One Day My Sister Died - Chapter 9

9. Please don’t abandon me

Yuan felt her tongue stiffen as she looked up at the ‘monster’ Emperor.

His face was just as hideous as the rumors, and painful to look at.

Biting her tongue to stifle a scream, Yuan checked herself to see if her hands and feet were shriveling and her body was rotting, and finally looked him in the face.

Now that she was looking him straight in the eye, she could see something other than his hideous half-face.

The disheveled blond hair, eyes that shone like expensive amethysts beneath languidly drooping eyelids and the pale skin with dark bags under his eyes.

A chiseled nose and tightly closed lips.

Although he has a sensitive aura, and half of his face is not normal, he is still beautiful.

It was then that Yuan noticed the man’s gaze, not his appearance.

A gaze she couldn’t help but feel, piercing her like a needle.

She had never seen such a hostile gaze since her rude cousins.

Yuan immediately understood the meaning behind that gaze.

“There is no place for you here.’’

It was an all-too-familiar stare she’d been receiving for about a decade.

“Nice to meet you for the first time. I’m Yuan Felice.”

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Yuan gritted her teeth in her stiff mouth and finally spoke.

Her voice trembled miserably, her fingertips seemed about to break, and she couldn’t even sit properly.

As if it didn’t matter what Yuan said, the man simply raised one more foot inside the carriage.

As if he wanted to show her more of his face.

Yuan was momentarily startled, but she didn’t flinch or frown.

Is this his test? If she can bear him or not?

Is he trying to scare her, who has lived face-to-face with demons for 10 years, with only  his half-hideous face?

Yuan hardened her heart in front of his gaze that clearly signaled for her to get lost.

She couldn’t go back to hell like this.

“Please let me go inside the house, it’s too… cold.”

I meant it.

All I could do with my frozen body was think about the horrible memories of the Felice mansion and my memories of Louise.

I didn’t want to.

I wanted to ask why and how she died.

I wanted to curse this man if he was responsible for her death, but if not, I wanted to live pain-free in my new home.

The man said nothing.

His cold, impassive face continued to stare cruelly at me without a single ripple.

His lips that would never seem to utter words like “come in” or “aren’t you cold?” were firmly sealed.

That time when the suffocating and cold silence continued.

Although his appearance was pleasing, his dry lips began to break roughly into two, then three.

It was fortunate. Since I couldn’t see anything, the words I muttered like prayers all night came out easily.

“I’m not going home.”

Did you kill Louise?

Did you kill my sister?

Are you my enemy or my family?

The words I had promised myself to say when I met him began to crumble in front of the warmth of the person who came after a few days.

The desire to get into the warmth of the man’s home without offending him overrode her reason and her tongue moved uncontrollably.

“Don’t leave me like this.”

A voice that bordered on pleading hollowed out of her mouth.

The desire to go somewhere warm instead of going against the man’s will overcame her reason and moved her tongue as she wanted.

“Please…… don’t abandon me.”

Her body, finally pushed to its limits, begged for her own well-being instead of asking about Louise’s death.

Her hands, frozen and on the verge of breaking, clung to the warmth in front of her, not blaming her cowardly thoughts.

Yuan instinctively reached out more eagerly.

He gave her no answer, no hand.

It didn’t matter.

As long as he was in front of her, there would be plenty of places to reach out and grasp.

The hand that had clutched the hem of the Emperor’s wrinkle-free robe tightly enough to hold on for dear life only lasted a few seconds before it fell away.

***

A terrible sensation of cold and heat swept over Yuan’s entire body for what felt like an eternity.

Yuan’s eyes flew open as if escaping the sensation of her parched lips. A blinding light hit her retinas directly.

“So hot…”

Yuan blinked several times, trying to adjust her eyes to the light of the antique chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

After a few moments of this, Yuan realized that this was no longer a carriage, and she turned her head in disbelief.

“Are you awake?”

A young maid was organizing the firewood by the fireplace.

The maid was a small child with dark brown hair and faint freckles on the bridge of her nose.

She called loudly for someone outside, then shoved a couple of dry logs into the fireplace and walked over to Yuan.

Yuan’s eyes widened and she looked around, and the maid gently helped her to her feet.

