who had been waiting below, approached and asked.
“Your Grace, how is the princess faring?”
“She should take precautions for at least a fortnight, I’d say.”
Her wrist, seized so roughly, was a landscape of bruises.
Though she claimed they would fade in a few days, the princess’s delicate skin suggested they would linger far longer.
Her hands were remarkably smooth and soft—nothing like the toughened, weathered skin of northerners.
“Still, despite appearances, I’d say her temperament is rather formidable, wouldn’t you?”
“…Who?”
When Axid raised an eyebrow in confusion, Kaiden grinned crookedly and answered.
“The princess. I saw the face of that woman you struck—it was completely battered.”
He found himself recalling the sensation of those soft, delicate hands from their first meeting.
“…The princess’s hands were the ones left completely bruised from the blow she gave that woman.”
“…Pardon?”
Even at their worst, the princess’s palms were swollen so stiffly that she could barely make a fist.
“Moreover, the princess could have had that woman executed immediately for Royal Family Defamation, yet she chose not to.”
From the way she’d brazenly reported the offense in front of everyone, it was obvious how disrespectfully the woman had behaved toward her.
And yet she forgave her with merely a forced kneeling.
Considering that Royal Family Defamation was such a grave crime that it bypassed trial entirely and allowed for immediate execution, it was an act of remarkable mercy.
How could someone with such a tender heart have survived this long in the viper’s nest that was the palace?
As Axid’s expression grew serious, Kaiden watched him with eyes filled with reluctant understanding.

***

The journey northward was grueling.
No matter how considerate the arrangements, traveling such distances in a weakened body was taxing.
Especially for someone unaccustomed to carriage travel.
Though her wrist had recovered enough to remove the bandages, she’d spent days battling nausea and muscle soreness—truly agonizing.
But this suffering, too, would soon end.
Through the carriage window, Lumiere gazed with bright eyes at the Grand Duke’s Castle drawing steadily closer.
A land of perpetual snow and ice, frozen in bitter cold.
Situated at the heart of Winterheim, the Grand Duke’s Castle stood with the solid, weighty dignity of a fortress that had endured countless harsh seasons.
The strange nostalgia she felt upon returning to this place after so many years was fleeting.
Lumiere gazed quietly at the hand Axid offered.
In her past life, they’d ridden in separate carriages, and the moment the door opened upon arrival, she’d screamed.

“Your Highness, we’ve arrived at the castle. Shall I help you out—”
“No, no! Please, save me! Don’t come any closer—!”

Axid had waited silently outside the carriage.
Only when the head maid, unable to bear it, finally coaxed her out after prolonged persuasion.
Recalling that version of him—humiliated not only at the Imperial Palace but here at the castle as well—her heart grew unbearably heavy.
What had she been so terrified of then?
“…Your Highness?”
“No, it’s nothing at all.”
She’d emerged from her reverie wearing a bitter smile, and it was then that she took his hand.
A middle-aged woman with brown hair and brown eyes approached with hurried steps.
“Your Grace, Your Highness, welcome.”
“It’s been a while, head maid. Has all been well?”
“Forgive me, but you must depart immediately for the Northern Fortress. A messenger arrived just moments ago. The situation there has become urgent.”
As the head maid spoke with a darkened expression, Axid nodded briefly and fell silent.
In the north, where monster attacks arrived with relentless frequency, such news was commonplace.
It was a situation he’d anticipated.
“Your Highness, I wish I could escort you personally, but I must depart at once.”
“Don’t trouble yourself on my account. Please, return safely without injury.”
He tore his gaze away from Lumiere with difficulty—her pale face softened by a gentle smile.
“Treat the princess with the utmost courtesy.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Should anything—however trivial—happen to the princess, you must report it to me immediately. Understood?”
“I shall remember, Your Grace.”
After reiterating his instructions to the head maid, Axid turned to leave, as though he could delay no further.
His movements were swift and orderly—the practiced efficiency of one accustomed to departing for battle without respite.
“Your Highness, I am Terra, serving as head maid. Allow me to show you inside.”
Lumiere watched Axid’s receding figure in silence for a moment, then turned her head away.
Beneath the measured tone lay a chill in her eyes—a palpable wariness and rejection.
It seemed she would need to work diligently to win the head chamberlain’s favor.
Not that she hadn’t expected it.
Given her reputation and the relations between the two nations, this reaction was only natural.
Still, the woman was neither petty nor malicious.
“Would you show me to my chambers?”
“Of course. This way, if you please.”
Footstep by footstep.
As she followed the head chamberlain through the main residence, her eyes wandering slowly over its interior, she suddenly caught sight of something.
A large, thick window at the end of the corridor drew her gaze.
……
Beyond the glass lay a quiet Garden, where skeletal trees stood sentinel.
In that spot where the sun lingered longest within the castle walls, the figure of a man seemed to flicker—standing there until dusk.
The undefined heaviness made her feet falter, though only for a moment.
A faint voice, carried down the corridor, broke her reverie.
“Pepper at fifteen gold per pound? Just six months ago it was ten!”
“You think I enjoy raising prices? But the tariffs and transit fees have skyrocketed.”
“We don’t buy only pepper, do we? Just in this shipment alone…….”
That voice…….
“Your Highness?”
“Quiet.”
She silenced the bewildered head chamberlain and peered quietly into the half-open Reception Hall.
A soft, fleshy frame swollen with avarice; a face wearing the mask of generosity.
A man she had seen countless times in her Past Life.

“Tch, stupid fools. No vision—they buy what others won’t touch, and they think themselves fortunate.”
“We’re grateful, truly. You’re selling us your refuse at a premium price.”
“Ha! Yes, thanks to those buffoons, people like us eat well. I should thank them indeed.”

A piece of refuse who played the decent man in front but mocked the Grand Duke’s realm behind closed doors.
He was conducting business with her chamberlain.

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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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