Episode 3: A fiancée with a business addiction; will this marriage be okay? (6)
T/N: Rinee has been changed to Rineh. Maarten has also been changed to Martin. Past chapters reflect this change.
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Seeing Yenikarina wink at her, Aristine returned that with a smile.
“Why, that is very nice of you.”
That was the reply Yenika wanted but her smile was a little stiff.
‘Did…did she just drop formalities with me?’ (T/N: Aristine did not use the polite form when she spoke)
Was this idiot looking down on her right now?
“Ah, my bad. Princess Yenika, can I speak more comfortably to you?”[1]
‘The nerve.’
But Yenikarina managed to squeeze out a smile.
What a really annoying woman.
She said ‘my bad’ but her expressionless face showed no signs of her feeling sorry at all which was even more irritating.
“That, actually, I’m rather…”
Shy with strangers—is what she was going to say but before she could, Aristine opened her mouth.
“It’s because you remind me of my younger sister. Princess Yenika, you said you want me to think of you like my younger sister too, right?”
‘What?’
Yenikarina couldn’t say anything because she was so speechless.
“Ah, were you perhaps just saying that to be polite? I am not very good at making that distinction. I thought you were being serious.”
Aristine’s gaze fell to the floor.
As expected of a beauty, that alone made her look pitiful and sad.
Yenika grew even more irritated when she saw Martin sigh like he was feeling sorry for Aristine.
‘How can I be serious?! Why the hell would I want someone like you to think of me like your younger sister!”
There was only one person who could treat her as a younger sister and that was her brother, Hamill.
But in the end, the words that left her mouth were…
“Of course! I was serious, for sure.”
Yenikarina forced a bright smile.
“So it’s fine, right?” (Aristine)
The sight of Aristine dropping honorifics immediately made Yenikarina’s smiling face crack.
Her entire life, she had been able to keep smiling no matter what happened, but she had never found it so hard to keep smiling before today.
‘Damn it. Is it because she lived next to a wall her entire life that she’s so tactless or what?’
But considering what she saw her do to Paellamien earlier, it didn’t seem like Aristine was completely tactless.
Anyway, since the princess wanted to drop the honorifics first, there was no need for her to keep being formal.
“Mn, well then Yenika will also—”
“Ah.”
Aristine cut her off.
“My younger sister always speaks respectfully to me. Even when she was very young, she never lowered her speech with me.”
“…”
Yenikarina was momentarily struck speechless.
Her mind went blank.
Then at that very moment, a burst of laughter came from right next to her.
“Pfft!”
It was Martin.
He tried to hold back his laughter, but he couldn’t stop it from leaking out. His shoulders were trembling.
Yenikarina gave him a glance then she smiled sweetly.
“Brother Martin.”
“Hm? Huh?”
“What is so funny? Yenika wants to know too.”
“Huh? No, that is…”
“That is?”
“…Sorry.”
“What might you be sorry for? Did you do anything wrong to Yenika?”
Aristine watched indifferently as Martin was intimated by Yenikarina’s attack then she looked away.
Actually, there was a different person she had been wanting to deal with for a while now.
Nephther, the King of Irugo.
His sharp eyes reminiscent of Tarkan’s turned towards her. His turquoise-blue eyes held a bit of interest.
‘That’s a good sign.’
When Starlina picked a fight with her, she only made Starlina shut up for the sake of convenience, but it seems to have had an unexpected effect.
The King of Irugo had taken interest in her because of that.
‘He cares for Tarkan so he must have wanted Tarkan’s partner to be a socially capable woman.’[2]
Currently, in Irugo, the Crown Prince had not yet been selected.
Hence, the fight for succession was fierce and they were divided into two factions: One side belonged to her prospective husband, Tarkan, and the other side belonged to Hamill, the eldest son and biological child of the Queen.
Like Hamill, Yenikarina was also the biological child of the Queen.
The remaining prince and princess were all from other concubines…
‘No, Tarkan is the exception.’
Tarkan was not born from a properly titled concubine. He was born from a commoner woman, who was not even a concubine.
That very birth was Tarkan’s political weakness. Because of this, most of the royal family members stood on Hamill’s side.
The simplest explanation for this was that they despised Tarkan for being born from someone with a lowly origin.
A slightly more complex explanation was that they were trying to exclude a new power that would cause them to share their existing aristocratic powers. The nobles united into one group and were trying to maintain the power they had established, one way or the other.
‘In the end, politics is always about fighting for interests.’
All the politics Aristine had seen through her Monarch’s Sight were like that.
Once all the members of the royal family had sat down, the court ladies served freshly brewed tea and refreshments.
Aristine stared at the teacup with rosy tea.
The tea swirled in the teacup and its smell spread through the air, giving off a pleasant scent. The glossy jelly that was served alongside the tea looked delicious as well and it kept drawing her eyes.
‘But today, I came here to deal…no, I came here to sell a product.’
Aristine wanted to prove to Tarkan how good of a salesperson she was.[3] And she was pretty confident.
Aristine had a very good memory.
One thing for sure is that she had never forgotten anything she saw with her Monarch’s Sight.
In the first place, Aristine was limited in what she could do when she was confined in a ruined palace with nobody around.
In addition, the Monarch’s Sight was not something she could use because she wanted to so Aristine spent a lot of time reflecting on what she had already seen.
That was the only way she lived her life.
She would sit by herself, thinking over and over again about the outside world that happened to be reflected in the water.
Even memory became something that could be trained.
Aristine had a lot of things she remembered and could not forget. Plus, thanks to that habit, she gradually became able to examine various things when she looked into the past, present, and future with the Monarch’s sight.
Not just people’s conversations but how pretty the flowers behind them were, or how blue the sky was or how bright the sun was.
She would always put things like that deep in her heart and recall them preciously in that poorly lit room.
Naturally, her skill in observation increased.
But one might ask why that was important right now.
Aristine had already seen the King of Irugo before through her Monarch’s sight.
Not just one time but many times.
Thanks to that, Aristine knew the secrets of the King that even Tarkan did not know.
Translator’s Corner:
[1] In Korean, there is a formal and informal way of speaking.
The formal one is the polite form with honorifics while the informal one has no honorifics and is usually what you use among people you are close with. Using it with someone you are not on close terms with is considered rude. Speaking more comfortably/lowering your speech simply means switching from formal to informal.
[2] Socially capable: The word here is used for someone who is good at navigating people. It’s usually used on politicians.
[3] Not too sure about this sentence. It might change later. She’s talking about marketing specifically.
Note: On the change from Maarten to Martin, I initially felt the name ‘Martin’ was out of place with all the unique names of the Irugo royal family so I spelled the name the way it is pronounced but then, we have a Dionna so Martin is probably more of what the author was going for.
