The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living - Chapter 239
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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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Part 2, Episode 44
“Can I look at this?”
I asked in a trembling voice.
“Of course!”
Leah answered.
“But honestly, it’s just page after page of characters we can’t understand anyway…….”
She handed the diary directly to me as she spoke.
“It’s been eight hundred years since the First Emperor, Daxion Bebiano, received an oath and left this behind. I’m sure he wrote it himself, don’t you think?”
“……This?”
The diary was pink, with cute little drawings of rainbows, stars, and rabbits decorating its cover. It seemed like someone had purchased a Riente notebook from that era and drawn and colored it by hand.
At my flabbergasted expression, Leah scolded me sternly.
“Brisa, that’s just prejudice. Adults can like rabbits too.”
The fact that the Queen of Riente had been present at that place was never widely known, and that misunderstanding had stemmed from this.
“But precisely for that reason, the Imperial Family refused to acknowledge that this belonged to the First Emperor.”
Fair enough. The appearance of it hardly symbolized the authority befitting the First Emperor’s possession.
“Everyone said it was a forgery or something like that, and it turned only us into a laughingstock. So Johnstone decided we’d just keep holding onto it.”
Sinistra’s tastes had stripped authority even from an eight-hundred-year-old relic.
I opened it to the first page.
A woman in her twenties who had suddenly fallen into the Kingdom of Riente and fallen in love with the King of Riente—her story filled page after page.
“Oh my.”
As I flipped through the opening pages dismissively and clicked my tongue, Leah’s eyes widened.
“What? You can read this script? You understand it? Why that look?”
I answered truthfully.
“It’s right up your alley.”
Of course, as I moved further in, the atmosphere changed.
[His affection has grown completely cold. Now he says he regrets accepting me as his queen. I lack refinement and dignity, he says. I’m too reckless…….
Once he had said he adored my strange ways.
He’s taken our child from me. It was no use begging through my tears.
The child is to inherit the throne, he said, and must receive a proper education. He worried that my poor influence would corrupt him.
All I wanted was to plant beans with my child in our vegetable garden.]
Leah noticed my expression had turned serious.
“Is it different now?”
“Yes, now it’s my cup of tea.”
I flipped through the pages frantically as I spoke.
“A vegetable garden shows up first.”
[In the midst of such loneliness, I made a friend. His name is Hexan. He’s a mage, apparently. Sometimes he brings his younger brother Daxion along.
He’s very interested in the world I came from originally. Especially if I tell him somewhat terrifying folklore, he’s delighted.
Mermaids, werewolves, Centauros, servant demons, fallen angels, liches, nightmares, elves, dwarves, vampires, mummies, zombies, necromancy……. Honestly, I find such tales boring.
He still doesn’t come looking for me. Even when I ask to see our child, he won’t show me a single hair.]
Leah bounced her feet excitedly.
“What is this, some kind of farming journal?”
I answered seriously.
“No. It’s a domestic strife diary.”
[It makes no sense. Hexan was a Dark Mage.
In Riente, they say Dark Magic has been used to impede the continent’s progress.
I went to him and protested his baseness, but he grew angry, saying that someone like me, a foreigner, was unfit to be queen. I begged with tears, but again I was denied the chance to see my child.
Hexan used my story as nourishment and cast a curse on the Four Families far across the continent using the Power of the Other World, they say. Since I came from another dimension, I possess enormous power…….]
“Brisa, why does your expression look so grave? Is someone you know appearing in this?”
“My ancestor.”
At my serious answer, Leah asked excitedly.
“What’s your ancestor doing? Unifying Riente or something?”
“She’s unable to meet her mother.”
[I wept every day from guilt. I never knew my story would make someone else unhappy.
But today Daxion came to find me. He’s figured out how to Tame people who are cursed.
He says he needs my power to set them completely free. Daxion taught me how to use the Power of the Other World.]
And so Sinistra, as we came to know her, set out for the continent with Daxion.
[It must have looked like a midnight flight with Daxion. I’ll never return to Riente again.
I’ll never see my child in this lifetime. Still, every night I weep, thinking of my child.]
And after sealing the demons in the Ring.
Sinistra suffered a second betrayal.
[Daxion confessed his love to me. He said that now that the Four Families are subjugated, we should rule the continent together.
I thought they would be free forever. Daxion deceived me. He even imprisoned me.
But Daxion, you will never have me, not ever.]
After that, suddenly came the final entry.
[My darling, I love you. I miss you. I want to see you. Just once…….]
The diary ended there. Surely Sinistra must have used the Power of the Other World that Daxion taught her to escape.
Perhaps she couldn’t manage to take the diary with her, or perhaps she abandoned it deliberately.
‘Maybe she just wanted to forget the past entirely…….’
This diary was densely filled with the days when she loved the King of Riente fiercely, the joy of her child’s birth, the gradual cooling of that love, and the moment her child was taken from her.
‘If someone had been betrayed repeatedly like that, I think I’d hate everything too.’
So she must have moved as far away as possible, from the far southeast to the far northwest, named the place Rudolph Village, kept Dark Mages at bay, and gone into hiding.
Rather than telling children terrifying tales of Half-Human, Half-Beasts, she would tell them stories of Santa Claus……. Stories of dreams and fantasy she probably wished to tell directly to her own child.
I closed the diary with a heavy heart, and Leah tilted her head questioningly.
“What? It’s Riente Script? But why hasn’t anyone been able to decipher it all this time?”
“Well…… you could say it’s just a script that only I can read in this world.”
“Ah!”
Leah immediately deduced it.
“It’s a script only the Riente Royal Family can read! You learned it from your mother!”
It was a reasonable inference. I was the only remaining member of the Riente Royal Family in this world.
Rather than give a direct answer, I asked with regret.
“Can’t I take this with me?”
“Of course not.”
Leah spoke flatly and took the diary from my hands.
“It’s Johnstone’s treasure.”
I shrugged in disappointment and asked.
“But hasn’t the Imperial Family said anything about taking this back yet?”
“After becoming an official laughingstock a few hundred years ago? Not really. And even though the Imperial Family ridiculed us, they still hoped we’d keep preserving it, just in case.”
“So you were trying to expose such a precious family secret.”
I gave a bitter laugh.
“Don’t even think about getting invited to my birthday party. I want to be congratulated only by those who are truly honorable.”
“I’m not counting on it anyway. I haven’t even finished drafting the formal letter of friendship request to send to Sears yet.”
Leah giggled and tugged at my hand.
“You probably want to keep the whole thing as small as possible anyway, right? Admit it?”
I affirmed with silence.
In truth, I did have a slight wish to invite Leah.
It absolutely wasn’t because we’d become friends or anything like that. It absolutely wasn’t because the time we’d spent talking together recently had been quite fun. Absolutely not for any reason like that. I wasn’t such an easy woman. Hmph!
‘But…….’
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if my birthday party would even happen properly.
It seemed like the Western Region was the one preparing it originally, but now something is definitely happening in the Western Region.
‘I hope Leopold is safe at least.’
Being a cowardly sort, I even hated surprise parties. I just wanted everything to be predictable.
If Leopold wasn’t contacting me because of some surprise party, I’d just as soon have no birthday at all.
I didn’t even need good things—I just wanted my life to be free of anxiety and sorrow.
‘Next time, I absolutely have to tell them not to do surprise parties. I really hate things like that.’
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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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