TINOT 9

Chapter: 9

“Please send a request to annul the engagement. That is all I ask of you, Father.”

There were times when Lysithea found dealing with her biological father far easier than dealing with the twins.

If those children treated her worse than a stranger, then this man treated her exactly like one.

“……It wasn’t that I was indifferent to your affairs. The House of Spencer has formed marital ties with the imperial family for two generations. I had to determine how much of His Majesty’s will was involved in the engagement of the next Duke of Spencer.”

The former emperor’s consort had been a son of House Spencer, and the current empress was descended from a collateral branch of the Spencers.

And that wasn’t all.

When the emperor had been nothing more than a reckless imperial prince, House Spencer had been the only family to pledge loyalty to him.

This was the marriage of Joel, the man destined to become the next Duke of Spencer.

If the engagement between Joel and Lysithea had been the emperor’s will, then even the House of Aster could not simply refuse it outright.

There were many factors to consider—that was the only reason it had taken so long.

With his sharp mind, he produced an excuse that sounded convincing to anyone.

“Then must I maintain this engagement against my will, simply because it aligns with His Majesty’s intentions?”

In truth, whatever the emperor thought had nothing to do with her.

What would happen if she fell out of imperial favor—death, perhaps? Nothing more.

She was going to die in a year anyway. It wasn’t particularly precious.

But for people without the slightest qualification to dare interfere in her life—no matter who they were—that was something she could not tolerate.

Emperor or Marquis Aster alike, what right did they have over her life?

“Do you think a noble’s marriage is a personal matter?”

He spoke as though scolding her, displeasure evident on his face.

“I never expected to hear that from you, Father.”

Lysithea tilted her head, her expression dazed with disbelief.

“I thought you believed love and happiness mattered more than a family’s interests.”

The protagonist of a legendary romance, the man who had loudly chosen a love match over all else.

Was this not Eric Aster, who had so fiercely rejected political marriages and their consequences?

“You once said you found it repulsive how nobles would sell even their souls for the prosperity of their houses.”

For a moment, his eyes narrowed.

He remembered saying those exact words to someone long ago.

‘If it were for the prosperity of my house, I would sell even my soul.’

Back when he lived a life of constant warfare with Lysithea’s birth mother, it had been a phrase he repeated like a habit.

But at the time, Lysithea had been a newborn who couldn’t even speak.

A coincidence, surely.

Yet today, his chest felt inexplicably tight.

“Do you resent me over your maternal family?”

Originally, the one meant to enter a political marriage with House Rowan had been his older brother, Linus.

But when his brother died in an accident, Eric had rushed home from his studies abroad and inherited everything.

The position of heir—and even his brother’s fiancée.

Regret over unfinished studies and the suffocation of living a life he never wanted had shackled him.

How could he have welcomed such a marriage?

A union that began in discord inevitably rotted into hostility.

When Julia, his political wife, died, Duke Rowan demanded that Eric remarry—this time to Julia’s cousin.

It was a proposal only a madman would make.

To place a cousin into the position of a dead sister.

When Eric refused and instead remarried Emma, relations between Aster and Rowan collapsed beyond repair.

It couldn’t be said that his resentment toward Rowan never bled onto the child.

And with a maternal family that completely ignored her, she must have grown up lonely.

Still, he believed he had done his best.

He had provided her with everything she needed. He had never laid a hand on her.

Even so, from a child’s perspective, perhaps resentment over her maternal family was inevitable.

“Resentment….”

Lysithea let out a quiet, involuntary laugh as she stood.

“There was a time when I did. Back when I still expected something from you.”

That winter night when the sound of his footsteps made her heart race, when she strained to hear every noise.

Back then, she thought that if he would only open the door and look in on her sick body, all her pent-up sorrow would wash away.

But the girl who once begged for that pitiful affection was gone.

The moment he turned his back on her and embraced Edward instead, she decided to become an orphan.

Her parents were already dead—so she would kill the child who still longed for love right then and there.

If the girl who died that winter at sixteen had been able to leave last words, they might have been these:

“I know I was a child you never wanted. But didn’t I have the right to wish I’d been born to parents who loved me?”

So what she was saying now was merely the delivery of that child’s last testament.

Parents believe only they lack the right to choose their children.

But children cannot choose their parents either.

I hated you too. I wanted a kinder father.

