Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Candice, the head maid, opened the door and said, "Madam, are you ready to return to the Dumpelt Family... Oh my, you fixed it?"
As soon as Scarlett heard Candice's voice, she proudly held up her wristwatch with both hands.
Candice exclaimed in surprise, "Polly! The watch is working!"
"R-really?"
Polly answered loudly from the kitchen at her booming voice and ran upstairs.
While Candice sat Scarlett down and braided her blonde hair, fixing it in a circle like a wreath with pins, Polly, who had checked the watch several times, jumped up and down beside her, her eyes filled with tears.
"Thank you! This watch, my late grandmother bought it for me when I was born because she was so happy. So I really wanted to fix it!"
"How on earth did you fix it, Madam?"
The maids, all amazed, surrounded Polly and looked at the watch, asking questions. Scarlett smiled.
"It took me fifteen days."
"Even so! No one else could fix it! It's so amazing."
Everyone was so excited that it was difficult for Scarlett to tell them that she was going to hand her husband the divorce papers today. But not saying anything at all felt like deceiving them.
A little later, the servants packed her luggage into trunks and dragged them out, and finally, Candice checked Scarlett's clothes.
"It's been a hundred days since you last met."
Scarlett smiled at Candice's words as she carefully examined her.
"Indeed."
"By the way, this still hasn't healed, which is upsetting."
Candice frowned as she examined the wound on Scarlett's left wrist.
Ever since she woke up in the hotel with amnesia, there had been a raw, chafed wound on her left wrist, where she always wore a watch.
Scarlett put the watch over it, covering the wound, and said, "It's fine if I cover it."
"Still, on this beautiful skin... Where on earth did you get this wound?"
"I wonder. It would be nice if I could remember."
Scarlett tried to think that she must have done something pathetic during that week when she lost her memory. Just seeing the wound made her heart sink and filled her with a terrifying feeling, so she couldn't bear it unless she covered it.
A little later, the two left the small but precious villa. It was already dark outside, and it was raining heavily.
Scarlett got into the carriage.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and Viktor's image came to mind. His perfect navy coat tailored to his long limbs, his sleek, always stylishly groomed black hair, his straight nose, and his deep blue eyes that always reminded her of the sea, she loved them to her heart's content in her mind.
Come to think of it, looking for a four-leaf clover for him was indeed for her own happiness. It was just one of her ways to enjoy May. In fact, even if it wasn't that, all the actions she had done for Viktor had made her happy. If she hadn't been happy, she wouldn't have continued to do things without any reward.
Thinking that way, she came to think that it had been a pleasant two years.
*
The royal family was very reluctant to have articles published about Marina Dumpelt being insane, but they couldn't completely prevent it.
The princess, who had been driven out by the royal family's coldness, had gone mad, and the extra edition that her son had lived to fulfill her dreams even while being strangled by her spread throughout the capital of Salantie.
The fact that even his closest aides, the sailors on the same ship, didn't know this made the royal family's position difficult.
A long war of nerves ensued. Viktor lived as he had always lived, never showing any signs of impatience. The Iren royal family seemed to hate incorporating Viktor into the royal family so much that they didn't give a clear answer and kept postponing it.
But Viktor wasn't very impatient. If lack of perseverance was the problem, Viktor Dumpelt was the person furthest from that problem.
It had been raining for days, and Viktor was trying to kill the evening by sipping a glass of wine by the window on the third floor of the annex. He filled the empty glass, emptied it, filled it, and emptied it, intending to get drunk, when he heard the sound of a carriage running through the mud.
Viktor looked out the window and saw a carriage speeding through the darkness in the rain.
A moment later, Blight announced in a troubled voice.
"Madam has arrived."
"Scarlett?"
"Yes."
Viktor wondered if he had miscalculated the date, but after recalculating, it was still the 99th day since Scarlett had left.
He didn't want to show his drunken appearance to others, so he frowned slightly and rebuttoned his unbuttoned shirt. After putting on a vest over his suspenders and even putting on a jacket, he went down the stairs and saw Scarlett entering, wearing a raincoat.
She found Viktor coming down the central staircase and laughed cheerfully.
"Viktor, long time no see."
"Isn't it tomorrow?"
"Oh, right. It's tomorrow, the day we agreed to meet."
