Cesare stared at Ariadne with a frozen expression at her announcement of the breakup, barely able to force a smile onto his lips.
“Are you finally letting me talk comfortably?”
“We’re breaking up.”
Ariadne had always been very polite to Cesare.
Cesare tried every possible way to get her to talk, but Ariadne refused to talk comfortably as if she had been used to being called that for over ten years.
But now, when the end was near, he finally heard the words he had been waiting for.
“I thought this day would never come.”
Cesare tried to smile, closing his eyes prettily. The answer to his best efforts was a sharp rebuke.
“Stop being a bastard. Stop it here.”
"Ari."
“Don’t call me that.”
Ariadne looked at Cesare with her deep green eyes and said.
“Because it’s creepy.”
I hope you hurt as much as I did. I hope you get some of it back.
And Ariadne's needle seemed to have pierced Cesare precisely. His aquamarine eyes wavered with sadness.
“Don’t be like that. I can explain everything.”
“Explanation? Does that need explanation?”
Her birthday party. Her sister. And her fiancé, whose face was buried in the hem of her skirt.
“No, does that explain it?”
Ariadne was showing raw anger for the first time in her relationship with Cesare.
“What I saw, how can it be explained in words!”
Cesare shouted in return.
“I was threatened!”
"What?"
“Isabella threatened to scream if I didn’t kiss her there!”
Usually, women don't threaten, "If you kiss me, I'll scream," but rather, "If you don't kiss me, I'll scream."
Unless there is some history before that. Ariadne asked with sharp eyes.
“What else happened before that?”
At Ariadne's sharp question, Cesare flinched and trembled. It was only for a moment, but Ariadne's sharp eyes caught it clearly.
“Tell me everything correctly.”
Cesare looked up at Ariadne with the expression of a puppy being scolded by its master.
“...If I tell you everything, will you forgive me?”
“I’ll decide after I hear everything.”
Cesare's head began to spin violently. Ariadne noticed this too and added stiffly.
“If you get caught lying... you know?”
A cold sweat ran down Cesare's back.
He was very tempted to downplay the situation, but he wasn't confident he could successfully fool the woman.
Isabella de Mare and Cardinal de Mare, who know the truth, are Ariadne's family members, although she has not yet heard it. They will find out someday.
Finally, Cesare began to stammer and confess what had happened.
Everything from Isabella coming to find him and mistaking him for Ariadne, to Isabella's physical attack.
“...So when I came back, Isabella wasn’t there... Yeah. That’s what happened.”
Cesare wanted to use what had happened in his bedroom at the Villa Sortone as a stepping stone to an excuse for what had happened at the ball, but Ariadne, understandably, could not hide her shock at what had happened before.
“So in the end, you slept with my sister?”
Deja vu. Same deja vu. Did Isabella seduce Cesare like this in her past life?
“...I was drunk.”
Cesare rubbed his forehead with slight annoyance.
“I was unconscious since morning.”
Ariadne's anger grew even more at Cesare's twisted attitude.
Now, Cesare was crawling on his knees on the floor. And in the meantime, he was getting irritated?
When Cesare saw Ariadne's eyebrows rise, he immediately straightened his posture and began to pray with a tearful face.
Ariadne hated it when Cesare drank, and she hated it even more when he started drinking in the morning. As a result, it was a poor excuse.
“We fought before because of the ‘Spring Festival’ ball. You didn’t contact me. I was so desperate that I spit it out all morning!”
Cesare begged for mercy.
“I did it because I wanted to see you, okay? Just look at me once.”
“How can you be sure that this is just one time? You’re going to let any woman who hits on you when you’re really drunk?”
“No, no, that can’t be!”
“Your logic is exactly that!”
“I’ll quit drinking! I’ll never drink again!”
“Stop talking nonsense! I’ll hang up on you! Do you think I’ve heard that story once or twice?!”
Although Cesare had previously told Ariadne that he would abstain from drinking, today was the first time he had promised to give up alcohol.
