I Don't Want To Do a Romantic Comedy With a Villain! - Chapter 55
Episode 55
Side Story – Record of Regression
The first memories of his life are not clear. They are hazy and mushy, like releasing dye into a stream.
Realizing the fact of regression did not take long. When he opened his eyes in the second life, he could immediately sense it. The familiar dates and times, the humidity in the room touching his skin, the cry of a cuckoo that slept within the clock as soon as it struck the hour, all were just like back then.
Vehen, whose fingers had wrinkled with age, was delighted to realize the fact of regression. He had loved Neriant to the point of suffering. Unable to continue the lineage, he had aged lonely, yearning for Neriant.
So, in the next life, he naturally sought to find and conquer love.
‘Vehen, I’m happy to grow old with you.’
‘I feel the same. Neriant, I’m happy to witness the rising sun and the setting sun with you.’
Vehen was happy. Neriant’s face, wrinkled with the years and full of memories, was beautiful. The cycle of marrying the one he loved, continuing the lineage, and growing old together until death repeated several times. Was it five times, or eleven? He couldn’t recall exactly.
There were moments when he closed his eyes only to open them again, or when he stood with Ceteran, setting up the guillotine for Tedric, going back to the very beginning.
Life repeated itself relentlessly, without Vehen’s consent.
Whether it was a divine prank or a devil’s curse, around the twenty-second regression, he began to fear encountering the dying Neriant and grew tired of witnessing Tedric’s fall from the guillotine every time.
Vehen grew weary of the monotonous and repetitive life.
Despite this, the reason he diligently carried on with his life and repeated past actions was that he feared change. His innate nature felt fear of uncontrollable plans and an unknown future.
If, by any chance, Vehen had lived recklessly and ruined the empire, he worried about the descendants who would have to bear the burden. He also feared the atrocities recorded in history if the regression were to end.
After thirty-three regressions, Vehen felt the frustration of the repeating cycle. Now, he let go of himself, sensing the clock’s cuckoo, the dust floating in the room, the humidity, the temperature, and even the shape of the clouds covering the sky, all without looking.
‘Even if I make Ceteran the emperor or save the empress from assassination, the empire does not improve. What’s the point of living?’
He would die as soon as he opened his eyes, steal his breath away while walking in the garden, throw himself into a river, or fall from a building. The same life repeated. It was maddening. No, perhaps he had already gone mad.
It was the thirty-eighth regression when Vehen, enraged by the repeating life, went on a rampage.
Those who bothered him, Vehen beheaded. In a life where he rejected Ceteran’s plea to wake up and grabbed the fork stabbed into Tedric’s neck who tried to hold his hand.
Vehen learned the truth about his parents’ death. Count Mirtese offered to make him emperor and shifted the blame to Tedric.
‘His Highness Tedric ordered me. To kill Duke DeVirté and his wife. I will help you seek revenge. You will become the emperor!’
Of course, Vehen mercilessly beheaded Count Mirtese as well. Standing on the blood flowing like a stream under his feet, Vehen felt sorrow.
‘Mother, father… Is this repeated life the punishment I deserve for not being able to breathe with you?’
He didn’t know. His parents were kind, gentle, affectionate, and loved the empire. Vehen, until he lost his parents at the age of seventeen, was someone who could easily laugh, and dream of tomorrow while looking at the clear and refreshing sky.
The sudden loss of parents, standing alone, made Vehen obsessively focus on work and become emotionally distant. Although he occasionally felt sorrow for not being able to save his parents at the age of seventeen, it was a past that was already determined, so Vehen harbored no further resentment.
From the next regression onward, Vehen sought revenge on Tedric. He somehow avenged his parents through Tedric. However, in the forty-second regression, he learned that Count Mirtese had acted on his own without consulting Tedric.
Drip, drip, the sound of water droplets falling on a rock echoed. The steadily tapping droplets had dented the rock and finally split it in half. At this point, it didn’t matter anymore. Since life would repeat no matter how it turned, there was nothing to fear.
‘Why are you doing this? Why are you betraying me?’
‘Your Highness, I’m exhausted. Whether you become the emperor or the imperial lineage is cut off, it doesn’t matter to me anymore.’
