Previously
Sienna reaches the Grand Duchy and finds Soliet's grave marked by an orange tree, where she breaks down in grief and guilt. Desperate to end her suffering and follow her family, she consumes a double lethal dose of poison. However, she wakes up in a dilapidated room to find her deceased knight, Theodore Monches, alive and well.
How to Break Up with You Perfectly Episode 6
Theodore replied with a tone that bordered on sheer pity.
“I am certain you heard the news yesterday that the Grand Duke advanced all the way to Serojan. His Majesty ordered every church across the Empire to offer prayers for victory in this war, and I surely delivered that mess—”
“He’s alive?”
The Princess snapped her head up. Her blue eyes, which had trembled with endless instability, surged with an unreadable emotion. Theodore unconsciously stiffened his shoulders.
When an answer did not come immediately, she lunged at the man far larger than herself and seized him by the collar.
“Answer me! Is he alive?!”
Her voice was piercing, sharp enough to tear. Theodore glanced down at the frail hands clutching his collar, then let out an incredulous laugh.
“Yes, yes. Of course he is alive. Who do you take him for? He is the Empire’s greatest hero. He’s doing just fine, naturally. The whole Empire is in an uproar over his army finally reaching the borders of Serojan.”
He rattled off the words, his voice dripping with obvious annoyance. Having remained by the Princess’s side since his days as an apprentice knight, he was as accustomed to her various outbursts as a man could possibly be.
Theodore was the only person who could handle her, and yet he was also the only being who did not look upon the Princess with contempt.
He realized he had just spouted something rather insolent. And the Princess was not a master generous enough to overlook insubordination.
He was certain that before long, she would either strike him across the cheek or that the mirror teetering precariously in the corner of the room would finally be smashed to pieces.
Yet for quite some time, there was no reaction from Sienna. She did not flare up in anger as she had moments before, nor did she strike his cheek for insolence as she usually would. She merely let her hands drop limp with a dazed expression.
“He’s alive…”
At her stunned murmur, Theodore looked down at her with a bewildered face.
“Your Highness…?”
The Princess’s face twisted bizarrely.
She tried to process this absurd situation as rationally as possible. Yet within these circumstances, there was nothing she could accept as sensible.
The familiar scenery of the room. Her body, feeling as if fresh flesh and bone had sprouted anew. And two—no, three lives that should have long since perished, all alive and breathing.
Every piece of evidence pointed to a single truth: an impossible thing had happened to her.
Only then did she recall once more the words Theodore had spoken just moments ago. He had certainly said that the army led by the Grand Duke had succeeded in advancing to Serojan.
And the Battle of Serojan, which ended in a historic victory, was the final war her husband had waged before resigning from all his titles by marrying her.
Which meant…
‘I truly returned to the past?’
Her trembling hands clenched her skirt. Questions like How? and Why? drifted aimlessly through her mind.
A fierce impulse surged within her to grab someone and scream.
I never asked for a miracle like this. All I wanted was to go to my daughter’s side… to return to the side of those I loved…
Theodore looked on with concern as the Princess’s face shifted past pale to a sickly, bruised blue.
“Your Highness, are you all right?”
Her blue eyes, frozen with terror, turned toward him. Then, slowly, she took him in from head to toe.
Soft yellowish-brown hair and olive eyes. An absurdly massive frame and an insolent gaze unbefitting a subordinate—it was unmistakably Theodore Monches.
Instead of answering, she hastily reached out and touched his throat. Theodore twitched an eyebrow slightly, but he did not resist. Beneath his hot skin, the throbbing pulse was transmitted directly into her palm.
‘It’s not a dream.’
Her insolent knight. Her sole ally. Theodore Monches was truly alive and breathing. That alone proved everything.
Only then did Sienna finally accept the truth. She had not died. Not only that, she had returned to a distant past.
A hollow laugh slipped through her lips. How desperately she had lived right up until the moment her life ended. And now she had to go through all of it again?
Sienna pulled back the hand she had placed against Theodore’s neck.
“…There is no reason not to be all right.”
Barely suppressing the turmoil of rage and shock inside her, Sienna replied flatly.
Right. Perhaps there was no reason not to be. Looked at another way, this might be a chance to change her life.
If she had truly returned to the past, what lay ahead would depend entirely on what she did. That marriage, which had been a pit of misery. That man’s death. She could change it all.