It was a little odd, but judging by Ariadne's expression, now was not the time to ask such trivial questions.
She was fuming like someone who had let out a decade's worth of anger.
“You’ll drink for the rest of your life, you’ll never be able to stop women from coming to you, and you’ll be playing around with your lower body.”
“No, that’s not true! To think that I sleep with every woman I come across is a huge misunderstanding!”
Ariadne's sarcasm flew in and struck home.
“Then? You slept with her because she was the Isabella you always admired?”
A seemingly sinister smile appeared on her lips. It was a wound disguised as a grudge, a sadness.
“Did you like my pretty sister that much?”
Cesare also felt it. This was the true nature of Ariadne, this was a test, and if he failed it, it would be the end.
His voice trembled.
“...Letter.”
"what?"
He didn't want to talk. It was his last bit of pride.
“...I saw the letter.”
“What letter?”
Cesare gritted his teeth and spat out each syllable. His frown was like that of a child who didn't want to eat carrots.
“Letters to Alfonso.”
“!”
Ariadne finally realized where the letters Isabella had stolen were used.
Cesare read her inner feelings of longing for Alfonso.
Cesare spat out to Ariadne in a sad voice.
“Since when, since when have you been in a relationship like that with that kid?”
Ariadne forgot what she was saying and looked at Cesare. Her large, round green eyes stared at him intently.
“Did you go all the way with that kid?”
“Cesare!”
Ariadne wanted to reprimand Cesare for not being able to say what he wanted to say, but she ended up keeping her mouth shut.
Because tears flowed down from his watery eyes.
“You rejected me because you missed that kid because you wanted to see that kid?”
She opened her mouth but then closed it.
“...”
Her swirling emotions were too complex to simply be positive.
At first, it was like that, but later it wasn't.
She was indeed driven away by her longing and guilt toward Alfonso.
But in the end, there was only one reason that kept her from readily taking Cesare's hand, and that was Cesare.
“...It’s not because of Alfonso.”
Ariadne whispered, looking at Cesare with tearful green eyes.
“The reason I pushed you away is... It’s because of you.”
Because I don't trust you.
Because I can't be sure what kind of person you are.
But Cesare, who had seen Ariadne's letter, thought that she was lying. He snapped at her sharply.
“Would you please throw away this empty consolation?”
He shook his head nervously.
“It’s always been like this, always!”
His anger seemed to be unsettling. Cesare got up from his seat and paced around the room to try to calm himself down.
After walking for a while with only his back to her, he looked back at Ariadne with eyes filled with tears.
“What the hell am I worse than that kid?”
From birth until now, everything Cesare had longed for was given to Alfonso.
The love of a King and Queen, an unshakable position in the royal family, a front-row seat at official functions, and even the affection of the woman he loves.
“Why isn’t it given to me?”
You. The throne. The world.
All he has is a mess, the laughter of the social world, and the enthusiasm of the cheapskates that are not even that.
Those below him are clinging to him and trying to free-ride to his position.
The truly noble ones, those whom Cesare loved, were of no interest to him.
Cesare knelt at Ariadne's feet.
He wanted to hold her hand but was afraid of being rejected, so he held the hem of Ariadne's skirt instead.
“Can’t you just look at me?”
Tears welled up in his blue eyes. The despair of an abandoned baby animal could be read on the face of a grown man in his twenties.
Ariadne, whose skirt was grabbed by Cesare, answered calmly.
“You wanted revenge on me for Alfonso’s actions.”
Cesare nodded vigorously. He was sobbing.
“You wanted to relieve me of the burden you had on me by sleeping with Isabella.”
He nodded absentmindedly, the words tumbling out in a blur between his sobs.
“Never... I absolutely did not sleep with Isabella because I loved her. That’s not it...”
Cesare's breathing and words were heard mixed together.
“I’m sorry... I hope you weren’t hurt...”
Ariadne spoke in a low voice.
“You should have just said that you slept with Isabella because she was prettier than me.”
Isabella was so absolutely beautiful that he gave in to her temptation. If he had, she would have killed every woman in the capital who was prettier than her.