Scarlett didn't take off her raincoat.
As she walked into the lobby with rain dripping from her, Viktor's brow furrowed this time noticeably. Scarlett looked brighter than she had three months ago, so Viktor thought that perhaps the restrained life at the Monastery suited her.
Scarlett approached with a bright smile, but her steps were a little slow.
"How have you been?"
"Fine."
And before she got close to him, Scarlett crouched down, opened the bag she had brought, took out a document envelope, and handed it to him.
"This."
Viktor gestured, and Blight took it, checked it, and handed it to Viktor with wide eyes. Even after realizing that what he had received was divorce papers, Viktor's expression didn't change much.
Scarlett opened her mouth.
"Lord Gregory approved it."
"You want a divorce?"
"Yes. Then remarry a good family's daughter. Then the royal family will see you differently."
Viktor indifferently checked the documents and walked to the table in the lobby. And with the gold-rimmed pen placed there, he wrote down the necessary information.
When he returned it to Blight, he took the document envelope and fidgeted, whispering softly.
"Shouldn't you consider it a little more?"
"It's fine."
Viktor said and turned around.
Scarlett, who had inadvertently followed him a few steps as he casually walked up the stairs, said, "Then, I'll go straight to Crimson Manor."
At her words, Viktor stopped and turned to Scarlett, saying, "You're going now?"
"Huh? Yes."
"It's raining and late. Don't say ridiculous things and go tomorrow."
"There's still a Tram. I'm going to walk there."
Scarlett said cheerfully and looked up at him, saying, "I'm sorry for betraying you, Viktor. But loving you was real. More than my life. Really, why did it turn out like this..."
She said that and found it difficult to continue speaking, so she turned around.
"Goodbye, my love."
Only after Scarlett had run away quickly did Viktor realize that she hadn't taken off her raincoat because she had no intention of staying in this house. He should have thought too late that he shouldn't have drunk today because he had to pick her up tomorrow.
A flustered Blight followed Viktor.
"Young mas—"
But Viktor didn't even pretend to hear and went back to where he had been drinking. With the sound of him closing the door, the mansion sank into silence.
*
Scarlett, who had run out into the rain, stopped before she could run far due to the lingering heat of the severe fever. Then Andrei, who was standing by the door with her luggage on his back, took her bag for her and scolded her.
"Madam, please walk faster?"
"Are you already calling me Madam? I haven't even opened the store yet."
"You hired me, so you're the Madam."
Scarlett moved her feet, struggling to hold the umbrella.
On the way to the Tram station, she asked, still not understanding.
"I can't pay you much, are you really okay with that?"
"Yes. It was my dream. To start from a small store and grow it into a huge business."
"...Hu-huge?"
"As I said, Madam, you have outstanding abilities. Enough to fix a watch that even the other watchmakers of the Crimson Family couldn't fix."
"It took me fifteen days."
"Anyway. You can tell just by that. That Miss Scarlett Crimson is the one who inherited the technology of the famous Crimson Family of watchmakers."
They talked like that, braving the rain, stood at the station, and boarded the Tram.
While heading to 7th Avenue, where she would leave Dumpelt Mansion and open a watch store, Andrei looked at a book with his usual haughty face, and Scarlett looked at the blurred streets beyond the closed glass window.
"Maybe it's because we've been living apart for three months, but I'm not very sad."
"Ah, yes."
"Don't you think I'm accepting the divorce relatively calmly?"
"The very fact that you're saying that makes you seem full of lingering feelings."
"You're so cold."
"My coldness will be of great help to you in the future."
Andrei was calm, and Scarlett found him amusing, so she burst into a small laugh. She thought it was fortunate that she could still laugh like this even after the divorce.
The 7th Avenue that Scarlett had rented was the most bustling street closest to Crimson Manor. Because the fever she had caught at the Monastery had not subsided, she was only focused on making watches in the second-floor workshop. In the meantime, Andrei did most of the work of preparing the store. It was really fortunate for Scarlett, who knew a little about watches but almost nothing about self-employment.
By the time summer passed and she had fully recovered her health, the watch store had opened, and immediately after, Scarlett bought a bicycle. It was the first time since her parents had passed away and her cousin Marilyn had taken her bicycle.
