Chapter 1
수장은 "head of the Aristocratic Faction"으로 번역하며 선봉과 수장이라는 서로 다른 의미를 구분했다. 전체 출력 준비가 완료되었다._TITLE: If a Person Were Born from a Jewel
If a person were born from a jewel, would they feel like this?
Jewel Eyes, changing color with the light, could not be matched by any gem in the world. His hair was a translucent white, clear as cloud, and beneath it rested features in which not a single flaw could be found.
"Your Grace!"
The beautiful man who wore this unreal face was Alpheus Pancrazio, Duke of House Pancrazio, spearhead of the Aristocratic Faction.
"You have a private audience with the marquis ahead of you, and you're coming this way!"
But that angelic face was a lie. Alpheus walked with a killing air, as if he might cut someone down at any moment.
"Move."
"Y-Your Grace!"
Afraid he would seize some innocent in that state, Levin, who had been waiting, burst out and hurried toward him. The moment Alpheus caught sight of him, he asked, savage and blunt.
"Levin. Her condition?"
"That is..."
The question came the instant Levin drew near, but he could not form a proper answer. He only shook his head, his face rigid.
"She is still unconscious."
"The physician."
Levin looked at Alpheus's deathly pale face, then dropped his gaze and fumbled for words before he managed, at last, to speak.
"The truth is, a physician would be pointless. No matter what diagnosis she receives, she..."
Alpheus said nothing.
"Shall I summon the physician again?"
"Enough. I'll see her myself."
Alpheus reached for the door before him. It was shut fast with an enormous lock.
Click. Levin hurried to undo it. The lock was so large and so heavy that the moment it released, it plunged to the floor with a dull, weighty thud.
Before Levin could open the door all the way, Alpheus drove his foot into the gap.
"Y-Your Grace! I'll come with you!"
Levin rushed after the duke.
A vast room, and a single bed. It looked bleak at a glance, but Alpheus crossed it as if the bleakness were familiar, his eyes locking on the bed the instant he entered.
At the end of his gaze, a woman lay buried in the center of the bed. Whatever the sight of her unconscious form called up in him, his face hardened by degrees into something cold.
"Your Grace..."
When Levin looked at him with worry, he murmured something too low to catch, then moved at once.
"Belle."
Alpheus came to the bedside and bent over her.
Through the spill of platinum-blonde hair, skin pale enough to be translucent—like a porcelain doll—caught the eye first. She looked only like a finely made doll. Nothing about her suggested a living thing.
Slowly, Alpheus laid his hand against her cheek.
For a while he kept it there without a word, and little by little the air around him began to change.
The cold that, only moments ago, had seemed ready to kill several people, and the blankness of his face, cracked slowly, like a husk peeling away.
"...Ha."
What showed through was despair, and rage. Levin, watching, swallowed a pained sound and called to him as if he could not bear the sight.
"Your Grace, please calm yourself."
"Levin. How long has Belle had her eyes closed?"
"That is... nearly five days now."
"...Five days?"
Alpheus's voice was past cold. It had the weight of a man about to kill. Goosebumps prickled up Levin's arms. He rubbed them with his palm and bowed his head.
"Damn it all. Then she hasn't eaten a thing this whole time?"
"We tried to feed her by force, but Your Grace dislikes us laying hands on her, and so we..."
"So you simply watched? Until Belle was reduced to this?"
Alpheus turned a freezing glare on him. Glaring would not produce an answer. After a moment of it, he gave an order to the knights standing behind Levin.
"Bring it. Now."
"Yes, Your Grace!"
The knights came in carrying freshly slaughtered meat. They held the meat out, and a knife with it.
"Your Grace! The knife..."
A knight offered the blade, meaning for him to cut the meat, but Alpheus portioned the slab into bite-sized pieces by the strength of his grip alone.
He cut it like that? The knights and Levin stared, aghast, but he paid their gazes no mind. He took up the smallest piece, dismissed the knights, and slowly sat on the edge of the bed.
"Belle."
He called her, and still she did not open her eyes. There was no response at all. Alpheus's expression twisted further.
"Please. Don't torment me."
Anxious, he pushed the meat into her mouth again and again with his fingers, but the blood on his hands only smeared her face. Still she gave no response.
The last of his composure left him. Abruptly, he placed the finely torn meat into his own mouth.
"Y-Your Grace!"
Levin, watching from the side, could not hide his shock and cried out under his breath. Alpheus had begun to chew raw meat that looked gamey even to the eye.
Then he caught her slack cheek, bent his head, parted her closed lips, and pushed the meat through. Again and again he fed her what he had chewed, the way a beast feeds its young.