If he were a superficial person who only ranks people instead of a completely broken person, they could have been together.
When Cesare heard those words, he jumped up and waved his hands.
“No! Absolutely not!”
He spoke absentmindedly with a tear-stained face.
“How can she be prettier than you? You are much prettier!”
Mechanically interpreting Ariadne's words, he quickly denied Isabella's beauty.
“Isabella doesn’t even have breasts. She’s so skinny I thought she was a man. She looks like two raisins on her back! She’s skinny and bony and it hurts when my flesh touches her! A voluptuous body like yours is really pretty. I slept with her because she’s really pretty.”
Cesare's tearful confession had none of the results he intended.
Because Ariadne was staring at Cesare with an expression that said she had been hit.
In her head, the present and the past intersected.
“You’re so big, you look like you could hug a man! Your hair is so black, it looks like a crow’s!”
Isabella's clear, ringing voice. The intoxication of victory shone on her face.
“Your breasts are so big and saggy that he thought you were a cow!”
It was a perfect decalcomania.
“Ha, haha, hahahahahahahaha!”
At that moment, Ariadne couldn't hold back the laughter that suddenly burst out.
“Ha, hahahaha! Hahahahahahaha!”
A tear sparkled in the corner of her smiling eye.
She had lived with a slim hope until now.
The last thing she heard from Cesare at the end of her previous life was Isabella's own words.
Isabella is not a very trustworthy messenger.
So, in one corner of her mind, there was a small hope that Cesare had said those words as Isabella's scheme, that it was just a misunderstanding, that her dozen years had not been wasted, and that this time, this time, Cesare and Ariadne would finally have a happy ending.
Ironically, that hope was shattered when Cesare belittled Isabella, as Ariadne could sense.
If Cesare had been deeply in love with Isabella, he would have made such contemptuous remarks about Ariadne.
Because of what she heard from Isabella in the past, Ariadne in the past felt a terrible sense of defeat.
At the time, she thought that if she could just beat Isabella if she could just give her the same, she would do anything.
But now that she had the chance to return it in kind, Ariadne didn't want to do it at all.
Cesare, intimidated by Ariadne's sudden madness, followed her with his eyes.
Ariadne, who had been holding back her bursts of laughter, smiled slightly. This time, it was a slightly sad smile.
“Ari..?”
Cesare called her cautiously. Ariadne did not answer, but instead lightly kissed Cesare's forehead as he knelt on the floor.
May you find peace in this life too.
“Cesare...”
It was wrong from the very first time we met. She cried.
She was annoyed by the years she had held onto, and she felt sorry for herself for wasting her energy. She couldn't do anything about the huge illusion, the dream, being shattered.
She didn't want to be that mean person who would happily pass those words on to Isabella.
She didn't even want to be the winner of this fight.
“May the protection of God be with you.”
Because she doesn't have the power to save him, she can't be with him anymore.
Ariadne rose to her feet.
“Ari...?”
Cesare, who did not understand the meaning of her actions but realized with his animalistic sense that the situation was not normal, called her.
“Ari? Ari!”
But she left her study slowly, as usual.
In front of the study door, there was the maid Sancha, who had belatedly rushed up upon hearing that Duke Cesare had come and was fidgeting in front of Ariadne's door, and Giuseppe and his men, whom she had brought along in case of emergency, were waiting.
Ariadne gave instructions to Giuseppe in a calm voice.
“Take the guest to the front door.”
She added.
“He won’t be coming here again.”
Cesare heard all of Ariadne's eulogy through the open wooden door of the study.
He collapsed to his knees on the floor of Ariadne's study, his forehead resting on the dark brown wood.
He sobbed quietly while Ariadne's people peered inside the study door and rolled their eyes.
The cry was heartbreaking, rending the lungs, and reminiscent of the cry of a young animal that has lost its mother.
He cried for a very long time.
In Cesare's arms, the 'Swan of Linville', who had lost the chance to be born again forever, was sleeping soundly wrapped in a soaking-drenched silk casket.