However…
‘That child will truly exist only in my mind now.’
Sienna’s complexion darkened.
Even the father who had doted on her so dearly would have forgotten the child. The seven years the man had spent raising her with blind devotion had vanished into thin air like bubbles. Now, only she remembered Soliet’s brief life.
The child’s laughter scattering in the wind echoed hollowly in her ears like an auditory hallucination. Sienna clenched her fists tight. Her poorly trimmed fingernails dug into her flesh.
‘Perhaps it is for the best. Rather than being born to a mother like me and suffering such misfortune all over again, it is better not to exist at all.’
Though she would have to live on burying the child in her heart alone, through this, the man’s final wish would be granted. The lives of the two who had plummeted toward the abyss because of their marriage would also find their proper path at long last.
Sienna made a vow to herself. If this was truly an opportunity granted to her, she would live in a different direction from the foolish self of her past.
She would not harbor the undeserved greed of becoming the Grand Duchess. She would not dream of revenge against those who insulted her. She would not even resent the man who did not love her.
Never again would she repeat the errors of the past.
* * *
“I have good news.”
I was just lifting my first spoonful of the wheat porridge the priests had handed out for breakfast.
Even though I had already experienced it, the wretched treatment struck me anew. Staring down with a grimace at the wheat porridge heavily mixed with sand, I let out a deep sigh and put the spoon back down.
“Did they say proper food will be served for dinner?”
“Something even better than that might arrive, who knows?”
Theo looked in a considerably better mood than usual. Seeing him uncharacteristically animated, I cast a lukewarm gaze at him.
“They say the army returning from the border will be stopping here.”
Yet for all his triumphant posturing, the news was nothing remarkable, so I answered bluntly.
“What is so wonderful about that?”
“It is great news. Outside, the atmosphere is already gearing up as if they were throwing a welcome banquet.”
At the word banquet, I let out a dry scoff.
“A banquet. I wonder if they intend to serve this sand-filled porridge to the soldiers who laid down their lives for the Empire as well.”
“Surely not. Seeing how the abbot’s complexion improves by the day, it seems he has food stashed away somewhere.”
The fact that the abbot had stockpiled provisions in secret was something both of us had already anticipated.
Watching people starve to death in close quarters made it plain to the naked eye who among them grew rosier by the day.
“In any case, the army stopping here might be a good thing for us as well, Your Highness.”
“Of course you would be pleased, seeing your brother after so long.”
In my previous life, Theo’s older brother, Count Monches, had despised me intensely.
Part of it was his bitterness that the Grand Duke, who had once dominated the battlefield, cast aside all power on my account to remain cooped up in the manor. And part of it was that I, the woman who had made the Grand Duke abandon everything, repeatedly brought disgrace upon his honor ever after.
Most decisively, after my marriage, when Theodore returned to the Imperial Knights and lost his life in a war he joined, the Count openly directed his resentment at me.
So, apart from my own lack of fond feelings toward the Count, I could understand to some degree why he found me distasteful.
If not for me, the Grand Duke would never have had to suffer unnecessary indignities, and Theo would not have met such a futile death.
At my lack of enthusiasm, Theo scratched his cheek in slight embarrassment before continuing with renewed determination.
“Not just my brother, but the Grand Duke is coming here as well. Isn’t that the most important fact?”
To those subsequent words, I offered no particular reply. Seeing that, Theo rambled on.
“He is the only man on this vast continent whom even the Emperor cannot treat lightly. Having expanded our northern territory by leaps and bounds through this war, his standing will be even more magnificent once he returns to the capital.”
“We’re on the verge of starving to death right here, and you think that sort of nonsense matters right now?”
Despite my irritated retort, Theo gave a nonchalant shrug.
“That is precisely why this is good news for us. The Emperor won’t ignore a request from His Grace the Grand Duke, so using this opportunity, we could…”
“Theo.”
I fixed him with a solemn stare.
“Let me tell you this in advance: do not do anything unnecessary. I know very well that you and your brother share a close bond with the Grand Duke, but I have no desire to become entangled with him.”
“Entangled? On the contrary, if the Grand Duke were to turn a blind eye to Your Highness’s plight, wouldn’t that go against the very essence of chivalry?”
“Whatever it is…”
Strictly speaking, he was not even a knight, but it was too bothersome to point out every single detail. Rather than saying another word, I merely exhaled a sigh, my face weary and fed up.