Chapter 2
─ A 90-Day Bucket List
D-120. To my dear Largo.
He was always cold to me.
So I thought he despised me.
It wasn’t surprising.
It was only natural.
I was an unholy being, unacknowledged even by the gods.
Unlike him, who bore the pure and noble bloodline of the Duke of Gong, I was a vulgar, filthy bastard.
And it wasn’t just him.
Finding someone who didn’t despise me would’ve been harder than finding someone who did.
That’s all bastards were worth.
Even the one who brought me into this world never truly wanted me.
My mother, who gave birth to me, had once sold flowers in the royal capital—a courtesan, the king’s first love.
A cramped, grimy room in the slums. A gray world filled with drifting dust.
My mother would stumble into the room in disheveled clothes and collapse carelessly onto the battered bed.
Creak, the old bed tilted to one side.
Her frizzy hair would scatter in all directions.
She’d place a pale hand over her forehead and giggle softly.
On days like that, her lips—red like blood—would always whisper the same words:
“Carmen, the woman who first offered roses to the former king. He was enraptured by just a single word from me.”
Words I’d heard a thousand times.
Her cheeks flushed as she recalled the most dazzling day—her first meeting with the king.
But the scent of roses no longer lingered on her.
Only the suffocating stench of alcohol and cannabis overwhelmed everything.
Yet I never uttered a word of complaint.
I would stroke her back and wrap her frail body in filthy blankets.
Because even the illusion of my mother dreaming of the past made her shine.
Because I feared that if she could not even live within that fleeting dream, she might let go of the world entirely.
That’s how I was conceived—born as the one and only stain on the pure and noble king.
In the infancy I could not remember,
I was told the king had once cherished me, his only child.
Just as much as he had loved my mother, I was cradled on his lap.
But love that burns bright is the quickest to burn out.
“All I said was ‘Your Majesty.’ That’s it. But then, His Majesty…”
“…Where do you think you’re putting those filthy hands?”
If what my mother said was true, it all happened quite suddenly.
“Take them off. Immediately.”
The king, who had once let her sit sweetly on his lap, shoved her away with cold indifference.
My mother’s voice, recounting that day, was full of sorrow.
She described how the king tilted his head at her, looking at her as though she were a stranger.
And then he muttered:
“To think… I’ve been wrapped in the skirts of such vulgarity all this time.”
“Your Majesty…?”
“A lowly wench who can do nothing but flatter others and spread her legs.”
“I… I couldn’t say a word.”
My mother was frozen by the cruel words.
She said his gaze, as he looked at her, was colder than ice.
“What are you all doing? Get this worthless thing out of my sight!”
Turning his head, the king shouted to his attendants.
Dragged away in disgrace, my mother finally came to her senses and clung to the king.
“Wh-why are you acting like this all of a sudden?!”
“Don’t touch me.”
The king shoved her away mercilessly.
And then came the kicks—cruel and heartless.
Staring up at him in shock, she barely managed to ask:
“Y-Your Majesty! Then what about the p-princess…?!”
“Princess?”
“…Pardon?”
“What proof is there that thing carries my blood?”
“……”
Faced with his cold, cutting voice, my mother couldn’t utter a single word.
And so, when I was barely a year old, she was cast out, along with me.
The woman who once boasted of bearing the king’s first child fell in a single moment.
The nobles who had hated her rejoiced in her downfall.
Her place in the palace, once seemingly secure, was instantly taken by another.
It only took three years.
Tears of blood in her eyes, my mother left the palace she had once called home.
Yet because I carried the king’s blood—because I was his one and only illegitimate child—
She clung to a shred of hope as she wandered the filth-ridden back alleys with me in her arms.
Once a woman who sold roses in the palace, she now sold wildflowers to survive.
“But you are without a doubt His Majesty’s daughter. The only one in the entire kingdom who carries his blood.”
Whenever I asked about the king, she’d grasp my hand and I’d ask:
“Is the king… a bad person?”
“……”
Her gray eyes clouded as she stared at me.
Shaking her head, she’d stroke my cheek with a hand that had once been soft.
“No, no. He’s not a bad man. If anything…”
Overcome with emotion, she’d stop again and look me over frantically.
She must’ve been searching for traces of the king in me.
My hair, my features—they didn’t resemble hers. They resembled him.
But her eyes had long lost their light. If you could assign dimension to them, “hollow” would’ve been the perfect word.
And then she’d pull me into a tight embrace.
“He won’t leave you like this forever. One day, he’ll take your hand and bring you back to the palace. Yes… once he calms down… once he…”
Her breathing turned heavy.
Perhaps she was crying. As a child, I could only wonder as I clung to her.
All I could do was hold her tightly with my small hands.
The reek of alcohol and cannabis was nauseating, but I couldn’t bear to leave her side.
I only hoped the sorrowful dawn would pass quickly, as I welcomed the dew with her ragged breaths.
Years passed that way.
Until the day she died, the miracle she wished for never came.
It happened when I was fifteen.
In that silent slum, where no one ever visited, she quietly closed her grief-filled eyes.
Left alone, I gathered the only coin I had and went to the temple to arrange her funeral.
For a woman who, at least once, had been the king’s mistress.
The priest greeted me with an annoyed expression and begrudgingly offered a prayer.
“May this poor soul return to the embrace of the gods and be guided with grace.”
His duty-bound condolence was brief and hollow.
My mother’s soulless body was laid in a coffin, the lid was shut, and laborers carried it into the temple’s underground chambers.
As I watched, waves of regret, sorrow, and memories crashed over me.
I wept a single tear in farewell and rose to leave.
But as I turned away—
I saw something in that white temple that caught my eye.
“…What is that?”
I couldn’t help but ask.
The priest, still holding the coin that had been my mother’s fare to the afterlife, followed my gaze.
And replied indifferently:
“A piano.”
At his answer, I approached the object—my first time ever seeing such a thing.
“An instrument crafted by the servants of the gods. It plays the divine language known as music, which no ignorant human could ever hope to grasp.”
I cautiously lifted the heavy lid.
Creak, a thick wooden groan.
The faint scent of wood drifted up. Shiny black enamel reflected my face.
White and black keys—88 in total.
In that moment, an indescribable urge overwhelmed me.
Even now, I can’t say what it was.
Only that unknown, unseen, unfelt things began to bloom inside me.
Uncountable notes danced before my eyes.
They became measures, then motifs, then an entire musical passage.
Music so vivid in my mind pleaded—begged—to be released.
To be brought out from within. To be set free.
“What are you doing?!”
I remember only the priest’s startled cry.
Enraptured, as if I were the only one left in the world, I began to press the keys.
And that pressing became a melody.
What began as mere noise became music—filling the once silent temple.
Majestic, mournful, lyrical, grand.
A requiem for my mother.
The first time I ever spoke the language of the gods to the world.
“…Oh god…”
Soon, the priest fell to his knees, murmuring in awe.
It was only then that I snapped out of it—and realized what I had done.
I, the bastard no one wanted. A being unacknowledged even by god.
And yet, in the cruelest twist of irony—
I was the one chosen by the divine.