“Are you finally letting me talk comfortably?”
“We’re breaking up.”
Ariadne had always been very polite to Cesare.
Cesare tried every possible way to get her to talk, but Ariadne refused to talk comfortably as if she had been used to being called that for over ten years.
But now, when the end was near, he finally heard the words he had been waiting for.
“I thought this day would never come.”
Cesare tried to smile, closing his eyes prettily. The answer to his best efforts was a sharp rebuke.
“Stop being a bastard. Stop it here.”
"Ari."
“Don’t call me that.”
Ariadne looked at Cesare with her deep green eyes and said.
“Because it’s creepy.”
I hope you hurt as much as I did. I hope you get some of it back.
And Ariadne's needle seemed to have pierced Cesare precisely. His aquamarine eyes wavered with sadness.
“Don’t be like that. I can explain everything.”
“Explanation? Does that need explanation?”
Her birthday party. Her sister. And her fiancé, whose face was buried in the hem of her skirt.
“No, does that explain it?”
Ariadne was showing raw anger for the first time in her relationship with Cesare.
“What I saw, how can it be explained in words!”
Cesare shouted in return.
“I was threatened!”
"What?"
“Isabella threatened to scream if I didn’t kiss her there!”
Usually, women don't threaten, "If you kiss me, I'll scream," but rather, "If you don't kiss me, I'll scream."
Unless there is some history before that. Ariadne asked with sharp eyes.
“What else happened before that?”
At Ariadne's sharp question, Cesare flinched and trembled. It was only for a moment, but Ariadne's sharp eyes caught it clearly.
“Tell me everything correctly.”
Cesare looked up at Ariadne with the expression of a puppy being scolded by its master.
“...If I tell you everything, will you forgive me?”
“I’ll decide after I hear everything.”
Cesare's head began to spin violently. Ariadne noticed this too and added stiffly.
“If you get caught lying... you know?”
A cold sweat ran down Cesare's back.
He was very tempted to downplay the situation, but he wasn't confident he could successfully fool the woman.
Isabella de Mare and Cardinal de Mare, who know the truth, are Ariadne's family members, although she has not yet heard it. They will find out someday.
Finally, Cesare began to stammer and confess what had happened.
Everything from Isabella coming to find him and mistaking him for Ariadne, to Isabella's physical attack.
“...So when I came back, Isabella wasn’t there... Yeah. That’s what happened.”
Cesare wanted to use what had happened in his bedroom at the Villa Sortone as a stepping stone to an excuse for what had happened at the ball, but Ariadne, understandably, could not hide her shock at what had happened before.
“So in the end, you slept with my sister?”
Deja vu. Same deja vu. Did Isabella seduce Cesare like this in her past life?
“...I was drunk.”
Cesare rubbed his forehead with slight annoyance.
“I was unconscious since morning.”
Ariadne's anger grew even more at Cesare's twisted attitude.
Now, Cesare was crawling on his knees on the floor. And in the meantime, he was getting irritated?
When Cesare saw Ariadne's eyebrows rise, he immediately straightened his posture and began to pray with a tearful face.
Ariadne hated it when Cesare drank, and she hated it even more when he started drinking in the morning. As a result, it was a poor excuse.
“We fought before because of the ‘Spring Festival’ ball. You didn’t contact me. I was so desperate that I spit it out all morning!”
Cesare begged for mercy.
“I did it because I wanted to see you, okay? Just look at me once.”
“How can you be sure that this is just one time? You’re going to let any woman who hits on you when you’re really drunk?”
“No, no, that can’t be!”
“Your logic is exactly that!”
“I’ll quit drinking! I’ll never drink again!”
“Stop talking nonsense! I’ll hang up on you! Do you think I’ve heard that story once or twice?!”
Although Cesare had previously told Ariadne that he would abstain from drinking, today was the first time he had promised to give up alcohol.
It was a little odd, but judging by Ariadne's expression, now was not the time to ask such trivial questions.
