The Survival Story Of A Fallen Lady - Chapter 14

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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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Fallen Noblewoman’s Survival Record — Episode 14
At her casual question, Seo Heon felt his chest tighten.
【That’s what I’d like to know.】
The shoulder of Jin Jaein that he held was so slight it barely filled his palm.
The back of her hand visible beneath her sleeve was chapped red from the cold, bearing no mark of nobility.
Her cheeks and nose, frozen stiff, ached with the bite of winter.
A small paper cut opened along the edge.
It was a wound too conspicuous to ignore.
Then.
“Heh!”
Laughter escaped from Jin Jaein’s lips.
When Seo Heon furrowed his brow, she finally burst into full laughter, wiping the corners of her eyes with her sleeve.
“Surely you didn’t think I meant to throw myself from the Watchtower?”
Jin Jaein, having stilled her laughter, looked straight up at him in his mask.
“You’re quite tender-hearted, aren’t you?”
Tender-hearted?
Me?
The unfamiliar word made Seo Heon’s mouth go rigid.
“I simply came up to see Muk-wang Manor from above.”
【You expect me to believe that?】
Climbing the Watchtower alone in the dead of winter, without a servant in sight?
He wanted to ask, but could not.
Jin Jaein smiled with ease, as though nothing at all had happened.
Yet Seo Heon found himself doubting whether even that smile wasn’t a false mask.
When he did not release the shoulder he’d grasped, Jin Jaein gently folded her hand over his.
It was a weak but steady grip.
Without warning, his hand fell away.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be the one to snuff out my own lamp.”
Perhaps it was the cold wind.
Her low voice, nearly a whisper to herself, settled coolly into the night.
As if some deep resolve had crystallized within her.
Seo Heon felt an inexplicable relief wash over him.
It seemed she had no true intention of dying.
“But why have you come to the City Wall at this hour?”
“…….”
“Is something troubling you?”
Jin Jaein asked in that artless way of hers.
Her cheeks bright crimson with frost, her breath clouding visibly in the air.
【……You’re the one who troubles me.】
It was an answer he could never speak aloud.
The words of Shin Sang Nok and the old chamberlain churned in his head.
And now to encounter her here, at the Watchtower of all places.
It was then that Jin Jaein seemed to catch every unspoken word, stopping short before continuing alone.
“Your Highness, are you perhaps curious about why I came to Muk-wang Manor?”
Moonlight glimmered in the dark eyes that looked up at him.
Again.
Words that seemed to read his very heart.
Seo Heon turned without answering and walked on.
He had many questions, yet could ask none.
[Sixth: Do not wonder at anything.]
That one casual line deepened his silence further still.
A quiet sincerity drifted to him from behind.
“To live.”
Her voice was measured, neither loud nor soft.
Seo Heon’s footsteps halted.
【……What a pity.】
She must have fled here to escape Hell itself.
But that hope would have shattered the moment she arrived.
General Maeng and his servants.
And now the matter of demons as well.
For her, this place must have been yet another hell.
And yet.
“I would not presume to seek the favor or attention of the Prince. A place to dwell would suffice.”
Her answer, so wholly unexpected, made Seo Heon turn to face her.
Jin Jaein smiled faintly.
There was no understanding it.
Her words moved like wind across a still field, forever swerving from what he anticipated.
“Then I shall take my leave. May your night be a peaceful one.”
With her bow offered, Jin Jaein withdrew without hesitation.
* * *
‘That was close.’
Back in her quarters, Soah exhaled, pressing a hand to her chest.
She had climbed the Watchtower to survey the layout of Muk-wang Manor with Un Jo.
There was a place from her past life—one she desperately needed to confirm.
In daylight she could not move freely, so she had seized the night to investigate.
She had never expected to encounter Seo Heon there.
‘It was lucky I managed to slip past without answering.’
His inability to speak had never felt like such a blessing.
If he had pressed further, she would have been in real trouble.
【…So you are what troubles him.】
‘I seem to be getting under his skin.’
Soah rested her chin in her hand, lost in thought.
Though called the Cursed Prince, he was still a Prince of the Realm.
If he wished, he held the power to take a woman by force.