How many times he repeated it, he could not have said.
Eyelids that had not so much as stirred, corpse-still, began to flutter as if they might lift at any moment. Alpheus raised his head slowly and stared, eyes wide, determined not to miss a single second of her waking.
A soft stir of lashes, and her eyes opened.
They were gold, the color of the metal itself. When they opened fully, joy flooded his face. His eyes curved into crescents as he called her name.
"Belle."
Blood had smeared the corner of his mouth from feeding her, and he did not seem to care.
He smiled, wide and bright. The smile was so beautiful that even bloodstained it resembled a painting—and yet madness threaded through it.
"Are you awake?"
He never thought to wipe his own mouth. Slowly he reached out, cleaned the blood from hers, and whispered the question with tenderness.
Watching from the side, Levin grew strangely abashed and turned his head. A strange air had settled between the two of them when she opened her mouth.
"Cher."
The moment the name left her lips, Alpheus's face hardened like a demon's.
A moment ago he had looked happy enough to be flying. Now his expression crumpled as if he had been dropped from that sky into the abyss.
"It is I."
Her eyes roamed the empty air, searching for the one called Cher. Alpheus caught her chin and turned her face until she had no choice but to look at him.
"Cher?"
"Isabel."
"Cher—"
But Belle—Isabel—went on calling only for Cher, as if that were the single word she knew how to speak.
At last, after calling her name again and again, he seemed to reach the end of what he could endure. A twisted smile broke over his face, and he spoke in a voice like a beast's low growl.
Duke Alpheus Pancrazio smiled, thin and cold, having resolved to imitate the man called Cher—the man his fiancée was searching for. Isabel Ramirez, who had died and come back.
At those words Isabel stared at him for a long moment without speaking.
"Mm."
She had been looking at him through narrowed eyes. A small sound escaped her. Then she nodded, over and over, opened both arms, and wound them around his neck.
Whether she was still half in sleep, or simply not in her right mind, she did not seem to realize that Alpheus was not Cher.
He met her with a smile of endless tenderness, and held her in return.
God.
Someone was watching. Levin. He had watched in silence, and now he lowered his head as if he could not bear to see any more.
How did the two of them come to this?
Alpheus, clinging to Isabel and begging her to know him, and Isabel, vacant-eyed, dazedly seeking only a man named Cher.
Faced with that bleak scene, Levin slowly closed his eyes.
If only I could go back to that day and change everything.
The complete reversal of the bond between those two reached back only a little way. Not long ago at all.
"...sabel... Princess Isabel!"
"Ah."
"What has you so lost in thought?"
I must have nodded off. By the time the maids who had been fussing with my hair called to me, every last ornament was already in place.
"Sorry. I dozed off for a bit."
"Not at all, Your Highness. Here is the mirror."
At the voice that followed, I lifted my head and gazed steadily into the glass.
When I smiled at the reflection, the maids beside me took it for pleasure and raised their voices, tumbling over one another.
"How lavish."
"You are so beautiful. Especially this ornament, made from the diamonds that came in this time from the Rakum region! It suits Your Highness more than anyone."
From the styling of my hair to my gown, my jewels, even the smallest trinkets, they poured out praise until it would have been faster to search for something they had not complimented.
"Jewels? And where are these jewels supposed to be. I can hardly see them."
"Not at all! They're right here, plain as day. Your Highness's platinum hair simply shines that brightly."
They went on explaining how beautiful the jewels were, and how perfectly they suited me. I did not agree.
I look like a fool.
The woman in the mirror—platinum-blonde hair spilling down in soft waves, somber blue eyes catching the light—looked like nothing but an idiot.
"Today His Grace is certain to see Your Highness and be delighted, saying how beautiful you are."
"That's right. So beauti—"
"That's absurd."
The room, which had been warming with their cheer, sank cold at that single sentence, as if someone had thrown water over a fire.
They kept glancing at me, unsettled by how quickly the air had chilled. I only smiled at the mirror, as if I were used to it and none of it mattered.
"He'll be so busy with his papers he won't know whether the thing in my hair is a diamond or a rock."
They shook their heads, insisting it wasn't so. Whether it was or not, I rose, unbothered by the cold that had settled over the room.
"Why those faces. I didn't make any of it up. Shall we go?"
I was the empire's only princess, and my fiancé—
"To the ducal house."
—was the Duke of Pancrazio, head of the Aristocratic Faction, a man who loathed me and hated me besides.
Knock, knock.
"Your Grace, Princess Isabel has arrived."
No answer.
"Your Grace?"
Still nothing.
The knock was repeated several times more, and still there was no response. At that, the aide Levin's expression began to stiffen with unease.