She was fuming like someone who had let out a decade's worth of anger.
“You’ll drink for the rest of your life, you’ll never be able to stop women from coming to you, and you’ll be playing around with your lower body.”
“No, that’s not true! To think that I sleep with every woman I come across is a huge misunderstanding!”
Ariadne's sarcasm flew in and struck home.
“Then? You slept with her because she was the Isabella you always admired?”
A seemingly sinister smile appeared on her lips. It was a wound disguised as a grudge, a sadness.
“Did you like my pretty sister that much?”
Cesare also felt it. This was the true nature of Ariadne, this was a test, and if he failed it, it would be the end.
His voice trembled.
“...Letter.”
"what?"
He didn't want to talk. It was his last bit of pride.
“...I saw the letter.”
“What letter?”
Cesare gritted his teeth and spat out each syllable. His frown was like that of a child who didn't want to eat carrots.
“Letters to Alfonso.”
“!”
Ariadne finally realized where the letters Isabella had stolen were used.
Cesare read her inner feelings of longing for Alfonso.
Cesare spat out to Ariadne in a sad voice.
“Since when, since when have you been in a relationship like that with that kid?”
Ariadne forgot what she was saying and looked at Cesare. Her large, round green eyes stared at him intently.
“Did you go all the way with that kid?”
“Cesare!”
Ariadne wanted to reprimand Cesare for not being able to say what he wanted to say, but she ended up keeping her mouth shut.
Because tears flowed down from his watery eyes.
“You rejected me because you missed that kid because you wanted to see that kid?”
She opened her mouth but then closed it.
“...”
Her swirling emotions were too complex to simply be positive.
At first, it was like that, but later it wasn't.
She was indeed driven away by her longing and guilt toward Alfonso.
But in the end, there was only one reason that kept her from readily taking Cesare's hand, and that was Cesare.
“...It’s not because of Alfonso.”
Ariadne whispered, looking at Cesare with tearful green eyes.
“The reason I pushed you away is... It’s because of you.”
Because I don't trust you.
Because I can't be sure what kind of person you are.
But Cesare, who had seen Ariadne's letter, thought that she was lying. He snapped at her sharply.
“Would you please throw away this empty consolation?”
He shook his head nervously.
“It’s always been like this, always!”
His anger seemed to be unsettling. Cesare got up from his seat and paced around the room to try to calm himself down.
After walking for a while with only his back to her, he looked back at Ariadne with eyes filled with tears.
“What the hell am I worse than that kid?”
From birth until now, everything Cesare had longed for was given to Alfonso.
The love of a King and Queen, an unshakable position in the royal family, a front-row seat at official functions, and even the affection of the woman he loves.
“Why isn’t it given to me?”
You. The throne. The world.
All he has is a mess, the laughter of the social world, and the enthusiasm of the cheapskates that are not even that.
Those below him are clinging to him and trying to free-ride to his position.
The truly noble ones, those whom Cesare loved, were of no interest to him.
Cesare knelt at Ariadne's feet.
He wanted to hold her hand but was afraid of being rejected, so he held the hem of Ariadne's skirt instead.
“Can’t you just look at me?”
Tears welled up in his blue eyes. The despair of an abandoned baby animal could be read on the face of a grown man in his twenties.
Ariadne, whose skirt was grabbed by Cesare, answered calmly.
“You wanted revenge on me for Alfonso’s actions.”
Cesare nodded vigorously. He was sobbing.
“You wanted to relieve me of the burden you had on me by sleeping with Isabella.”
He nodded absentmindedly, the words tumbling out in a blur between his sobs.
“Never... I absolutely did not sleep with Isabella because I loved her. That’s not it...”
Cesare's breathing and words were heard mixed together.
“I’m sorry... I hope you weren’t hurt...”
Ariadne spoke in a low voice.
“You should have just said that you slept with Isabella because she was prettier than me.”
Isabella was so absolutely beautiful that he gave in to her temptation. If he had, she would have killed every woman in the capital who was prettier than her.