I didn’t care if he was poor or uneducated—I just wanted a father who would hold me when I was sick and soothe me.

“You said my engagement isn’t a personal matter but a matter of the family. Then handle it accordingly. House Spencer has insulted House Aster—so protect the honor of one of its members.”

She was no longer the weaker party.

Having killed the fragile heart that yearned for affection, she could always stand on higher ground.

As if she had said everything she needed to, Lysithea turned to leave the room, then paused as though something had just occurred to her.

“Oh—and don’t worry. My annulment won’t interfere with the twins’ future.”

She knew exactly what kind of ripples her words would cause.

That flimsy obsession with “fairness” that felt no guilt over unequal affection would crack.

And if that hypocrisy could be used to her advantage, there was no reason not to exploit it.

“If you consider me your daughter, send the annulment request to House Spencer, Father.”

Left alone in the room after Lysithea departed, he collapsed into his chair, chest heavy.

Would her annulment negatively affect the twins?

That had been his very first thought when he heard that a woman named Lillian Rose was staying at the Spencer estate.

But he knew this was a feeling that must never be discovered.

No matter how much less it hurt, she was still his daughter.

The moment this feeling was exposed, how would others judge him?

So he told no one.

And yet—how did that child…?

She couldn’t possibly know.

She was surely just saying cruel things, as she always did, to scrape at his insides.

‘Then why…?’

He hurriedly stamped his seal onto the annulment request Lysithea had left behind and had it removed from his sight.

He felt like a truly wretched father.

***

A familiar pain drilled into Lysithea’s head.

It felt as though a diligent sculptor lived inside her skull.

That sculptor scraped at bone with a blade, then—dissatisfied—began gouging holes with an awl.

Her temperament had never been good to begin with, and as the pain worsened, she grew sharper by the day.

Swallowing her medicine, Lysithea closed her eyes.

She did not believe her misery was special.

A miserable childhood wasn’t reserved solely for villains.

There were countless protagonists who rose to heroism after suffering.

Some used hardship as nourishment for growth, while others drowned in it, unable to escape.

‘This is where the ending is decided.’

She was undeniably the latter.

From the start, she was not someone capable of stepping into the light after adversity.

Her abnormal memory—never granted the mercy of forgetting—anchored her to the past.

Without forgetting, one cannot move forward.

How could she escape when everything she’d lived through remained as vivid as yesterday?

That was why she perfectly understood the choices made by the “Lysithea” in the story.

That Lysithea Aster would gladly join hands with demons if it meant plunging the protagonists into despair.

A path befitting a villain—one who desired others’ misery more desperately than her own happiness.

“Marie, send this letter to Grand Duke Cassius.”

Her real self intended to do the same.

At this point in time, there could be no greater humiliation for Joel Spencer.

Cassius Diarmuid, Grand Duke.

Nephew of the emperor’s deceased sister—the very thorn in the emperor’s eye.

A tragic imperial who lost his rightful claim to the throne to his uncle, once first in the line of succession.

The greatest mage of the land, beloved beyond measure by the Star of Earth.

Another villain of this story—one who had once joined hands with Lysithea Aster against the protagonists.

It was time for his entrance.

***

Lysithea was dreaming.

Judging by the sunlight filtering through half-drawn curtains, it was clearly midday, yet the unfamiliar mansion felt strangely dim.

The vast, antiquated estate showed no signs of life.

It wasn’t abandoned—traces of meticulous care remained, giving the impression that the mansion itself had been preserved like a specimen.

Walking absentmindedly down the corridor, Lysithea stopped when something shattered beneath her feet.

Clink.

Glass shards.

A window along the hallway had broken, scattering fragments across the floor.

As wind seeped in through the shattered frame, the warped wood groaned in protest.

Jade-colored curtains fluttered in the breeze.

Perhaps because it was a dream, the broken window did not feel grotesque.

Instead, the mansion possessed a lonely kind of beauty.

“Ninety… ninety-one….”

A low voice drifted in on the wind.

Was there an old phonograph somewhere in this place?

The dry, weathered sound echoed faintly, as though worn down by time.

The slow, fragile voice—barely holding together—was like sugar syrup dried thin, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.

Like a bee drawn to honey, Lysithea searched the mansion for that voice.

“Ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five.”

It was unbelievable that something so sweet was counting nothing more than numbers.