In one life, Vehen placed the second princess on the imperial throne, resolving the main issues of conflict between Tedric, Ceteran, the empress, and the emperor. In another life, he cut off the imperial lineage and became the emperor himself. In some lives, Vehen gave up everything and disappeared, watching the downfall of the empire from a distant land.
One day, while wandering the world after abandoning the empire, he met a man who spoke to him.
‘Why do you look so tired? Did you lose love, or did you lose power?’
He was just a passing stranger, met by chance in a deserted desert, unaware of who Vehen was. So, it seemed easy for Vehen to answer.
With an uncut beard and thick hair, Vehen might have wanted to confess his secrets.
‘Life repeats itself and becomes exhausting.’
‘That’s nonsense! Well… I’ve heard things here and there, but if you’re a sorcerer, you can repeat life.’
The man’s face was not precisely remembered. It remained buried in countless memories, leaving only in sentences.
‘Hey. Sorcerers still exist! I’ve already encountered one in the southern country, I swear.’
‘A sorcerer… does that mean a sorcerer can turn back time?’
Vehen was desperate, earnest, and desperate. He wanted an end to a life that could be finished.
‘Sorcerers can make the earth rise, divide the sea, and make the sky roar. Can’t they manipulate time?’
‘Let me meet a sorcerer. I’ll pay whatever it takes.’
The man grinned disgustingly, revealing yellow teeth.
Whether a charlatan or not, the man with a large bag full of belongings bestowed light upon Vehen.
‘Sorcerers don’t settle in one place. They gather and wander here and there. Meeting them is a once-in-a-lifetime event, if ever.’
Yes, Vehen had never encountered them in eighty years of life.
If only he had known, he could have found them.
Then he could have buried this tedious life with the setting sun.
Vehen looked beyond the man at the expanse of the desert.
He gazed at the dunes stretching beyond the man’s shoulders. Behind the majestic sand peaks, the moon shone. Stars poured down like silk, illuminating the night sky reflected in Vehen’s eyes. The night sky sparkled with hope.
In eighty-one lives and beyond, Vehen abandoned everything to search for the sorcerers.
Naturally, he couldn’t find them. Despite deploying money, power, and personnel, searching across empires and other countries, nothing came of it.
‘Does the sorcerer truly exist? Did he lie to make a fool out of me?’
The future depended on when he had his meals, what he said, and whom he met, so Vehen no longer clung to the future.
He simply didn’t care anymore. As long as he could end this life.
It was on the way back from Hitan, beyond the empire. The weather was sunny, the streets were still dirty yet vibrant, and a strange stench lingered.
While riding a horse without a carriage to reduce baggage on the way back home, he stopped when an unexpected figure appeared in front of him.
‘It seems your life is not insignificant.’
Black eyes, black hair, clothes he had never seen despite traveling the world, and a lean body despite the hardships.
Seeing her dazzling face, Vehen didn’t even think about questioning the rudeness of blocking the Duke’s path.
It was his first meeting with Min-joo.
Her peculiar attire, bare feet, and smooth skin that seemed untouched by hardship, along with her intriguing demeanor, caught Vehen’s attention. However, Vehen was so weary of the repetitive life that there was no room left for curiosity.
“Duke DeVirté, are you okay?”
When one of the attendants who came to greet him asked Vehen, her once pitch-black eyes were now sparkling and shining. Vehen easily recalled where he had seen those eyes before—the Milky Way embroidered on the black sky in the desert. The night sky, sparkling with hope in the darkness, was reflected in Min-joo’s eyes.
Vehen was exhausted from intervening in someone else’s fate, and his watch had been broken for a long time, so his interest didn’t last long.
“I know the future! You’re Duke Vehen Jegnis DeVirté, right?!”
Knowing the future is something achievable for a priest based on sacred powers or a sorcerer based on learned skills. If the black-clad woman in front of Vehen was a priest, she might be someone from the abandoned temple, and if a sorcerer…
“Not dressed as a priest, but isn’t it a sorcerer?”
The man whispered. As soon as he spoke, cracks began to appear in the peaceful atmosphere.