If he were a superficial person who only ranks people instead of a completely broken person, they could have been together.
When Cesare heard those words, he jumped up and waved his hands.
“No! Absolutely not!”
He spoke absentmindedly with a tear-stained face.
“How can she be prettier than you? You are much prettier!”
Mechanically interpreting Ariadne's words, he quickly denied Isabella's beauty.
“Isabella doesn’t even have breasts. She’s so skinny I thought she was a man. She looks like two raisins on her back! She’s skinny and bony and it hurts when my flesh touches her! A voluptuous body like yours is really pretty. I slept with her because she’s really pretty.”
Cesare's tearful confession had none of the results he intended.
Because Ariadne was staring at Cesare with an expression that said she had been hit.
In her head, the present and the past intersected.
“You’re so big, you look like you could hug a man! Your hair is so black, it looks like a crow’s!”
Isabella's clear, ringing voice. The intoxication of victory shone on her face.
“Your breasts are so big and saggy that he thought you were a cow!”
It was a perfect decalcomania.
“Ha, haha, hahahahahahahaha!”
At that moment, Ariadne couldn't hold back the laughter that suddenly burst out.
“Ha, hahahaha! Hahahahahahaha!”
A tear sparkled in the corner of her smiling eye.
She had lived with a slim hope until now.
The last thing she heard from Cesare at the end of her previous life was Isabella's own words.
Isabella is not a very trustworthy messenger.
So, in one corner of her mind, there was a small hope that Cesare had said those words as Isabella's scheme, that it was just a misunderstanding, that her dozen years had not been wasted, and that this time, this time, Cesare and Ariadne would finally have a happy ending.
Ironically, that hope was shattered when Cesare belittled Isabella, as Ariadne could sense.
If Cesare had been deeply in love with Isabella, he would have made such contemptuous remarks about Ariadne.
Because of what she heard from Isabella in the past, Ariadne in the past felt a terrible sense of defeat.
At the time, she thought that if she could just beat Isabella if she could just give her the same, she would do anything.
But now that she had the chance to return it in kind, Ariadne didn't want to do it at all.
Cesare, intimidated by Ariadne's sudden madness, followed her with his eyes.
Ariadne, who had been holding back her bursts of laughter, smiled slightly. This time, it was a slightly sad smile.
“Ari..?”
Cesare called her cautiously. Ariadne did not answer, but instead lightly kissed Cesare's forehead as he knelt on the floor.
May you find peace in this life too.
“Cesare...”
It was wrong from the very first time we met. She cried.
She was annoyed by the years she had held onto, and she felt sorry for herself for wasting her energy. She couldn't do anything about the huge illusion, the dream, being shattered.
She didn't want to be that mean person who would happily pass those words on to Isabella.
She didn't even want to be the winner of this fight.
“May the protection of God be with you.”
Because she doesn't have the power to save him, she can't be with him anymore.
Ariadne rose to her feet.
“Ari...?”
Cesare, who did not understand the meaning of her actions but realized with his animalistic sense that the situation was not normal, called her.
“Ari? Ari!”
But she left her study slowly, as usual.
In front of the study door, there was the maid Sancha, who had belatedly rushed up upon hearing that Duke Cesare had come and was fidgeting in front of Ariadne's door, and Giuseppe and his men, whom she had brought along in case of emergency, were waiting.
Ariadne gave instructions to Giuseppe in a calm voice.
“Take the guest to the front door.”
She added.
“He won’t be coming here again.”
Cesare heard all of Ariadne's eulogy through the open wooden door of the study.
He collapsed to his knees on the floor of Ariadne's study, his forehead resting on the dark brown wood.
He sobbed quietly while Ariadne's people peered inside the study door and rolled their eyes.
The cry was heartbreaking, rending the lungs, and reminiscent of the cry of a young animal that has lost its mother.
He cried for a very long time.
In Cesare's arms, the 'Swan of Linville', who had lost the chance to be born again forever, was sleeping soundly wrapped in a soaking-drenched silk casket.
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