Yet in her past life, he had taken neither a proper consort nor a concubine.
Only the Concubine appointed by the Emperor.
‘Does he not want women interfering in his politics?’
Without a visible expression, his heart remained impossible to read.
【A troublemaker has appeared. How irritating.】
Un Jo, perched by the window, broke through her reverie.
【Did you find what you were looking for?】
Soah nodded.
Muk-wang Manor was barren soil.
The warmth of spring had been too harsh a gift for the Northern Region.
With aid from the capital, they distributed Relief Grain and scraped together the prince’s own coffers to barely endure—but only barely.
‘This year will be harder.’
Soah thought of Seo Gon.
“This year, His Majesty has entrusted the relief effort to me, Soah.”
The Relief Grain Seo Gon had sent to Muk-wang Manor was meager enough to starve the north dry.
“If Muk-wang Manor won in its bid for autonomy under the guise of a Demon Valley crisis, it must fend for itself.”
This spring would bring far crueler trials to Muk-wang Manor.
“Un Jo.”
Soah looked up.
“We need to move faster.”
* * *
A street blooming thick with cherry blossoms.
White steam rose from a cauldron.
People who had caught the scent of rice gruel lined up before the pot.
“Take your time. We have prepared enough for everyone here to eat well.”
A man in silk sleeves, rolled up to his elbows, spoke with gentle kindness.
A woman carrying a child wept at his words, bowing low.
“Had you not helped us, my child and I would have starved to death. You are our savior!”
At this, Seo Gon smiled warmly.
“How could I turn my back on the people of the Province?”
Those gathered around him were moved to tears, throwing themselves prostrate on the ground.
Seo Gon laughed with paternal affection.
Setting down the ladle, Seo Gon wiped his hands with a handkerchief and turned away.
“How many were there?”
“Three hundred and fifty-one, my lord.”
“Of those, how many are usable?”
Seo Gon asked, still smiling faintly at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes…?”
“Select only the young and able-bodied for the roster.”
The administrator who trailed behind him bowed deeply at the waist.
“A bushel of grain for one able man—surely that’s a profitable exchange?”
Seo Gon laughed softly.
“Your Grace, and a messenger arrived from the East Palace a moment ago.”
The administrator withdrew a letter from his sleeve.
As Seo Gon read it, his smile froze gradually upon his lips.
“What matter brings this news?”
“You are to assume oversight of the Relief Grain for Muk-wang Manor.”
The letter crumpled beneath Seo Gon’s fingertips.
He recalled what had transpired not long ago.
“If any woman will do for my fourth brother, then why not give him some other lady instead of that concubine?”
“This is a matter the Emperor himself has sanctioned. Would you have me overturn the imperial decree because of your private feelings?”
The Crown Prince had declared that he would hear no more quarreling over such a trivial matter as a concubine.
Seo Gon folded the letter and turned the matter over in his mind once more.
“Your Grace, we’ve been so worried, seeing you away for so long.”
He recalled the girl—Jaein—coming out to greet him, her earlobes flushed crimson.
She who had served him his beloved tea with such care, and who had gone flustered at his simple remark that it smelled wonderful.
Jin Jaein was his.
That had been certain.
‘A mere concubine.’
Right—she was nothing.
He could do without her.
In truth, she was no great prize to begin with.
She was merely charming and endearing; he had simply taken notice of her.
But to have her stolen by Seo Heon was another matter entirely.
‘That monster—taking what is mine.’
Seo Gon recalled the curse that afflicted his terrible youngest brother.
Years ago.
A young nobleman had once glimpsed Seo Heon’s bare face by accident.
So repulsive and horrifying was that visage that afterward the man had skipped meals and trembled uncontrollably.
He had muttered the name of Muk-wang like a madman possessed.
In the end, one winter he had set out for Muk-wang Manor with sword in hand, only to collapse and die along the road.
And now, by this time, Jaein would be there beneath the same roof as that creature.
“…I wonder if she’ll cry.”
“Your Grace?”
“It’s nothing.”
Seo Gon smiled again and resumed his walk.
“I must attend to the duties the Emperor has entrusted to me.”

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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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