“She should be burned at the stake. If it’s an extinct sorcerer, it would be great to confine and study it.”
Extinct, that was treating it like an animal. Vehen had searched for sorcerers, disturbing the empire and surrounding countries under the pretext of extermination, but found none. And now one appeared before him?
It might be a deliberately created situation, or perhaps the last mercy bestowed by the gods. However, for Vehen, who had repeated countless lives, if he made a mistake, he could just cut his throat and regress; it wasn’t that great a dilemma.
It was Vehen who called the woman trying to escape, feeling the faltering atmosphere.
“Prophecy… it’s amusing. If the intention was to attract my unmarried interest, it succeeded.”
The only way to avoid being accused of being a sorcerer and burned at the stake, the only option was to make Vehen think of her as a woman trying to seduce him. That’s how Vehen brought Min-joo into the mansion.
“I am neither a sorcerer nor a priest. I come from a different world.”
Looking back at the distant past, even now, Min-joo hadn’t changed. She was stubborn and easily frightened yet had the bold personality to speak her mind when necessary. As Vehen kept getting the same answers when he asked if she was a sorcerer, he brought Min-joo into his home.
Everything Min-joo spoke about the future was Vehen’s past. Sending Neriant to Ceteran, Tedric rises to pull down the Empress after poisoning her—everything leading to Vehen being left alone.
So it was only natural for him to acknowledge it.
Min-joo knew the future, while Vehen had lived through that future.
However, Min-joo’s knowledge of the future was very fragmented, and Vehen, with countless past experiences, found that knowledge was utterly useless. Despite initially wanting to dismiss her, he couldn’t help but keep her around, thinking that perhaps the prophet could point out the location of the sorcerer.
It was a hope he couldn’t let go of.
Having Min-joo by his side was a novel experience for Vehen. She lacked formality yet strangely maintained a level of courtesy. While casually lounging on the sofa, she neither opened her mouth nor made a sound while eating. The strangest part was that she always took off her shoes when getting on the bed and wouldn’t lie down in her outdoor attire.
Min-joo used many unfamiliar words, and her behavior was strangely both commoner-like and more refined than nobility. Her coffee, oddly enough, tasted exceptionally good, surprising Vehen. He couldn’t feel anything when eating other foods except for the rubbery taste of chewing.
“You, the more I see you, the more interesting you become.”
Success in love with Neriant, numerous marriages, and experiencing the end together made the repetitive love terrifying for Vehen. Believing that love would last forever, he was shocked to find himself getting tired of it after going through Neriant’s death multiple times.
Even if he thought he was not the one, he was punished for taking away the one who was meant to be with Ceterian.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt guilty that he had ruined someone else’s life.
Living countless lives, Vehen didn’t realize that he was eroding himself, becoming blunt, leaving only remnants behind. His fundamental core, worn and worn, collapsed, and the betrayals he suffered, the tiresome experiences, and the passing years blurred his identity.
“Vehen is strange. Despite being young, his speech is like that of an old man. He acts like he’s seen it all and behaves like a person who has lived a complete life.”
Only then did he realize that he had changed.
“He looks anxious, sometimes insensitive. Saying this might be impolite, but he looks like a person being chased. What on earth is he being chased by?”
Chasing the wretched end of eternal life, the fact that he was being pursued became apparent only now.
“If you don’t want to answer, it’s okay. But Vehen, do what you want. Compulsions or worries, when you look back later, they won’t be that big of a deal. Who would stop a Duke from doing what he wants?”
Like grains of sand on the beach, countless memories were swept away by the waves, but this memory stood out vividly. Min-joo’s face, initially blunt in speech but turning into a bright smile, speaking gently.
Her black bangs covered her eyebrows, her long hair tied in a neat bundle, and her crescent-like black eyes beneath fluttering eyelashes; the round shoulders rising above, partly covering her cheeks.
On that day, in the room, the scent of savory and crisp croissants lingered, the warm sunlight filtering through the curtain even as Min-joo swayed her legs, and the subtle dust floating with each shake of her legs—all of it was vivid.
“I… want to be by your side.”
He wish she was his destined one.
Just as Neriant for Ceteran, and her for him.
He wished it was his fate.