Chapter – 10
I Want to Live Like You.
For a moment, Josephine stared blankly up at the man glowing like gold.
For a very brief moment, it felt as if she had returned to that spring-filled academy days when she firmly believed he was her first love.
‘Jo, thank you for living for me. You are the only one who can sacrifice yourself for me.’
‘You will soon be the Empress of this Empire.’
‘I will definitely make you happy. So that no one can ever look down on you again as an adopted orphan from a ducal family, I will make you the noblest woman in this Empire.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, Josephine. I love you so much it aches to the very marrow of my bones.’
She had loved that face of Henelius.
She had been so happy with those words and that voice of Henelius, as if she owned the world.
All without knowing it was nothing but sweet talk to use her.
A fresh wave of nausea now rose within her.
‘……Why did I do that?’
For the first time, her vision blurred.
‘Why did I love this man so much?’
A single hot tear was already streaming down Josephine’s cheek.
Seeing that tear, Henelius flusteredly scrambled.
“What’s wrong, Empress? Are you hurt somewhere? You didn’t drink that black tea earlier, did you?”
“……No. I’m fine. Please don’t worry.”
Josephine wiped the tear away with a finger from her left hand, which hadn’t been splashed by the tea.
Now, even looking at him, her heart no longer burned.
That’s why it was lamentable.
That there was once a time when her heart felt so bursting with heat for this son of a bitch.
‘What on earth is going on?’
Elisabeth couldn’t believe it.
Since she had entered the imperial palace as Henelius’s maid, she had never once seen the two of them together so affectionately.
‘He… left me here? Henelius?’
Yet Henelius had now abandoned her on this cold floor and gone to that girl.
That stupid girl from their academy days who used to just follow him around holding the hem of his dress!
“Please get up for now, Miss. You need treatment first.”
Elisabeth, discarded by the Emperor for the first time, got up with the support of a maid.
The right wrist Elisabeth had covered was now flushed a bright red.
It happened to be exactly the same spot where Josephine had been injured during the weapons demonstration.
Henelius added in a noticeably stiffer tone than before, his face hardened.
“Quickly, assist Miss Hausen and treat her.”
The maid swiftly brought cold water, soaked a clean towel, and pressed it against Elisabeth’s injured area.
“J-Just bear with it a little, Madam. The palace physician will be here soon.”
The maid, perhaps also flustered, accidentally used the title reserved only within the Elize Palace to address her.
Elisabeth was still an unmarried woman.
The fact that Henelius had promised to announce only a year later had now been revealed in this very place.
“W-What are you saying, Olga. Madam? I’m not even married yet……!”
Elisabeth also seemed deeply embarrassed by the title the maid had mistakenly uttered.
However, Henelius made no particular remark about the title.
Josephine, who should have been the most flustered, was also utterly impassive.
Though she had always inwardly dismissed Josephine as a clueless fool, today, for some reason, a chill ran down her spine.
The look in Henelius’s eyes as he gazed at her was also different from before.
‘Something’s wrong.’
Elisabeth gnashed her teeth, biting her gradually drying lips.
For a moment, watching that affectionate-looking pair, she had completely forgotten.
Who the poison that had stained all of Josephine’s jewelry black had come from.
“Jo…….”
Without thinking, Elisabeth’s face immediately became tearful.
Clearly, someone had poisoned that teapot just before today’s tea party.
The most likely person was Huber, who had visited the palace earlier and taken the teapot away.
If so, that meant the one who framed her was Josephine.
‘We’ve gotten along just fine without any problems until now, why suddenly?’
Elisabeth couldn’t understand it at all.
“I’m sorry. But, if you disliked it, you should have just said so. You didn’t have to go this far……!”
But trying to argue about that now wouldn’t sway Henelius’s heart, which was with the Empress.
Instead, she had to use her charming appeal, which he found endearing, to divert his suspicion.
To say that Elisabeth de Hausen, the pure young lady who knew nothing of the world, could absolutely never do such a thing.
“If I had known you’d hate it this much, sniff, sob. I would have let you go without holding you back…….”
“What are you talking about.”
But Josephine was also now sick and tired of Elisabeth’s act.
Josephine deliberately put on a very frightened expression and spoke.
“You were the one who kept offering me that black tea first.”
“B-But, His Majesty Henelius said so too. That it would be fine if you let it cool and drank it slowly…….”
“Tsk tsk…….”
Josephine was beyond absurd, she was flabbergasted.
“How can you say that?”
A hollow laugh escaped her, and the corner of her mouth twitched.
Who was it that had grabbed her left hand so she couldn’t escape and poured out soft-spoken abuses earlier?
“I’m sorry for accidentally dropping the teacup and hurting you. But I clearly said I didn’t want it hundreds of times. What’s your reason for doing this?”
“W-What are you saying. Do you really think I put poison in the tea? For what reason?”
“Then who put that poison in?”
Josephine looked at Elisabeth with fearful eyes and trembled.
“Were you trying to poison even me, your only friend? Tsk tsk, how could you do this to me?”
She didn’t stop there and, pretending to be unable to bear the fear, hugged herself and began to sob.
“I know well that you loved Henelius too. But did you have to covet this Empress position so much that you’d harm me?”
Even as she said this, Josephine felt a strong sense of dissonance with herself for the first time.
Was I someone who could frame others so chillingly calmly?
Was I someone who could feel joy, let alone guilt, from this?
It was an unfamiliar sensation she was feeling for the first time. Her fingertips felt numb, even tingly and painful.
“N-No, Jo. Why is the story turning out like this? You… you don’t trust me?”
In the end, in her desperation, Elisabeth forgot her burn and hurried over, clinging to Josephine.
“That black tea was originally meant for His Majesty Henelius. So are you saying I planned to harm the Emperor from the start?”
Endless tears streamed down Elisabeth’s cheeks.
They weren’t crocodile tears, but tears of blood shed from truly unbearable injustice.
“Does that make any sense? Jo, it’s true I haven’t been a perfect friend to you, but this isn’t the way to doubt someone. Sob…….”
To think she’d see that in Elisabeth’s eyes.
It was always herself who was the one crying and clinging in unfairness, but now it was Elisabeth in that position, not her.
“……”
Josephine did not sympathize with those tears. She only found it ridiculous.
‘You should cry more.’
Josephine’s wet eyes looking down at Elisabeth grew colder and colder.
‘You’re only experiencing this for the first time. It would be too unfair for me if you just cried a bit and that’s it.’
Her mind cleared in an instant.
It felt like she had finally found the answer after a long, winding journey.
‘Right. It’s unfair.’
So this is how easy it was. To harbor malice towards someone.
‘I don’t want to live like the past anymore.’
Josephine muttered while looking at Elisabeth.
‘I want to live like you, Elisabeth.’
Now she could understand how Elisabeth had felt looking down at her.
‘I want to live like you—hurting and tormenting people carelessly, without holding a single shred of guilt.’
Like Henelius or Elisabeth. Like they had betrayed her and lived so comfortably and well.
She wanted to live like that, even just once.
“If you don’t believe me, ask Siegfried, that person! Didn’t that person say earlier! That there was no poison in the black tea!”
Elisabeth wailed.
Once again, someone’s smile flashed by like a glint of light.
It was the sole spectator, Siegfried, who was watching this entire spectacle from afar with delight.
“That son of a bitch.”
And the moment Siegfried’s name came up, Henelius suddenly rushed forward, spewing curses.
“Kuh, ugh.”
Siegfried, who had been standing there like a displayed suit of armor until then, crumpled to the ground from Henelius’s kick.