When the maid handed her the bowl of water, Yuan gratefully drank it. The dreadful thirst quickly subsided, and she felt a refreshing sensation spreading through her body.

Yuan was lying on a bed.

A bed with a warm down comforter.

She tried to relish the soft and warm feeling, a sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time, even trying to feel the texture beneath her palms, but her hand was wrapped in bandages.

As I groped for my bandaged hand, the maid quickly explained.

“We almost had to deal with a corpse in the middle of winter! We decided to inform Sir Vile as soon as you woke up, but why on earth is he taking so long to get here?”

“Is this… the Black Mansion?”

“Yes.”

A deep voice floated in the air.

The maid rolled her eyes as Yuan cleared her throat, feeling that my voice was strange.

“Don’t you remember? We don’t know the details either! The Emperor never comes out of his room, except for every special occasion, and even then, we must stay in our rooms. But wouldn’t you know, such a situation happened this morning! Naturally, we thought the ninth Queen, meaning you, madam, was going back to your family’s home. But the butler and the guards brought you back.”

“Madam…?”

“Oh, right. The people here call any new lady of the house ‘madam.’ It’s a bit awkward to call you ‘Your Highness’, isn’t it?”

The young maid, who introduced herself as Henna, began to talk rapidly.

“The abandoned Emperor hates being called ‘Your Highness,’ but he doesn’t like being called anything else either, so we continue to call him ‘Your Highness.’ Does the master even like anything in this world? Sometimes, I wonder if he even exists!”

Like a great storyteller, the young maid began to recount everything that had happened after Yuan lost consciousness, and how much the servants had been worried about Yuan’s carriage, all without taking a breath.

Yuan tried to wrap her head around all the information pouring out of the young maid.

Within that, she struggled to find out if the abandoned Emperor, Claude Yufrees, who was like a ghost in this black mansion, had said something about her situation.

After replaying the maid’s words in her mind for a moment, Yuan responded.

“Where is he now?”

“The Emperor has locked himself in his room again, as usual.”

“Does that mean I can live here now?”

“Oh, well…”

Henna rolled her eyes again. She dropped her gaze to Yuan’s bandaged hand, unable to meet her eyes, and murmured.

“After your treatment is over and you recover, you will likely return to your family…But that’s just what I’ve heard! It might not be what His Majesty intends!’’

Henna was a young but affectionate maid.

She was obviously reluctant to tell the dying emperor’s wife the cruel truth.

Yuan listened to the maid’s voice as she began to rattle off excuses again.

Henna’s voice was interrupted by a man bursting through the open door.

“You’re awake!”

The man wore glasses that made him dizzy, and his khaki hair stood on end like a man who had been hit by a shell on the battlefield.

He wasn’t very tall, and he was thin.

Yuan recognized him instantly from the huge medical bag in his hands as Vile, the doctor Henna had told her so much about.

“How can you come so late? It’s been a while since we called you!”

Vile, instantly chagrined by the young maid’s exasperation, walked very gingerly over to Yuan, who looked at him distantly, and sat down.

He was clearly frightened, judging by the way his bushy beard twitched.

“You’re very badly hurt, especially your hands and feet, so I’ve put some medicine on them, but it’s only a stopgap measure, and you’ll need to warm yourself up more gradually in warm water. Are you not cold?”

Unable to meet Yuan’s eyes, Vile, who had been looking down at her already bandaged hand, let out a hiccup as soon as he glanced up at her and held his breath before lowering his gaze again.

Henna, watching from the sidelines, clicked her tongue, and finally spoke up.

“Sir Vile. You are completely different from the Emperor.”

It was only then that Yuan remembered that among the current affairs of the mansion that Henna had been talking about.

The new physician, Vile, had wet his pants at the sight of the Emperor, collapsed, and spent the next few days sick.

The poor physician was obviously frightened and wary of Yuan just because she was the Emperor’s wife. Yuan introduced herself in a soft voice as if to reassure him.

“My name is Yuan Felice, and are you the physician who healed me?.”

“Fe, Felice?”

“Is the medicine you applied in my hand made of plantain? Or elm?”

“Are you really a child of the House of Felice?”

Vile’s eyes widened at the sound of the surname Felice, and he raised his voice.